please with sugar on it?' The simper reappeared, like an old
acquaintance you'd hoped was dead.
'Uh-huh,' Kinnell said, and wrote his standard thanks-for-being-a-
fan message. He didn't have to watch his hands or even think about
it anymore, not after twenty-five years of writing autographs. 'Tell
me about the picture, and the Hastingses.'
Judy Diment folded her pudgy hands in the manner of a woman
about to recite a favorite story.
'Bobby was just twenty-three when he killed himself this spring.
Can you believe that? He was the tortured genius type, you know,
but still living at home.' Her eyes rolled, again asking Kinnell if he
could imagine it. 'He must have had seventy, eighty paintings, plus
all his sketchbooks. Down in the basement, they were.' She
pointed her chin at the Cape Cod, then looked at the picture of the
fiendish young man driving across the Tobin Bridge at sunset.
'Iris-that's Bobby's mother - said most of them were real bad, lots
worse'n this. Stuff that'd curl your hair.' She lowered her voice to a
whisper, glancing at a woman who was looking at the Hastings'
mismatched silverware and a pretty good collection of old
McDonald's plastic glasses in a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids motif.
'Most of them had sex stuff in them.'
'Oh no,' Kinnell said.
'He did the worst ones after he got on drugs,' Judy Diment
continued. 'After he was dead-he hung himself down in the
basement, where he used to paint-they found over a hundred of
those little bottles they sell crack cocaine in. Aren't drugs awful,
Mr. Kinnell?'
'They sure are.'
'Anyway, I guess he finally just got to the end of his rope, no pun
intended. He took all of his sketches and paintings out into the
back yard-except for that one, I guess - and burned them. Then he
hung himself down in the basement. He pinned a note to his shirt.
It said, 'I can't stand what's happening to me.' Isn't that awful, Mr.
Kinnell? Isn't that just the awfulest thing you ever heard?'
'Yes,' Kinnell said, sincerely enough. 'It just about is.'
'Like I say, I think George would go right on living in the house if
he had his druthers, ' Judy Diment said. She took the sheet of
paper with Michela's autograph on it, held it up next to Kinnell's
check, and shook her head, as if the similarity of the signatures
amazed her. 'But men are different.'
'Are they?'
'Oh, yes, much less sensitive. By the end of his life, Bobby
Hastings was just skin and bone, dirty all the time-you could smell
him - and he wore the same T-shirt, day in and day out. It had a
picture of the Led Zeppelins on it. His eyes were red, he had a
scraggle on his cheeks that you couldn't quite call a beard, and his
pimples were coming back, like he was a teenager again. But she
loved him, because a mother's love sees past all those things.'
The woman who had been looking at the silverware and the glasses
came over with a set of Star Wars placemats. Mrs. Diment took
