Shine Your Light on Me (12 page)

“What do you think? I’m going to call the state police.”

“To what end?”

“He’s committed crimes.”

“Who hasn’t?” Mickey said, standing now. He paced the room, and he looked at her occasionally, but it was not a friendly look, and she quickly became convinced he was mumbling under his breath to Pine’s mother. He spoke incoherently for a few more minutes and she was about to jerk the box from his hands and take it to the police on her own, when he said, quite loudly, “No.”

“What was that?”

He stopped in the middle of the living room. He squared his shoulders. “This would be a titanic embarrassment to this family.”

“What about those he’s hurt?”

He smiled ruefully and she looked by his chair and noticed the half-empty bottle of Crown Royal. He held his liquor well. She said, “You’re drunk.”

“There is something in here that disturbed you more than the rest of the items combined, isn’t there?”

“Are you trying to bring this up now? After all this time?”

“We’ve never talked about it.”

“No,” she said, “we haven’t.”

She wished they didn’t have to talk about it at all, or now, after he’d been drinking. His face reddened considerably, and he laughed loudly, and he approached the fireplace and she rose, afraid he was going to dump the box’s contents into the flames. But he set the shoebox on the mantle next to a photograph of the two of them from last year, both browned and sleek from the sun and waters in the Bahamas. He turned the photograph facedown when he caught her staring at it, and he said, “Do you think I’ve forgiven you?”

“I don’t expect you to. I wouldn’t have if it’d been you.”

“Then what did you expect?”

“I expected outrage.”

He slammed his fist on Pine’s possessions, flattening the shoe box. “You want rage? It’s here, buried, but it feels remote. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Because I don’t love you. Maybe I never have. But I would not have expected such behavior from you, especially not with Jack LeDoux!”

“You’re more alike than you want to admit.”

He jabbed his finger at her. “Say that again!”

“No, it only needs said once.”

“When I helped him, when I got him on his feet and walking, Jack was so grateful, you know that? He was so grateful he dragged my wife into bed, and I knew, I could smell him on her, their decadent, forbidden, secret forays. But then the cancer came so quickly and she grew so weak. I couldn’t punish her any more than fate had. But I sat by her bed there at the end, while our sons were sleeping in their rooms, and I told her I knew, and that I was glad she was dying. It was beneath me, but I would feel the same about you if you found such a curse in your bones.”

“I appreciate you showing some emotion,” she said. “For the longest time now I didn’t believe you could feel anything at all. Did you put Mitch up to crippling Jack?”

“He did that on his own. He is the oldest and it was only natural for him to possess what his father possesses.”

“What are you saying?”

“Don’t play games with me,” he said. “How can you not know what runs through my son’s head? You spend enough time with him. He’d not only kill for you, he’d die for you. He’d risk my rage. But it’d be a waste of a good boy, following his father’s footsteps, losing part of himself to some whore.”

“You have a very high opinion of yourself, Mick. And I don’t know if it’s the alcohol talking or if you mean every word you say—”

“I mean
every
word.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to regain the control she normally kept over herself. She didn’t want him to get worked up. His face was flushed with blood, the vein throbbing on the side of his neck. She wanted to work things out with him, to help him see that things could no longer go on the way they had, not when there was such a small child involved. She didn’t care about Jack or anyone else. She was thinking of Jessica, and worried about Mickey having another heart attack. She said, “So, what now?”

“What did you do with the money from my safe?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Did you corrupt Mitch enough that he helped you do this? All I’ve done is give, give, give, for and to all of you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He grabbed the shoebox and tossed it in the fire. He grabbed the poker from the rack and jabbed at the cardboard, holding it down as the flames curled and quickly consumed it until it was feasting wholeheartedly on its contents.

She said, “Did you know Pine is molesting your granddaughter?”

“She’s well on her way to becoming a prostitute and conniver like all women then, isn’t she?”

She threw herself at him, but he was ready and batted her arms aside and he slapped the red hot poker against the line of her jaw and she screamed, more from shock than the strange deep cold she felt arrest the side of her face.

She stumbled back and tripped over her feet and landed heavily on her rear-end. She glared up at him with tears in her eyes. He looked at her with open distaste. He said, “If it’s true, I’ll be the one to tell Mitch.”

“If you ever touch me again I’ll kill you.”

He laughed and took a step toward her, raising the iron fireplace poker, and said, “Will you now?”

 She scooted back, temporarily forgetting everything else that had been or could be, her only concern to put distance between them. She cried, “Stop!”

She wanted to tell him that this was foolish, that he was going to hurt himself, or that he would hurt her worse, and later he would regret it. They would both regret it. And didn’t they already regret too many things?

He stepped forward, fireplace poker raised, and she held out her hands, tears in her eyes, her jaw aching, begging him, “Please, please, stop!”

To her surprise, he did. And he dropped the poker and his face grew pale, then slack, and he held his left arm for a moment and then touched the tips of his right fingers over his heart, his mouth making little fish motions. He looked as if he couldn’t breathe. He stumbled toward his chair and the shadows beyond the light, but fell short of both.

“Mick?” She scrabbled up onto all fours and stood. The carpet was smoldering, a light trail of smoke stinging her eyes. She touched her cheek, thought about letting the house burn with him in it, and then she groaned. She jerked her hand from her burned jawline. Looking at the end of the poker, so dark against the white carpet, she thought she could see traces of her flesh on the cast iron.

The smoke grew worse. She fled for the kitchen, retrieved a pitcher of water, doused the end of the fireplace poker, and then sat down heavily on the floor and glanced back and forth between the flames dancing in the fireplace and Mickey’s body. She told herself she wouldn’t miss him. She had not loved him, either, it was more a marriage of convenience, no use lying to herself about it now. She could afford what she wanted, which wasn’t much, although she had loved traveling. And for Mickey she had been his young trophy wife, a sign to all those who knew him, and those who didn’t, that he was the top dog around here.

She gathered her shoes and coat at the door but for a moment forgot how to put them on. Then she touched her jaw again and planted her head against the front door and let her tears fall freely. There was no sense in holding them in. The world was in the midst of undoing, or some kind of transformation, and she feared she and Jessica and Jack and Mitch and all the others were caught in some unknowable, irreversible process.

• • •

Bobby’s father stood in the doorway. He was an average sized man with small spectacles, a glass of wine in hand, big eyes full of disappointment. He had an air about him of superiority but masked it well with what others assumed interest and concern. He said in a moderated tone, “What are you sneaking about for, Robert? It’s late, you should be in bed.”

“It’s only ten.”

“Are you sassing me? Don’t you think that a man in my position would know what’s better for you than you would? You hurt me when you try to do this, you’re not as smart or as world-wise as you’d like to think.”

“So?”

“So, get in bed, get your rest. School tomorrow.”

“I’m going out,” Bobby said.

“Sometimes I think you want me to hurt you. Is that it? Pull your pants down.”

“No.”

“Do what I tell you or you’ll only make it worse on yourself. Drop your pants and bend over your bed. Close your eyes if you have to, if you think it’ll make it hurt less. I’ll be right back.” He sipped his wine and then turned back into the hall and disappeared. Bobby had a baseball bat near his door. His father had bought it for his birthday four years ago. He’d tried it once, but he didn’t have the coordination to make a go of it. He grabbed it now and pushed the door shut and drew back on the bat, his heart hammering and his palms sweating. The only thing he could think clearly was:
Not again, motherfucker
...

Waiting those thirty seconds for his father to return was about the longest time in his life. He was out there in the living room, and Bobby’s mother would see the look in his eyes, and ask: Is he home? What did he do now? But his dad would only shake his head and she’d buckle and look the other way because he’d broke her of ever standing up, so that’s why it had to be like this: the bombs, the baseball bat, anything that could smear him all over a room and silence him for an eternity.

Come on
, Bobby thought.

But then the phone rang and he heard his father answer it and the call quickly grew to great lengths. His arms were heavy by then, so he let the bat drop and moved deeper into his bedroom and gathered his things and slipped out the window and into the night. There wasn’t going to be a last supper, and that was okay, he was only a little bit hungry anyway.

CHAPTER 6

Bobby was starving by the time he crossed the long pasture and saw the water tower a half mile in the distance. He glanced in the direction of the school but looked away quickly. He was tempted to walk to Cindy’s but didn’t want to cause her any more problems. He wished he had a way to help her make her dreams come true. But he was next to helpless.

Up ahead, he caught a faint outline of a car in the ditch. It was a white one. Its ass-end jutted up at the sky. He walked toward it, the ground crunching underfoot, his face chilled. Should have brought a ski mask, but he wanted people to recognize him, unless of course it was Pine, and he could hear his four-wheeler out there somewhere in the crummy countryside, engine racing.

Funny, as he got closer, to realize the car in the ditch belonged to Elroy O’Connell. Two brothers less alike Bobby hadn’t ever met. The windows were steamed. He slapped a gloved hand on the driver side door and said, “You in there?”

He tried the door handle. It opened with a screech. Elroy was behind the wheel, blinking rapidly. He looked at Bobby and smiled weakly and said, “These roads are for shit.”

“You okay?”

“I think so.”

Bobby spied the duffle bag on the passenger floorboard and licked his chapped lips and said, “You got something to eat?”

Elroy rubbed his forehead to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. “I always have something to eat. Are you hungry?”

“Pretty much. It’s cold out too. Wish I could help you get your car unstuck but I was never good at stuff like that.”

“My dad or Mitch will have a wrecker get it out in the morning. None of us are good at stuff like this either. We can sure wreck ‘em though.” He laughed. “What do you want to eat?”

“What do you have?”

Elroy grabbed the bag and pulled it onto his lap. He kept the contents hidden as he leaned over it and unzipped it, pulling Twinkies and Skittles and Paydays and a dozen other sugary treats out and placed them on the glass over the speedometer. He still had his seatbelt across his hips, the shoulder strap lying flat against the seat behind him. It looked like it’d hurt, sitting like that for a while, but it didn’t faze Elroy.

Bobby pointed at the package of Twinkies and Elroy handed them over. As Bobby tore into the package with his teeth and freed the moist spongy slices and stuffing one whole into his mouth, he mumbled, “Where are you headed?”

“I was going to Aiden’s.”

“It’s still a long walk from here and the temps are dropping,” Bobby said. To his surprise, he didn’t want to lose Elroy’s company. The boy was two years older than him, and aside from their fathers having success in common, the sons shared little else. Elroy was a sensitive, and Bobby had always believed himself a head case; he didn’t know where his unhappiness and discontent stemmed from, until that moment in the snow with the night their only company.

But to put his feelings and thoughts into words, and to share them with someone else, was a terrifying prospect. He’d rarely done so with Cindy, who he felt closer to than any other soul. And then Elroy was turned toward him, opening a package of Skittles, and he said, “What’s wrong, Robert?”

Bobby shrugged. “I should be going. Thank you for the food. And the talk.”

“You can take more if you like.”

“Are you sure?”

“Like I need more junk food,” Elroy said, patting his expansive stomach.

Bobby chuckled nervously and said, “Maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

Elroy looked at the steamed window, the thin blanket of snow on the other side. He said, “I can hear Pine out there. It sounds like he’s coming this way.”

Bobby heard it too, and he fought the urge to flee. “I never understood how different you guys are.”

“Me either. It’s a weird night. Listen to all those people out there,” Elroy said. “It’s not over yet.”

“What’s not?”

“I’m going to leave,” Elroy said. “I think I have a place out there in the world. I never fit in here. I know it sounds stupid since I don’t have much to complain about, but I don’t have much to hope in either.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Elroy said. “And I think maybe it’s my responsibility to make my own hope. Why should it be up to anyone else? I don’t know why I ever thought that to begin with, or maybe I just never thought much about it at all.”