for the plain and simple reason that you need more things to keep it this way and to take care of it.
A nanny, for instance—if you had skin like this, you probably couldn’t have gotten along without a nanny to look after it for you, even if just to give it the time which would be necessary if you yourself were too busy, if you, the mother or the father of the child, were just too worn out from other things and too busy. If I had a boy who had skin like Andy Lieblich’s, I would spend the money on it, I can tell you—Florence and I, I can tell you that we would not hesitate for one instant. Skin like this, in later life, it’s a calling card, and don’t you think it isn’t.
I can’t tell you, I can’t even begin to tell you, what kind of skin Steven Adinoff had. In all honesty and sincerity, I didn’t actually pay that much attention to much other than just to his lip and to his buttons and then, later on, after it got going, to what the hoe itself was doing to him.
He was really a complete mystery to me. I hadn’t even seen him before the day when I actually killed him. There were certain things about him which I never concentrated on. Once he picked the rake up, this was the only main thing—and if you asked me what I chiefly had on my mind about him before this, then I would definitely but definitely have to say to you that it was his lip, his lip—whereas afterwards, whereas when it was actually happening, by this time it was entirely a question of only mainly three things—namely, where the trench was opening up, how his cheek looked on account of more and more of it which was coming away from his face, and the whole general question of why he seemed to be really interested in all of this and actually doing his best to probably give in to it.
I didn’t even know if he was the kind of a boy who had played rough games before this, or done things which were strictly out of bounds for boys like Andy Lieblich and me. On the other hand, I really did not know really the first thing about Steven Adinoff—and, in all frankness, I still don’t.
For one thing, he wasn’t from the block, he wasn’t from our block—and for another thing, I don’t know where it was that Steven Adinoff came from—he just showed up in the Lieblichs’ Buick is all I actually know—and I don’t even really even know even this—because I didn’t even really see him come in it—I was just putting two and two together when I thought it, this all being on the day in August when I saw the Buick come back and then later on, after lunch, Andy Lieblich coming out with Steven Adinoff right with him—not that it matters the least little bit one way or another, how Steven Adinoff got over to Andy Lieblich’s. The only point I really want to make is that Steven Adinoff wasn’t from our block, one, and that, two, when I first saw him, he was a brand-new boy to me, even though there was something about Steven Adinoff which made me think that there was an important way in which he wasn’t.
He could have been from Cedarhurst or from Hewlett or from Lynbrook or Lawrence or Inwood or from any one of the towns which were around there then.
I just realized something—namely, that I could not tell you where the nanny was from, either—in the sense of where the nanny used to live before she started living at the Lieblichs’. All I can tell you is the idea which she gave me specifically, that where it was where, that it was a place which was where all of the boys were stronger boys than we were, and were Christian ones, Christian.
She said that they were wild Indians, that they were rascals, that they were ruffians and scamps.
She always had her uniform on. I never saw her without her uniform on—or without those rubber bands which she always had on over the wristwatch on her wrist. You know what I can say about the nanny which will give you the exact feeling I had about her? I can say that she always felt like she was there even when I was just thinking about her.
King of the Mountain, Hide and Seek, Tag—maybe Steven Adinoff was used to playing games like those games. I don’t know. Builder or Gardener or Farmer—he could have thought these were just sissy games. In all honesty and sincerity, the nanny herself, maybe even she thought that, maybe all of the times when she was sitting there in the chair for her to keep an eye on us in the sandbox, maybe that’s what the nanny was really thinking of to herself, that we were playing a game which just a sissy would play, even though she was the one who more or less set the game up that way herself, who said, who always said, which three games she was going to give us to pick from, and then, and who then, after we did it, after we picked, who would not ever let us switch to something different, to another game, no matter what.
Right this instant I could vomit from just reminding myself of how he talked—right this very instant I think I almost could, although I suppose that this is just an exaggeration from me feeling so involved in the whole question of discussing all of this at all, or at least from just the feeling which you have when you finally actually start.
We didn’t even play games like Button, Button, Who’s Got The Button? Or the game of London Bridge.
She said the thing she had to always watch out for with us was somebody getting too overexcited or getting too overheated or getting too worked up, and then, before you knew it, before you know it, it is all at sixes and sevens and somebody has to pay the piper. She said that this was why there had to be rules—that the reason was to keep things from getting to be all at sixes and sevens for everybody.
I’ll tell you one of the things the nanny said the most.
She said, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” This is something I agreed with then—and now that I am a man of fifty years of age, all I can say to you is experience has taught me to agree with it even more.
I think this was one of the reasons why Andy Lieblich was so lucky to have her. There were a lot of reasons why Andy Lieblich was lucky to have a nanny, but this one was one of the biggest ones—namely, the reason that the nanny kept her eye on things for you and taught you things which in later life could stand you in good stead, whereas in my particular case I just had a mother for her to do this and not some extra person the way Andy Lieblich did.
To be absolutely truthful with you, I personally liked it when I had the feeling that there was a sense in which I was the nanny’s boy too—in the same way that Andy Lieblich himself was—that is, not her flesh and blood in the strict sense of the term of flesh and blood, but instead her job, the thing she was mainly supposed to be thinking about and looking out for throughout the course of the day.
Right then! Right there!—that’s exactly it, that was exactly it, my almost saying the livelong day, my wanting to say the livelong day—really feeling myself hardly able to stop myself from saying the livelong day—killing Steven Adinoff, it was the same feeling, the thing with like rhyming the sounds, or like rhyming the words!
Or like some, you know, some beat in me or something.
Imagine, what would I do if I had a hoe in my hands?
She probably thought to herself how could boys like this ever hurt each other? On the other hand, it was she herself who said that boys will be boys and that you could never tell a book by its cover.
It was so quiet when I was killing him.
Aside from the water sizzling and aside from her rolling them up and down, her rolling the rubber bands up and down over her wrist and her wristwatch. And make no mistake of it—I for one was listening closely, believe you me, I was a boy who was all ears.
That’s how I can tell you, that’s how I happen to know about it to tell you—about the overall sensation of sogginess.
Here’s the best way to say it—on the inside I was listening to myself, listening to the words—whereas on the outside I was all ears and didn’t miss, did not
