Too Close to Home

by Linwood Barclay

  Ellen shrugged. “I saw you the other day, looking at your paintings.” There were a number of canvases, in various stages of completion, leaned up against the wall in the shed, gathering dust. When I didn’t say anything, she added, “I wondered if you were thinking of getting back into it.”

  I shook my head. “Ancient history,” I said. “I was just deciding whether to throw them into the truck and take them to the dump.”

  Ellen frowned. “Stop it,” she said.

  I used the last of my toast to mop up some egg yolk, popped it into my mouth, and dabbed at the corners of my mouth with a napkin. “Thanks, hon,” I said, kissing the top of her head as I got up. “What are you going to do today?”

  “Read,” she said tiredly. “It’s not like I have to read every writer who comes to the festival, but I at least need to know a bit about their work. You run into them at the cocktail parties, you have to be able to bluff your way through. Writers, honestly, a lot of them are really nice, but God they’re needy. They need constant validation.”

  “No sign of my associate yet?” I asked as I took my plate to the sink.

  “I think you’ll have to wake him,” Ellen said. “I thought the smell of bacon would do it. Tell him I saved him some and can do a couple eggs fast.”

  I went upstairs and stopped outside the door to my son’s room. I rapped lightly on the closed door, then opened it about a foot, enough to see that he was under the covers, turned away from the door.

  “Hey, Derek, wakey wakey, man,” I said.

  “I’m awake,” Derek said.

  TWO

  DEREK KEPT FACING THE WALL. “I don’t think I can go today,” he said. “I think I’m sick.”

  I opened the door wide and stepped into his room. It looked as it always did, as though a bomb had gone off. Heaps of clothes on the floor, half a dozen different pairs of sneakers, none matched up, scattered hither and yon, countless empty software and game boxes, a desk along one wall with not one but three computer monitors, two keypads, half a dozen different computer towers underneath, wires—connected and disconnected—all over the place. He was going to set the house on fire one day.

  “What’s wrong?” I said. Derek was legendary for feigning illness to get out of school, but he was less likely to pull that kind of stunt working for his father.

  “I just feel off,” he said.

  Ellen passed by the door, heard a snippet of conversation, came in. “What’s up?”

  “Says he’s sick,” I said.

  She moved past me, sat on the edge of Derek’s bed, and tried to get her hand on his forehead, but he turned away so she couldn’t get near him.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let me see if you’ve got a fever.”

  “I don’t have a fever,” he said, his face still hidden. “Can’t I just feel out of it one day? And besides, it’s fucking Saturday.”

  “And you got last Monday and half of Tuesday off because of rain,” I reminded him. “Win some, lose some. We should be done by noon. We’ve just got the Simpsons, the Westlake place, and what’s-her-name, the one with the cat that looks like a furry pig, who gave you the computer.”

  Here’s the thing about Derek. He’s a good kid, and I love him more than I can say, but sometimes he can be a royal pain in the ass. Finding creative ways to get out of his obligations is one of his talents. He hates school, and he hasn’t always made the best choices. A few that immediately come to mind: a couple of years back, he and his pal Adam were setting off firecrackers in the dry grass behind the house. It hadn’t rained in a month and one spark could have started a fire that would have burned our place down. I nearly wrung his neck. There was the time he went joyriding with a fifteen-year-old buddy who took out his father’s MG—without permission and without a driver’s license—and wrapped it around a tree. Thank God no one was hurt, except for the MG, of course. And there was the time he and another friend decided to explore the rooftop of the high school, scaling gutters like they were goddamn ninjas or something. Maybe, if all they’d done was hang out there, no one would have noticed, but they’d chosen to do sprints across the roof, then leapt off the edge and over an eight-foot gap to another wing of the school. It was a wonder they hadn’t killed themselves.

  “We never even came close,” Derek told me later, as if this constituted a defense.

  They were doing so much thumping up there that the night janitor called the police. They got off with a warning, largely because they hadn’t actually vandalized anything. I was furious when the cops brought him home.

  “Another fucking stunt like this,” I said, “and you can find some other place to live.”

  I regretted it later. I didn’t mean it, that his next fuckup would be his last under our roof. Teenagers, honestly, sometimes they did some stupid shit, but you stood by them no matter what. It was all part of what you’d signed on for.

  If Derek really was sick, I didn’t want to drag him out to push a lawn mower through the heat and humidity. But it occurred to me that it might not be an actual illness he was suffering from.

  “You hungover?” I asked. It was hardly an outrageous question. Only a month ago I’d found a six-pack of Coors hidden under some old storm windows that were leaned up against the back of the shed.

  “No,” he said. Then, abruptly, he threw off the covers, rolled over, and swung out of bed in one swift movement, bumping into his mother. “Fine,” he said. I think Ellen and I were both surprised to see that he was still in jeans and T-shirt. He reached for his work boots, ignoring the sneakers right next to them. “I’ll work. So I’m sick. No big deal.”

  Ellen looked at me expectantly, like she was wanted me to pick up on this, ask him what was the matter. But I just shrugged and said, “Good.”

  “There’s some bacon already made,” his mother said. “Would you like me to make some eggs for—”

  “I’m not hungry,” he said.

  Ellen got up, leaned back, held up her palms in the universal backing-off gesture. “Okay, fine,” she said and walked out of the room.

  “I’ll be out by the truck when you’re ready,” I said, left, and closed his door behind me.

  Ellen was standing there and said, “You think he’s hungover?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. If he is, pushing a noisy lawn mower first thing in the morning is exactly what he deserves.”

  I brushed my teeth, took a baby aspirin because Ellen had heard some doctor on Oprah say it was a good idea, and went outside. There was hardly any breeze and you could tell it was going to be a scorcher.

  We have a building behind the house, what I call the shed, but it’s really a double garage with one big wide door on it, where I have a workbench and a place to keep all our stuff. I’d picked up half a dozen used lawn mowers for next to nothing and got them in decent running order so that if either of the two we took with us each day crapped out, I had a replacement set to go. Just the one lawn tractor, however, a John Deere, its green paint and yellow striping fading from constant sun exposure. It sat on the short trailer already hitched to the back of my Ford pickup, which has Cutter’s Lawn Service and a phone number stenciled on the door, as well as my name, Jim Cutter.

  I did a quick check to see that we had everything we needed. The hedge trimmer and extension cords, four small red plastic containers with plain gasoline for the lawn mowers and the tractor, and a fifth with a mix of gas and oil for the handheld trimmer and the leaf blower, which I hated for the racket it made, like a goddamn jet coming in for a landing, but it was a hell of a lot faster for clearing lawn clippings off driveways and sidewalks than a broom. When you wanted to pack up and move on to the next job, speed was everything. And after I’d already been pushing a mower or wielding the trimmer, the last thing I wanted to do was sweep by hand.

  I glanced into the truck to make sure we each had our work gloves and our earmuff-like gadgets to keep the noise out of our ears. I opened the glove box, checked that I had a replacement spool of f
ilament wire in case the weed whacker ran out.

  Something was missing, though. I was trying to think what it was when I heard the back door of the house open and close and Ellen was standing there with the mini-cooler. The lunches I’d made the night before. I smiled, went over and took it from her.

  “How’s it going in there?” I asked her.

  “I’m just staying out of his way,” she said. “We should do something this afternoon if you’ve got any energy left. Maybe go down to Albany, do a bit of shopping.”

  “Shopping,” I said. “That’d be fun.” I wasn’t using my sincere voice.

  Ellen gave me a look. “We could go someplace for dinner. See a movie. There’s that new Bruce Willis thing. Die Really Really Really Hard or something. I need a break from all this literary stuff.”

  I gave her a noncommittal shrug. “Let’s see how the day goes. Going out for dinner sounds good. The shopping thing, not so much.”

  “You need to take at least one long weekend this summer. You didn’t even take the Fourth. Let Derek run things for a day. He’s got his license, he can drive the truck. He could get as much done as he could on his own; the next day you could squeeze in a couple extra jobs. He needs to handle the extra responsibility. It would be good for him. We could drive up to Montreal. Go hear some jazz or something.”

  That was actually a pretty good idea, but all I said was, “We’ll see.”

  “We’ll see. We’ll see. That’s what they’ll put on your tombstone.”

  She turned to go back in as Derek came out. He walked past her without a word, hair falling over his eyes, and headed for the truck.

  “I guess we’re off,” I said to Ellen, and she rolled her eyes, a kind of “good luck” gesture.

  As I got into the truck I said to Derek, “You wanna drive?” He shook his head. “I’m guessing you had no breakfast. You want me to stop along the way? A McMuffin or something? A doughnut? Coffee?”

  Another shake of the head.

  “Okay then,” I said and turned the ignition. I had the windows down for now, would probably close them and turn on the air later. I pulled the column shift into drive and eased down on the accelerator. The trailer, weighed down with the Deere and other equipment, rattled as we picked up speed. As we headed down the lane, about halfway to the highway, the Langley house came into view. I noticed the Saab SUV parked out front of the house, as well as Donna Langley’s Acura sedan.

  “I thought they were going away,” I said.

  “Huh?” said Derek.

  “The Saab’s there. I thought they were going to some lodge or something. In Stowe? Somewhere that way?”

  Derek glanced over. “I guess they didn’t go.”

  “Didn’t Adam say they were going up there for a week or something? Didn’t you go over there to see them off last night?”

  “They must have changed their mind after I left,” Derek said, looking away from the Langleys’ and out his own window.

  “Just seems funny, is all,” I said. “You book a place for a week and change your mind.” Nothing from Derek. “Maybe Albert had something come up, some new case or something, they had to cancel at the last minute. I guess that kind of thing happens when you’re a criminal lawyer.” I glanced over at Derek. “Not that he’s a criminal. Just that he represents criminals.” An old joke. I’d probably only used it a hundred times or so.

  When Derek said nothing, I raised my voice a notch and said, “Yeah, Dad, that’s probably what happened.” Dropped it a bit. “You think so, son? You think that’s what happened?” Up again. “I’d say so, Dad, yeah. You’re never wrong about these things.”

  Quietly, “Leave me alone, Dad.”

  We got up to the highway and I hung a right, heading north, which would take us into Promise Falls. It’s an average-sized city, forty thousand or so, but we’ve got all the major fast-food joints and a Wal-Mart and a Home Depot and a multiplex and most of the major car dealerships except the really high-end ones, like BMW. There’s the college on the north side of town, so that accounts for the Volvo dealership.

  Once you get past the newer subdivisions that surround the town, you reach the old part, which is big on charm with its hundred-year-old houses and large lots, like a lot of places in this part of the state and nearby Vermont. Big trees, a main street with lots of small businesses that have managed to hang on even after the Wal-Mart showed up. We had Mayor Randall Finley to thank for its arrival. He brushed off the local business association’s concerns about the monster retailer, saying they could do with a little competition, that it wasn’t enough to be quaint and charming, you had to give people value for their dollar.

  Finley had managed to offend so many people in town, it amazed me he’d been reelected. But he had a constituency out there that loved it when he stuck it to unions and special interests and those who didn’t live up to some moral code voters were under the impression Finley himself adhered to. There were probably more than a few residents of Promise Falls who loved it that he’d barged in on the unwed mothers and given them a piece of his mind, and a little something extra.

  “So what did you end up doing last night?” I asked, still attempting to draw Derek out. “I never heard you come in. I crashed early, went right into a coma. You see Penny?”

  He’d been seeing Penny Tucker for a month or more now, and the few times she’d been by the house she struck me as a sweet kid. I could only imagine the limericks teenage boys might come up with that involved her last name.

  “No,” Derek said. “She was grounded.”

  “Why? What she do?”

  “Banged up the car.”

  “Oh no. Bad?”

  “No.”

  “What she hit?”

  “The bumper.”

  “On what?”

  “Telephone pole.”

  “She going to have to pay to have it fixed?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Jesus, it was like pulling teeth. And then, for the first time, I noticed something different about my son.

  “When did you stop wearing that little stud thing in your ear?” I asked. “The peace sign.”

  He reached up and touched his left earlobe, where there was a tiny dimple from a piercing, but no jewelry. Derek shrugged. “I don’t know. It fell out or something. I lost it a while ago.”

  We did the Simpson place first. A medium-sized property, no hills, nothing tricky. I assigned Derek to the tractor, since he likes riding it, thinking that if I started him with something he enjoyed, his disposition would improve. I did the trimming, then got out a mower for the spots the tractor couldn’t easily reach.

  Mrs. Simpson came out with a glass of water for each of us, which we gratefully accepted. I could see her husband standing back in the kitchen, looking our way slightly disapprovingly. I knew his type. We were the hired help, and if we needed water, we should know enough to bring it with us, or at least take it from the garden hose like we were a couple of golden retrievers. Mrs. Simpson, however, was not a shit like her husband.

  Then all we had to do was blow the clippings off the drive, which Derek looked after. We were there barely an hour, and just as we were getting back into the truck, we were approached by a skinny kid about Derek’s age, with thick black hair and skin so white you had to wonder if he’d been getting tanned by a refrigerator bulb, wearing a pair of shorts that had at least a dozen pockets all over them. He came up to my window.

  “You hiring?” he asked. He handed me a slip of paper from a wad of flyers he was holding. I glanced at it and read, “Stuart Yost. Odd Jobs.” And a phone number.

  “Sorry,” I said, handing the flyer to Derek, who jammed it into the glove box. “I got my son here working with me.”

  “I’m just looking for something for the rest of the summer,” he said.

  “Nearly the end of July, Stuart,” I said. “Kinda late, isn’t it? Another month and you’ll be back in school.”

  “I had one but I lost it,” he said. He sh
rugged. “Anyway, thanks.”

  As he walked off I said to Derek, “You know him from school or anything?”

  He shook his head no, said nothing. Derek’s disposition had not improved all morning, and I began to wonder what was eating at him. Was there another crumpled-MG incident? Had he and one of his friends been leaping from one tall building to another, maybe the police station this time, instead of the high school? Driven along the road after midnight, playing mailbox baseball, taking a bat to each mailbox they passed?

  I could remember doing that. My later teen years weren’t particularly well supervised.

  Surely, if he’d gotten into any real trouble, and been caught at it, Ellen and I would have heard about it by now.

  Next was the lady with the cat that looked like a furry pig. Agnes Stockwell. She’d been kind enough on our last visit to give Derek an old computer she’d had sitting in her garage for the better part of a decade. It had belonged to her son, Brett, a Thackeray College student who had, tragically, jumped to his death off Promise Falls—the Promise Falls, the one the city takes its name from—when he was in his last year. She didn’t use a computer, and she’d never turned it on since his death.

  “I’m not really a computer person,” she’d told Derek. The garage was open the last time we were there, and Derek, who collects old hardware so he and his friend Adam can take apart and rebuild computers for their own amusement, spotted it on a shelf. Mrs. Stockwell, whose husband passed away the year before her son committed suicide, told him to take it.

  Her place was a little more work because she has a lot of beds she tends, and it’s hard to navigate the John Deere around them, so Derek and I each grabbed a lawn mower and went to work. But she rewarded us, even going beyond what Mrs. Simpson had done. She came out with lemonade as I was getting out the weed whacker to tidy up the edges, and we both gulped it down. Derek even managed a “Thank you.”