The Whistling Toilets

1
IT HAD BEEN RAINING all day and I had to ride my bike home from my after-school job, which in eleven days would turn into my summer job. I wanted to make sure my mom saw how drenched I was. I found her in the kitchen boiling wieners. She looked surprised to see me.
"Hey. What're you doing here? You're supposed to be at the Forresters'."
"I know. Look at me. This is how wet you get when you have to ride your bike everywhere instead of having a--"
"Bus pass?" Mom said, smiling. "You'd better get changed and hurry over there. Bitsy just called. They're wondering where you are. She told me to remind you to be sure and bring those postcards."
"The postcards, yeah. Is Dad home yet? I'd kind of like him to see me, too."
"He's not home. Look, you're dripping on the floor. I'll tell him how soaked you were. I really don't think we need convincing, Stan. It's up to you to save for a decent car that won't leak oil all over the driveway. It's fine that you've chosen to coach tennis again this summer, but it really doesn't pay enough for you to --Oh, but look, you'd better get going, hon. And don't forget those postcards."
I went upstairs to my room. Talk about getting shot down. She was right, of course. That idiotic summer job hardly paid anything at all. I could have found something better, but for some reason I was coaching tennis to a bunch of runts at a decrepit neighborhood rec center.
The postcards. I'd had them yesterday, but where were they? Probably somewhere on my messy VIP shelf. My Shelf of Heroes. Let's see ... there was a book by Vince Lombardi about his years as the Green Bay Packers' coach. There were two books by Arthur Ashe. Ashe hadn't been the greatest tennis player or Davis Cup coach of all time, but he was by far the classiest, and my biggest hero. My friend Ginny had given me his book Days of Grace two Christmases ago. I also had his earlier autobiography, Advantage Ashe, which he'd written in 1967 and which I'd read and reread lots of times. I had borrowed that book frommy school library back in the fifth grade and hadn't gotten around to returning it.
Then there were my two special magazines. One had an article about an English tennis player named Lord Gerald Boxton. He wasn't a very good tennis player and he wasn't even a nice guy, but he was a wealthy international playboy who played professional tennis for kicks, and for that reason, he was a sort of hero to me. Also, I happened to be using one of his tennis rackets. He didn't know I was using it. It was the most expensive tennis racket in the world: the Derwint "Derbyshire" XQ-2R-200S. Made in England, the BMW of tennis rackets. I had acquired it two winters ago, when I was fourteen and working as a ball boy at a men's pro tournament in Seattle, where Boxton was playing.
The other magazine had an article about Ginny. It had come out in September, nine months ago, and since then I had looked at it so many times it was starting to get ragged.
It told about how Ginny was a rising tennis star, plundering the fourteen-and-under age division in several junior tournaments, rising steadily in the computer rankings.
The article also told about Ginny's personal tennis coach, Rick Donsprokken, who was the head pro at Ginny's club in Seattle and who also ran a prestigious summer tennis camp in eastern Washington.
A little over a year ago, Donsprokken had sent some of his best junior players, including Ginny, to live half the year at a tennis academy in Florida, where they would receive intensive tennis training and a decent academic education. Donsprokken didn't actually work at the tennis academy, but he knew the teachers and counted on them to keep his players in top form. A lot of personal coaches did this--sent their players off to an academy when they weren't competing in tournaments. That way, the player and coach could get a vacation from each other; the player could form friendships with other players and be exposed to different teaching styles; and the coach could continue earning a living at his or her local club. The other half of the year, Rick Donsprokken took his team around the country on the national junior tennis circuit, where the players competed in one tournament after another. "Team Donsprokken" had its own academic tutor, physical trainer, and sports psychologist. All funded by parents, financial backers, and sponsors who were betting that two or three of these players would someday hit fame and fortune in big-time tennis.
Ginny and I were neighbors. I had known her for ten years. I also knew Donsprokken well; I had gone to that tennis camp of his nine years in a row.
The article had a half-page color photograph of Ginny. She was standing on a sunny beach in Florida, wearing a sporty one-piece bathing suit with the brandname prominently displayed across the front of it. The clothing company had paid money to have Ginny wear its logo. The money went into the Team Donsprokken fund. Ginny got to keep the bathing suit.
There she was, with her thick honey-colored hair down over her shoulders, looking tanned and sort of kid-like. She wore a silver bracelet on her left wrist and a silver chain around her neck that had a small heart-shaped locket that contained a tiny photo of her cat, whose name was Boat. She was fourteen in that picture, but had turned fifteen in January, two weeks before I had turned sixteen.
"Stan!" My mom was calling from downstairs.
"Yeah! I'm hurrying."
I put the magazine back on the shelf. For a moment I'd forgotten what I was looking for. The postcards. Ginny had sent them in the mail last week. And now Ginny's parents had summoned me--along with the postcards--to their house for a meeting. Ginny's psychologist from Team Donsprokken was going to be there, too. Evidently, Ginny had mentioned to her psychologist that the postcards were "symbolic." I doubted Ginny would ever say something like that in seriousness, but her parents and psychologist thought otherwise. They were hoping the postcards contained some clue as to why Ginny had recently been on the skids and falling apart; why her behavior, both on and off the tennis court, had seemed vague and distant. But what did they think I had to do with it?
When I came downstairs, having found the postcards and changed into dry clothes, my mom, who was still in the kitchen, asked if she could see the postcards. I showed them to her. She held them up, glancing from one to the other, laughed, and shook her head.
"Do you think they're symbolic?" she asked.
"About as symbolic as those hot dogs. You ought to grill them, to symbolize what's about to happen to me."
"Oh, they're not going to grill you." Mom handed the postcards back to me. "Roast you, maybe. Listen, do you want hot dogs when you get home, or are you going out tonight?"
"Both."
"Oh. That means you're going out with the other two hot dogs."
"Just going to shoot pool, Mom. Didn't Bitsy say anything to you about why they wanted to see me? I get the feeling it's more than the postcards. They think I have this influence over Ginny or something. Are they going to try to pin something on me? I mean, am I in trouble?"
My mom smiled. "I don't know. Should you be?"
I didn't answer. Deep down, who didn't feel like they should be in some kind of trouble?
I left through the back door into the light Seattle rain, straight for the woods. It wasn't the quickest way to Ginny's house, but it was the most pleasant.
This evening the woods had a mossy, dripping smell. I must have walked down this path, who knows, maybe a thousand times over the past ten years.
Ginny and I used to stand underneath the trees, waiting for a single leaf to break loose so we could catch it as it zigzagged to earth. The path led down to a creek. We had seen salmon spawning, swimming upstream in six inches of water, their snouts long and green, their teeth sharp; they looked utterly exhausted but kept going.
Once we saw a muskrat carrying the head and torso of a Barbie doll in its mouth. Nobody believed us.
We had fished in the creek. One time Ginny had caught a small trout, too small to keep, but I couldn't get the hook out of its mouth; it had swallowed the bait and hook and everything and the hook was way down in its guts, and the more I pulled on the hook, the more I felt like I was yanking the fish's guts right up through its mouth. Ginny and I both panicked, but she was the one who started crying, even though I felt like it, too.
Coming out of the woods into Ginny's back yard, I walked around the side of the house to the front, where I noticed two workmen. One of them was digging a hole with a post-hole digger. The other was watching him dig the hole. The one watching gave me a brief nod and I nodded in return.
The guy using the post-hole digger had huge muscles,a deep suntan. He was sweating hard. His hair was tied in a ponytail, and a cigarette poked from his mouth. Nothing like having a smoke while you're doing back-breaking work.
I continued up the landscaped walkway to the front porch and rang the doorbell. The workmen's pickup truck was parked on the street, but there were two other strange cars in the Forresters' driveway. One of them must have been the psychologist's, but who belonged to the other one? Bitsy hadn't mentioned anybody else.
I was about to ring again, when the door opened.
"So you're the new housekeeper," I said.
"So you're the old Stan Claxton." Her voice sounded flat and bored. "Mr. and Mrs. Forrester told me about you."
She was young, twentyish, and, according to my mother, a grad student at the Bible college a few miles away. She wore khaki pants and Birkenstock sandals with thick white socks. She had an enormous ballooning rear end, frog lips, and glasses. She had pretty hands.
As she led me through the foyer to the parlor, I couldn't help thinking that if I were an international playboy like Gerald Boxton, this new housekeeper would have been sexy, with a body like the aerobics instructor at the rec center where I taught tennis, and she would glance at me over her shoulder and wink flirtatiously, and our wild and steamy summer wouldbe under way. Ah, to live the life of Lord Gerald Boxton.
The parlor served as a waiting room to the den, where Dirk and Bitsy did a lot of business and received visitors. They were both wheeler-dealer types who'd made their own pile of money as well as inheriting some from dead relatives.
"What's with the workers out there?" I asked the housekeeper.
"Mrs. Forrester backed into one of the lampposts. The left one. Flattened it."
"What'd it do to her Jeep?"
"Minimal damage."
"Do you always call her Mrs. Forrester?"
"In front of visitors I do."
"I'm not really a--"
"I know what you are." She blinked several times. "I hope you don't mind waiting in the parlor."
"I bloody well do mind." I said this in my Gerald Boxton accent. Occasionally he took possession of me without warning. Kind of like I had taken possession of his Derwint "Derbyshire" XQ-2R-200S.
She closed her eyes in a silent groan. "That is perhaps the lamest British accent I've ever heard."
"What's your name?" I asked in my regular voice.
"Nancy. Mrs. Forrester will come get you when they're ready."
I looked at the closed door of the den. "How many in there?"
Nancy mentally counted. "Mm--five."
"Five! I thought it was just the psychologist. Who else?"
"You'll find out soon enough. Would you like something to drink?"
"Scotch-and-soda."
She closed her eyes again, that bored look, and repeated the question. I told her I'd settle for a glass of two-percent milk with ample heaps of Ovaltine. I watched her walk out of the room. That enormous butt.
I had always liked this parlor. Ginny and I had played many a board game in here--chess. Scrabble, Yahtzee, and Risk were our favorites. And one whole summer of practically nothing but Monopoly. The sun had a nice way of sneaking in very quietly and creeping across the carpet. But it was also a good room for standing at the window and watching the rain.
I checked to make sure Nancy was gone, then walked over to my longtime friend and partner, the Money Chair.
Good old Money Chair. I gave its green, smooth, expensive leather a few pats. It was an heirloom, Bitsy's side of the family. An inviting place for all those distinguished visitors to park their rumps while waiting for their power meetings with one of the Forresters.
I checked again to make sure Nancy wasn't coming, then sat down in the Money Chair. It made a pleasant sigh, like a weary dog curling up before a fire. Itsmelled like the pages of old library books. I slipped my left hand between the cushion and side and probed with my fingers, and began pulling things out. Dimes, nickels, quarters, two pens, a peppermint. I popped the peppermint into my mouth and counted the coins--$2.35--and dropped them into my hip pocket. And, to use the cliché, waited for God to strike me dead. Or at least to say something to my face. But God and I had not been on speaking terms for a while.
I sat and looked out the window at the rain falling, and heard one of the workmen out front cussing.
Copyright © 1996 by Randy Powell