Chapter 4
A Lot to Learn
AS SOON AS ELIZA HAD LEFT for Europe, I visited the house on my own. I told my parents that, as a diligent lad who took his duties seriously and meant to go about them in an organized way, I intended to get right down to work and would be spending most of Saturday looking the place over, making an inventory of what was required, listing the jobs that would have to be performed, and making a schedule on a calendar that I had been given when I visited the showroom of Babbington Studebaker. I thought I gave a fine performance.
“Stay out of trouble,” said my father, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he had seen through my act; he said it all the time. There wasn’t any reason to think that he knew that what I really intended to do was snoop around.
At the back door to Dudley’s house, I lifted the mat and found the key. I picked it up. I held it in my hand. It was heavy.
(Of course it was heavy, freighted as it was with allegorical import. In the fairy tale version of this story, a beautiful and worldly woman gives to an adolescent boy the secret of the location of a hidden key that will unlock a door that leads into a house — make that a castle — within which are hidden treasures physical, metaphorical, and sexual, like rubies, gold, knowledge, power, and women of all ages. He uncovers the key and takes it into his possession. He fits the key into the lock. He pauses for a moment to give a thought to the step he is about to take. We return to my story at that point.)
I held in my hand the key that would — could, might — unlock the mystery of my paternity. I paused, since I had begun thinking of myself as a character in an allegorical tale, and reflected on the step I was about to take.
“This door,” I murmured aloud, acting the lead in my own drama, “opens onto a new phase of my life.”
I opened the door. I stepped inside.
I was in the kitchen. It seemed not very different from any other kitchen, and not at all like the start of a new phase of my life.
I walked the length of the hall that ran down the center of the house and looked through the glass set into the panels beside the front door. I imagined Dudley waiting for my mother to come up the walk and ring the bell, and I decided that if I were he I would not be waiting there at the door, nervously watching out the window. If I were awaiting a visit from the girl next door, I would be elsewhere, in the kitchen, perhaps, fixing a snack, or in the living room, sitting in front of the fire, reading a book, sipping a drink, scarcely aware that the time had come when the girl was expected, certainly not annoyed that the girl was late.
The living room was just off the entry hall, to my right as I stood facing the front door. In front of the fireplace, two chairs faced each other. I had often sat in one of those, with Dudley in the other, and listened while he lectured. His lectures were usually instigated by my mother, who would send me to Dudley if I asked a question that she couldn’t answer — or didn’t want to answer. I would pedal on down to Dudley’s house, usually in the evening. He and Eliza would greet me, and we would all chat about nothing for a while. Dudley would have a drink, and Eliza might, too. She would make me cocoa if the weather was cold, lemonade if the weather was warm, and then after a while she would excuse herself, close the pocket door between the living room and dining room, leave through the door to the hall, and close that behind her, and I would be alone with Dudley. There had been a time when I had enjoyed those sessions, when I welcomed the information and advice Dudley gave me, but I had come to enjoy them less and less as I had come to think that I knew more and more. I no longer wanted to know what he thought I ought to do; I wanted to decide for myself. I had become impatient with his counsel. I fidgeted while he spoke, and I rarely did as he advised me to do. I hadn’t wanted him as a mentor, and he had decided that he didn’t want me as a pupil.
“You’re becoming stubborn, willful, and headstrong,” he had told me at our last session. “I have the clear impression — and clearly it is the impression you want me to have — that you think our talks are no longer of any use to you. You think that I have nothing to teach you. Correct?”
“I think that I can think for myself,” I had said.
“And I think that you have a lot to learn.”
“That may be,” I had said, “but the lot that I have to learn is — ” I had stopped because I didn’t know what to say. If there had been something clever somewhere in my mind that I could have stuck onto the end of my sentence, I hadn’t been able to find it.
“Yes?” Dudley had asked, with a hint of a smirk and a raised eyebrow.
Nothing. I had gotten up out of my chair and left the room. I hadn’t allowed myself to run, though I had wanted to run. I closed the door behind me, and I stood in the front hall for a moment, trying to recover my self-esteem. Eliza had put her head around the corner of the door to the kitchen and looked down the length of the hall at me.
“Peter?” she had said.
“I’ve got a lot to learn,” I had said, and I had let myself out the front door and into the night.
[to be continued]
Subscribe to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy
Share The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy
Watch Well, What Now? This series of short videos continues The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy in the present.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, Where Do You Stop?, What a Piece of Work I Am, At Home with the Glynns, and Leaving Small’s Hotel.
You can buy hardcover and paperback editions of all the books at Lulu.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.
