"Listen, I'm very sorry you had to be there for that," he says. "I guess I was more stressed out than I'd, sort of, given myself credit for." Has he made this speech already?
"What were you stressed out about?" she says.
"I don't know. Work, mostly." She seems to accept this. At least she says nothing. "So the Mom left you guys here by yourselves?"
"Why wouldn't she?" says Melanie. "I've only been doing home-alones since I was like Roger's age. And don't call her the Mom, okay?"
PRESTON FALLS
"I guess you have, haven't you? God, I feel like Rip Van Winkle. Hey, there you go, that would be a good trivia question. What was the name of Rip Van Winkle's dog—no, wait. First, who was Rip Van Winkle?"
Mel sighs. "Wolf."
He looks at her. "You're kidding. That's really the dog's name? How did you know that?"
"They made us read it last year."
"And you remembered the name of the dog? That's amazing."
She shrugs. He can see she's having trouble with the corner of her mouth. Trying not to smile.
"I didn't think they read that in school anymore," he says.
Nothing. So he has to fucking spell it out. "Why were they reading 'Rip Van Winkle'?"
"We were studying the cultures of the thirteen colonies."
"Ah." Heel of hand to forehead. "Dutch Culture Day." Shitting on her for the school they sent her to. He switches to his attentive slash respectful mode. "So what did you think of it?"
"I don't know," she says. "Sexist. Oi course.''
"Why of course? "
"Everything is that's old. Did he, like, hate women?"
"You mean the way he does Mrs. Rip?" A vista opens: father-daughter literary discussions. "Yeah, you do sort of wonder what her side of the story would be like."
Mel says nothing.
"Listen," he says, "did the Mom say when she'd be getting back? Oops. Sorry."
Mel sighs. "She said not long."
"So listen, I guess I better go up and have a word with your brother." He gets up and stretches, fists high above his head.
"The Terminator," she says.
"Right," he says. "So do you have any theories?"
"Yeah. Testosterone."
"I think he's a little young for that," says Willis. "I don't know, maybe not." One more thing he's pig-ignorant about: do you only get testosterone at puberty, or does it come with testicles automatically?
He climbs the stairs, Rathbone right beside him, tail thunking against the balusters, and knocks on Roger's door. "Yo. The Rog-meister."
"What," Roger says through the door.
"I'll huff and rU puff."
I 4 7
"What do you want?"
"Roger, if you don't open this door by the time I count to ten —"
"It is open."
Willis opens the door, and Roger's sitting against the wall, legs out, with what looks to be a five-pound weight in each hand, keeping his trembling arms straight. "Hey How's it going?"
Roger doesn't answer. Willis walks over and sits at his work station. Fucking mess. Papers, cassettes, marker pens, little plastic superheroes. A bottle of mucilage with the wedge-shaped rubber top, glue drooling out of the slit.
"So your mom told me something happened at school this morning," Willis says. "You want to tell me your version?"
"No."
"I guess I phrased that badly," says Willis. "What happened?"
Roger lowers the weights, slowly, still keeping his arms straight. At the last inch he loses control, and they thud on the floor. He takes a deep breath, lets it out. "I hit a kid, big deal."
"What kid?" says Willis.
"I don't know what his name is."
"How old a kid?"
"I don't know."
"Older or younger than you?"
"Same age."
"So he's in your class, but you don't know what his name is?" No answer. "What did he do to you, this kid?"
"Nothing."
"Then why did you hit him?"
"He was getting on my nerves."
"And how did he do that?"
"I don't know, he's just a feeb. I didn't want him there." Slowly, Roger raises the weights again.
"Is that a reason to hit somebody?"
"He wouldn't move when I said."
"Why should he have to?"
No answer. The weights inch up.
"Suppose somebody started ordering you around," Willis says. "How would you feel?"
"So what? I'm not him." Roger's got the weights at shoulder level, arms absolutely straight.
PRESTON FALLS
"What did you call him—a feeb? What exactly is a feeb?" Roger can't possibly know the word ephebe, right?
"I don't know," says Roger. "Some little feeb. That can't do anything right." The weights start down.
"Well, you know," says Willis, "sometimes people think they're mad at one person but actually who they're really mad at is somebody else. Or they're even mad at themselves." Poor kid's probably thinking, Will somebody get him the fuck out of here?
Roger sets the weights on the floor. "I'm thirsty," he says.
Willis follows him down to the kitchen (Mel looks up at them, then back down at her book), feeling like a stupid, doomed apeman dragging his knuckles along the floor while compact, wily Roger belongs to a race adaptive enough to survive. Roger goes up on his toes to get a glass down—so lightly that it gives WiUis a pang—then opens the refrigerator and pours milk. Rathbone (who knows where meat is kept) sits like a good dog, gazing at the open refrigerator and sweeping his tail back and forth on the linoleum.
"I think I'll join you in one of those," Willis says.
"You don't drink milk." Roger takes the glass of mflk in one hand and a cardboard canister of protein powder in the other, and shuts the refrigerator door with his foot. Willis goes to the cupboard and takes down a glass. Roger puts his stuff on the counter and gets a spoon out of the silverware drawer.
"I'm just going to say something," says Willis, opening the refrigerator. Rathbone's tafl starts up again. "You're old enough that we don't have to dance around this, okay?" He takes out an almost-brand-new half gallon of orange juice. (You can count on Jean.) "I've been spending quite a bit of time away, you know, on weekends, and of course now we're looking at a couple of months when I'll mostly be up in Preston Falls. Because the house needs so much work." He pours orange juice, puts the carton back and shuts the refrigerator door. Rathbone lies down. "Anyhow, what sometimes happens," he says, "is that when the routine changes around home, kids will sometimes blame themselves, or think they've done something wrong. You know, when it's not their fault at all. Or anybody's.'' He sits down and takes a sip, like an orator pausing. "And this in turn can get them upset, or angry, and sometimes they're not even sure what they're angry about, you know? I'm not saying that you we been feeling this way, necessarily, but I really just want
I 4 9
you to understand and remember that Mommy and I both love you and Mel very much. And we care very much about each other."
And let him find a loose end in that.
Roger finishes stirring protein powder into his milk, sucks the spoon a second, then carries it over to the sink. He replaces the lid on the canister and puts it back in the fridge. Then and only then does he take his first sip.
"So what do you think about all that?" says Willis.
Roger shrugs. "I don't know. I guess it's pretty normal."
"What is?"
"I don't know," says Roger. "Tyler's mom and dad got a divorce. And so did Adam's."
"Whoa," says Willis, "wait a minute." He puts his glass down. "That's not what's going on here. At all. Did you think that? Mommy and I aren't— Rog, believe me, it's not anything like that. It's just a time when I have to be up at the house to do some fixing and Mommy has to work and you guys have to go to school, right? And meanwhile Mommy and I are going to be using this time, each of us, to think about how we could all have mo
re fun together maybe than we've been having. You know?" He waits a beat, giving the earth its chance to swallow him up.
"Mel says you're getting a divorce," says Roger.
"Well, I don't know where Mel gets her information." Fucking Mel, thanks a lot. Willis gets up to look into the living room; she's no longer on the couch. "I guess I need to talk to her about this too."
Roger's picking at a scab on his elbow. "Mel says that's what Mom says."
"Don't do that," says Willis. Roger stops picking. The upstairs toilet flushes. "Well, obviously there's been a miscommunication somewhere. Which we're going to have to get straightened out, because that is not what's going on. But you know, if that's what you thought, I can understand why you'd be upset. And maybe that had something to do with what happened at school, you know? But what you don't do in that situation, you don't take it out on some poor kid. Okay? Because you think he's a feeh or whatever he is. If you're feeling angry, you talk to somebody. Right? You know that. Me or Mommy, preferably, but if we're not available right at that time, you go to a teacher or a teacher's aide or to Ms. Schoemer. Or your sister, even."
"Oh right," Roger says.
PRESTON FALLS
"Well, whoever," says Willis. "The point is, you don't just lash out and hit. You understand? Now, if somebody hits you, that's a different story. It's perfectly okay to stick up for yourself and defend yourself. But you don't be the one who starts stuff and picks on other kids. Any more than you want them to pick on you." Hey, give this man a white robe, sandals and the little children at his feet. "Do you understand?"
Willis waits for a nod. He hears a door close upstairs. "Yo. I asked you if you understood."
Roger nods. More a twitch of the head, actually.
"Good. Because I don't ever want to hear of this happening again." So now we're the father in the thunderclouds. He downs the rest of his orange juice like a shot of red-eye. "Okay? Enough said?"
He's rinsing out their glasses and trying to plan what to say to Mel about the divorce thing, when the phone rings. Roger gets it—he'd never admit it, but he's still proud of answering the phone—and says, "Yeah, he's here." He thrusts the phone toward Willis with a rigid arm. "Mom wants to talk to you."
Willis wipes his hands on his jeans and takes the phone.
"I saw the truck in front of the house," she says. "How long did you plan on staying?"
"What—^where are you?"
"At a phone booth."
"Oh. So in other words—" Roger's sitting right here. In other words, she drove by the house, saw he was there and went to a phone booth?
"Could you just give me a rough idea?" she says. "Like were you going to spend the night?"
"Not if it's, you know, inconvenient," he says.
"I'm not trying to kick you out. It's just that if you were planning on going back up tonight, it might be less awkward if I waited tiU after you left."
"Interesting," he says. "Yeah, o-kay. Got it. Fine."
"You're deliberately misunderstanding me."
"Well, I doubt that.'' Willis looks at Roger; he's reading the Cheerios box. "Just give me, I don't know, five? Too long?"
"Crap. I shouldn't have done this."
"Hey. Not a problem." In fact, he almost fell asleep driving down here. "There was one thing I wanted to bring up, but we can talk about it later."
I S I
"What's that?" Jean says.
"We'U talk about it."
"Oh," she says. "So Roger's right there?"
"Youbetcha."
"This really sucks," she says, and hangs up.
"Love you," he tells the dial tone, loud enough for Roger to hear.
He puts the phone back in the cradle. "Listen, bud," he says to Roger. "Mommy needs me to do something for her right away, so you may not see me for a while, okay? But we'll be talking on the phone. Would you do me a big favor and explain to Mel when she comes down?" No way he's going to try to sell her this sudden-errand bullshit.
"I don't get what I'm supposed to say."
"Just tell her that I'll be calling, okay? And no more hitting feebs. Unless they hit you first." He gives Roger's upper arm a gentle right hook and heads for the door. Rathbone gets up to follow him. "No, you stay,' Willis says. Rathbone sits and looks down at the floor.
At the corner of Stebbins and Crofts he pulls over and waits to flag her down. Now it's completely dark. After fifteen minutes he guesses she must have come the other way, on Bonner. He gives it another five, then turns around in somebody's driveway and cruises back past the house. Son of a bitch: there's the Cherokee. Well, what would he have said anyway? Told her to tell Mel to tell Roger their marriage isn't fucked?
He hangs a left on Bonner, goes out to Route 9 and up to the Dunkin' Donuts, where he orders four coffees to go. But when he gets back in the truck, it hits him that he absolutely can't make it all the way back to Preston Falls. Even with a cup of coffee for each hour. Shit, how did this day start out? Waking up in What's-his-name's barn—can that be possible? And what happened yesterday? Oh, who the fuck knows. There's a motel a couple of miles north on the right-hand side, or there used to be. He could be in a bed within ten minutes. Which might be well worth the fifty bucks or whatever. Because this really isn't making it.
Yep, the Birlstone Motel. Birlstone: what ho. VACANCY. TV. WEEKLY RATES AVAILABLE. There's definitely a sweet taint of self-pity in this, putting up in some shithole motel right in Chesterton. But he did legitimately get disinvited from his own house, did he not? So who can say a word?
The cleaning woman pounds on the door at like eleven in the morning, so he must've slept fourteen hours. More. Too much, probably. Or still not enough. Since he slept in his clothes, all he has to do is put on his boots, grab up the room key and the Dunkin' Donuts bag, and he's out of there before they can charge him for an extra day He gulps his first cup of cold coffee sitting in the truck outside the motel office. His second while crossing over the Tappan Zee.
Twenty miles south of Preston Falls, he stops at the used-book store where they've got that lawn boy out front, with the Nixon mask. He's hoping he might find Barnaby Rudge, the only one he's missing, and which is probably a piece of shit; but if you're doing a Dickens thing, you might as well do a fucking Dickens thing. Place is run by a blatant old pedophile with a white beard gone yellow around the mouth. Once, years ago, Willis brought Roger in and the son of a bitch tried to get Roger to sit on his knee. When they got back outside, Roger asked if the man was one of Santa's helpers.
No Barnaby Rudge, but while he's looking for Junkie, which he remembers as being better than any of the later shit, he finds an old copy of Pilgrim's Progress, its cover showing a hippie-haired cavalier and an armored knight, both in water up to their asses. The Slough of Despond, probably. Or no, probably that river you have to cross over, the River of Whatever-the-fuck. He flips through the yellow-brown pages and finds an illustration captioned "Atheist": a feather-hatted fop beckoning someone to follow, unaware he's at the edge of an abyss (you see a bird flying in the distance) and about to put his slender walking stick down into empty air. Willis doesn't remember Atheist but assumes he must be a fucking atheist. What's great about Pilgrim's Progress is, everything's just exactly what it is.
"I'm going to take this off your hands," says Willis, bringing it up to the counter.
"Ah," says the bearded man. "Now, that" He taps his index finger on it. "That came out of a very wealthy home in Saratoga Springs. The House Beautiful."
"God, that's right," says Willis, getting out his wallet. "This is actually where that comes from, isn't it? The House Beautiful."
"Ah, well, you understand," says the bearded man. "But how many others? Fewer and fewer. The House Beautiful. Vanity Fair. The Slough of Despond." He even pronounces it slew. "We're seeing the return of the Dark Ages, my friend."
Willis is convinced. That is, it seems as convincing as anything else.
When he gets back to the house, the machine's blinking
. Jean. Please call. Yeah, fine. He starts coffee. He decides to bag the rest of Edwin Drood, so he hunts up good old Sherlock Holmes and reads "The Man with the Twisted Lip" and then, despite the coffee, falls asleep somewhere in "The Adventure of the Creeping Man." When he wakes up it's dark and therefore too late to call Jean: she'll be home, where the kids can overhear. What day is this anyway? Thursday? Friday? How could you quickly find out? Because on Saturday he has to do that thing.
He decides it can't be Saturday and reads the entire fucking "Hound of the Baskervilles." That takes care of a couple of hours. Then he steps outside and has another little go at the stars. Comes back in and reads Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Tries to read The Picture of Dorian Gray. Yeah, maybe in some other life. Reads "A Study in Scarlet," skipping the Mormon shit. Then starts the Mormon shit. Falls asleep. Wakes up at first light and starts worrying he'll get busted and his house and everything will be seized because of zero tolerance. Jesus, the house in Chesterton too. Tries to read "The Valley of Fear," but his heart's racing and he's short of breath. Is this the heart attack?
He goes downstairs and polishes off the last of the Dewar's, which numbs him enough that he can nod out over "The VaUey of Fear." Waking up in full daylight, he dials 0 and asks if this is Saturday A reproachful second goes by before the operator says, "This is Friday, sir."
He starts coffee.
PRESTON FALLS
It turns so cold Friday night he gets the woodstove going; the first time since spring. Since he still hasn't finished stacking that wood, it's still blocking the back door into the kitchen and he has to wheel a supply all the way around in the wheelbarrow. But it comforts him: the old ritual of kindling and feeding fire, the primalness of wood heat. Which is bullshit, because heat's heat, a matter of molecules moving. He gets sleepy around ten, climbs the cold stairs and huddles under the cold covers in all his clothes, knees as close to his chest as his gut allows.
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