Read Online Other Plans by Constance C. Greene - Free Book Online Page A

never told on him. And there were plenty of opportunities. He’d taken his father’s last pack of cigarettes and he and Jimmy Howard had smoked their little brains out behind the garage and she didn’t tell. He’d driven the new car up and down the driveway and broken the taillight. She didn’t tell. Lots of things she kept to herself. Les was definitely not a squealer. He loved her for that.
    The last time he’d been spanked, he’d prepared for trouble by sticking his arithmetic workbook inside his pants. When his father’s hand had landed, whammo, in just the right place, the old man had been cured of spanking him forever.
    When he was ten, he’d fallen off his bike and broken his arm. It was a Saturday and his mother was out rolling bandages or something. His father had taken him to the hospital to have the bone set. After, they’d gone home and his father had squeezed him a glass of fresh orange juice and asked him how he felt. He said okay; then his father’s arm had, as if by accident, rested on his shoulder. He could still smell his father’s sweater. It smelled of burning leaves. Nothing else smelled like burning leaves except burning leaves, which you couldn’t do anymore due to pollution.…
    He had an idea for a TV commercial. Skinny guy, hollow chest, glasses, wispy hair, resembling Woody quite a bit, is raking leaves. All of a sudden girls are coming out of the woodwork, from behind trees, coming up out of manholes, they’re everywhere, attacking the guy like Indians going after Custer at Little Big Horn. All on account of the way the guy smells. He rakes a big pile, strikes a match to it, then varoom! the product shot. This would have to be a commercial for an after-shave called, you guessed it, Burning Leaves. If he could just get it past the environmentalists.
    If he didn’t make it as a gag writer for Woody, he might be able to cut the mustard as a hotshot TV-commercial writer. The world was loaded with opportunities, he figured.

6
    â€œFor God’s sake, John, sit up straight and stop dropping food all over the tablecloth. Anyone looking at you would think you’d been raised in a cave.”
    â€œHenry,” Ceil said.
    He drew himself up ostentatiously and sat erect. John Hollander, West Point cadet. He carried each mouthful of dinner to his mouth with slow deliberation, chewed every bite twelve times, and washed it all down with precise sips of milk. In the heavy silence of the dining room, he could hear himself swallow.
    â€œHey, you two.” His mother’s face was white, her lips pressed into a thin, tense line. “Something interesting must’ve happened to you today, out there in the world. I crave conversation.”
    Doggedly, his father ate his mashed potatoes. It was his habit to eat all of one thing before he tackled another.
    â€œMa,” he said brightly, “did you know that Woody’s real name is Allen Stewart Konigsburg? And I just read that he shelled out three mil for a house in the Hamptons because he wants to escape the madding crowd. How about that?”
    His father looked up and said, “Woody who?”
    He considered saying “You don’t know who Woody is?” imitating his father’s attitude when he, John, didn’t know some fact his father found essential to an understanding of world affairs. Instead, he said, “Woody Allen, Father. The greatest comic of the twentieth century. He drives a yellow Rolls and eats oatmeal with butter on it and hangs out at Elaine’s.”
    His father laid down his fork and wiped his mouth. “If you paid as much attention to your schoolwork as you do to some fly-by-night comedian, you might be president some day,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, Ceil, I have a telephone call to make. I’ll be waiting for you, John. Give me ten minutes.”
    After his father had gone, he said, “Can you just please let