Greely's Cove (37 page)

Next thing on the agenda: grocery shopping, and picking up household odds and ends: cleansers and sponges and Brillo pads, a mop and a broom—things that old Hannie Hazelford had overlooked in her outfitting of the house weeks earlier.

And after that, the big one: the task of inventorying Lorna’s gallery on Frontage Street, cleaning it out, gathering its wares and fixtures for storage and auction—a massive job that Renzy Dawkins had offered to help with, as had Jeremy. Not fun, surely, but neither would it be an ordeal, for this was part of the new beginning that Lorna herself would have endorsed and encouraged. No sense in putting it off.

A full day indeed, and the morning was fast slipping away. He drained his coffee cup, rinsed it in the sink, and went to the door that separated the garage from the kitchen, meaning to herd the three young dogs into the backyard for their morning “hot and steamies.” Then he meant to rouse his son and get things rolling.

He pulled the door open, fully expecting a rush of puppyish energy to come bounding into the kitchen. He stood still a moment, surprised by the quiet.

In the garage sat Renzy Dawkins’s classic Roadmaster convertible, which Renzy had insisted lending him until Carl got a car of his own. Along the wall lay a jumble of rakes and hoes, a lawn mower, a nest of garden hoses, and Lorna’s ancient Gitane bicycle. On the floor near the door were three pans mounded with Purina Dog Chow and a fourth one, smaller, heaped with Tender Vittles for the kittens. A plastic bucket filled with water sat nearby, and, like the pet food, it was apparently untouched.

The garage was empty of life and sound, and Carl suddenly became intensely conscious of the fact that Lorna had died here, having locked herself in the rusting Subaru wagon that she and he had picked out together and bought long before he’d graduated to Porsches. He suppressed a shudder and whistled into the blank atmosphere of the garage, then clucked his tongue and made kissing noises in the hope that the animals were only hiding, perhaps sleeping, on the other side of the Buick. But they were gone. No amount of whistling could coax them back from nonexistence.

“No need to worry about them, Dad,” said Jeremy from behind him, having slipped soundlessly into the kitchen. Carl nearly jumped out of his skin. “I knew how busy you’d be for the next few days, so I took care of them. A trip to the animal shelter won’t be necessary now.”

Carl collected his wits, pushed the door closed again. He turned toward his son, who was leaning against the counter with his hands pocketed in bulky white safari pants. He looked like any other towheaded teenager of the American Eighties, but something in that smile—as well as his mature, slightly British speech—insisted that he was anything but common.

“Hi,” said Carl, a little unsteadily. “I was just about to get you up.”

“Well, here I am,” answered the boy with a shrug. “Shall I make us some breakfast? You look famished.”

Carl took a step forward, scratching his short beard and frowning.

“Jeremy, what did you do with the animals?”

“Took care of them, like I said.” He busied himself with fetching pans from the cupboard, eggs and juice and muffins from the refrigerator.

“Yes, but what did you
do
with them? They were in the garage when we turned in last night.”

“I—uh—I set them free. You said that this house was too small for a passel of dogs and cats, remember? Freeing them seemed preferable to sending them to the shelter, where they’d probably be put to sleep. I thought they deserved a fighting chance.”

“But I told you we could keep a dog and a cat. Wasn’t that the deal?”

“I decided that I really don’t need any pets after all. How do you like your eggs?”

Once again Carl endured the sinking feeling that his son was a stranger—or, worse, a stranger that he could never truly know, a creature of a different species. But he had heard other fathers voice the same lament about their teenagers, and from this he took a small comfort.

“Never mind the eggs, Son. I want to know what you did with the animals. I want to know where you took them, and why.
Look
at me, Jeremy.”

The lad turned from the counter and stared hazel bullets at his father, sliding his hands into his pockets again. “Very well, I shall
look
at you,” he said in a tone that Carl found unnerving. “I set the animals free, as I said before. I did so because I wanted to spare you the inconvenience of transporting them to the animal shelter. What more do you want me to say?”

That this was a lie was evident in the opaqueness of Jeremy’s face. Carl felt the first sparks of paternal anger. A good father does not allow his son to lie to him, and Carl meant to be a good father, starting this very moment.

“I want the truth, Jeremy,” he replied sternly. “I’ll always be on your side no matter what happens, no matter what you do, but the one thing I won’t stand for is lying, not to me or to anyone else. Do we understand each other?”

Jeremy smiled again, but not with boyish openness this time: It was a cynical smile more befitting an old man who had known his share of trouble.

“So it’s
understanding
you want, is it? Then understand this:

I have my own life to live, and I shan’t accept your intruding into my private affairs. I’ll play this little father-son game so long as it suits my purposes, and not a minute longer. You would do well to remember that,
Dad.
”

Carl was flabbergasted by the retort, by the boy’s snide emphasis on the word
Dad
in particular. This was a side of Jeremy he had not seen before: defiant, hostile, even threatening. The abrupt turnaround in his son’s attitude was like a bucket of ice water thrown in his face, and Carl could well understand why Nora Moreland had been unable to cope during her stay in this house.

“Better cool your jets, big guy,” said Carl, planting his fists on his hips, determined to reestablish his fatherly authority. “I won’t have you talking to me that way, not ever. Maybe you think you can get away with bullying your grandmother like you did, but don’t try it with me. This isn’t a game we’re playing here—”

“Oh, isn’t it? But I thought that’s what pretending is—a game. I pretend to be your loving son, trotting along at your feet and playing the role of obedient teenager, while you pretend to be the all-American dad, wise and nurturing—all for appearances, of course. It just so happens that the arrangement suits me for the time being, since someone my age can’t very well be out on his own, now can he?”

A tincture of rage and confusion colored Carl’s cheeks as he fought down the wild urge to slap Jeremy’s face. “Jeremy, what’s gotten into you?” he asked pleadingly. “Why are you acting like this?”

“How do you want me to act? Like a little boy, perhaps? Shall I go out and buy a Michael Jackson album, or stand around with my friends in the parking lot of a shopping mall, bouncing a Hacky Sack off my foot? Or maybe I should try out for track or baseball, or start hanging out at video arcades. Would any of those make you happy?”

“Look, I’m not trying to be an asshole. I just want to know what’s wrong, that’s all. Maybe I can help—”

Jeremy laughed loudly, causing Carl to flinch. “You want to
help,
is that it? Well, don’t try to help
me,
because I don’t need it. Help yourself instead. You’re the one who came back with a head full of notions about starting a new life and becoming a real father, without the slightest idea of what any of that means. You saw yourself as the kindly mentor of a stereotypical pubescent brat, whom you would teach and guide and mold into a younger version of yourself, doing all the fatherly things that you assumed were expected of you: fishing, sailing, bicycling, spending
meaningful
time together—all your ideas, not mine.”

What kind of kid talks like this?
screamed a voice in Carl’s mind. Prodigy or not, this was hardly the speech of a thirteen-year-old boy, especially one who until six months earlier had been incapable of uttering a single human word. Even more wrenching was the realization that Jeremy was speaking the truth.

“J-Jeremy, listen to me,” said Carl, immediately regretting his weak tone. “You and I—we’ve got to—we’ve got to have some kind of understanding, if we’re going to live together and—”

“Did you say
if?
Is there any question about whether we’re going to live together?”

“Let me finish, God damn it!”

“
What’s the matter, Old Carl? Having second thoughts about things?
”

The boy’s voice had suddenly deepened to the elegant baritone of Carl’s own father. It lacked any trace of British accent and now had the same mocking inflections that Carl’s father had used when teasing or scolding.

“
That’d be just like you, wouldn’t it? Bail out the minute the sledding gets a little tough! Maybe you’re just not cut out for this home life after all, this father-business, the small-town lawyer. Maybe you really do belong in the fast lane, Old Carl, where you don’t have to go to all the trouble of loving anyone but yourself.
”

Carl put a hand on the refrigerator to steady himself and tensed his muscles to dampen the shudder that was rippling through his body. How Jeremy could have known about the voice of his dead father and its alter-ego role in his mind was a chilling riddle. But more chilling still was the boy’s flawless impersonation. Carl’s father had died long before Jeremy’s birth, so the boy could not possibly have known what his grandfather’s voice had sounded like.

“Jeremy, listen to me. I’m not going to run out on you, never again. When your mother and I split up, it wasn’t because—”

Because of what? He caught himself on the verge of telling the lie again, the one lie had told to so many people over the years: that Jeremy had not been the reason for his and Lorna’s breakup. He resolved to stick to the truth, as he admonished his son to do.

“Jeremy, you’re my son, and I love you. I’m going to be here for you—”

“Oh, stop deluding yourself,” said Jeremy, spitting the words. The British accent was back, stronger than before. “You don’t love
me,
you love an
idea:
the idea of being a father, of having a son, of living a pure and wholesome life in good old Greely’s Cove, just as Lorna would have wanted. You’re totally out of touch with reality,
Dad.
” The boy moved close to his father and stared boldly into his face with those hard, knowing eyes. “You haven’t a clue about what I really am, or for that matter what this town is, or even what Lorna was. Suppose I were to tell you that your wife—my mother—had been fucking your friend Renzy Dawkins for the past year, right up until she killed herself. Or that your old chum Stuart Bromton has been taking bribes from a drug dealer, and that he plans to run away from his home and family as soon as he’s collected enough cash. If I were to tell you these things—” Carl quailed and paled, battling the desperate impulse to slam his fist into his son’s smooth jaw.

“—you wouldn’t believe me, would you? How much less would you believe the truth about
me
? The simple fact,
Dad
, is that the truth doesn’t fit your tidy ideas and images, so you choose to discount it. Well, no matter. The games you play with yourself are of no concern to me. I’ll even play along, if that’s what you want. Just don’t try to put a leash on me. As I said before, this arrangement suits me for the time being, as long as you don’t intrude into my personal affairs.”

Carl suddenly felt very sick. The stories told by a pair of teenaged thugs, Jason Hagstad and Kirk Tanner, about how his son had somehow forced them to commit acts of terrorism against old Hannie Hazelford no longer seemed outlandish. Jeremy was capable of incredible mental cruelty; that much was clear. He knew exactly which buttons to push.

A dark certainty took shape in Carl’s mind: The challenge of raising this boy, of loving him and salvaging him from the sickness that had afflicted him since his birth, would be far greater than Carl had ever dreamed or feared. The new life would not be an easy one.

“Jeremy,” he said heavily, trying to keep his eyes from welling with tears, “if you wanted to hurt me, you’ve succeeded. I’m not saying I believe everything you’ve said, but what you said still hurts. The fact is, you
are
my son—and God damn it, I’m going to love you even if it kills me. I may never be able to understand you, and the day may come when I can’t even control you”—the glint in Jeremy’s eyes suggested that the day had already come—“but I’m always going to love you.”

He couldn’t say any more, not just yet. His vocal chords ached.

For a few seconds Jeremy’s face hardened rebarbatively, twisted and contorted as if in pain. Whether the pots and pans on the counter actually vibrated, or whether the kitchen utensils in the cupboards and drawers actually rattled and clattered, Carl did not know or really much care. Later he would tell himself that he had merely hallucinated. Jeremy’s scowl softened, and the hard gleam fled his hazel eyes. He was suddenly a little boy again, gazing with dejection at his feet, perhaps feeling ashamed for the monstrous things he had said. The transformation was immediate and complete.

“I don’t want to build a prison around you, Jeremy,” said Carl, regaining his voice and assuming that his son’s silence was an opening. “What matters to me most is your happiness, that you have a chance to grow and become whatever you choose. It doesn’t worry me that you’re not like other kids, because in many ways you’re better than most other kids—smarter, more mature, capable of greater things, probably. But even so, Jeremy, you need somebody like me, somebody who cares about you and can provide the things you need, keep you on course. Can’t you see that? You need a father, and I’m the guy.”

The boy raised his gaze into his father’s face, and at that very moment Carl knew fully what fatherly love was all about—selfless and steady, given without qualification, total. His own father must have loved him like this.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” said Jeremy softly, sounding almost like an American boy now. “I shouldn’t have said the things I did.

I hope you’ll forgive me.”