Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [20]
At the end of the day, the sun setting in the dunes behind us, Metrakos put on running shoes and ran the fifteen miles home. He left thirty minutes before we did but was already four miles down the road when we saw him. He wore a bandanna around his head and no shirt, his back gleaming with sweat. As we passed, Pop honked the horn and we all waved at Theo and he smiled and waved back. On both sides of us were salt marshes, acres of mudflats and sea grass, deep yellow-green under the last of the sun. I sat back in my seat and wondered how anyone could run fifteen miles. I also liked how kind Metrakos was, how respectful he was to everyone he talked to. And smart, too. Educated.
OUR MOTHER had a new boyfriend now, Bruce M. Her other boyfriends looked like convicts compared to him; he picked her up on a Saturday night in the summer, and as soon as he pulled to our curb on Lime Street, we knew this one was different. He didn’t drive a beat-up van or a motorcycle or a loud muscle car, he drove a sleek gray Jaguar XJ6, a car I didn’t even know existed, and when he stepped out of it, we saw a slim, clean-shaven man wearing good shoes, ironed pants, and a shirt and tie. It was navy blue, and when he got close enough, we could see dozens of tiny peace signs sewn into it.
Mom introduced us to him and he smiled down at each of us and reached out his hand. He actually looked happy to meet us. Mom wore a skirt and earrings and as they crossed Lime in the late-afternoon light, the four of us huddled at a window and watched him open the passenger door for her. He laughed easily at something she said, then he walked around the hood of the Jaguar and climbed in behind the wheel. We must’ve been leaning on the curtain because the rod pulled from the window jambs and came down on us and we all hit the floor laughing, sure they saw us spying.
“I like that one,” Suzanne said.
“I hope she marries him.”
One of us said that. I don’t remember who, but it could have been me.
HE SLEPT over that first night and most every weekend after that. He gave Mom money and there was food in the fridge, gas in the car, and he drove us to Schwinn Bicycles up the river and bought each of us a brand-new bike. I forget what the girls got, but Jeb picked out a yellow ten-speed and I chose a bright tangerine five-speed chopper with a banana seat and two-foot sissy bar in the back. It looked just like the motorcycle Peter Fonda rode in Easy Rider. It was the bike of outlaws.
That afternoon we rode those bikes up and down the streets of the South End. When the sun went down, Bruce wanted to take us all out to eat somewhere and before we left, Jeb and I went out back with our new rubber-coated chain locks and ran them through the four bike frames, locking them to a cross-brace in the fence. I checked the latch on the gate, then dragged two cinderblocks over and wedged them against it.
At the restaurant, an air-conditioned one in Andover that had white linen table cloths and rolled napkins, Bruce said we could order whatever we wanted. He and Mom sipped bourbons and laughed a lot and kept looking at each other over the table. We’d never gone out with any of her other boyfriends before. Part of me felt guilty; if there was going to be a man eating at the table with Mom and us, it should be Pop, shouldn’t it? But Bruce was warm and easy to talk to and somehow whatever we said, he found interesting or funny or intelligent, and he would say so, looking us directly in the eye.
I looked away. I looked down at my plate. In our weekly dinners with Pop, he would talk with the four of us too, but he didn’t look us in the eye very long. Instead, there was the feeling he had a lot to do, that this meal was something it was hard for him to take time for. But