Skull Session (36 page)

They looked around the room. "Yeah," the boy said. "Maybe.

Yeah."

"I think it's worse now," the girl said. She flipped her golden hair up and back, seeming to gain confidence. "Are you trying to figure out who did it?"

Mo didn't answer but continued probing them for a few minutes more. They didn't know anything else useful. They just wanted to look around. Other kids at school knew about it. Who? Everybody. Nobody in particular.

He was escorting them outside, around the house toward their path, when the girl gave him something to think about.

"Are you the same policeman who was up here the other time?" she asked.

Mo stopped walking. "What other time? The one time you were here?"

The boy rolled his eyes, exasperated with her, but the girl didn't miss a beat. "One other time we were going to come up, up the driveway, but we didn't because we saw the police car there. At the bottom."

"When was this?"

They thought about it. "Like a week or so after Halloween," she said. Rizal? Mo questioned them some more but got nothing. No, they hadn't seen the policeman. Yes, maybe it was a State Police car, but it might have been a Town of Lewisboro police car. The boy had gone mum, the girl was willing to talk all day even if she had nothing to say. At last he walked them to the edge of the woods, where they headed down a small ravine.

Mo waited for a moment, then walked to the top of the driveway. The tension had left him, and now he felt drained. Conclusions, none. Maybes, two. Maybe three cycles of damage. Maybe Rizal had been up before, maybe around the time of the hypothetical third cycle, in early November.

Not worth it, considering how close he'd come to the ultimate fuck-up. He'd come within one motor nerve impulse, a tiny shock of electricity down his arm, of blowing two kids away.

"Fuck," he said out loud. He kicked at the gravel. He told himself he'd managed to master the impulse, he'd made progress, he should feel good. Instead, he felt like shit. The Rizal thing was a major headache. Also, the girl had been very pretty. Her confidence had come back as she'd recognized something in Mo. Disgusted with himself, he spat and started walking down.

44

J
ANET, IT'S PAUL. I'm here at the farm. I want to see Mark today."

It was eight-thirty Sunday morning.

"I thought you wouldn't make it back until tonight."

"Yeah. Well, I was able to leave earlier than I expected."

"Well, fine. But not knowing the whimsy of your schedule, we've already made plans. Mark has Tommy Clarke coming over at ten to play."

"Okay. So give me a time this afternoon when I should pick him up."

"I never agreed that you were going to see him at all."

Fight back,
Paul reminded himself. "I'll be there at two. Have Mark ready to come back to the farm with me."

"And if I disagree?"

"You and I have a prior and established agreement about the disposition of Mark." Paul was trying to invent some plausible legalese, as if he knew what he was talking about. "Until such time as a court decides otherwise, that agreement stands. If you prevent me from seeing him, I will call the police and claim you've abducted him."

"They won't believe you."

"Oh? I'll have them ask Mark if he'd like to see me. If he routinely does see me. In any case, I don't think having an abduction charge pending will help your custody action, or whatever it is you're planning. Have him ready at two."

His hands shook as he hung up. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee, spilling some on the counter, when Lia came into the kitchen. Her eyes were still puffy from sleep.

"What was all that about?"

"No more Mr. Nice Guy." Paul sipped his coffee and bared his teeth at the heat of it.

"Oh—-Janet," she said. "Got a cup for me?"

They sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and planning the next few days, calendars open on the checked tablecloth. Lia's work at school would take most of her time. Paul's priority would be to sort out things with Janet, consult a lawyer if necessary, and spend time with Mark. He also had a lot of calls to make: Kay, Aster, Vivien. Especially Vivien. He jotted notes to himself, then remembered an additional errand:
Call M. Stropes.

"Kay, this will sound weird, but bear with me, okay? Royce was an only child, right?"

"Of course! Why would you think otherwise?"

Paul had caught her up on events at Highwood, ending with Royce's visit, and now he debated how much to tell her. He decided on a compromise: "We keep running into pictures of Vivien with two kids. There's a family resemblance."

"Maybe some cousin? I seem to remember there were a few other branches of the Hoffmanns around."

"Do you know any of them?"

"No. Never did. Especially after the divorce there wouldn't have been much contact. What does it matter?"

"Royce handed me one of the photos, implied it was in my best interest to find out who the other kid was."

"That's just Royce, jerking your chain."

"Maybe. But he seemed sincerely, if that's a word one can apply to Royce, pissed off when he said it. He'd lost his cool a bit."

"Good work Paulie!"

"I've got another question. Do you remember a room that opened into Vivien's bedroom?"

"Can't recall. I remember wondering what was in there—that whole wall of the balcony. I guess I figured Vivien had a suite. It wouldn't surprise me if that house had lots of hidden closets and nooks, though. Why?"

"It's just an odd room. Just very strange."

"Paulie." Kay's voice took on her warning tone. "Are you getting into something you shouldn't?"

"Like what?"

"Like trying to unravel the Hoffmanns' family problems and intrigues? Because, talk about the Augean stables, there's no end to it. Tar-baby city. Of course the Hoffmanns would love to get you entangled."

"Why would either of them
want
me to get entangled?"

"Never underestimate the power of sheer narcissism. It's a kind of an exhibitionistic thing: 'Aren't my knots and tangles just so scandalous and fascinating?' You make a great audience."

"I'll bear it in mind," he said. "But I have a couple of other questions for you."

"Go ahead. Not that you'll listen to what I say."

"Vivien—if she's as conniving and rotten as everyone says she is, why were she and Mother and Ben such good friends? There's got to be more to her."

"Oh, of course there is. She's human. More or less. I think she's a very smart woman, with strong and interesting perspectives on things. I think that's the side Ben liked, a challenging intellectual companion. But I remember other sides of her too. I don't think she was always such a calculating, manipulative person. I think that came later. I think there's a powerfully sentimental person there too. Deep personal loyalties. Or there
was,
anyway."

"What changed her?"

"I think Hoffmann's leaving her was a crushing blow. She was only about eighteen when she married him, and I think she was really in love with the son of a bitch. Practically a child bride, the only man she'd ever loved, right? Big disillusionment. After the divorce, around 1952, her world started collapsing. First the divorce, then Freda's death, then Royce being such a pain. And then all those years of sohtude. It's as if she had to become as calculating and cynical as she had been innocent and hopeful. If she wanted to survive. Ben's death probably didn't help, either—they were pretty close."

"Which brings up another question. Kay, why do you think Ben did it? Why'd he kill himself?" He didn't mean to sound so morose.

She whistled quietly. "Boy, you
are
getting put through the wringer by this Highwood job, aren't you?" There was sympathy in her voice. "Listen, Paulie. If you feel you've got to work through this, fine. But don't ask Mother any of these questions, okay? Don't dredge it all up for her. She seems particularly fragile now. Will you promise?"

He had a moment of trepidation as he knocked at the door of Janet's modern duplex, keying "No Reply" on his lapel as his abdomen clenched spasmodically. Anticipation was always the worst for bringing on the tics. He dropped his hands as Janet opened the door.

She was wearing faded jeans and a heavy sweater, bare feet. She had her hair cut in a new style, a chin-length, straight cut that was very chic.

"Hi," he said. It was always unsettling, seeing Janet or Mark here: the wall-to-wall carpeting that she'd once claimed she hated, the too-prominent television, the coordinated furniture. Mark wasn't in the living room.

She shut the door behind him. "I tried to call my attorney, but of course I couldn't reach him on a Sunday. I take it you were bluffing me with that legal vernacular."

"Looks like you'll have to wait until Monday to find out, doesn't it? Where's Mark?"

"In his room."

Paul felt a flood of relief just knowing he was nearby. "I brought you something from New York. A little place in Chinatown," he said, putting the box on the table. He rustled in the tissue wrappings and took out the Chinese teapot he'd bought. "I remembered Mark had broken yours last month. The man who ran the store told me that in China you always offer a gift with both hands. It signifies that it is a gift of value, testament to the esteem in which the receiver is held by the giver."

It was a risky gambit, too virtuous, one that could easily backfire, but he cradled the delicate porcelain pot in two hands and held it out to her. For a moment he saw the spark of fury kindling in her eyes. He made himself hold her gaze, and to his surprise he saw the anger in her face give way to a brief indecisiveness and then a split second of softness.

She took the pot from him, two hands. "Thank you," she said simply. For a moment a kind of grace held between them as she admired the teapot, stroking its flawless surface, and he admired her. Then the moment passed, and when she spoke again her voice was flat, all business. "It's very pretty, and you're right, I need a teapot. But you can't bribe me."

"Don't I know it. I have more respect for you than to try." He unpacked the cups that went with the pot and set them on the table beside it. "And you can't threaten me. Not when it comes to my son. How about a truce? How about talking to me about what's going on?"

"Mark," she called in the direction of the hallway, "your father's here."

Back at the farm, they went for a walk, catching the remains of the afternoon sun. In the woods above the high field, both were thrilled to find a trail of moose prints, matched pairs of crescents, bigger around than a saucer. Nearby they found a tree that the moose had eaten from, its trunk stripped of bark in a long slash. They decided it had been a bull moose, a big one: The top of the scrape began three feet above Paul's head.

The sun was going down as they headed back to the house. Mark seemed thoughtful. "What if we saw the moose?" he asked.

"That would be great, wouldn't it?"

"No—I mean, what would we do? So he wouldn't get us."

"He wouldn't want to 'get' us. The only time you have to worry about them is in rutting season, when they get territorial."

"What's rutting season?"

"Well. That's when they mate. The males sometimes butt heads, deciding who gets to be with the female moose." He laughed. "It's not so different from when humans are in love—they just lock horns in different ways."

Mark had a stick and was systematically slapping every tree they passed with it. "How come everything, people and animals, fight when they love each other? Like you and Mom. Or in stories and movies. It's almost like loving and fighting
always
have to go together."

Mark was always catching him by surprise, the sudden lateral step, the innocent wisdom.
You always hurt the one you
love
—who sang that? The Coasters? No, Clarence "Frogman" Henry. It was true: love and war, love and hate, even love and death, forever paired. Who didn't wish for just love, without its dark twin? Love had its
shadow.

"You're a pretty smart kid," Paul said. "Seriously. There's a lot of truth in what you just pointed out. But it's not always all that gloomy, I assure you."

Mark didn't seem to hear the compliment. "Like Mom says negative things about you, usually when something else is making her feel bad. I think maybe when she's missing you."

"What kind of negative things?"

"Today she said you were a quitter. That you run away from things, you're good at starting things but never finishing them. She said you'd quit the job you have now, you'd give up before you were finished."

Paul struggled with the anger that reared up. He didn't care what Janet thought about him. But she had no right to make Mark distrust his father. The kid was entitled to the security of feeling that Paul was going to be there and was competent to protect him, guide him, instruct him.

"I have no intention of quitting that job. And what she said just isn't true, I don't quit things."

"You quit from being married to Mom."
Whack-whack:
Mark hit another tree.

There didn't seem to be an adequate response. The explanations could take a lifetime. "Well," Paul said, trying to keep his tone conversational, "that's a subject that deserves a long answer. But the most important thing, right now, is that you know—I mean
know,
for sure—that I'm not quitting being your father, ever. Do you know that?"

Mark didn't answer. They came out of the woods and stood for a minute on the hill overlooking the farm. The direct sunlight was gone, but the landscape still glowed with a lavender tint, as if giving off the sunset colors it had absorbed. Paul found himself holding his breath, watching Mark covertly. Then they started down the hill. He was relieved when Mark took his hand and held it, but wasn't sure whether Mark was taking, or offering, comfort.