Tales from the Nightside (8 page)

“Maybe he got lost, huh? It’s awfully spooky out there. Maybe he’s afraid to come out of where he’s hiding.”

“A cat’s never—” He stopped as soon as he saw the expression on the boy’s thin face. Then he nodded and broke out a rueful smile. “Well, maybe you’re right, pal. Maybe the fog messed him up a little.” Damon’s hand crept into his, and he squeezed it while thinking that the boy was too thin by far; it made his head look ungainly. “In the morning,” he promised. “In the morning. If he’s not back by then, I’ll take the day off and we’ll hunt him together.”

Damon nodded solemnly, withdrew the hand and pulled the quilt up to his chin. “When’s Mom coming home?”

“In a while. It’s Friday, you know. She’s always late on Fridays. And Saturdays.” And, he thought, Wednesdays and Thursdays, too.

Damon nodded again. And, as Frank reached the door and switched off the light: “Dad, does she sing pretty?”

“Like a bird, pal,” he said, grinning. “Like a bird.”

The voice was small in the dark: “I love you, Dad.”

Frank swallowed hard, and nodded before he realized the boy couldn’t see him. “Well, pal, it seems I love you, too. Now you’d better get some rest.”

“I thought you were going to get lost in the fog.”

Frank stopped the move to close the door. He’d better get some rest himself, he thought; that sounded like a threat.

“Not me,” he finally said. “You’d always come for me, right?”

“Right, Dad.”

Frank grinned, closed the door, and wandered through the small house for nearly half an hour before finding himself in the kitchen, his hands waving at his sides for something to do. Coffee. No. He’d already had too much of that today. But the walk had chilled him, made his bones seem brittle. Warm milk, maybe, and he opened the refrigerator, stared, then took out a container and poured half its contents into a pot. He stood by the stove, every few seconds stirring a finger through the milk to check its progress. Stupid cat, he thought; there ought to be a law against doing something like that to a small boy that never hurt anyone, never bad anyone to hurt.

He poured himself a glass, smiling when he didn’t spill a drop, but he refused to turn around and look up at the clock; instead, he stared at the flames as he finished the second glass, wondering what it would be like to stick his finger into the fire. He read somewhere . . . he thought he’d read somewhere that the blue near the center was the hottest part and it wasn’t so bad elsewhere. His hand wavered, but he changed his mind, not wanting to risk a burn on something he only thought he had read; besides, he decided as he headed into the living room, the way things were going these days, he probably had it backward.

He sat in an armchair flanking the television, took out a magazine from the rack at his side and had just found the table of contents when he heard a car door slam in the drive. He waited, looked up and smiled when the front door swung open and Susan rushed in. She blew him a distant kiss, mouthed 
I’ll be back in a second,
 and ran up the stairs. She was much shorter than he, her hair waist-long black and left free to fan in the wind of her own making. She’d been taking vocal lessons for several years now, and when they’d moved to the Station when Damon was five, she had landed a job singing at the Chancellor Inn. Torch songs, love songs, slow songs, sinner songs; she was liked well enough to be asked to stay on after the first night, but she began so late that Damon had never heard her. And for the last six months, the two-nights-a-week became four, and Frank became adept at cooking supper.

When she returned, her makeup was gone and she was in a shimmering green robe. She flopped on the sofa opposite him and rubbed her knees, her thighs, her upper arms. “If that creep drummer tries to pinch me again, so help me I’ll castrate him.”

“That is hardly the way for a lady to talk,” he said, smiling. “If you’re not careful, I’ll have to punish you. Whips at thirty paces.”

In the old days—the very old days, he thought—she would have laughed and entered a game that would last for nearly an hour. Lately, however, and tonight, she only frowned at him as though she were dealing with a dense, unlettered child. He ignored it, and listened politely as she detailed her evening, the customers, the compliments, the raise she was looking for so she could buy her own car.

“You don’t need a car,” he said without thinking.

“But aren’t you tired of walking home every night?”

He closed the magazine and dropped it on the floor. “Lawyers, my dear, are a sedentary breed. I could use the exercise.”

“If you didn’t work so late on those damned briefs,” she said without looking at him, “and came to bed on time, I’d give you all the exercise you need.”

He looked at his watch. It was going on two.

“The cat’s gone.”

“Oh no,” she said. “No wonder you look so tired. You go out after him?”

He nodded, and she rolled herself suddenly into a sitting position. “Not with Damon.”

“No. He was in bed when I came home.”

She said nothing more, only examined her nails. He watched her closely, the play of her hair falling over her face, the squint that told him her contact lenses were still on her dresser. And he knew she meant: 
did you take Damon with you?
 She was asking if Damon had followed him. Like the night in the fog, with the woman; like the times at the office; like the dozens of other instances when the boy just happened to show up at the courthouse, in the park while Frank was eating lunch under a tree, at a nearby friend’s house late one evening, claiming to have had a nightmare and the sitter wouldn’t help him.

Like a shadow.

Like a conscience.

“Are you going to replace it?” He blinked. “The cat, stupid. Are you going to get him a new cat?”

He shook his head. “We’ve had too much bad luck with animals. I don’t think he could take it again.”

She swung herself off the sofa and stood in front of him, her hands on her hips, her lips taut, her eyes narrowed. “You don’t care about him, do you?”

“What?”

“He follows you around like a goddamn pet because he’s afraid of losing you, and you won’t even buy him a lousy puppy or something. You’re something else again, Frank, you really are. I work my tail trying to help—”

“My salary is plenty good enough,” he said quickly.

“—this family and you’re even trying to get me to stop that, too.”

He shoved himself to his feet, his chest brushing against hers and forcing her back. “Listen,” he said tightly. “I don’t care if you sing your heart out a million times a week, lady, but when it starts to interfere with your duties here—”

“My 
duties
?”

“—then yes, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you stay home when you’re supposed to.”

“You’re raising your voice. You’ll wake Damon.”

The argument was familiar, and old, and so was the rage he felt stiffening his muscles. But this time she wouldn’t stop when she saw his anger. She kept on, and on, and he didn’t even realize it when his hand lifted and struck her across the cheek. She stumbled back a step, whirled to run out of the room, and stopped.

Damon was standing at the foot of the stairs.

He was sucking his thumb.

He was staring at his father.

“Go to bed, son,” Frank said quietly. “Everything’s all right.”

For the next week the tension in the house was proverbially knife-cutting thick. Damon stayed up as late as he could, sitting by his father as they watched television together or read from the boy’s favorite books. Susan remained close, but not touching, humming to herself and playing with her son whenever he left—for the moment—his father’s side; each time, however, her smile was more forced, her laughter more strained, and it was apparent to Frank that Damon was merely tolerating her, nothing more. That puzzled him. It was he who had struck her, not the other way around, and the boy’s loyalty should have been thrown into his mother’s camp. Yet it hadn’t. And it was apparent that Susan was growing more resentful of the fact each day. Each hour. Each time Damon walked silently to Frank’s side and slid his hand around the man’s waist, or into his palm, or into his hip pocket.

He began showing up at the office again, until one afternoon when Susan skidded the car to a halt at the curb and ran out, grabbed the boy and practically threw him, arms and legs thrashing, into the front seat. Frank raced from his desk and out the front door, leaned over and rapped at the window until Susan lowered it.

“What the hell are you doing?” he whispered, with a glance to the boy.

“You hit me, or had you forgotten,” she whispered back. “And there’s my son’s alienation of affection.”

He almost straightened. “That’s lawyer talk, Susan,” he said.

“Not here,” she answered. “Not in front of the boy.”

He stepped back quickly as the car growled away from the curb, walked in a daze to his desk and sat there, chin in one palm, staring out the window as the afternoon darkened and a faint drizzle began to fall. His secretary muttered something about a court case the following morning, and Frank nodded until she stared at him, gathered her purse and raincoat and left hurriedly. He continued to nod, not knowing the movement, trying to understand what he had done, what both of them had done to bring themselves to this moment. Ambition, surely. A conflict of generations where women were homebodies and women had careers; where men tried to adjust when they couldn’t have both. But he had tried, he told himself . . . or he thought he had, until the dishes began to pile up and the dust stayed on the furniture and Damon said 
does she sing pretty?

It’s always the children who get hurt, he thought angrily.

Held that idea in early December when the separation papers had been prepared and he stood on the front porch watching his car, his wife, and his son drive away from Oxrun Station south toward the city. Damon’s face was in the rear window, nose flat, palms flat, hair pressed down over his forehead. He waved, and Frank answered.

I love you, Dad.

Frank wiped a hand under his nose and went back inside, searched the house for some liquor and, in failing, went straight to bed where he watched the moonshadows make monsters of the curtains.

“Dad,” the boy said, “do I have to go with Mommy?”

“I’m afraid so. The judge . . . well, he knows better, believe it or not, what’s best right now. Don’t worry, pal. I'll see you at Christmas. It won’t be forever.”

“I don’t like it, Dad. I’ll run away.”

“No! You’ll do what your mother tells you, you hear me? You behave yourself and go to school every day, and I’ll . . . call you whenever I can.”

“The city doesn’t like me, Dad. I want to stay at the Station.”

Frank said nothing.

“It’s because of the lady, isn’t it?”

He had stared, but Susan’s back was turned, bent over a suitcase that would not close once it had sprung open again by the front door.

“What are you talking about?” he’d said harshly.

“I told,” Damon said as though it were nothing. “You weren’t supposed to do that.”

When Susan straightened, her smile was grotesque.

And when they had driven away, Damon had said 
I love you, Dad.

Frank woke early, made himself breakfast and stood at the back door, looking out into the yard. There was a fog again, nothing unusual as the Connecticut weather fought to stabilize into winter. But as he sipped at his coffee, thinking how large the house had become, how large and how empty, he saw a movement beside the cherry tree in the middle of the yard. The fog swirled, but he was sure . . .

He yanked open the door and shouted: “Damon!”

The fog closed, and he shook his head. Easy, pal, he told himself; you’re not cracking up yet.

Days.

Nights.

He called Susan regularly, twice a week at pre-appointed times. But as Christmas came and Christmas went, she became more terse, and his son more sullen.

“He’s getting fine grades, Frank, I’m seeing to that.”

“He sounds terrible.”

“He’s losing a little weight, that’s all. Picks up colds easily. It takes a while, Frank, to get used to the city.”

“He doesn’t like the city.”

“It’s his home. He will.”

In mid-January Susan did not answer the phone and finally, in desperation, he called the school, was told that Damon had been in the hospital for nearly a week. The nurse thought it was something like pneumonia.

When he arrived that night, the waiting room was crowded with drab bundles of scarves and overcoats, whispers and moans and a few muffled sobs. Susan was standing by the window, looking out at the lights far colder than stars. She didn’t turn when she heard him, didn’t answer when he demanded to know why she had not contacted him. He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around; her eyes were dull, her face pinched with red hints of cold.

“All right,” she said. “All right, Frank, it’s because I didn’t want you to upset him.”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

“He would have seen you and he would have wanted to go back to Oxrun.” Her eyes narrowed. “This is his home, Frank! He’s got to learn to live with it.”

“I’ll get a lawyer.”

She smiled. “Do that. You do that, Frank.”

He didn’t have to. He saw Damon a few minutes later and could not stay more than a moment. The boy was in dim light and almost invisible, too thin to be real beneath the clear plastic tent and the tubes and the monitors . . . too frail, the doctor said in professional conciliation, too frail for too long, and Frank remembered the day on the porch with the saucer of milk when he had thought the same thing and had thought nothing of it.

He returned after the funeral, all anger gone. He had accused Susan of murder, knowing at the time how foolish it had been, but feeling better for it in his own absolution. He had apologized. Had been, for the moment, forgiven.

Had stepped off the train, had wept, had taken a deep breath and decided to live on.

Returned to the office the following day, piled folders onto his desk and hid behind them for most of the morning. He looked up only once, when his secretary tried to explain about a new client’s interest, and saw around her waist the indistinct form of his son peering through the window.