Hearts In Atlantis

cut her throat, Bobby thought. He didn’t want to think it but he did.

He tiptoed across the living room as quietly as Jack in the giant’s castle, opened the door to the foyer, and went out. He tiptoed up the first flight of stairs (walking on the bannister side, because he’d read in one of the Hardy Boys mysteries that if you walked that way the stairs didn’t creak so much), and ran up the second.

Ted’s door stood open; the room beyond it was almost empty. T he few things of his own he’d put up—a picture of a man fishing at sun-set, a picture of Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet, a calendar— were gone. The ashtray on the table was empty, but sitting beside it was one of Ted’s carryhandle bags. Inside it were four paperback books: Animal Farm, The Night of the Hunter, Treasure Island, and Of Mice and Men. Written on the side of the paper bag in Ted’s shaky but completely legible handwriting was: Read the Steinbeck first. “Guys like us,” George says when he tells Lennie the story Lennie always wants to hear. Who are guys like us? Who were they to Steinbeck? Who are they to you? Ask yourself this.

Bobby took the paperbacks but left the bag—he was afraid that if his mom saw one of Ted’s carryhandle bags she would go crazy all over again. He looked in the refrigerator and saw nothing but a bot-tle of French’s mustard and a box of baking soda. He closed the fridge again and looked around. It was as if no one had ever lived here at all. Except—

He went to the ashtray, held it to his nose, and breathed in deeply. The smell of Chesterfields was strong, and it brought Ted back com-pletely, Ted sitting here at his table and talking about Lord of the Flies, Ted standing at his bathroom mirror, shaving with that scary razor of his, listening through the open door as Bobby read him opin-ion pieces Bobby himself didn’t understand.

Ted leaving one final question on the side of a paper bag: Guys like us. Who are guys like us?

Bobby breathed in again, sucking up little flakes of ash and fight-ing back the urge to sneeze, holding the smell in, fixing it in his memory as best he could, closing his eyes, and in through the win-dow came the endless ineluctable cry of Bowser, now calling down the dark like a dream: roop-roop-roop, roop-roop- roop.

He put the ashtray down again. The urge to sneeze had passed. I’m going to smoke Chesterfields, he decided. I’m going to smoke them all my life.

He went back downstairs, holding the paperbacks in front of him and walking on the outside of the staircase again as he went from the second floor to the foyer. He slipped into the apartment, tiptoed across the living room (his mother was still snoring, louder than ever), and into his bedroom. He put the books under his bed— deep under. If his mom found them he would say Mr. Burton had given them to him. That was a lie, but if he told the truth she’d take the books away. Besides, lying no longer seemed so bad. Lying might become a necessity. In time it might even become a pleasure.

What next? The rumble in his stomach decided him. A couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were next.

He started for the kitchen, tiptoeing past his mother’s partly open bedroom door without even thinking about it, then paused. She was shifting around on her bed. Her snores had become ragged and she was talking in her sleep. It was a low, moaning talk Bobby couldn’t make out, but he realized he didn’t have to make it out. He could hear her anyway. And he could see stuff. Her thoughts? Her dreams? Whatever it was, it was awful.

He managed three more steps toward the kitchen, then caught a glimpse of something so terrible his breath froze in his throat like ice: HAVE YOU SEEN BRAUTIGAN! He is an OLD MONGREL but WE LOVE HIM!

“No,” he whispered. “Oh Mom, no.”

He didn’t want to go in there where she was, but his feet turned in that direction anyway. He went with them like a hostage. He watched his hand reach out, the fingers spread, and push her bed-room door open all the way.

Her bed was still made. She lay on top of the coverlet in her dress, one leg drawn up so her knee almost touched her chest. He could see the top of her stocking and her garter, and that made him think of the lady in the calendar picture at The Corner Pocket, the one get-ting out of the car with most of her skirt in her lap . . . except the lady getting out of the Packard hadn’t had ugly bruises above the top of her stocking.

Liz’s face was flushed where it wasn’t bruised; her hair was matted with sweat; her cheeks were smeary with tears and gooey with makeup. A board creaked under Bobby’s foot as he stepped into the room. She cried out and he froze, sure her eyes would open.

Instead of awakening she rolled away from him toward the wall. Here, in her room, the jumble of thoughts and images coming out of her was no clearer but ranker and more pungent, like sweat pouring off a sick person. Running through everything was the sound of Benny Goodman playing “One O’Clock Jump” and the taste of blood running down the back of her throat.

Have you seen Brautigan, Bobby thought. He is an old mongrel but we love him. Have you seen . . .

She had pulled her shades before lying down and the room was very dark. He took another step, then stopped again by the table with the mirror where she sometimes sat to do her makeup. Her purse was there. Bobby thought of Ted hugging him—the hug Bobby had wanted, needed, so badly. Ted stroking his back, cupping the curve of his skull. When I touch, I pass on a kind of window, Ted had told him while they were coming back from Bridgeport in the cab. And now, standing by his mother’s makeup table with his fists clenched, Bobby looked tentatively through that window into his mother’s mind.

He caught a glimpse of her coming home on the train, huddling by herself, looking into ten thousand back yards between Providence and Harwich so as few people as possible would see her face; he saw her spy-ing the bright green keyfob on the shelf by the toothglass as Carol slipped into her old blouse; saw her walking Carol home, asking her questions the whole way, one after another, firing them like bullets out of a machine-gun. Carol, too shaken and worn out to dissemble, had answered them all. Bobby saw his mother walking—limping —down to Commonwealth Park, heard her thinking If only some good could be salvaged from this nightmare, if only some good, anything good—

He saw her sit on a bench in the shade and then get up after awhile, walking toward Spicer’s for a headache powder and a Nehi to wash it down with before going back home. And then, just before leaving the park, Bobby saw her spy something tacked to a tree. These somethings were tacked up all over town; she might have passed a couple on her way to the park, so lost in thought she never noticed.

Once again Bobby felt like a passenger in his own body, no more than that. He watched his hand reach out, saw two fingers (the ones that would bear the yellow smudges of the heavy smoker in another few years) make a