Twilight Child (22 page)

 “I hope we
never get him, Dad.” It was still a boy's voice, although the body was a man's.

 “Who?” It
wasn't that his mind had wandered, just that in memory the response was
necessary since he was also remembering himself.

 “Nasty Jake,”
the boy said. “I want to see him, get close enough for a good shot, but I want
him to get away. Next year, too. And the year after that and the year after
that.”

 “With that
attitude, we'll never get him. You've got to want to get him.”

 “I'm not saying
we shouldn't stalk him and nail him in our sights. I want him to know we can
get him. I just want him to keep going.”

 Never mind
that Nasty Jake existed only in imagination. He had become as real as he had to
be.

 “Kind of
defeats the purpose of the hunt, doesn't it?”

 “The thing
is—” The boy seemed to stumble over his words. “If we keep him alive and free,
then he'll be around to keep us challenged. And we'll always have him.”

 “That's one
way of looking at it. But suppose another hunter gets him.”

 “Not him,
Dad. Not Nasty Jake. He's ours. Yours and mine.”

 “I see what
you mean.”

 “He's ours,”
the boy repeated.

 “Damn right.”

 And so he's
still out there somewhere, Charlie thought, spun back into present time by the
unbearable burden of loss. Chuck's share of Nasty Jake was to have been handed
over to Tray. It was against the natural flow of events to prevent such things.
It was wrong, repellent, selfish, insensitive. He had felt himself exploding
with anger, hardly aware that he had risen from the chair and walked over to
the gun cabinet where, in a drawer below the case, he kept his shells. Also
without realizing it, he had broken the stock and loaded two shells in the
chambers, then returned to the chair, the rifle resting across his knees,
safety off, finger on the trigger.

 He had
wondered if the time had finally come to kill Nasty Jake.

 “
I
don't
see what that has to do with it,” Charlie said for about the fourth or fifth
time.

 Robert Forte
looked toward Molly, then up at the ceiling. Actually, Molly thought, he was
being patient. Charlie had been difficult all morning, even before they had
arrived at the lawyer's office. They had stopped first at the bank, where the
manager told them there would be a penalty for cashing in their money market
certificate thirty days earlier than it was due.

 “That's not
very fair,” Charlie told the neat, crisply dressed young woman behind the desk.
They were everywhere now, Molly thought, like
The Invasion of the Body
Snatchers
. Well-groomed, confident younger women. Where did they learn to
use makeup so well, and to talk with such command and assurance? She glanced at
the woman's hands, smooth and creamy as alabaster, and hid her own
liver-spotted ones under her pocketbook. The woman was devoting most of her
conversational attention to Charlie, who did not take to her kindly.

 “I'm sorry,”
the woman said to Charlie. “If you wait thirty more days, there will be no
penalty.” Officiously, she pointed out the rules on the back of the
certificate.

 “I can read,”
Charlie said. “I still think it stinks.”

 Molly might
have intervened at that point, but she held her silence. Forte had asked for a
five-thousand-dollar retainer and, bitch though he might, Charlie was
determined to deliver as scheduled. A matter of pride, he had told her at
breakfast. A deal is a deal.

 “I've been
working with this bank for thirty years,” Charlie said as he signed the
certificate and passed it along for Molly's countersignature. “Now they're
always looking for the edge. Wasn't that way before, was it, Molly?”

 Molly nodded,
as if with high conviction. Actually, she had always found the bank personnel
patronizing and officious. This young woman had made them appear even more so.

 “Would you
like a certified check?” the woman asked.

 “Absolutely
not,” Charlie had replied.

 He had filled
out a deposit slip that lay on the desk before her. A certified check might
have made it appear that they were trying too hard to convince the lawyer that
they really did have the money to finance the case. He had already written the
check and put it in an envelope, which was in the inside pocket of his jacket.

 “We are
grateful for your business, Mr. Waters,” the young woman said, flashing one of
those synthetic television commercial smiles.

 “We do it all
for you,” Molly hummed, handing her the certificate. The woman looked at it
closely in what seemed to be a deliberate gesture of uncertainty, turned it
over, then got up and walked with sleek arrogance to the far side of the
teller's counter.

 “They own the
world now,” Charlie said, following her with his eyes. Had he meant the young,
or women? There were times when she challenged his view. Not today. She nodded
in grudging agreement, reminding herself that they had also invaded the school
system.

 “Like
Frances—young, unfeeling, and indifferent,” he muttered. “I'd rather have given
that money to Tray.” He shook his head. “What a waste.”

 It was, of
course, a hint of what was to come. Driving downtown, he was sullen, and she
noted that his lips moved soundlessly. Was he starting to talk to himself
again? she wondered, suddenly alarmed.

 “Stop that,
Charlie.”

 “Stop what?”

 “Cussing
under your breath.”

 The brief
rebuke had stopped his lips from moving, but he remained uncommunicative all
the way to the office. His first act was to hand the lawyer the envelope, which
remained on the desk all morning. Forte had called in a stenographer, who had
brought one of those machines that they used in court.

 At first, the
lawyer had only asked for facts, a kind of personal history—dates of birth,
where they had been raised, what schools they had attended, occupational
statistics for both of them, his marine record, their church affiliation.
Nothing controversial. Forte got up from his desk and walked to the window,
looking out at the harbor. Turning, he began to pace the room, straightening a
picture, lifting his coffee cup.

 “Thank you,
Miss Farber,” he said, after nearly an hour of questioning. The stenographer
gathered up her equipment and left the room. Then he sat down again at his
desk, a ball-point pen poised over his yellow pad, and turned to Molly.

 “How would
you characterize your son's marriage, Mrs. Waters?”

 She glanced
at Charlie, then re-crossed her legs in the opposite direction. For some
reason, Molly found the question had taken her by surprise, although she had
known it was coming. In fact, she had gone over it in her mind dozens of times.

 “He was away
a lot,” she said. It was not exactly the answer she had prepared.

 “Supporting
his family,” Charlie interjected.

 “He asked me
the question, Charlie,” she rebuked, shooting him an angry glance. “You
promised.”

 “I'm cool,”
he said, showing both palms. “I won't butt in.”

 “But when he
did come home, he seemed happy at first but then became moody and morose.
Before you knew it, he was off again.”

 “Because she
didn't make him happy . . .” Charlie interrupted. Molly looked
at him sternly. “Sorry,” he said to the lawyer.

 “She hated
the idea of his going. She tried everything to stop him. Until finally I guess
she just became resigned. I felt sorry for her and tried to fill in the gaps.
We had her over every Sunday. Sometimes for the whole weekend. And I would call
her three or four times a week.” From the corner of her eye, she could see
Charlie and sense his attempt at self-control. They had been discussing this
topic for years, and their perceptions were still miles apart. Yet, even now,
she could not bring herself to reveal what she had chosen to keep buried.

 Even while
she answered the lawyer's questions with what she hoped were precision and
clarity, she sensed that it could never be the whole truth. Beneath the surface
of her careful answers, other thoughts were running on a parallel track. Not
thoughts, really. A memory that could be reproduced only in perfect fidelity,
too painful to be exposed to a stranger's interpretation.

 Chuck had
come by himself to Molly's house. The timing had surprised her. She had just
come from school. Charlie would not be home for another two hours. What had
occurred to her then was that rarely, perhaps never since he was twelve or
thirteen, had she and Chuck ever been exclusively together. Not in quite this
way, where he had actually sought her out. She had made him a mug of coffee,
and they had sat at the kitchen table.

 He was
twenty-five by then, filled out, his skin weathered and tanned, giving his
beauty a harder edge than she remembered. His hands were rough and callused,
and sun wrinkles had begun to be visible along the temples, beside his cobalt
eyes. Her eyes. Nonetheless, she could still see the baby in the man, and if he
had allowed it, she could easily have curled him in her arms and laid his head
against her breast. His macho standoffishness had only secretly increased her
yearning for demonstrative affection.

 He had been
home for nearly two weeks and was to leave in a few more days, and she could
sense clearly the restlessness in his taut body.

 “Is the baby
okay?”

 “Fine.”

 “Frances?”

 “Fine.”

 They went
through the amenities with unusual awkwardness, and after a while he pushed the
coffee mug away, stood up, walked to the refrigerator, and took out a beer. He
was silent for a long time.

 “What is it,
Chuck?”

 She eschewed
the usual clichés about a mother knowing. She had known for years, not quite
certain what she knew, except that somehow her child was not what he seemed.

 “I've been
trying to figure it out, Mom,” he had said. Not responding, she let the silence
draw him out. “I don't like coming home. I'm not sure why.”

 “I don't need
a ton of bricks to fall on my head to see that.”

 “It's not
Frances,” he added hastily. “It's me. When I'm away, I like the memory of her
and Tray. I really have a sense of feeling about them. But when I'm home, it's
gone. I don't know why. I mean I really feel for them when I'm away.” He
upended the beer can. His Adam's apple worked up and down his neck.

 “Us, too?”

 “In a way,
yes.”

 She had
shrugged.

 “That's the
kind of thing you wouldn't reveal unless it was the absolute truth,” she had
told him.

 “I've talked
about this to the other guys. Some of them feel the same way. I couldn't tell
this to Dad. I don't know why. Maybe I'd be ashamed. But I'm happy out there
working those rigs.” Pausing, he snapped his fingers. “The beat of it, the
whole rhythm of it. The hard physical work, the danger, the freedom.”

 In the
ensuing silence, she had questioned herself and Charlie. How had they made him
like this? Their little family had always seemed loving, was still loving.
Would she now have to spend a lifetime retracing her life whenever she thought
about Chuck? Was it the “manliness” that Charlie had instilled, the initiation
rites in some secret society from which females were forever barred?

 “There are a
lot of men like me, Mom. I'm not as different as you think. In our hearts,
maybe, we're family men. But not in action.” He got up and took another beer.
“God, I hate to tell you this. When we work, we work hard. And we play hard.”
He took a deep swig of the beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
The gesture seemed to illustrate his revelation. He was, indeed, an
undomesticated man.

 “You don't
have to say this, Chuck.”

 “I've been to
Hong Kong and Sydney three times this year. It's part of it. The playing. I'm
not out there for the money, Mom. Hell, I blow a lot of it.” He had offered a
shy, crinkly smile. “On women. I don't think I can ever settle down again. This
life isn't for me, Mom. I've tried to explain this to Frances.”

 “About the
women?”

 “Never that.
About the way I feel.”

 “And her
reaction?”

 “It makes her
unhappy.”

 “Can you
blame her?”

 “She says she
loves me. I guess in a way I love her. But from a distance. That's the worst
part. When I'm with her, I feel nothing.”

 “Poor thing.
Has she asked for a divorce?”

 “No. Maybe
she thinks it will all go away.”

 “And you?
What will you do about it?”

 For a long
time, he didn't respond, finishing his beer.

 “What is
there to do? I live my life the way I want. Maybe I stick with it so I can have
a place to come home to from time to time. Who knows?”

 “What about
Tray?”

 “He's one
helluva kid.”

 “And you're
his father.”

 “I know,
Mom.” He had looked out the window into the yard. His eyes seemed to turn
inward, glaze over. “Who would think I would turn out like this? I feel bad
about what it might be doing to others, but I really don't feel like a bad
person. You know what I mean?”

 She had
watched him carefully as he talked, trying to see what was beyond the words,
the hidden man. Then she realized that he was hiding nothing, that what he was
giving her was the most accurate picture of himself that he could articulate.
What you see is what you get, he seemed to be telling her. It troubled her to
learn how far he was from her own image of him. So that business of a mother
truly knowing her child was just another myth, she thought.

 “Dad would
probably think I'm a bum.”

 “No—he
wouldn't,” she had protested. “Definitely not.” She wasn't sure. Charlie might
actually be envious of Chuck's freedom, but Charlie had never shirked
responsibility.

 “So let's
keep it between ourselves, Mom.”

 Molly nodded
her consent.

 She had been
true to her promise. Would Charlie be jealous? Was Chuck saying something that
men only told men? She had not wished to find the answer to that and therefore
continued to say nothing. But that did not preclude her from offering an
interpretation based on what she knew.

 She had
answered all the lawyer's questions from that perspective, regardless of how
Charlie fumed beside her. The inescapable conclusion by any independent
observer was that her son's marriage had not been a happy one.

 “Did they
fight?” the lawyer asked.

 “I never
heard them.”

 “Was she
unfaithful?”

 “No. I doubt
it.”

 “I wouldn't
be so sure,” Charlie muttered.

 “That's not
fair, Charlie,” Molly interjected. “She was a good girl in that respect. It's
wrong to make such an accusation.”

 “Considering
what I know now, I wouldn't put anything past her,” Charlie persisted.

 But when he
was questioned by the lawyer, he did not refute Molly's assessment of Frances's
unhappiness.

 “Maybe she
was unhappy. I'm not saying no. A happy man doesn't stray from the nest,
either. If she was that unhappy, she should have asked him for a divorce. In
marriage there are always problems.” He looked sheepishly toward Molly. Their
marriage wasn't perfect, but it was better than most. Come on, Charlie, she
begged him silently. We're as good as you can get. They were friends and still
lovers and he was being a damned macho liar. But still, she wouldn't tell him
that.