“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 Another thaw had melted most of it, but this time it had not disappeared completely; it had only withdrawn into the shadows, where it formed a white rime under hedges, the bases of trees, the overhang of the garage.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.”
“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.”