by Peter Straub
Tom carried the book into the living room. From the other side of the staircase came the roars and yells of a Yankees game booming fuzzily from the television in the study, where his father had collapsed into his chair. The gladiatorial New York fans always made a lot of noise. The front windows framed Lamont von Heilitz’s big grey house. Had von Heilitz’s father ever advised him to start thinking about business opportunities? Tom jumped up and walked twice around the living room, wishing that the ball game would end so that he could switch the television to the Mill Walk station and wait for the news. Of course there would be nothing on the news. Church bake sales, the scores of the local Little League teams, the announcement of the construction of a new high rise parking lot … Tom wandered up the stairs and went into his room. He got to his knees and checked under his bed. The leather-bound journal was where he had left it. He heard his parents’ bedroom door click open, and stood up in an almost guilty scramble. His mother’s footsteps went down the front stairs. Tom left his bedroom and went down after her.
He found her in the kitchen, looking unhappily at the dishes in the sink and the empty beer cans his father had dropped on the table. She had brushed her hair and wore a long peach-colored satin nightgown and a matching bed jacket that looked like a compromise between underwear and clothing. “I’ll wash the dishes, Mom,” he said, realizing almost for the first time that, despite the uncertainty and puzzles of his life, his parents often made him feel as though they were his children.
For a moment Gloria seemed utterly confused about what to do next. She went uncertainly toward the table. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice as blurry as her face.
He went to the sink and turned on the hot water. Behind his back, Gloria moved around the kitchen turning on the kettle, rattling the cups, opening a box of tea. She seemed to be moving very slowly, and he thought that she was watching him busy himself with the pile of dirty dishes. He heard her pour hot water into the cup and sit down again with a sigh. Then he could not stand the silence any longer, and said, “Mr. Handley wanted me to come to his place after school yesterday, to show me some rare books. But I thought he really wanted to talk to me.”
She uttered some indistinct sound.
“I thought that you asked him to talk to me. Because of my scrapbook.” He turned from the sink. His mother was slumped over the cup of tea with her bright hair hanging like a screen before her face. “There isn’t anything to worry about, Mom.”
“Where does he live?” The question seemed to bore her, as if she had asked it only to fill a space in the conversation.
“Out near Goethe Park, but we didn’t get to his place.”
She brushed back her hair and looked heavily up at him.
“I got sick—dizzy. I couldn’t go any farther. He drove me home.”
“You were out on Calle Burleigh?”
He nodded.
“That’s where you had your accident. I suppose … you know. Unpleasant memories.”
She took in his start—Tom nearly dropped the dish he was drying—with an expression of grim confirmation. “Don’t think that things like that go away. They don’t, let me tell you.” She sighed again, and seemed to tremble. She snatched up the cup of hot tea and bent over it so that again the bright curtain of her hair fell to hide her face. Tom still felt as if the insight she had casually tossed his way had knocked the breath out of his body. He had a quick, mysterious mental glimpse of a fat old woman yelling “Cornerboy!” at him and knew that he had actually seen her on the day of his accident. The world had cracked open to let him peek beneath its crust, then sealed itself shut again. Down below the surface was an angry old woman waving her fist, what else?
An instant before he realized that his mother was crying, he caught, like a sharp, distant odor, the urgent, driven feeling of that day. Then he noticed that his mother had curled down even further into herself, and that her shoulders were shaking.
He wiped his hands on his trousers and moved toward her. She was crying soundlessly, and when he reached her, she pressed her napkin to her eyes and forced herself to be still.
Tom’s hand hovered over the nape of his mother’s neck: he could not tell if she would allow him to touch her. Finally he permitted his hand to come down softly on her neck.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” she said. “Do you ever blame me?”
“Blame you?” He pulled a chair nearer and sat beside her. A tingle passed through his body with the realization that his mother was really talking to him.
“You couldn’t say I was much of a mother.” Gloria wiped her eyes with her napkin and sent him a look of such rueful self-awareness that she seemed momentarily like another person altogether: a person he seldom saw, the mother who really was present from time to time, who could see him because she could see out of herself. “I never wanted anything bad to happen to you, and I couldn’t protect you, and you were nearly killed.” She wadded the napkin in her lap.
“Nothing was your fault,” Tom said. “And after all, it was a long time ago.”
“You think that makes a difference?” Now she appeared slightly irritated with him. He felt her focus move away from him, and the person she might have been began to fade out of her face. Then he felt her make a conscious effort of concentration. “I remember when you were little,” she said, and she actually smiled at him. Her hands were still. “You were so beautiful, looking at you sometimes made me cry—I couldn’t stop looking at you—sometimes I thought I’d just melt, looking at you. You were perfect—you were my child.” Gloria slowly reached for his hand and touched it almost shyly. Then she drew her hand back. “I felt so incredibly lucky to be your mother.”
The look on his face caused her to turn away and buy a moment of self-possession by sipping her tea. He could not see her face.
“Oh, Mom,” he said.
“Just don’t forget I said this,” she said. “It’s the truth. I hate being the way I am.”
What he needed, how much he needed it, made him lean toward her, hoping that she would hug him or at least touch him again. Her body seemed rigid, almost angry, but he did not think that she could be angry now.
“Mom?”
She turned her head sideways and showed him her ruined face. Her hair dripped across her cheek, and a strand clung to her lip. She looked like an oracle, and Tom froze before the significance of whatever she was going to say.
Then she blinked. “You want to know something else?”
He could not move.
“I’m happy you’re not a girl,” she said. “If I had a daughter, I’d drown the little bitch.”
Tom got to his feet so quickly he nearly overturned his chair, and in seconds was out of the room.
The day crawled by. Gloria Pasmore spent the afternoon in her bedroom listening to her old records—Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glenroy Breakstone and the Targets—lying on the bed with her eyes closed and smoking one cigarette after another. Victor Pasmore left the television set only to go to the bathroom. By four-thirty he had passed out, and lay back in his recliner with his mouth open, snoring, in front of another baseball game. Tom took another chair, and for thirty minutes watched men whose names he did not know relentlessly score points against another team. He wondered what Sarah Spence was doing, what Mr. von Heilitz was doing behind his curtained windows.
At five o’clock he got out of the chair to change the channel to the local news. Victor stirred and blinked in his chair, and woke up enough to grope for the glass of watery yellow liquid beside the recliner. “What about the game?”
“Can we see the news?”
Victor swallowed warm whiskey and water, groaned at the taste, and closed his eyes again.
Loud theme music, an even louder commercial for Deepdale Estates on Lake Deepdale, which was “another Eagle Lake, only two miles away and twice as affordable!”
Tom’s father snorted in genial contempt.
Tom said “Hey!” and sat up straight.
“Police Captain Fulton Bishop reported today that an anonymous source has given police valuable information leading to the whereabouts of Miss Hasselgard’s murderer. Captain Bishop has informed our reporters that the slayer of Marita Hasselgard, Foxhall Edwardes, is a recently released former inmate of the Long Bay Holding Facilities and a habitual offender. Mr. Edwardes was released from Long Bay the day before the slaying of Miss Hasselgard.” The picture of a surly, wide-faced man with tight curling hair appeared on the screen.
“Hey,” Tom said, in a different tone of voice.
“Whuzza big deal?” his father asked.
“… many convictions for burglary, threatening behavior, petty larceny, and other crimes. Edwardes’ last conviction was for armed robbery. He is thought to be in hiding in the Weasel Hollow district, which has been cordoned off by police until searches have been completed. Motorists and carriage traffic are advised to use the Bigham Road cutoff until further notice. I’m sure that all of you join us in hoping for a speedy resolution of this matter.” He looked down at his desk, turned over a page, and looked up at the camera again. “In a related story, grief-stricken Finance Minister Friedrich Hasselgard is reported missing in heavy seas off the island’s western coast. Minister Hasselgard apparently took out his vessel, the Mogrom’s Fortune, for a solitary sail around the island at roughly three o’clock this afternoon, after hearing of the imminent capture of his sister’s murderer. He is believed to have been overtaken by a sudden squall in the Devil’s Pool area, and radio contact was lost soon after the squall began.” The newscaster’s eyes flicked down toward the desk again. “In a moment, traffic from our overhead observer, Ted Weatherhead’s weather, and sports with Joe Ruddier.”
“Okay,” Victor Pasmore said. “They got him.”
“They got who?”
He began to lever himself up out of the recliner. “The lowlife who bumped off Marita Hasselgard, who the hell do you think? I better start thinking about dinner. Your mother’s a little under the weather today.”
“What about Hasselgard?”
“What about him? Jumped-up natives like Hasselgard can sail anything, anywhere, through any storm that comes along. I remember when Hasselgard was a kid in his twenties, he could thread needles with a sailboat.”
“You knew him?”
“I sort of knew Fred Hasselgard. He was one of your granddad’s discoveries. Glen took him out of Weasel Hollow, got him started. Back when they were developing the west side, Glen did that with a bunch of bright young native boys—saw to their education and put them on the right track.”
Tom watched his father lumber toward the kitchen, then turned back to the television.
Joe Ruddler’s violent red face filled the screen. “THAT’S IT, SPORTS FANS!” Ruddier shouted—aggressiveness was his trademark. “THAT’S ALL THE SPORTS FOR TODAY! THERE AIN’T NO MORE! YOU CAN BEG ALL YOU WANT TO, BUT IT WON’T DO ANY GOOD! RUDDLER’S CHECKIN’ OUT UNTIL TEN O’CLOCK, SO PLAY IT COOL OR PLAY IT HARD—BUT YOU GOTTA KEEP PLAYIN’ IT!” Tom switched off the television.
“You gotta keep playin’ it,” Victor chuckled from the kitchen. Tom’s father loved Joe Ruddier. Joe Ruddler was a real man. “We got some steaks here we better eat before they go bad. You want a steak?”
Tom was not hungry, but he said, “Sure.”
Victor walked out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Look, would you cook them? Just put them on the grill. There’s some lettuce and stuff, you could make a salad. I want to check on your mother, make her a drink or something.”
Half an hour later Victor led Gloria down the stairs as Tom was setting the table in the dining room. In the peach satin outfit, her hair limp now, Tom’s mother looked like a red-eyed ghost. She sat in front of her steak and sliced off a piece the thickness of a playing card and pushed it across the plate with her fork.
Tom asked her if she felt ill.
“We’re going out for dinner tomorrow,” Victor said. “You’ll see, she’ll be full of beans by tomorrow night. Won’t you, Glor?”
“Leave me alone,” she said. “Will everybody stop picking on me, please?” She sliced off another minuscule portion of steak, raised it part of the way to her mouth, then lowered her fork and scraped the tiny bit of meat back onto her plate.
“Maybe I should call Dr. Milton,” Victor said. “He could give you something.”
“I don’t need anything,” Gloria said, seething, “except to … be … left … alone. Why don’t you call my father, he’s the person who always fixes everything up for you.”
Victor ate the rest of his meal in silence.
Gloria turned her head to give Tom a look of real reproach. Her eyes seemed swollen. “He’ll help you get started too, anywhere you like. You can go anyplace.”
“Nobody wants me to stay on Mill Walk,” Tom said, understanding that his parents had virtually accepted his grandfather’s offer for him.
“Don’t you want to get off Mill Walk?” His mother’s voice was almost fierce. “Your father wishes he’d been able to get away from this place. Ask him!”
“I don’t think we’re very hungry tonight,” Victor said. “Let me take you upstairs, Glor. You want to be rested for tomorrow, dinner at the Langenheims’.”
“Whoopee. Dirty jokes and dirty looks.”
“I am going to call Dr. Milton,” Victor said.
Gloria slumped in her chair, letting her head loll alarmingly on her chest. Victor quickly stood up and moved behind her. He put his hands under her arms and pulled her up. She resisted for a second or two, then swatted away his hands and stood up by herself.
Victor took her arm and walked her out of the dining room. Tom heard them going up the stairs. The bedroom door closed, and his mother began screaming at a steady unhurried pulse. Tom walked twice around the dining room, then took the plates into the kitchen, wrapped the uneaten steaks in baggies and put them in the refrigerator. After Tom had washed the dishes, he walked out into the front hall and listened for a moment to his mother’s screams, which now sounded oddly remembered, disconnected from any real rage or pain. He went to the front door and leaned his head against it.
Less than half an hour later a carriage rolled up in front of the house. The doorbell rang. Tom left the television room, opened the front door, and let in Dr. Milton.
Victor stood on the lowest step of the staircase. A red wine stain shaped like the state of Florida covered the front of his shirt. Dr. Milton, who was dressed in the same outfit of cutaway and striped pants that he had worn for the picture in Lamont von Heilitz’s journal, smiled at Tom and carried his black bag toward the stairs. “Is she better now?”
“I guess,” Victor said.
Dr. Milton turned his ponderous face to Tom. “Your mother’s a little high-strung, son. Nothing to worry about.” He looked as if he wished to ruffle Tom’s hair. “You’ll see a big improvement in her tomorrow.”
Tom said something noncommittal, and the doctor carried his bag upstairs after Victor Pasmore.
By ten o’clock Tom felt as if he were all alone in the house. The doctor had left hours before, and his parents had never come back downstairs. He turned on the television to watch the news and sat on the armrest of his father’s recliner, tapping his foot.
“Dramatic conclusion to search for Marita Hasselgard’s killer,” said the reliable-looking man in the heavy glasses. “Finance Minister feared missing. Complete details after these messages.”
Tom slid onto the seat and moved the recliner into its upright position. He waited through a string of commercials.
Then came color film of what looked like the entire police force of Mill Wa
lk, equipped with automatic rifles and bulletproof vests, firing from behind cars and police vans at a familiar wooden house in Weasel Hollow. “The hunt for Foxhall Edwardes, suspected murderer of Marita Hasselgard, came to a dramatic conclusion late this afternoon after shots were fired inside a Mogrom Street bungalow early this evening. Two officers, Michael Mendenhall and Roman Klink, were injured in the early exchange of fire. Reinforcements quickly arrived on the scene, and Captain Fulton Bishop, who had been led to identify Edwardes as the murderer of Miss Hasselgard by an anonymous tip, spoke to the suspect through a bullhorn. Edwardes chose to shoot rather than surrender, and was killed in the resulting exchange of gunfire. The two injured policemen remain in critical condition.”
On the screen, the windows and window frames of the little house splintered apart under the gunfire, and chips of stone flew away from the front of the house. Black holes like wounds appeared in the walls. Smoke boiled from the ruined door. Flames shot out onto the roof, and one side of the house collapsed in a roil of smoke and dust.
The announcer appeared again. “In a related story, Finance Minister Friedrich Hasselgard, reported earlier as lost in a squall in the Devil’s Pool, was listed an hour ago as officially missing. His luxury sailing vessel is being towed back to Mill Walk harbor by members of Mill Walk’s Maritime Patrol, who found the Mogrom’s Fortune adrift at sea. It is presumed that Minister Hasselgard was swept overboard during the storm. Searches continue, but there is little hope for Minister Hasselgard’s survival.” The announcer looked down, as if in sorrow, then up again, upbeat and neutral at once. “After the break, the latest weather reports and Joe Ruddler’s updated sports report. Stay with us.”
Tom turned off the television, picked up the telephone, and dialed the number of the house across the street. He let it ring ten times before hanging up.