CHAPTER ELEVEN: Dinner and a Phone Call
He did not see Donati the following day. Breakfast time words proved unmovable clay.
“I got an interesting phone call last night,” Dante’s father said over toast and coffee, “from Janet Jones. Seems she recently lost ten dollars from her purse.”
Dante swallowed a mouthful of Corn Flakes. Both parents were looking across the table. As always their appearances nearly matched, like mannequins in a window. But for a low simmer of accusation, man and woman were posed expressionless. Dark hair framed carved faces, one of glory on the battlefield, the other of freedom.
“Sorry,” he told them.
“Sorry for what, exactly?” asked his father.
“I’m sorry that…you know, she lost the money.”
He finished eating in silence, not looking up from his bowl. Minutes later he was heading out the door to visit Donati. His father stopped him.
“Dante! I need you to grab a rake and take care of the lawn.”
He froze, his hand on the latch. “Right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
“But I’m on my way to Mr. Donati’s. He needs help with reading his newspaper.”
This was a lie—one of them anyway—he’d manufactured to help justify his visitations with the old man. Never once had his father questioned it. Until today.
“You raked his lawn last week? Or was it the week before?”
“Dad—“
“Now it’s time to rake yours. Get to it.”
After the lawn his mother asked him to wash the breakfast dishes, which she had inexplicably left to harden in the sink. After this, she sent him on an errand to buy postage stamps. Postage stamps on a Sunday.
“Who are you writing to?” Dante asked. To whom are you writing? Mr. Wolfe corrected in his mind.
“Nobody,” his mom shrugged.
“Then why—“
“Just go.”
Dante went. Once home, it was time to tidy the basement. He cleaned the card table, dusted the stereo. A small trash bucket in the corner needed changing. He did that, too. Then a creak on the steps announced the presence of his father. The older man looked at Dante stonily as he had at breakfast. A pipe simmered in his mouth.
“Why don’t you tell me,” he began, without coming to the bottom step, “where you put that ten dollars? Then this nonsense can come to an end.”
“I don’t have ten dollars,” replied Dante. This was the truth; thus, it came out as such.
His father didn’t care. “Young man,” he said, “I grow weary.”
“I don’t see why you think I would steal ten dollars. I have everything I need here.”
“Indeed,” the father puffed, now beginning to look a bit like Sherlock Holmes. “Right now only you know the answer to that question, Dante. I’ll strike you a bargain.”
“A bargain.”
“Yes. Call Janet. Apologize to her. She won’t accept it, but no matter. Your mother and I will be satisfied. Do this and we let you continue the regular life of Dante Torn. If not, why…” A puff of smoke floated in front of his face. “Who knows? Perhaps you and Mr. Donati will need to become postage friends instead of breakfast buddies. Maybe that’s why your mother sent you out for those stamps. How does that sound?”
A sudden fury swelled in Dante’s chest. The smug, satisfied music of his father’s words made him want to smash something to pieces. The stereo, maybe. Or perhaps the card table could do with flipping over. A chair against the wall. He looked at the garbage bucket. It was just the right size for kicking across the room.
“I await your answer, dear boy.”
“Can’t I think about it for awhile?” Dante finally managed.
His father struck a match, relit the pipe. “And why,” he asked, an eyebrow raised over the flame, “must you do that?”
“Because I’m quite innocent and don’t wish to proclaim otherwise to a person such as Janet,” Dante said, mimicking—savagely—the other’s style and tone.
“You’re not helping our situation,” said his father.
“I didn’t take her money.”
And the father: “You’re a lying fool. It shames me.”
He didn’t wait for Dante’s reply. Instead he turned on his heel (the step creaked again) and disappeared through the top door.
How can he know? Dante wondered. How can he know I took the money?
He didn’t have a shred of proof. Not one tiny little scrap. And yet…
Joe and Janet are his friends. They’ve known each other since way before you were born.
“Whatever,” Dante said to the empty basement. His eye went to the card table. The grown-ups were calling his bluff, betting more chips. Fine. But Dante would not show his eights and aces until he absolutely had to.
From the top of the stairs his mother told him to get ready for church. An hour later he was in the pews, wondering if today’s sermon would involve some mysticism about the dishonor of thievery or obeisance to thy father and they mother. Nothing of the sort arrived. The priest instead settled into the second epistle of Paul, intoning the benefits of belief in what one could not see.
“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed,” he read. “We are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed…”
Once back at number 54 Dante was sent straight to his room for the rest of the day. Here there was little to do except nap and brood at the window. The latter got boring very quickly. His room overlooked State Street. Beat up cars, broken sidewalks. Kids playing catch with a Nerf football.
The former brought with it a dream.
Okay, Sunny said, peering at him over a card table. What do you ya got?
Dante looked at his hand. An ace of diamonds, a two of hearts, a four of spades. One king, one queen. A jack faded yellow, as if time had taken special issue with its glossy features.
I don’t think I can use any of these, Dante told her.
Sunny’s hair caught fire. She howled and sprang over the table. Barking like a demon from deep within the earth, she ripped at Dante’s throat.
In utter terror Dante groped for a pitcher of water, tipped it over…
Then he went downstairs to dinner, where no one spoke to him, even when he asked his mother to pass the mushroom soup, please. Plates clanged. Utensils dinged. Yet words, like the steps of those two poets within the city of Dis, proceeded with great hesitancy. The ground was uncertain. Treacherous.
Deciding it best to leave things that way for a little while longer, Dante finished eating, went upstairs, and washed for bed. The card table dream still flickered in his mind. He guessed it wouldn’t for much longer though. The wax of its wick had nearly been spent. Its light was but an ember on the dish. And why not? He had never put much stock in dreams.
He put his toothbrush away and went back to his room. Dark had fallen. Pegasus’ great square glowed high in the south of a sky with no moon. Dante lay down. A book of poetry peeked from under the covers. He read for awhile. Then he fell asleep.
Hours later he awoke to the howling of heavy wind. His bedside clock showed 12:42. Curious, Dante rose and went to the window, to find that State Street had become a chaos of swirling leaves caught up in a rainy storm. The breath of Aeolus cradled their boughs. Rain drops spattered the window, rushed away, then spattered again.
He watched the storm for a number of minutes before deciding to go downstairs for a midnight snack. The hall outside of his room was quiet. Not wishing to wake his parents, Dante tip-toed down the stairs. This was rather unnecessary, as number 54’s mighty curved case did not creak, but habit for lairs of serenity had hold of him. He came to the ground floor. Darkness. A ticking clock. Furniture snoozing in deep shadows. The window pane shook as a particularly hard gust of wind struck it. Dante walked to the kitchen, where a purring refrigerator greeted his arrival. He went to the door and was just about to open it when the living room phone rang.
Say what? he thought, his hand frozen on the handle.
The phone rang again. Dante looked at the stove clock. Straight up 1AM. Now who in the world…?
For a third time the phone’s bell brrrrring!’d from the living room. Dante walked to it with a head full of possibilities, none of them happy. Happy calls didn’t come in the middle of the night. In the middle of the night they rang only for emergencies.
“Hello?” he said, switching on a lamp.
“It’s one o’clock in the morning,” a young female voice chanted. The air of amusement in its tone gave it away on the spot.
“Sunny?” Dante said.
“I speak to you with words imploring, darkness rife with imps ashoring…”
“Sunny?”
She laughed. “Yes, dear, it’s me. I can’t remember the entire poem, sorry.”
“You’re up awfully late on a school night.”
“Those are my sentiments, Mister. But then I knew you’d be up.” Another short, brutal laugh puffed through the line. “Skulker.”
Smiling now, Dante said: “So what’s on your mind?”
“Pizza. I’ve got a slice. Wish you were here to share it.”
“Me too. But I think I’ll need to make do with Corn Flakes this time around.”
“Got Milk?”
“Of course,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Now quit watching lame commercials on TV.”
When Sunny next spoke her tone was more serious. “There’s a storm outside, Dante,” she said.
“I hear it. It sounds like ghosts in the trees.”
“Maybe that’s true. What do you say we join them for awhile?”
“Together? How?”
The line began to hiss with static, faint at first, but intensifying as Sunny said: “Oh, that’s easy. Just keep listening to me, Dante. Dante?”
Her request was rapidly becoming difficult to follow. He could barely hear her at all.
“Dante. Dante.”
Sunny’s voice, fading, fading. The hiss became a rush of turbulent water. Frothing madness over jagged rocks. Tilting the receiver away from his ear, Dante called Sunny’s name. Whether she answered he never found out, for at that instant the rushing stopped cold, as if frozen on that antediluvian gale which killed the great mammoths even as they dined. Complete silence followed. Then, surprising him even further, another voice he knew spoke on the line. It belonged to Joseph Jones, and it was not happy.
“Boy!” he shouted, making Dante jump. “Boy, you’d better start talking to me right now!”
“Who is this?” Dante snapped, irritated to have Sunny snatched from the cup of his ear by this bellowing brute.
But it was evident immediately that Joseph was in no mood for demands. “Get your father on the phone right now, boy! This is the last time I’m telling you!”
And Dante, growling: “Well that’s a relief. Let me go wake him up.”
“I don’t like your attitude—“
He dropped the receiver and went upstairs. Neither of his parents were heavy sleepers; getting them out of bed was no great chore. In five minutes his father, rumpled and ruffled, was seated on the couch, listening to Joseph. Dante waited while his mom brewed coffee. Of course the news would be grim.
“Oh no,” his father kept saying, the receiver pressed to his ear. “Oh no. Oh no.”
His mother put a mug of coffee on the table. Her face looked anxious.
“Joe, I’m sorry,” the father said. “My God. Is there anything you need?”
“Honey?” his mother asked, brimming with dread. “What is it?”
She had taken a seat next to her husband. Dante was in the chair opposite. The elder Torn spent a few more minutes talking with his friend, until at last he said goodbye and hung up the phone. He looked at his wife. Then at Dante.
“Honey,” the mom asked again. Practically begged. “Tell me what’s going on!”
“Yeah,” Dante listened to his father say. “Yeah. Okay.”
But he wouldn’t speak. Whatever had happened needed time for its messenger to arrange. To formulate into words. Indeed, when at last he did open his mouth, he could only manage one.
“Janet,” he said.
Dante’s mother gasped. “Oh God!” she said. “Is she okay?”
“No. She had a stroke. She’s…she’s dead.”
For a long time his father couldn’t say anything else. Number 54’s front windows shook with more heavy gales. Dead leaves swirled on the porch. Dante heard these things clearly, along with something else. A girl’s voice, echoing in his own mind.
Pizza. I’ve got a slice…
“Dead,” his father said. He sounded drugged. “I can’t believe it. I just talked to her yesterday.”
Dante looked at his mother. She had begun to cry in the early morning gloom.
Wish you were here to share it.
No tip, his father’s voice echoed, now bring us down the pizza.
And Janet, half-drunk: Do as your father says, little boy…
Call Janet. Apologize to her.
But it seemed the need for apologies to Janet had come to an end. Nor would she continue to accuse Mr. Torn’s thirteen year-old son of theft.
“How old was she?” Dante asked rather stupidly.
And his father answered. By dawn he’d forgotten it, though. It didn’t matter anyway. She’d obviously been old enough.
Dante sat at the breakfast table eating Corn Flakes all by himself. Both parents had risen early and gone to Joseph’s. Consolation and commiseration. Thinking about what words of comfort they might be using, he poured more cereal into his bowl.
“Goodbye, Janet!” he called to the empty kitchen. “Oh and…thank you for the tip!”