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 the stars and the director. All the cool things he did with her, never his dad.
Even though she was his stepmother and he called her Mom, Lila was more like his big sister—thirty-six years old and still young at heart, she would say. She dressed in tight hip-hugger jeans and miniskirts, funky stockings and tops, hair scarves, funny hats. Or she wore cutoffs, T-shirts, and sandals. Almost every week they went to a movie. She once said her favorite of all time was a French film called Jules et Jim, which was about two guys in love with the same woman. Nothing he’d be interested in at his age.
Lila had been in his life since she began dating his father, Kirk, five years ago. His own mother had died of cancer when he was four. Because Kirk was an airline pilot and away from home more days than he wasn’t, he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Fremont, New Hampshire, about fifteen miles away. It was only when Kirk married Lila that he moved back home to Derry. He had taken to Lila immediately. She was the mother he had never really known. And for a while his best friend.
It was a beautiful late summer morning, and the air was warm and clear, the sky a radiant blue with scrappy clouds scudding toward the horizon. It was a little before eight o’clock, and they were on U.S. Route 1 where Lila was taking him to day camp on the New Hampshire shore just north of Hampton Beach. Then she would drive to Portsmouth to do a photo shoot.
“Hey, do I look okay?” she asked, glancing at him full face. She made an exaggerated smile to show all her even white teeth.
“Yeah. You look fine.”
“Well, you’re my best critic, so you can tell me the truth.” She fluffed up her hair.
“So, what’ll you be doing at the shoot?” He liked using such language.
She turned the radio down in the middle of “Bad Moon Rising.” “Would you believe, they’re going to have me polishing a car.”
“Polishing a car?”
“It’s for a car wax, Simoniz. Nothing too fancy, but it should be fun.”
“But you’ll get all dirty.”
She laughed. “No, I’m going to change. And I won’t really be polishing the car, just posing with a rag.”
“What’ll you wear?”
“I think they’re planning on having me in a bathing suit. Probably a bikini.”
“What’s that?”
“A two-piece bathing suit. Kind of silly, if you ask me, but I guess it sells car wax.”
At home they had several photo albums full of magazine ads she had done for clothing and laundry detergent. Several were in bathing suits. She also had secret albums she once showed him of artists’ sketches in charcoal and pen when she used to pose in the nude. Another of photographs in black-and-white. He once overheard his father claim in a heated moment that Lila would “lift her skirt for every Tom, Dick, or Harry.”
“Your father thinks I’m crazy, but it pays well. Besides, maybe somebody in the movies will see it and like what they see.”
He had also overheard Kirk say that she should stick to local plays and summer stock, that chasing after every little ad was crazy. He had used that word several times. Crazy. Sometimes psycho. Once he said that she “wasn’t dealing with a full deck.”
“When you going to be in a movie again?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Soon I hope.”
It was a subject that always made her a little anxious. More than anything else she wanted “the big break” as she called it. She even had a New York talent agent named Harry Dobbs she talked to a lot on the phone.
“Can I be in movies someday?”
“Maybe,” she said, and glanced at him. “You’re sure pretty enough, Beauty Boy.”
She then turned her face back to the rearview mirror to fix her eye shadow with her finger. At the same time the truck in the right lane cut in front of her to avoid something in the road.
The next moment passed in a long loud blur. The truck screeched as it braked hard and his vision filled with red taillights as their car rushed full speed into its rear. Lila screamed before the horrible impact and his body lurched forward, sending his head into the windshield.