Castle: A Novel (14 page)

FOURTEEN

I don’t know where or how my father met Avery Stiles, but it is not difficult to imagine a scenario by which the two, working after hours on campus—my father at his maintenance chores and Professor Stiles on his research—struck up a conversation and, eventually, a friendship. My father, though cold and distant with his family, was quite amiable around others. In retrospect, this may seem strange, but as a child I never thought to question the drastic change in personality that overtook him at the hardware store, the bank, the municipal dump, when he encountered perfect strangers. I accompanied him on these errands for many years, and distinctly recall the tense silence that enveloped the truck as we drove. My father’s back never seemed to touch the seat—he leaned forward, his chin out over the steering wheel his bony fingers gripped, his jaw tight, his eyes darting across his field of vision. Any attempt on my part to speak was met with a terse “Quiet,” and so I sat in nervous boredom, my body rigid, waiting for the journey to end.

But when we reached our destination and climbed down from the truck, my father changed into a different person. His compact frame loosened, his forehead smoothed, his hooded eyes grew wide. When he encountered a familiar face, he initiated a handshake from ten feet away, striding forth with a confident gait and a broad smile. He chatted with great intensity, usually about the weather, or a description of some project he was engaged in, and people in town seemed to like him. You wouldn’t think, looking at such a man, that he was friendless. Indeed, he appeared to enjoy broad social acceptance in our town. And then, when his errand was over, and he turned his back on his acquaintances, his face and body tightened up again, and by the time we climbed back into the truck, he had assumed his usual truculent demeanor.

I was not conscious, at the time, of harboring any particular feelings about my father’s transformations. Now, of course, it is easy to imagine that I must have felt jealous, that I wished he would bestow this kind of cheer upon my mother and me. But the truth is, I don’t remember feeling that way, and I don’t believe I did. I didn’t regard this version of my father as having anything to do with my mother and me. I thought of the cold, angry man I knew as my real father, and this gregarious fellow as a character he played. If anything, his manner embarrassed me—living as I did, I had come to regard this kind of social display as foolish and false, and though I have since overcome this misapprehension, I remain uncomfortable in my relations with others. But I digress.

Quite probably my father was very friendly to those he encountered at the college. And I suspect that he regarded himself as the equal of any professor who taught there—indeed, he likely considered himself more intelligent than the average academic, and he might well have been right. So it was not surprising that he would befriend a man like Professor Stiles, a misfit in the university community whose work had fallen into disfavor with his colleagues and superiors. He and my father were outsiders, and natural allies. This, anyway, is what I imagine may have been the case.

In any event, it came to pass that Doctor Avery Stiles was invited to our house for dinner one night, and my mother ordered to prepare some elaborate meal. I don’t recall what it was we ate, but my father spent an unprecedented amount of time in the kitchen, overseeing her work, dipping his fingers into things, demanding to know what she was doing and why she was doing it. I was a boy at the time—I would guess around eight—and understood only that a guest would be coming for dinner, and that I was supposed to be on my best behavior. Largely, though, I expected to be ignored that night, because it was my sister who was the ostensible focus of the evening.

Jill was around thirteen and in the early stages of her delinquency. She had begun to smoke cigarettes—I had seen her and her friends doing it behind the school—and wear makeup, and she sulked in the presence of my parents and often disappeared when family meals were in the offing. Perhaps as a result, she had lost weight, and no longer looked like the child she must still have been. She had begun to take on the twiggy roughness that she would settle into, in her adulthood.

I didn’t fully understand what my parents were talking about before Doctor Stiles’s arrival at our house. But it seemed to me that Doctor Stiles had been called in to meet Jill, assess her social problems, and suggest some course of action that would “cure” her. My mother insisted that she didn’t like the idea of a “psychologist coming into our house,” and my father said that he wasn’t a psychologist, he was a scientist, and he would “use science on her.” After a while the discussion became heated, and my mother, as always, backed down. But the evening was already unprecedented, not only because a college professor was coming over, but also because my parents had spoken to each other at such length, and with such passion.

The dinner was not to work out as planned, however, because just before Doctor Stiles was to arrive, my sister went missing. My mother called her down from her room, but she was not in her room, and she wasn’t anywhere else in the house, either. Her jacket was gone from the coat rack, and her bicycle from the garage.

My father blamed my mother for letting her leave, and insisted that she get in the car and go find her. But before the issue could be resolved, Professor Stiles appeared on the doorstep.

He was a tall, gaunt man with a long face, a narrow chin, and a round pair of eyeglasses. His clothes were drab and brown and threadbare, and his sparse black hair was snarled at the crest of a high, pale forehead. But he carried with him an air of quiet authority, to which my parents responded by taking his coat and leading him to the sofa, where he was handed a drink.

On the one hand, the Professor looked weak. His skin lacked color, and his arms and legs were thin as a waif’s. But he moved with a precision and assurance that bespoke a great physical dexterity, and his eyes ranged around the room, absorbing, one imagined, every detail. He appeared, in fact, to hold us all in judgment—but what sort of judgment was unclear. He betrayed nothing of his opinions. Such a person had never been in our house before, and I would have been hard pressed to recall when anyone besides ourselves had ever sat on that sofa.

My parents made small talk with Professor Stiles, and he joined the conversation with ease. But his eyes, I couldn’t help but notice, fell upon me time and time again. I said nothing, but I felt that I was expected to, and several times I almost opened my mouth to speak. I resisted, however, afraid of how I might sound. I had already developed a reputation at school as a quiet, studious pupil, not especially socially adept, and I wanted such a man to be impressed by me, or at least to approve. Ultimately I considered it best, then, not to speak at all.

In time, the group moved to the dining room, where a place had been set for my sister. As the meal began, Doctor Stiles glanced at the empty plate and asked, “And so your young lady will not be available this evening?”

My mother reddened, and my father grumbled something about my mother’s inability to keep her in line, but Professor Stiles waved off the question with a graceful, leaflike hand. “It is of no consequence,” he said.

Awkwardly, my parents returned to small talk, and we ate. Professor Stiles complimented the food, and my mother blushed again, this time with pleasure—I could not recall my father ever having complimented her for anything. It was not in his nature. But, seeing that she was under the Doctor’s sway, my father said, “Avery, tell her about your work. Tell her what you’ve been doing.”

“Ah,” Professor Stiles said, setting down his knife and fork, and addressing my mother with disarming directness. “I am interested in modifying behavior, particularly in children, through a form of conditioning that I have devised.”

“Oh!” said my mother, and though her tone was bright, I could tell that it was a put-on, that she didn’t like this visitor and wished he would finish his meal and go away. My father must have sensed this, for he scowled slightly at the tablecloth and gripped his fork a little tighter.

“Forgive me for being obscure, Mrs. Loesch,” the Professor went on. “It is difficult to distill my years of research into a simple explanation, even for a colleague. I’ll put it this way.” He straightened in his chair, lifted his napkin to his face, and daubed at the corner of his mouth. Then he replaced the napkin on his lap, drew breath, and continued. “You have noticed, I should imagine, the social unrest that has overtaken our cities of late, and the reactionary culture that has sprung up in protest of the war.”

“Of course,” my mother replied briskly.

Professor Stiles acknowledged her with a nod. “And so you are likely familiar, as well, with our failures in that war, the losses our armed forces have suffered, and the despair that has spread among our soldiers there.” He did not wait for an answer, but merely went on. “It is my feeling that we have civilized our own humanness out of existence. We are too affluent, and too soft, and many of our natural instincts have atrophied. My research means to explore how the human mind reacts when its comforts have been stripped away. I intend to recover those human skills that we have lost, to create a better soldier, and perhaps more importantly, a better citizen.”

“I see,” my mother said.

The smile that Professor Stiles offered in response was a sad one. He shook his head, turned to me, and winked. Then he reached into the pocket of his sport coat, lunged to his feet, and grabbed me from behind, pinning me to my chair. His arm was crooked around my neck; the tweed was rough against my throat. I felt something being pressed to my skull, just above the right ear.

My mouth was full of food, but I was unable to swallow. I heard my mother scream.

“I’m going to murder your child, Mrs. Loesch,” Professor Stiles said, his voice loud but calm. “What are you going to do?”

She screamed again and again, her hands twisting her napkin, her body curling further and further in on itself, shrinking like a piece of paper thrown into a fire.

I had not yet had time to be frightened—I felt only shock and confusion. I looked to my father for help and was even more baffled to find him sitting back, his arms crossed over his chest, looking on with interest, even amusement. It was clear he was not comfortable with the situation—his mouth was taut, and the veins stood out above his ear—but neither was he frightened, or even angry. Meanwhile, my mother continued to scream.

“I’m going to kill Eric, Mrs. Loesch,” he said. “What will you do? How will you save your son?”

“Please!” she wailed, rocking in her chair. She turned to my father. “Please! Brian! Please!”

“Mrs. Loesch!” Professor Stiles shouted.

“Oh, please!”

“Mrs. Loesch, look at me!”

I felt the object press harder into my scalp, and I tried to lean away. But the Professor’s arm held me tight. I struggled to swallow, failed, and coughed horribly, spitting the food across the table. My father frowned.

“Look at me, Mrs. Loesch! If you want your son to live, look at me!”

I believe that lifting her head was the most difficult thing my mother had ever done. Slowly, as though she were terribly old, she turned to face the end of the table where the Professor stood over me; she gazed into my eyes and I recognized that something in her had toppled over and shattered. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, and wrinkles fanned out from the corners of her mouth. A bubble appeared at a nostril, grew, and popped.

“Look at
me,
please, Mrs. Loesch.”

With a final, desperate effort, her eyes rolled up to meet his.

“Do you want me to kill your son, Mrs. Loesch?”

“No,”
my mother whispered.

“Mrs. Loesch, I want you to look at my hand.”

She blinked, and blankly gazed at his left hand, which rested on my shoulder, holding me to the chair with casual, implacable force. I could feel the long fingers there, pressing painfully into my flesh.

“No, Mrs. Loesch, the other hand.”

Her jaw trembling, she shifted her gaze to the Professor’s other hand, the one holding the weapon to my head.

“Mrs. Loesch, I want you to tell me what I have pressed to Eric’s head.”

Fresh tears began to run down my mother’s face. “A g—,” she stammered, “a g-g-
gun.
”

“Mrs. Loesch. Cybele. No.
What do I have pressed to Eric’s head?
”

A curious transition played itself out on my mother’s features. Though she was wracked by fear and despair, she must have found within herself some well of resolve, for she focused her glassy pink gaze and concentrated on the Professor’s weapon. After a moment, her eyes flew open, and her head jerked back an inch; the first stirrings of anger were visible at the corners of her mouth.

She looked up at the Professor, then at my father, who had slid down in his chair and was staring at his hands, folded on his belly. Some of the food I’d spat out had struck his shirtsleeve just above the elbow. He did not appear to notice it there.

Finally my mother’s eyes returned to mine. Her gaze was cold.

“Mrs. Loesch? Tell me what you see.”

She did not look at him as she spoke; her eyes remained on my face, but she appeared to be looking elsewhere, someplace far from this room. Her cheeks were still wet, but her eyes were dry now, as if the tears had been burned away. She said, “A train.”

With the pronouncement of these words, Professor Stiles released me from his grip. I slumped in my chair, coughing, and found suspended in front of my face, gently held by the Professor’s long pale fingers, a die-cast toy locomotive. After a moment, his face appeared beside it.

“For you,” he said.

This train was something I wanted very badly. I had seen it, in fact, just that week, at the toy shop in downtown Milan, displayed in the front window along with a collection of cars that linked to it. But it was the locomotive I wanted the most. Sleek, black, with windows of real glass and a precise red and white stripe running down its flank, it was a marvelous toy. It looked nothing like a gun, of course.