“Oh, for God’s sake!”
“There’s no need to take the name of the Lord in vain, son.”
“If he’d get off my back he wouldn’t have any reason to get upset, right? He kept riding me, didn’t he? I’ve got cuts coming, and if I want to use them, that’s my business.”
“Betty told me you haven’t been to classes all this week.”
“So I haven’t been to classes. So?”
“What makes you so cruel and hard? What makes you be so ugly to your own parents, Oliver? It just isn’t like you.”
“Betty had to come running to you, didn’t she?”
“Sonny, she’s worried about you, the same as we are. You hurt her dreadfully. I guess you know that. She’s a fine girl.”
“The very best. Yes indeed.”
“We’ve always been able to talk things out. And I think I know just a little bit more about the world than you give me credit for knowing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re an attractive young man, Oliver. And you’ve always been easily led. The world is full of idle, vicious women who take their pleasure in corrupting young men like you.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Maybe you’d like to tell me what I’m talking about. I think you know what I’m talking about.”
“I haven’t got the faintest idea.”
“You don’t seem to be keeping your sailboat at Dinner Key these days, Sonny. It hasn’t been there for weeks. And your sailboat friends haven’t seen you for weeks either.”
“Betty isn’t all nose! She’s half mouth!”
“If you’re not doing something you’re ashamed of, why are you upset?”
“What I do with my time is my business. I earned the money for my car, and I earned the money for the Dutchman. It’s none of Betty’s damn business what I do.”
“Or my damn business either?”
“You said it. I didn’t.”
“Where is your boat, Oliver?”
“It’s moored at a friend’s place.”
“A new friend?”
“Okay, okay, okay! What else did she have to tell you?”
“The last time any of your old friends saw you out on the Bay was some time ago, apparently. Betty didn’t find out until she started asking. You had a blonde-headed woman in your boat. A girl from school named Cricket saw you. Cricket told Betty the woman was nearly naked, a very cheap-looking type, and as old as I am.”
“She happens to be twenty-eight.”
“I can imagine. I can just imagine.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Sarcasm or something?”
“Oh, Sonny, it’s so easy for a clever woman like that to amuse herself with a boy like you.”
“You don’t even know her, so you don’t know what you’re talking about. How could you know what she’s like?”
“I know this. To change you as much as you’ve changed in these past weeks, she has to be an evil creature. A slut!”
He sat up. “You watch it!”
She reached and turned on the lamp on his homework desk. “Don’t yell at your mother,” she said calmly.
“Don’t call her names and I won’t!”
She stared at him until he averted his gaze and lay back once more. “You’ve gotten seriously involved with her, haven’t you?”
“Well — she’s a pretty tremendous person.”
“Is she married?”
“Her husband died. They didn’t have any kids. He died a long time ago.”
“Sonny, look at me. I am going to ask you something. If the answer is yes, I promise I won’t tell your father. It will be between you and me. Have you had — sex with this woman?”
“We’re in love.”
“I knew what the answer had to be. What else could a person like that possibly want of you? Oh, Sonny, she’s got you twisted around her little finger. You don’t know up from down, right from wrong. Behind your back she snickers at you, believe me. She’s callous and vicious. She’s just using you. You just happened to be handy. How many other strong young boys have there been?”
“You’re out of your mind. You don’t know how it is. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were going to dedicate your life to the service of God.”
“Let’s say it isn’t going to work out that way. Okay?”
“You’ve got hate in you now. I can feel it. You never had it before. Sonny, will you get down on your knees with me right now and pray to God for the strength to break the hold of the flesh that she has over you?”
“Knock it off, will you?”
“This is a good Christian home.”
“That could be the trouble with it.”
“What is that supposed to mean, Oliver?”
“I’m grown up. To you I’m still twelve years old or something. You and Betty. My God! Thanks but no thanks. I don’t even belong here any more. So don’t count on me staying here. And the more you keep twisting things and bugging me, the sooner I go. Okay?”
“Why warn me, son? What didn’t you just leave without a word? That would be more like the new Oliver Akard, wouldn’t it? You’re cruel and cold and — h-hateful.”
“I knew that was coming next. The weeps. Oh how could you! Oh dear. Oh what am I going to do.”
She tilted her head and stared at him, her cheeks wet with tears. “Where have you gone!” she asked wonderingly. “What has happened to my son?”
He felt a sudden fullness of his throat, a smarting of his eyes, and he had the impulse to reach to her and be taken into her arms. But he made himself laugh to hide any look of potential tears. “Where’d he go? Your little boy grew up, lady. Too bad. But they all do. So get used to it. Take up something else, huh? Bridge lessons maybe?”
In a sad and wondering way, as she stood up slowly, she said, “I don’t know you. I don’t even know you.” She moved slowly toward the closed door. She stopped a few feet from it, head lowered. She turned quickly, startling him. Standing slightly crouched, her face contorted, her fists clenched, she said, “You got into that chunk chocolate that time! Two whole pounds of it! Aaah, you gobbled it, you did. You crammed it down. Chocolate smeared all over your face and your clothes. Aaah, how sick you were! Vomiting, vomiting. I held you while you were emptying yourself. Do you know something? You disgusted me. I worried about it. I wondered if maybe I didn’t have enough mother love. You DIS GUS TED MEEEE!”
She ran out and banged the door shut.
“Mom?” he said, but too quietly to be heard. He was propped up on his elbow. He lowered himself back to the pillow. She had slammed the door so hard it had jingled the row of little trophy cups on the high shelf over the doorway.
It was night. The light on the desk reached far enough to show indistinctly a slow movement of the three scale-model aircraft suspended from nylon filaments, hanging from the ceiling over his tall chest of drawers. Spitfire. Hurricane. B-29. Atop the chest of drawers in a narrow chromed frame was the picture of Betty. He could not see it, but he knew exactly how it looked. I looked right into the lens, darling, and pretended I was looking right at you. Happy birthday, darling. Happy, happy birthday.
This was his room, he thought. He won those trophies. He made those models. He slept in this bed. That was his girl. It was a strange kind of sadness.
There was no way they could understand. Not any of them. How could they be made to see how special and how terrible it was, last night when Crissy had clung to him, weeping hopelessly, like a little kid afraid of the dark. She did not have anyone else. Their time was growing short. She kept saying there was nothing they could do. Nothing. But the idea of Staniker having her again was unendurable. She had made those funny little hints. And she had said, “Don’t you see? This was all we were meant to have. But it’s so much more than most people in their whole lives, my dearest. There’s one clean way to finish it. If we have the strength.”