Straub, Peter - Lost Boy Lost Girl by Straub Peter

Author:Straub, Peter [Straub, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780449149911
Publisher: Ballantine
Published: 2012-02-25T14:37:35+00:00

The

Red

Sky

PART FOUR

15

Now and again during our childhood, Philip and I had the benefit of Pop’s discourses on the female gender—never when Mom was within hearing range, of course. Pop gave us the lowdown on women when we accompanied him on his Saturday “errands,” which involved visits to the houses of his companions Mom disliked or detested. Refreshing stops at local bars and taverns formed the connective tissue between his social calls. Maybe one-third of the time, Philip and I were allowed to come with him into his friends’ houses or apartments. We were allowed into the taverns in about the same proportion.

Going with Pop into his friends’ places and the bars he frequented on Sherman Boulevard and Burleigh was only slightly more satisfying than having to wait in the car. In the car, we could listen to the radio, and in the taverns we could order Cokes. In both the car and the Saracen Lounge at the St. Alwyn Hotel—or Sam n’ Aggie’s Auer Corner, or Noddy’s Sportsmen’s Tavern—we were essentially left alone to quarrel with each other while Pop carried on according to the requirements of the moment. Sometimes I saw money changing hands, usually from his pockets to another man’s hand, but sometimes the other way around; sometimes he helped one of his friends move boxes or heavy objects like electrical saws or water heaters from one place, say, like a warehouse, to another, say, like a garage. In the bars and taverns he installed us in a booth along the wall, got us set up with Cokes, and left us there for an hour or two while he drank beer or played pool with his buddies. Once he commanded us to stay in the car while he went into the Saracen Lounge to “have a talk with a guy,” and after half an hour I got out of the car and peered in the window to see Pop nowhere in the room. In the pit of my stomach, I knew he had left us there, really walked away and left us, but I also knew that he would come back. As he eventually did, from around the corner, his eyes filled with handsome apologies.

Pop’s theories and opinions about women seemed not to apply to Mom. Mom was understood to exist in a separate category, distinct from all other females by reason of being beyond criticism, mostly, and anyway too close at hand to be seen whole. When a single tree fills your lens, the rest of the forest takes on a degree of abstraction. By some such process, Pop enabled himself to arrive at a point of view largely hostile to women without including his wife in the general condemnation.

“Boys,” he said (and now we are in the smoky, beer-stained depths of the Saracen Lounge, where two scoundrels named Bisbee and Livernoise lean forward over the table as if they, not we, were the boys being addressed), “there are two kinds of women, and you better watch out for both of ’em.

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