“Bud and I had a very special relationship,” he said.
“We’re sympathetic to that, Guy,” said my mother, “but you have to share your missing him with others who miss him, too. When you can’t do that, we’ve got two people to miss, Bud and you.”
My mother could always nail it right to the wall, with one blow.
“Hello, Jesse.” Donald Divine stuck out his hand and caught mine in a crushing blow. “Your dad has come up with another real winner.”
He pointed to a poster leaning against my father’s desk.
My father was finishing a martini.
While we stood there admiring the latest Challenge poster, I remembered back when my father was Brother Pegler, and he used to drop worms into tumblers of gin to show how lethal liquor was, that it killed worms instantly. (It was an old trick he’d copied from a famous evangelist named Billy Sunday.)
Bud used to tease him about it, say that it only showed people how to get rid of worms. “You’ll have people all over the country saying they’re only drinking to kill worms.”
Dad was a teetotaler in those days.
The change came around the time Dad hooked up with Donald Divine. Most changes in our life came around that time.
The new Challenge poster was enormous. Printed across it was a giant-sized charge plate.
“Your dad’s going to kick off our early summer shows with a little gold charge plate charm,” Donald said.
“How about another Martin?” my father asked him and, not needing to wait for an answer, scooped up Donald’s glass along with his own.
I flinched at “Martin” for martini. My dad’d got that one from Igor Sonnebend, this rich Born-Again Christian, along with several thousand dollars for our Summer House building campaign.
Dad got along with Igor real well, but my mother said Igor Sonnebend made her uncomfortable, because there never seemed to be enough of anything for him in this world. He wanted more homes, more cars, more fine furniture … more more more. She said she’d rather see Dad back preaching under a tent than dependent on Igor for anything. They had a few arguments over Igor, because my mother said when a man like that kept getting so much, wasn’t someone somewhere having to do with less?
My father insisted that Igor kept the wheels turning, that his needs kept people producing, kept people employed, but I don’t think he ever convinced my mother of it. She said there ought to be an “enough” for everyone.
While my father was off in the kitchen getting more martinis, I stood with Donald and studied the poster.
CHARGE IT TO THE LORD!
“If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account.”
Philemon 18
It was times like that when I missed Bud most. I could see us up in our room, doubling over, holding our stomachs laughing. “A charge plate! … I—don’t—be—lieve—it!”
Donald Divine always gave my father credit for every idea, but some of them were pure Donald. There was no way my father could have come up with some of them.
Bud and I called Donald “Divine Donald,” and an idea like the charge plate, in the good old days, would have left Bud and me breathless from laughing, tears running down our cheeks. I sometimes think it was Seal who changed Bud, fired up his conscience so he got mad more than he laughed.
Donald Divine said, “Jesse, next Sunday is going to be a bang-up show.”
Donald always called our services “shows.”
He looked younger than his thirty-five years. He was the type who wore expensive tweed jackets with suede elbow patches, silk scarves, and tinted glasses. He blow-dried his hair and had it cut regularly by a New York City stylist.
“It’s your father’s idea to do our show at sunrise from now on,” said Donald.
My father was back in the room with martinis and a slab of Brie on a silver tray, surrounded by Carr’s Table Water Crackers. (“Don’t buy any crackers but Carr’s,” my father’d told my mother a while ago. “That seems to be the ‘in’ cracker.”)
“Jesse,” my father said, “can you figure out why we’re switching to sunrise? I bet Bud could.”
“Too bad he’s not around to ask,” I said.
My father made one of his pained little facial flinches and went right on. “Summers out here, people are heading for the beach,” he said, “or they’re house hunting or looking for next summer’s rentals. We’re dealing with a resort area here. Now, if we try to compete with that, ACE is going to get blamed for the traffic jams.”
Donald said, “They’re already three deep on the Montauk Highway by nine in the morning. We have a problem, anyway, but at least this early we’ll cut it in half.”
“Who’s going to watch us at sunrise?” I said.
“We’re going to tape the sunrise show and run it at our regular time,” said Donald.
Then my father said, “Well, Jesse, have you noticed anything new?”
“It’s a good poster,” I managed.
“Not the poster,” said my father. “Me, Jesse. Me.”
Donald chuckled. “It proves my theory that kids don’t notice their parents or what they do, until it affects them.”
“I like to tell a story I once heard about John Denver, the singer,” said my father, who liked to tell that story so well Donald and I had both heard it a few times already. “He took his boy for the very first time to one of his concerts. They went to the spot by helicopter. Now this youngster didn’t really have any idea how famous his father was. As they were passing over the area where John Denver was to perform, they looked down and saw great masses of people waiting to get in, traffic jammed on all the highways. Well, the boy’s eyes got big as saucers. He looked up at his daddy, John Denver, and he said, ‘All these people came here to see some guy’s dad get up and sing?’”
Donald slapped his knee and howled at the joke as though it was the first
