Julian laid down the pen and raised his bloody hands to his head and parted a section of hair above his hairline. Then he stuck his head under the lamp. “Look. Look at the scars, Mother.”
Vanessa felt as if she were suddenly treading on barbed wire. “What about them?”
“Where did they come from?”
“You know perfectly well. I told you that you fell off your stepstool in the bathroom and hit your head on the radiator when you were two.”
“These are little spots, not a regular scar,” he said. “You’re lying, because I remember. Besides, how could I fall from a six-inch stool and land on the top of my head?” His eyes fixed her.
“You don’t remember anything.”
“I remember going to a hospital and having some kind of operation. I remember being bandaged up and seeing things. And taking tests and stuff. And other kids.” Then his voice became a bizarre falsetto:
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You took tests to see if there was any brain damage. And, thank goodness, there wasn’t,” she added, feigning motherly relief.
“But there was, and it wasn’t because I hit my head. It’s because you had me fixed.”
“Julian, I’m in no mood for your crap, okay? This conversation is over.”
As she started to leave, Julian shot to his feet. Because he was still small for his age, Vanessa towered over him by a foot.
“What if I did that to your head, huh? What if I operated on your head to make you smarter? Huh?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I remember being tested. Aptitude tests—intelligence tests. Three years straight of tests. I’m still taking them. And why? Well, I put it all together. I wasn’t supposed to remember, but I did. How would you like it if I did that to you?”
She did not respond.
“I asked you a question, Vanessa?” he said, in perfect mimicry of her. “I’m
She turned. He was standing there with one of his pens in his hand, the point aimed at her. “Don’t you threaten me, you little—” But she stopped short.
“What? Say it. ‘Little creep,’ right? Is that the expression you’re searching for, huh?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice like acid. “And don’t you speak to me that way. Not after what I’ve put myself through for you.”
“You know what I’m talking about. You had me fixed because I wasn’t good enough for you and your fancy friends at the club and university. You wanted a little superstar to parade around. Well, you got him, Vanessa! You got yourself your little genius, and his teeth are all ground down, and he’s taking five different medications because he’s a little GENIUS.”
As he screamed at her, his tongue flashed against the row of yellow stumps in bright red gums and spittle shot from his mouth. His face filled with blood and his eyes bulged like hens’ eggs. He looked positively grotesque. “How would you like a little brain surgery, Mother? Then you’d know what a miserable hell it is to be me—what it’s like to be possessed. What it’s like to hate you the way I do.”
As he approached, his face filled her vision. “HOW WOULD YOU LIKE THAT, MOTHER?”
As if to the snap of her own mind, Vanessa felt herself lurch forward.
“You little bastard!” she heard herself scream. “Because of you I’m ruined. They did this to me. They set me up. Because of you. Yes, because you’re such a fucking monster. BECAUSE OF YOU!”
Her hand shot to the jar of tools and pulled up a long sharp metal ice-picklike thing. The next instant, she buried it in the crown of Julian’s head.
Instantly blood geysered out of the boy’s skull as he let out a faint cry.
For a telescoped moment, she watched in numbed horror as Julian jerked about and rose in place on his toes as if trying to follow his own blood, his eyes widening in utter dismay, his mouth slack-jawed and moving wordlessly like a marionette’s trying to form a question. An involuntary pocket of air bubbled out of his throat as blood streamed down his face and onto his shirt. Then just as he seemed about to gain stature, his mouth spread into a hideous grin, and he collapsed backward onto his tilt board, the long instrument still stuck in place. Because of the internal pressure, blood shot out across the self-portrait picture, bedewing the paper in a postimpressionist spray.
Panting uncontrollably, Vanessa tried to comprehend what her hand had done. She did not cry out nor did she touch her son. She just stood there gasping for air and watched him die.
When she heard the deep-throated gurgle, she turned. Without deliberation, she removed a razor knife from the scattered implements.
She didn’t know how they knew about Blake’s paper, but she knew they had set her up tonight, contacted the prick and arranged for that video. It was their doing. Because she had wanted her son back. Because she had insisted they undo what they’d done to him. Because she threatened to blow the whistle when they refused to even try, filling him full of useless chemicals that made him even worse.
Such bullshit. Collateral effects! He was a freak. She had threatened to take him elsewhere, so they brought her down in public. On her night of nights.
She moved to Julian’s bed and sat against the bolster. She glanced once across the room at her son dead on his tilt board, his blood streaming onto the carpet.
For a second, the image of him nursing at her breast flitted across her mind. She let out a long pathetic groan.
Then she slashed her wrists.
For the next several minutes, with her knees clutched to her chest, and her wrists bleeding into a pillow, she whimpered softly and rocked herself to death.
41
Brendan had been in the kitchen cleaning up when the video exposure of Vanessa Watts was going on. He had only learned about it from another waiter on his way out.
Around eleven-thirty, he parked the pickup down the street from the DaFoe house so it wouldn’t be noticed. The only car in the garage was a Lexus SUV. It was green, the color of money, which Nicole’s parents had in abundance.
Unlike the simple little six-room Cape that he shared with his grandfather, Nicole’s home was a big white Colonial with a sweeping lawn, fancy shrubbery, and that European beech elm where he had spent several nights watching her undress, and one having sex with her history teacher.
Nicole let him in the back door. She had changed into green jeans and a yellow top. She looked like a daffodil. She was holding a glass of orange juice.
“You stink,” she said as if announcing the sky was black.
“From the g-g-garlic in the crab cakes’ dip. Carlos always adds too m-much. I’ll w-w-wash up.”
“And work on that stutter while you’re at it.” She led him upstairs to her bathroom.
He said nothing, inured to her bluntness. On one level, it fascinated him that she was so lacking in social cues. He at least had some residual instinct. She waited by the door as he washed up. “You missed quite a scene.” He told her about the plagiarism charge. “That’s not going to go over big with the administration at Middlesex
