Regina looked at him, worried and at a loss. For the first time in her life she simply did not know how to proceed. Arnie was beyond her control now. Knowing it brought on a horrible feeling of despair that sometimes crept up on her and filled her brain with an awful, empty, rotten coldness. At these times a depression so total she could barely credit it would steal through her, making her wonder exactly what it was she had lived her life for—so her son could fall in love with a girl and a car all in the same terrible fall? Was that it? So she could see exactly how hateful to him she had become when she looked in his grey eyes? Was that it? And it really didn’t have anything to do with the girl at all, did it? No. In her mind, it always came back to the car. Her rest had become broken and uneasy, and for the first time since her miscarriage nearly twenty years before, she had found herself considering making an appointment with Dr Mascia to see if he would give her some pill for the stress and the depression and the attendant insomnia. She thought about Arnie on her long sleepless nights, and about mistakes that could never be rectified; she thought about how time had a way of swinging the balance of power on its axis, and how old age had a way of sometimes looking through a dressing-table mirror like the hand of a corpse poking through eroded earth.
“Will you be back early?” she asked, knowing this was the last breastwork of the truly powerless parent, hating it, unable—now—to change it.
“Sure,” he said, but she didn’t much trust the way he said it.
“Arnie, I wish you’d stay home. You really don’t look good at all.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Got to be. I have to run some auto parts over to Jamesburg for Will tomorrow.”
“Not if you’re sick,” she said. “That’s nearly a hundred and fifty miles.”
“Don’t worry.” He kissed her cheek—the passionless kiss-on-the-cheek-of cocktail-party acquaintances.
He was opening the kitchen door to go out when Regina asked, “Did you know the boy who was run down last night on Kennedy Drive?”
He turned back to look at her, his face expressionless. “What?”
“The paper said he went to Libertyville.
“Oh, the hit-and-run that’s what you’re talking about.”
“Yes.”
“I had a class with him when I was a freshman,” Arnie said. “I think. No, I really didn’t know him, Mom.”
“Oh.” She nodded, pleased. “That’s good. The paper said there were residues of drugs in his system. You’d never take drugs, would you, Arnie?”
Arnie smiled gently at her pallid, watchful face. “No, Mom,” he said.
“And if your back started to hurt you—I mean, if it really started to hurt you—you’d go see Dr Mascia about it, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t buy anything from a… a drug-pusher, would you?”
“No, Mom,” he repeated, and went out.
There had been more snow. Another thaw had melted most of it, but this time it had not disappeared completely; it had only withdrawn into the shadows, where it formed a white rime under hedges, the bases of trees, the overhang of the garage. But in spite of the snow around the edges—or maybe because of it—their lawn looked oddly green as Arnie stepped out into the twilight, and his father looked like a strange refugee from summer as he raked the last of the autumn leaves.
Arnie raised his hand briefly to his father and made as if to go past without speaking. Michael called him over. Arnie went reluctantly He didn’t want to be late for his bus.
His father had also aged in the storms that had blown up over Christine, although other things had undoubtedly played a part. He had made a bid for the chairmanship of the History Department at Horlicks late in the summer and had been rebuffed quite soundly. And during his annual October checkup, the doctor had pointed out an incipient phlebitis problem—phlebitis, which had nearly killed Nixon; phlebitis, an old folks” problem. As that late fall moved toward another grey western-Pennsylvania winter, Michael Cunningham looked gloomier than ever.
“Hi, Dad. Listen, I’ve got to hurry if I’m going to catch—”
Michael looked up from the little pile of frozen brown leaves he had managed to get together; the sunset caught the planes of his face and appeared to make them bleed. Arnie stepped back involuntarily, a little shocked. His father’s face was haggard.
“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”
