‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know that.’ I got up and hugged her. Pancreatic cancer was what got her.
That one’s quick, at least, but it wasn’t quick enough. I guess none of them are when it’s someone you love.
‘But you have to work hard at your studies. Boys who don’t work hard at them have been dying.’ She smiled. There wasn’t much humor in it. ‘Probably you knew that.’
‘I heard a rumor.’
‘You’re still growing,’ she said, tilting her head up.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Yes. At least an inch since summer. And your hair! Why don’t you cut your hair?’
‘I like it the way it is.’
‘It’s as long as a girl’s. Take my advice, Pete, cut your hair. Look decent. You’re not one of those Rolling Stones or a Herman’s Hermit, after all.’
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. ‘I’ll think about it, Mom, okay?’
‘You do that.’ She gave me another hard hug, then let me go. She looked tired, but I thought she also looked rather beautiful. ‘They’re killing boys across the sea,’ she said. ‘At first I thought there was a good reason for it, but your father says it’s crazy and I’m not so sure he isn’t right. You study hard. If you need a little extra for books or a tutor — we’ll scrape it up.’
‘Thanks, Mom. You’re a peach.’
‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Just an old mare with tired feet. I’m going to bed.’
I studied another hour, then all the words started to double and triple in front of my eyes. I went to bed myself but couldn’t sleep. Every time I started to drift I saw myself picking up a
Hearts hand and beginning to arrange it in suits. Finally I let my eyes roll open and just stared up at the ceiling. Boys who don’t work hard at their studies have been dying, my mother had said. And Carol telling me that this was a good time to be a girl, Lyndon Johnson had seen to that.
We chasin The Bitch!
Pass left or right?
Jesus Christ, fuckin Riley’s shootin the moon!
Voices in my head. Voices seeming to seep out of the very air.
Quitting the game was the only sane solution to my problems, but even with the third-floor lounge a hundred and thirty miles north of where I was lying, it had a hold on me, one which had little to do with sanity or rationality. I’d amassed twelve points in the uber tourney; only Ronnie, with fifteen, was now ahead of me. I didn’t see how I could give those twelve points up, just walk away, and leave that windbag Malenfant with a clear field. Carol had helped me keep Ronnie in some sort of perspective, allowed me to see him for the creepy, small-minded, bad-complexioned gnome that he was. Now that she was gone —
Ronnie’s also going to be gone before long, the voice of reason interposed. If he lasts to the end of the semester it’ll be a blue-eyed miracle. You know that.
True. And in the meantime, Ronnie had nothing else but Hearts, did he? He was clumsy, potbellied, and thin-armed, an old man waiting to happen. He wore a chip on his shoulder to at least partially hide his massive feelings of inferiority. His boasting about girls was ludicrous. Also, he wasn’t really smart, like some of the kids currently in danger of flunking out (Skip Kirk, for instance). Hearts and empty brag were the only things Ronnie was good at, so far as I’d been able to tell, so why not just stand back and let him run the cards and run his mouth while he still could?
Because I didn’t want to, that was why. Because I wanted to wipe the smirk off his hollow, pimply face and silence his grating blare of a laugh. It was mean but it was true. I liked Ronnie best when he was sulking, when he was glowering at me with his greasy hair tumbled down over his forehead and his lower lip pushed out.
Also, there was the game itself. I loved playing. I couldn’t even stop thinking about it here, in my childhood bed, so how was I supposed to stay away from the lounge when I got back?