Christine (29 page)

31

The Day After

Arnie Cunningham did not go to school the next day. He said he thought he might be coming down with the flu. But that evening he told his parents that he felt enough improved to go down to Darnell's and do some work on Christine.

Regina protested—although she did not come right out and say so, she thought Arnie looked like death warmed over. His face was now entirely free of acne and blemishes, but there was a trade-off: it was much too pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn't been sleeping. In addition, he was still limping. She wondered uneasily if her son could be using some sort of drug, if perhaps he had hurt his back worse than he had let on and had started taking pills so he could go on working on the goddamned car. Then she dismissed the thought. Obsessed as he might be with the car, Arnie would not be that stupid.

“I'm really fine, Mom,” he said.

“You don't look fine. And you hardly touched your supper.

“I'll get some chow later on.”

“How's your back? You're not lifting a lot of heavy stuff down there, are you?”

“No, Mom.” This was a lie. And his back had hurt terribly all day long. This was the worst it had been since the original injury at Philly Plains
(oh, was that where it started?
his mind whispered,
oh really? are you sure?).
He had taken the brace off for a while, and his back had throbbed fit to kill him. He had put it on again after only fifteen minutes, cinching it tighter than ever. Now his back really was a little better. And he knew why. He was going to her. That was why.

Regina looked at him, worried and at a loss. For the first time in her life she simply did not know how to proceed. Arnie was beyond her control now. Knowing it brought on a horrible feeling of despair that sometimes crept up on her and filled her brain with an awful, empty, rotten coldness. At these times a depression so total she could barely credit it would steal through her, making her wonder exactly what it was she had lived her life for—so her son could fall in love with a girl and a car all in the same terrible fall? Was that it? So she could see exactly how hateful to him she had become when she looked in his gray eyes? Was that it? And it really didn't have anything to do with the girl at all, did it? No. In her mind, it always came back to the car. Her rest had become broken and uneasy, and for the first time since her miscarriage nearly twenty years before, she had found herself considering making an appointment with Dr. Mascia to see if he would give her some pill for the stress and the depression and the attendant insomnia. She thought about Arnie on her long sleepless nights, and about mistakes that could never be rectified; she thought about how time had a way of swinging the balance of power on its axis, and how old age had a way of sometimes looking through a dressing-table mirror like the hand of a corpse poking through eroded earth.

“Will you be back early?” she asked, knowing this was the last breastwork of the truly powerless parent, hating it, unable—now—to change it.

“Sure,” he said, but she didn't much trust the way he said it.

“Arnie, I wish you'd stay home. You really don't look good at all.”

“I'll be fine,” he said. “Got to be. I have to run some auto parts over to Jamesburg for Will tomorrow.”

“Not if you're sick,” she said. “That's nearly a hundred and fifty miles.”

“Don't worry.” He kissed her cheek—the passionless kiss-on-the-cheek of cocktail-party acquaintances.

He was opening the kitchen door to go out when Regina asked, “Did you know the boy who was run down last night on Kennedy Drive?”

He turned back to look at her, his face expressionless. “What?”

“The paper said he went to Libertyville.”

“Oh, the hit-and-run . . . that's what you're talking about.”

“Yes.”

“I had a class with him when I was a freshman,” Arnie said. “I think. No, I really didn't know him, Mom.”

“Oh.” She nodded, pleased. “That's good. The paper said there were residues of drugs in his system. You'd never take drugs, would you, Arnie?”

Arnie smiled gently at her pallid, watchful face. “No, Mom,” he said.

“And if your back started to hurt you—I mean, if it
really
started to hurt you—you'd go see Dr. Mascia about it, wouldn't you? You wouldn't buy anything from a . . . a drug-pusher, would you?”

“No, Mom,” he repeated, and went out.

• • •

There had been more snow. Another thaw had melted most of it, but this time it had not disappeared completely; it had only withdrawn into the shadows, where it formed a white rime under hedges, the bases of trees, the overhang of the garage. But in spite of the snow around the edges—or maybe because of it—their lawn looked oddly green as Arnie stepped out into the twilight, and his father looked like a strange refugee from summer as he raked the last of the autumn leaves.

Arnie raised his hand briefly to his father and made as if to go past without speaking. Michael called him over. Arnie went reluctantly. He didn't want to be late for his bus.

His father had also aged in the storms that had blown up over Christine, although other things had undoubtedly played a part. He had made a bid for the chairmanship of the History Department at Horlicks late in the summer and had been rebuffed quite soundly. And during his annual October checkup, the doctor had pointed out an incipient phlebitis problem—phlebitis, which had nearly killed Nixon; phlebitis, an old folks' problem. As that late fall moved toward another gray western-Pennsylvania winter, Michael Cunningham looked gloomier than ever.

“Hi, Dad. Listen, I've got to hurry if I'm going to catch—”

Michael looked up from the little pile of frozen brown leaves he had managed to get together; the sunset caught the planes of his face and appeared to make them bleed. Arnie stepped back involuntarily, a little shocked. His father's face was haggard.

“Arnold,” he said, “where were you last night?”

“What—?” Arnie gaped, then closed his mouth slowly. “Why, here. Here, Dad. You know that.”

“All night?”

“Of course. I went to bed at ten o'clock. I was bushed. Why?”

“Because I had a call from the police today,” Michael said. “About that boy who was run over on JFK Drive last night.”

“Moochie Welch,” Arnie said. He looked at his father with calm eyes that were deeply circled and socketed for all their calmness. If the son had been shocked by the father's appearance, the father was also dully shocked by his son's—to Michael, the boy's eyesockets looked nearly like a skull's vacant orbs in the failing light.

“The last name was Welch, yes.”

“They would be in touch. I suppose. Mom doesn't know—that he might have been one of the guys that trashed Christine?”

“Not from me.”

“I didn't tell her either. I'd be glad if she didn't find that out,” Arnie said.

“She may find it out eventually,” Michael said. “In fact, she almost certainly will. She's an extremely intelligent woman, in case you've never noticed. But she won't find it out from me.”

Arnie nodded, then smiled humorlessly. “ ‘Where were you last night?' Your trust is touching, Dad.”

Michael flushed, but his eyes didn't drop. “Maybe if you'd been standing outside yourself these last couple of months,” he said, “you'd understand why I asked.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You know damn well. It hardly even bears discussing anymore. We just go around and around the same old mulberry bush. Your entire life is jittering apart and you stand there and ask me what I'm talking about.”

Arnie laughed. It was a hard, contemptuous sound. Michael seemed to shrivel a little before it. “Mom asked me if I was on drugs. Maybe you want to check that one out, too.” Arnie made as if to push up the sleeves of his warmup jacket. “Want to check for needle-tracks?”

“I don't need to ask if you're on drugs,” Michael said. “You're only on one I know of, and that's enough. It's that goddam car.”

Arnie turned as if to go, and Michael pulled him back.

“Get your hand off my arm.”

Michael dropped his hand. “I wanted you to be aware,” he said. “I no more think you'd kill someone than I think you could walk across the Symonds' swimming pool. But the police are going to question you, Arnie, and people can look surprised when the police turn up suddenly. To them, surprise can look like guilt.”

“All of this because some drunk ran over that shitter Welch?”

“It wasn't like that,” Michael said. “I got that much out of this fellow Junkins who called me up on the phone. Whoever killed the Welch boy ran him down and then backed over him and ran over him again and backed up
again
and—”

“Stop it,” Arnie said. He suddenly looked sick and frightened, and Michael had much the same feeling Dennis had had on Thanksgiving evening: that in this tired unhappiness the real Arnie was suddenly close to the surface, perhaps reachable.

“It was . . . incredibly brutal,” Michael said. “That's what Junkins said. You see, it doesn't look like an accident at all. It looks like murder.”

“Murder,” Arnie said, dazed. “No, I never—”

“What?” Michael asked sharply. He grabbed Arnie's jacket again. “What did you say?”

Arnie looked at his father. His face was masklike again. “I never thought it could be that,” he said. “That's all I was going to say.”

“I just wanted you to know,” he said. “They'll be looking for someone with a motive, no matter how thin. They know what happened to your car, and that the Welch boy might have been involved, or that you might
think
he was involved. Junkins may be around to talk to you.”

“I don't have anything to hide.”

“No, of course not,” Michael said. “You'll miss your bus.”

“Yeah,” Arnie said. “Gotta go.” But he stayed a moment longer, looking at his father.

Michael suddenly found himself thinking of Arnie's ninth birthday. He and his son had gone to the little zoo in Philly Plains, had eaten lunch out, and had finished the day by playing eighteen holes at the indoor miniature golf course on outer Basin Drive. That place had burned down in 1975. Regina had not been able to come; she had been flat on her back with bronchitis. The two of them had had a fine time. For Michael, that had been his son's best birthday, the one that symbolized for him above all others his son's sweet and uneventful American boyhood. They had gone to the zoo and come back and nothing much had happened except that they had had a great time—Michael and his son, who had been and who still was so dear to him.

He wet his lips and said, “Sell her, Arnie, why don't you? When she's completely restored, sell her away. You could get a lot of money. A couple—three thousand, maybe.”

Again that frightened, tired look seemed to sweep over Arnie's face, but Michael couldn't tell for sure. The sunset had faded to a bitter orange line on the western horizon, and the little yard was dark. Then the look—if it had been there at all—went away.

“No, I couldn't do that, Dad,” Arnie said gently, as if speaking to a child. “I couldn't do that now. I've put too much into her. Way too much.” And then he was gone, cutting across the yard to the sidewalk, joining the other shadows, and there was only the sound of his footfalls coming back, soon lost.

Put too much into her? Have you? Exactly what, Arnie? What have you put into her?

Michael looked down at the leaves, then around at his yard. Beneath the hedge and under the overhang of the garage, cold snow glimmered in the coming dark, livid and stubbornly waiting for reinforcements. Waiting for winter.

32

Regina and Michael

Regina was tired—she tired more easily these days, it seemed—and they went to bed together around nine, long before Arnie came in. They made love that was dutiful and joyless (lately they made love a lot, it was almost always dutiful and joyless, and Michael had begun having the unpleasant feeling that his wife was using his penis as a sleeping pill), and as they lay in their twin beds after, Michael asked casually: “How did you sleep last night?”

“Quite well,” Regina said candidly, and Michael knew she was lying. Good.

“I came up around eleven and Arnie seemed restless,” Michael said, still keeping his voice casual. He was deeply uneasy now—there had been something in Arnie's face tonight, something he hadn't been able to read because of the damned shadows. It was probably nothing, nothing at all, but it glowed in his mind like a baleful neon sign that simply would not shut off. Had his son looked guilty and scared? Or had it just been the light? Unless he could resolve that, sleep would be a long time coming tonight—and it might not come at all.

“I got up around one,” Regina said, and then hurried to add, “just to use the bathroom. I checked in on him.” She laughed a little wistfully. “Old habits die hard, don't they?”

“Yes,” Michael said. “I guess they do.”

“He was sleeping deeply then. I wish I could get him to wear pajamas in cold weather.”

“He was in his skivvies?”

“Yes.”

He settled back, immeasurably relieved and more than a little ashamed of himself as well. But it was better to know . . . for sure. It was all very well for him to tell Arnie that he knew the boy could no more commit a murder than he could walk on water. But the mind, that perverse monkey—the mind can conceive of anything and seems to take a perverse delight in doing so. Just maybe, Michael thought, lacing his hands behind his head and looking up at the dark ceiling, just maybe that's the peculiar damnation of the living. In the mind a wife can rut, laughing, with a best friend, a best friend can cast plots against you and plan backstabbings, a son can commit murder by auto.

Better to be ashamed and put the monkey to sleep.

Arnie had been here at one o'clock. It was unlikely Regina was mistaken about the time because of the digital clock-radio on their bureau—it told the time in numbers that were big and blue and unmistakable. His son had been here at one o'clock, and the Welch boy had been run down three miles away twenty-five minutes later. Impossible to believe that Arnie could have dressed, gone out (without Regina, who had surely been lying wakeful, hearing him), gone down to Darnell's, gotten Christine, and driven out to where Moochie Welch had been killed. Physically impossible.

Not that he had ever believed it to begin with.

The mind-monkey was satisfied. Michael rolled over on his right side, slept, and dreamed that he and his nine-year-old son were playing miniature golf on an endless series of small Astro-Turfed greens where windmills turned and tiny water-hazards lay in wait . . . and he dreamed that they were alone, all alone in the world, because his son's mother had died in childbirth—very sad; people still remarked on how inconsolable Michael had been—but when they went home, he and his son, the house would be theirs alone, they would eat spaghetti right from the pot like a couple of bachelor slobs, and when the dishes were washed they would sit at a kitchen table hidden beneath spread newspapers and build model cars with harmless plastic engines.

In his sleep, Michael Cunningham smiled. Beside him, in the other bed, Regina did not. She lay awake and waited for the sound of the door that would tell her that her son had come in from the world outside.

When she heard the door open and close . . . when she heard his step on the stairs . . . then she would be able to sleep.

Maybe.