The Thief of Lost Time

Chapter 19: Silver Dollars

I was in my bedroom listening to records when the telephone rang.

"Mark," Mom called upstairs. "It's Billy. He's asking you over to his house."

I didn't want to go to Billy's. I was listening to Dance of the Hours by someone my mother called PaunchANellie on my 45-rpm record player. I'd already played it a dozen times at high volume. By now, Dad would have yelled up the stairs, "Hey, Maestro, turn it down." But he was in his workshop where the shriek of the buzz saw drowned out my music.

"Can he come over here?" I yelled, over the music.

Putting the receiver on the table in the hall, Mom climbed halfway up the stairs to the landing. "Mark, turn down that music and come talk to him."

Groaning, I rolled off the bed and turned off the record. "Coming." I was bored, but not so bored that I wanted to be soaked walking to his house. All morning rain had drummed the porch roof while bursts of wind rattled the windows. Billy had only called because his friend from school, who'd slept over, had gone home.

Mom stood on the stairs, her hands on her hips. She was mad about something. "Ask him yourself. I'm not your secretary."

I followed her downstairs and picked up the receiver. "Billy? What're you doing?"

Seeing Mom listening from the kitchen, I turned my back for more privacy.

"Do yah wanna come over?" Billy sounded like he was chewing a wad of bubblegum.

"I don't know. Wanna come over here?"

"My dad says I can't."

"How come?"

"He just says I can't. Anyway, there's something I wanna show you."

I thought a moment, my interest piqued. "All right. See you in five minutes."

I hung up and took my raincoat from the hall closet. Dad was pounding nails in the cellar, making another bookcase. "Mom! I'm going over to Billy's house."

"You don't have to shout." She found my rubbers in the closet. I sat on the stairs to put them on. "Why can't he come over here? The three of us could play Monopoly."

"Dad, too?"

"Your father's too busy."

Her tone of voice made me look up. She was angry. Dad wasn't spending time with her and Leslie was at a birthday party. Now I was leaving. "We can play when I get back."

"Perhaps." She kissed the top of my head. "Okay, go. Have fun."

When I left the house, the wind blew high in the trees, shaking the last leaves to the ground. I hunched my shoulders against the rain.

Billy Melchoir was a friend, due to our parents being friends. His father was an English teacher at Browne and Nichol's, a private boy's school on the Charles River. Mr. Melchoir once tried to convince Dad to enroll me in the school. "He can ride with me and my boys. It'll do Mark good."

My father laughed. "The Arlington public schools are excellent and a lot cheaper." That surprised me. I didn't know parents had to pay for kids to go to school.

Later, I asked Mom how much it cost to go to school. "Nothing. Except for our taxes."

"How much do the Melchoirs pay?"

Mom raised an eyebrow which she did when being sarcastic. "They don't pay a dime."

"They don't? Then what did Daddy mean?"

"It means Mr. Melchoir teaches at the school and all his boys go for free."

The Melchoirs had five boys. Billy, the oldest, was my age, eleven. Stevie was two years younger. A year later, Joan Melchoir had another boy, Robbie. Mom told me Joan was disappointed: she'd hoped for a girl. Not one to give up, Mrs. Melchoir became pregnant again. Once more. no girl, but Nature gave her a consolation prize: twin boys, Tommy and Eddie. The family bought a minibus.