“Arnold,” he said, “where were you last night?”
“What—?” Arnie gaped, then closed his mouth slowly. “Why, here. Here, Dad. You know that.”
“All night?”
“Of course. I went to bed at ten o’clock. I was bushed. Why?”
“Because I had a call from the police today,” Michael said. “About that boy who was run over on JFK Drive last night.”
“Moochie Welch,” Arnie said. He looked at his father with calm eyes that were deeply circled and socketed for all their calmness. If the son had been shocked by the father’s appearance, the father was also dully shocked by his son’s to Michael, the boy’s eyesockets looked nearly like a skull’s vacant orbs in the failing light.
“The last name was Welch, yes”
“They would be in touch. I suppose. Mom doesn’t know—that he might have been one of the guys that trashed Christine?”
“Not from me.”
I didn’t tell her either. I’d be glad if she didn’t find that out,” Arnie said.
“She may find it out eventually,” Michael said. “In fact, she almost certainly will. She’s an extremely intelligent woman, in case you’ve never noticed. But she won’t find it out from me.”
Arnie nodded, then smiled humourlessly. “'Where were you last night?” Your trust is touching, Dad.”
Michael flushed, but his eyes didn’t drop. “Maybe if you’d been standing outside yourself these last couple of months,” he said, “you’d understand why I asked.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You know damn well. It hardly even bears discussing anymore. We just go around and around the same old mulberry bush. Your entire life is jittering apart and you stand there and ask me what I’m talking about.”
Arnie laughed. It was a hard, contemptuous sound. Michael seemed to shrivel a little before it. “Mom asked me if I was on drugs. Maybe you want to check that one out, too.” Arnie made as if to push up the sleeves of his warmup jacket. “Want to check for needle-tracks?”
“I don’t need to ask if you’re on drugs,” Michael said. “You’re only on one I know of, and that’s enough. It’s that goddam car.”
Arnie turned as if to go, and Michael pulled him back.
“Get your hand off my arm.”
Michael dropped his hand. “I wanted you to be aware,” he said. “I no more think you’d kill someone than I think you could walk across the Symonds” swimming pool. But the police are going to question you, Arnie, and people can look surprised when the police turn up suddenly. To them, surprise can look like guilt.”
“All of this because some drunk ran over that shitter Welch?”
It wasn’t like that,” Michael said. “I got that much out of this fellow Junkins who called me up on the phone. Whoever killed the Welch boy ran him down and then backed over him and ran over him again and backed up again and—”
“Stop it,” Arnie said He suddenly looked sick and frightened, and Michael had much the same feeling Dennis had had on Thanksgiving evening: that in this tired unhappiness the real Arnie was suddenly close to the surface, perhaps reachable.
“It was… incredibly brutal,” Michael said. “That’s what Junkins said. You see, it doesn’t look like an accident at all. It looks like murder.”
“Murder,” Arnie said, dazed. “No, I never—”
“What?” Michael asked sharply. He grabbed Arnie’s jacket again. “What did you say?”
Arnie looked at his father. His face was masklike again. “I never thought it could be that,” he said. “That’s all I was going to say.”
“I just wanted you to know,” he said. “They’ll be looking for someone with a motive, no matter how thin. They know what happened to your car, and that the Welch boy might have been involved, or that you might think he was involved. Junkins may be around to talk to you.”
“I don’t have anything to hide.”
“No, of course not,” Michael said. “You’ll miss your bus.”
“Yeah,” Arnie said. “Gotta go.” But he stayed a moment longer, looking at his father.
Michael suddenly found himself thinking of Arnie’s ninth birthday. He and his son had gone to the little zoo in Philly Plains, had eaten lunch out, and had finished the day by playing eighteen holes at the indoor miniature golf course on outer Basin Drive. That place had burned down in 1975. Regina had not been able to come, she had been flat on her back with bronchitis. The two of them had had a fine time. For Michael, that had been his son’s best birthday, the one that symbolized for him above all others his son’s sweet and uneventful American boyhood. They had gone to the zoo and come back and nothing much had happened except that they had had a great time —Michael and his son, who had been and who still was so dear to him.
He wet his lips and said, “Sell her, Arnie, why don’t you? When she’s completely restored, sell her away. You could get a lot of money. A couple—three thousand, maybe.”
Again that frightened, tired look seemed to sweep over Arnie’s face, but Michael couldn’t tell for sure. The sunset had faded to a bitter orange line on the western horizon, and the little yard was dark. Then the look—if it had been there at all—went away.
“No, I couldn’t do that, Dad,” Arnie said gently, as if speaking to a child. “I couldn’t do that now. I’ve put too much into her. Way too much.”
And then he was gone, cutting across the, yard to the sidewalk, joining the other shadows, and there was only the sound of his footfalls coming back, soon lost.
Put too much into her? Have you? Exactly what, Arnie? What have you put into her?
Michael looked down at the leaves, then around at his yard. Beneath the hedge and under the overhang of the garage, cold snow glimmered in the coming dark, livid and stubbornly waiting for reinforcements. Waiting for winter.
32
REGINA AND MICHAEL
She’s real fine, my 409,
My four-speed, dual-quad,
Positraction 409.
Regina was tired—she tired more easily these days, it seemed—and they went to bed together around nine, long before Arnie came in. They made love that was dutiful and joyless (lately they made love a lot, it was almost always dutiful and joyless, and Michael had begun having the unpleasant feeling that his wife was using his penis as a sleeping pill), and as they lay in their twin beds after, Michael asked casually: “How did you sleep last night?”
“Quite well,” Regina said candidly, and Michael knew she was lying. Good.
“I came up around eleven and Arnie seemed restless,” Michael said, still keeping his voice casual. He was deeply uneasy now—there had been something in Arnie’s face tonight, something he hadn’t been able to read because of the damned shadows. It was probably nothing, nothing at all, but it glowed in his mind like a baleful neon sign that simply would not shut off. Had his son looked guilty and scared? Or had it just been the light? Unless he could resolve that, sleep would be a long time coming tonight and it might not come at all.
“I got up around one,” Regina said, and then hurried to add, “Just to use the bathroom. I checked in on him.” She laughed a little wistfully. “Old habits die hard, don’t they?”
“Yes,” Michael said. “I guess they do.”
“He was sleeping deeply then. I wish I could get him to wear pyjamas in cold weather.”
“He was in his skivvies?”
