By The Sea, Book Three: Laura Read Free Page B

ask? Do you suppose money
grows on trees?" She hurried her son along. Shops would be closing
soon.
    "Those fellows are eating ices," said Neil,
jerking his head toward two young dandies his age clad all in
white.
    "You are not those fellows, and lettuce
costs six cents a head. As long as there's a drought and produce
costs so much, there won't be ices. Besides, they rot your
teeth."
    "Can I join a baseball team then? I hardly
know how to play."
    "I don't think so, Neil. They wouldn't be
very tolerant of your travel schedule. Besides, Billy plays with
you quite a lot."
    "Billy plays catch with me. It's not the
same at all," said Neil, scarcely hiding his contempt of his
mother's ignorance. "I don't know anything about sliding into
second base, or stealing third, or about sacrifice flies. Nothing
except what I've read. What good is that?" he demanded with
disgust.
    His mother smiled distractedly and yanked
him quickly between two cars that were stalled in traffic. "Are you
planning a career with the Yankees, then?" she asked when they were
across the street.
    "I might be, if I knew something about it,"
he answered in a sullen voice.
    Laura straightened his hair with the palm of
her hand, amused by his martyr's air. "You claim to have no use for
New York City. Lord, look at your face. How do you get so filthy? I
can't take you into a shop looking like that!" She whipped out a
handkerchief, spit on its edge, and scrubbed his cheek clean.
    He endured the mauling, then said with
dignity, "I don't have any friends, Mama. Not one single one."
    "What? You don't count Billy?" Laura sighed
and straightened the collar of his shirt, then said softly, "I
know, sweetheart. Sometimes it can be hard for you."
    They went into the haberdasher's after that,
with Laura worrying that her son was all too right. This was new,
this ability to articulate what was bothering him. Up until now
when he was unhappy, he tended to brood, usually up in the
forecastle which he shared with Billy. He was somewhat shy,
probably because he was being schooled aboard the boat, and
introspective. If Neil felt that life aboard a boat had become so
intolerable that he had to blurt it out to his mother, then things
must be pretty bad.
    Inside the dimly lit shop, Laura pulled up
short. "Oh! I must have walked into the wrong store," she said,
looking around in confusion. The familiar bins that used to hold
neatly stacked overalls and Big Yank work shirts were filled with
more formal trousers and linen shirts. Gone were the corduroy
knickers and long socks, the school suits, breeches, and boys'
caps, all replaced by Arrow shirts and dark blue blazers, and even
a few straw boaters—out of fashion now, but still the hat of choice
for the formal yachtsman. (Even Laura knew that in Newport, the
skimmer hat was a fixture on the waterfront.)
    A smartly dressed middle-aged man who had
been tidying a rack of red bow ties took one look at them and said,
"You're looking for O'Brien's Men's and Boys' Wear, I presume."
    "Yes. They were here just a few months
ago."
    "A change of proprietorship. We're Taylor
and Son now," he said with a lift of his brow. "Perhaps you missed
the new sign?" His look plainly said that he couldn't imagine
how.
    Laura shrugged. "I never thought to look.
I've been coming here for a while … though I admit, not lately."
She looked around and sighed. "O'Brien's carried a line of the best overalls for boys," she said. "Such a soft denim, but
it wore like iron—which you really need, aboard a boat."
    The salesman perked up. "Oh? You have a
boat?"
    "We do," Laura answered. His condescending
manner was annoying her, so she decided to trump it with her boat
card. "A two-masted schooner."
    She could see that he was impressed. No
doubt he was picturing a sleek yacht built by a master boat
builder, all spit and polish with acres of varnish and a crew to
keep it that way. Fine. Let him.
    "A two-master!" he said. "A large yacht,
then."
    "It's not small," said Laura