than a couple of one-nighters. But when he declared that their brief affair was over, that he was still working things out with his wife, she became ballistic. To get back she left Dana a telltale phone message. That was the turning point: Dana announced that she wanted a separation.
It was a turning point for him, too. When he learned that she had told Dana everything, Steve drove to Sylvia’s place. He had been drinking, and in a moment of rage he slapped her across the face, accusing her of trying to destroy his marriage. She shot back that he had made the move on her, and he counteraccused her of leading him on for months. None of that was important. But what pecked at his conscience was the knowledge that he had crossed a barrier—that in a weird half-conscious angry-drunk moment he had struck a woman. For weeks following that he had had disturbing dreams of violence—sometimes against Sylvia, sometimes against Dana. Dreams that mixed up nightmare details, leaching in from his casework. Dreams that had sent him to his doctor for stronger meds.
He had apologized to Sylvia.
He had apologized to Dana:
That was their exchange months ago, and since then Sylvia Nevins had taken a job in Pensacola and the last he had heard she was engaged to be married. But that was irrelevant. Dana could not forgive him despite his apologies and the fact that it was the first time in their twelve years of marriage that he had cheated on her.
Over the months he looked back on that night a thousand times and hated what he had done. Because friends and colleagues were at the party, he had been discreet for most of the evening, making beer talk with Sylvia. But when no one was looking, he arranged to meet later at her place, where he spent the night in boozy sex. Deep down he knew that their tryst had not arisen out of a bottle or Sylvia’s seductive wiles. Steve had let it happen on his own volition, driven by despair and mortal sadness that his life with Dana was at the edge because he could not bring himself to fulfill her ultimatum. About his love for her he was not uncertain. It was about his capacity to be a father that had created a blockage. She was right: out of desperation, he had acted upon a stupid, spiteful impulse to get back at Dana for his own failings. The old blame-the-victim shtick he heard all the time in interrogations.
Steve moved to the refrigerator and removed his service revolver from the overhead cabinet. He strapped it on as she walked him to the front door, trying to repress the anger. “Sorry about the job.”
“I’ll get over it.”
“Something else will come along.”
“Maybe.”
He looked at her across the kitchen. “Can we give this another chance?”
“I think we’re out of chances. We are who we are and that’s not going to change.”
The tired resignation in her manner caused a blister of petulance to rise. She was closing the door on him the way his parents had when he was a kid—abandoning him physically, mentally, emotionally, and every other goddamn way because they were too caught up in their own tormented egos to be a source of comfort and understanding. Too adamant to care enough.
“I can change,” he said. “So this need not be forever, right?”
“I just want to be on my own for a while.”
He nodded. And his eyes fell to her neck and the fine hairs that made a phosphorescent haze in the light. In a flash his head filled with distended blue-black tendons at the end of the stocking noose.
“Stephen, I want children. I want what my sister has, what our friends have. I want to have a family.” She opened the door.
The black air was thick with humidity.
She looked at him. “You get it, don’t you?”
“I do.” He stepped into the night, his wedding vows echoing through the fog in his head.
5
DERRY, NEW HAMPSHIRE
SUMMER 1970
It started the morning his mother nearly killed him.
He was nine years old at the time—an age when young boys are beginning to realize that they are autonomous, self-contained creatures capable of independence but who still take refuge in the bosom of those who love them.
Lila was driving the new, big, gold 1970 Chrysler Newport convertible that looked like a small aircraft carrier on wheels. It was brand-new, a gift from his father Kirk on the fourth anniversary of their marriage. The top was down and the radio was blaring Creedence Clearwater Revival. Lila always drove with the top down and rock music blaring, unless it was pouring rain or below forty degrees. She wanted people to see her. She wanted them to take in the young sultry beauty in the big fancy convertible with the wind flowing through her fiery mane. She wanted people to envy her, to wish they were she.
And sitting in the passenger seat, he could feel the pleasure she radiated, tapping the steering wheel to the music, singing along with him, chewing gum, checking herself in the mirror, with her new red-frame Ray-Ban sunglasses and the black chiffon scarf trailing from her long swan neck. At stoplights she always posed so that other drivers could take her in. She was happiest at moments like this because her life looked like one of her commercials. A red-hot model on her way to becoming a Hollywood star.
And he was proud to be seen with her because she was so cool. They went everywhere together—to beaches, amusement parks, movies, Red Sox games. She even took him once to a street in Manchester where they were shooting a scene from a movie in which she had a part. He waited behind the cameras with the production people while she did her lines. It was a small walk-on, but it was fun. And when it was over, she introduced him to
