And through it all she had continued to smile inside because it was all working out according to plan, it was all working out the way she felt her own childhood should have. Her son had warm, supportive parents who cared about him, who would give him anything (within reason), who would gladly send him to the college of his choice (as long as it was a good one), thereby finishing the game/ business/vocation of Parenting with a flourish. If you had suggested that Arnie had few friends and was often bullyragged by the others, she would have starchily pointed out that she had gone to a parochial school in a tough neighbourhood where girls” cotton panties were sometimes torn off for a joke and then set on fire with Zippo lighters engraved with the crucified body Jesus. And if you had suggested that her own attitudes toward child-rearing differed only in terms of material goals from the attitudes of her hated father, she would have been furious and pointed out her good son as her final vindication.
But now her good son stood before her, pale, exhausted, and greased to the elbows, seeming to thrum with the same sort of barely chained anger that had been his grandfather’s trademark, even looking like him. Everything seemed to have fallen into a shambles.
“Arnie, we’ll talk about what’s to be done in the morning,” she said, trying to pull herself together and beat back the tears. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“Not unless you get up real early,” he said, seeming to lose interest. “I’m going upstairs to catch about four hours, and then I’m going down to the garage again.”
“What for?”
He uttered a crazy laugh and flapped his arms under the kitchen’s fluorescent bars as if he would fly. “What do you think for? I got a lot of work to do! More work than you’d believe!”
“No, you have school tomorrow… I… I forbid it, Arnie, I absolutely—”
He turned to look at her, study her, and she flinched again. This was like some grinding nightmare that was just going to go on and on.
“I’ll get to school,” he said. “I’ll take some fresh clothes in a pack and I’ll even shower so I don’t smell offensive to anyone in home room. Then, after school’s out, I’ll go back down to Darnell’s. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I can do it… I know I can… it’s going to eat up a lot of my savings, though. Plus, I’ll have to keep on top of the stuff I’m doing for Will.”
“Your homework… your studies”
“Oh. Those.” He smiled the dead, mechanical smile of a clockwork figure. “They’ll suffer, of course, Can’t kid you about that. I can’t promise you a ninety-three average anymore, either. But I’ll get by. I can make C’s. Maybe some B’s.”
“No! You’ve got college to think about!”
He came back to the table, limping again, quite badly. He planted his hands on the table before her and leaned slowly down. She thought: A stranger… my son is a stranger to me. Is this really my fault? Is it? Because I only wanted what was best for him? Can that be? Please, God, make this a nightmare I’ll wake up from with tears on my cheeks because it was so real.
“Right now,” he said softly, holding her gaze, “the only things I care about are Christine and Leigh and staying on the good side of Will Darnell so I can get her fixed up as good as new. I don’t give a shit about college. And if you don’t get off my case, I’ll drop out of high school. That ought to shut you up if nothing else will.”
“You can’t,” she said, meeting his gaze. “You understand that, Arnold. Maybe I deserve your… your cruelty… but I’ll fight this self-destructive streak of yours with everything I have. So don’t you talk about dropping out of school.”
“But I’ll really do it,” he answered. “I don’t want you to even kid yourself into thinking I won’t. I’ll be eighteen in February, and I’ll do it on my own then if you don’t stay out of this from now on. Do you understand me?”
“Go to bed,” she said tearfully. “Go to bed, you’re breaking my heart.”
“Am I?” Shockingly, he laughed, “Hurts, doesn’t it? I know.”
He left then, walking slowly, the limp pulling his body slightly to the left. Shortly she heard the heavy, tired clump of his shoes on the stairs—also a sound terribly reminiscent of her childhood, when she had thought to herself, The ogre’s going to bed.
She burst into a fresh spasm of weeping, got up clumsily, and went out the back door to do her crying in private. She held herself—thin comfort, but better than none—and looked up at a horned moon that was quadrupled through the film of her tears. Everything had changed, and it had happened with the speed of a cyclone. Her son hated her; she had seen it in his face—it wasn’t a tantrum, a temporary pique, a passing squall of adolescence. He hated her, and this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go with her good boy, not at all.
Not at all.
