Читать книгу Lost Boy Lost Girl - Peter Straub - Страница 10

NOT LONG AFTER he had read Nancy’s obituary in the paper and seen Mark through his hotel room’s window, Tim got into his rented Town Car and set out on an eccentric course to his brother’s house. Even allowing for one or two episodes of backtracking, the drive from the Pforzheimer to Superior Street should have taken Tim no longer than twenty to twenty-five minutes. If he had chosen to get on the expressway, the trip would have been five minutes shorter, but because he had not been in his hometown for nearly five years, Tim decided to drive north from downtown, then turn west on Capital Drive and keep going until he hit Teutonia Avenue’s six wide lanes, jog south-west on a diagonal and drive until he saw Sherman Park, Sherman Boulevard, Burleigh, or any of the little web of streets backed by alleys he had known in childhood. He knew where his brother lived. Assuming that its essential makeup had not changed significantly beyond a nice economic updrift, Philip had moved back into the neighborhood of his childhood. And as far as they went and no further, his assumptions had proved correct: adjusted for inflation, the average household income in the neighborhood made up of Superior, Michigan, Townsend, Auer, and Forty-fourth Street had probably quadrupled from the days of Tim’s and Philip’s childhood. However, other aspects, ones Philip had not taken into account, had changed along with income levels.

Tim had no trouble getting on Capital Drive and rolling west to Teutonia Avenue’s wide swath through a landscape of shopping centers and three-story office buildings separated by taverns. Everything looked like a cleaner, brighter, more prosperous version of the Millhaven of old, exactly what his earlier visits had led him to expect. He saw the Burleigh sign from a block away and turned into a more residential area. Identical four-story apartment buildings of cream-colored brick marched along side by side, the narrow concrete strips to their entrances standing out against the grass like a row of neckties.

Half a mile on, he saw a sign for Sherman Drive and turned left. It was not Sherman Park or Sherman Boulevard, but it had to be in the same general area. Sherman Drive dead-ended in front of a windowless bunker of poured concrete called the Municipal Records Annex. Tim doubled back and turned left again onto a narrow one-way street called Sherman Annex Way, and this came to an end at the southwest corner of Sherman Park itself, where Pops had now and then escorted little Tim and little Philip to the magnificent wading pool, the jouncing teeter-totter, the high-flying swing set, and the little realm given to the sleeping tigers and ponderous elephants of its stupendous, now long-vanished zoo.

He drove completely around the park without quite figuring out where to go next. On his second spin around the perimeter, he noticed the sign for Sherman Boulevard, turned onto it, and was instantly rewarded by the appearance on the left side of the street in remembered or shadow form of a great, ambiguous landmark of his childhood, the Beldame Oriental Theater, presently the tabernacle of a sanctified Protestant sect.

But when he turned into the old network of alleys and intersections, Tim drove twice past his brother’s house without being absolutely positive he had found it. The first time, he said to himself, I don’t think that’s it; the second time, That isn’t it, is it? That, of course, was Philip’s house, a combination of brick and fieldstone with a steeply pitched roof and an ugly little porch only slightly wider than the front door. Screwed into the screen door’s wooden surround were the numerals 3324. With no further excuse for delaying, Tim parked his ostentatious but entirely comfortable vehicle a short way down the block and walked back through the humid sunlight. Where enormous elms had once arched their boughs over the street, the dry leaves of plane trees clung to their branches a modest distance above their pale, patchy trunks. Tim reached the walkway before his brother’s house and checked his watch: the twenty-five-minute journey had taken him forty-five.

Tim pushed the buzzer. Far back in the house, a tiny bell rang. Footsteps plodded toward the door; a smudgy face ducked into, then out of, the narrow glass strips set high in the dark wood; the door swung back; and Philip stood before him, scowling through the gray scrim of the screen door. ‘Decided to show up, after all,’ he said.

‘Nice to see you, too,’ Tim said. ‘How are you doing, Philip?’

With the air of one performing an act of charity, his brother stepped back to let him in. He looked a decade older that he had the last time Tim had seen him. His thinning hair was combed straight back from his forehead, revealing strips of scalp the same pinkish-gray as his deeply seamed face. Rimless spectacles with thin metal bows sat on his high-prowed nose. Above his soft, expansive belly, a silver tie tack anchored a shiny claret necktie to his cheap white shirt. He was still doing his utmost, Tim thought, to look exactly like what he was, a midlevel administrator of a thoroughly bureaucratic enterprise. A vice principalship was the kind of job Philip had spent all of his earlier life struggling to attain: unassailably respectable, tedious unto stupefaction, impervious to the whims of the economy, tied into a small but palpable degree of power, fodder for endless complaints.

‘I’m still ambulatory,’ Philip said. ‘How the hell do you think I should be?’ He moved the few steps that took him from the little foyer into the living room, and Tim followed. Nancy, it seemed, was not to be mentioned until Philip’s sense of ritual had been satisfied.

‘Sorry. Dumb question.’

‘I guess it was nice of you to come all this way, anyhow. Sit down, rest up. After being in New York, you probably appreciate our famous midwestern peace and quiet.’

Having been given all the thanks he was likely to get, Tim walked across the living room and placed himself in an upholstered armchair that had come into Philip’s household after Nancy’s arrival. Philip stayed on his feet, watching him like a hotel detective. Philip’s gray suit was too heavy for the weather, and he tugged a wrinkled handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. From overhead came the ongoing rhythmic pulse of an electric bass.

‘There’s a lot of action around the Pforzheimer,’ Tim said. ‘Some big-time director is shooting a movie on Jefferson Street.’

‘Don’t tell Mark. He’ll just want to go.’

‘He’s already been there. I saw him from my window. He and a red-haired kid came out of Cathedral Square and walked down the street to watch them filming a scene. They were right beneath me.’

‘That was Jimbo Monaghan, his best buddy. Hell, his one and only buddy. You see one, the other one’s right behind him. Jimbo’s not a bad kid, for a dodo. Went through junior high at Quincy without any more than a half dozen demerits. Most kids rack up twice that.’

‘Did Mark?’

‘I had to be a little extra hard on Mark. The kids would have made his life hell if I’d shown any favoritism. Do you remember what kids are like? Find a weakness, they home in like sharks. Little bastards are barely human.’

Philip thought giving his son demerits proved that he was a stern and responsible father, but the truth was that it had given him pleasure.

‘I got Cokes, root beer, ginger ale. You want beer or anything stronger, you can supply it yourself.’

‘Ginger ale, if you’re having something.’

Philip ducked into the kitchen, and Tim took his usual cursory inspection of the living room. As ever, it contained the same peculiar mixture of furniture Philip had shifted from house to house before settling back in the old neighborhood. All of it seemed a bit more worn than it had been on Tim’s previous visits: the long green corduroy sofa, black recliner, highboy, and octagonal glass coffee table from Mom and Pop sharing space with the blond wooden furniture from some now-bankrupt ‘Scandinavian’ furniture store. Tim could remember Mom sitting in the rocking chair beside Pop’s ‘davenport,’ the fat needle working as she hooked thick, interwoven knots of the rug that covered three-fourths of Philip’s living room floor. Fifty years ago, it had been a lot brighter: now, it was just a rag to keep your shoes from touching the floor.

Philip came back into the room holding two glasses beaded with condensation. He passed one to Tim and dropped onto the far end of the davenport. His gray suit bunched up around his hips and shoulders.

‘Philip, with apologies for my earlier question, how are you doing these days? How are you handling it?’

Philip took a long pull at his ginger ale and sagged against the worn cushions. He seemed to be staring at something akin to a large insect moving up the half-wall leading to the dining room and kitchen.

‘With apologies, huh? That’s nice. It should be Nancy who apologizes to me, not you.’ He fixed Tim with a cold, brown-eyed glare. The rimless spectacles slightly magnified his eyes. ‘We’re getting into a strange, strange topic here. It is truly strange, this topic. I have to say, it surpasseth comprehension. Do you know what I mean, or do I have to explain it to you?’

‘I think I understand. I read the obituary in today’s Ledger. When I saw the words “without warning,” I thought –’

‘You thought?’

‘I thought Nancy probably killed herself.’

‘Is that what you thought? Well, guess what? Big brother rings the bell.’

‘Would you prefer it if I didn’t understand?’

‘I don’t know what I’d prefer.’ Philip’s face twisted, and everything below his nose seemed to collapse like a punctured paper bag. ‘Nobody asked me for my opinion about anything.’ He snatched off his glasses and passed a hand over his eyes. ‘No, they just go ahead and do whatever they feel like.’ He emitted a shaky sigh.

‘Do you think she should have asked your permission before she killed herself?’

Philip aimed an index finger at him. ‘There, that’s a great question, I mean it. A great fucking question.’

Tim swallowed cold ginger ale and forced himself to remain silent.

‘Yes,’ Philip said. ‘I do think so. I would have said, You selfish bitch, you can’t kill yourself. You have a husband and a son. Are you crazy?’

‘It was selfish – a selfish act.’

‘All suicides are selfish.’ He considered that proposition. ‘Unless the person is in tremendous pain, or dying, or whatever.’

‘Was she feeling depressed lately?’

‘What are you, a shrink? I don’t know. Nancy usually seemed a little depressed, if you ask me.’ He shot Tim a wary look. ‘Are you asking if I noticed that she seemed depressed lately?’

‘I’m not accusing you of anything, Philip.’

‘Keep it that way. I’m not to blame for what happened. Nancy and I got along all right. Why she did it is a mystery to me. Maybe she had some kind of secret existence. Maybe I didn’t know what was going on in her life. If she didn’t tell me, how the hell could I?’

‘How is Mark handling all this?’

Philip shook his head. ‘The kid keeps his feelings all wrapped up inside. He’s been hit hard, though. Keeps to himself, except for when he’s with Jimbo, the knucklehead you saw today. We’ll see how he gets through tonight and tomorrow and the next couple of weeks. If he looks like he needs it, I’ll get him some counseling or therapy, or whatever.’

Tim said that sounded like a good idea.

‘Sure it does, to you. You live in New York, where everybody sees a shrink. For you people, a shrink is a status symbol. Out here in the real world, it’s different. Plenty of people see it as an admission that something is wrong with you.’

‘You wouldn’t have to tell anybody. Neither would Mark.’

‘Word gets out,’ Philip said. ‘Vice principal’s wife commits suicide, his son starts seeing a head-shrinker. How do you suppose that plays out? What kind of effect do you think it would have on my career? On top of that, those appointments don’t come cheap. Excuse me, elder brother, but I’m a humble educator in the public school system, not a millionaire.’

‘Philip, if Mark could benefit from therapy, and you’d have trouble paying for it, I’d be happy to take care of it.’

‘Things aren’t quite that dire,’ Philip said. ‘But thanks for the offer.’

‘Do you really think your job is going to be affected by what Nancy did?’

‘One way or another, yeah. Subtly, in most ways. But what do you think my odds are of moving into a principal’s office anytime soon? I was on track before this. Now, who knows? It could hold me back for years. But you want to know the worst part of this whole deal?’

‘Sure,’ Tim said.

‘Whenever anybody looks at me, they’re going to say to themselves, There’s Underhill. His wife killed herself. And two-thirds, three-fourths of them are going to think I had something to do with it. She did it because of me, they’ll think. Goddamn it, I never thought I’d hate her, but I’m getting there. Fuck her. Fuck her.’

Tim decided to say nothing and let him roll on.

Philip glared at him. ‘I have a role in this community. I have a certain position. Maybe you don’t know what that means. Maybe you don’t care. But it is of very, very great importance to me. And when I think that stupid woman did her best, out of no reason at all but her own private unhappiness, to tear down everything I’ve worked for all my life – yes, I’m angry, yes I am. She had no right to do this to me.’

At least one thing was clear to Tim Underhill as he watched his brother chewing an ice cube from the bottom of his empty glass: Philip was going to be of no use at all.

‘What’s our schedule?’ he asked.

‘For tonight?’

‘For everything.’

‘We go to the Trott Brothers Funeral Home from six to seven for the viewing, or the visitation, or whatever it’s called. The funeral is at one tomorrow afternoon, out at Sunnyside.’ Sunnyside, a large cemetery on the Far West Side of the city, was still segregated into separate areas for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. There were no African-Americans in Sunnyside. When you drove past it on the expressway, it went on for mile after mile of flat green earth and headstones in long rows.

‘Philip,’ Tim said, ‘I don’t even know how Nancy died. If it isn’t too painful for you, could you tell me about it?’

‘Oh, boy. I guess you wouldn’t know, would you? It’s not exactly public information, thanks be to God. Well, well. Yes. I can tell you how she did it. You’ve earned it, haven’t you? Coming out here all the way from New York City. All right, you want to know what someone does when she’s going to kill herself and really wants to make sure there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it? If she wants to hit that nail right square on the head? What she does is, she basically kills herself three different ways, all at the same time.’

He tried to grin. The attempt was a hideous failure. ‘I had this bottle of sleeping pills left over from a couple of years ago. Not long after I left for work that morning, Nancy swallowed most of the pills – twenty of them, more or less. Then she ran a nice hot tub. She put a plastic bag over her head and fastened it around her neck. After that, she got in the tub and picked up a knife and cut open both of her forearms. Lengthwise, not those pussy sideways cuts people make when they’re faking it. She was serious, I’ll say that for her.’

The bass notes booming through the ceiling wavered in the air like butterflies.

Through the windows came the sound of cicadas, but Superior Street had never seen a cicada. Something else, Tim thought – what? Overhead, a door slammed. Two pairs of footsteps moved toward the top of the staircase.

‘Enter the son and heir, accompanied by el sidekick-o faithful-o.’

Tim looked toward the staircase and saw descending the steps a pair of legs in baggy blue jeans, closely followed by its twin. A hand slid lightly down the railing; another hand shadowed it. Loose yellow sleeves, then loose navy sleeves. Then Mark Underhill’s face moved into view, all eyebrows, cheekbones, and decisive mouth; just above it floated Jimbo Monaghan’s round face, struggling for neutrality.

Mark kept his gaze downward until he reached the bottom of the staircase and had walked two steps forward. Then he raised his eyes to meet Tim’s. In those eyes Tim saw a complex mixture of curiousity, anger, and secrecy. The boy was hiding something from his father, and he would continue to hide it; Tim wondered what would happen if he managed to get Mark into a private conversation.

No guile on Jimbo’s part – he stared at Tim from the moment his face became visible.

‘Looky here, it’s Uncle Tim,’ Philip said. ‘Tim – you know Mark, and his best buddy-roo, Jimbo Monaghan.’

Reverting to an earlier stage of adolescence, the boys shuffled forward and muttered their greetings. Tim sent his brother a silent curse; now both boys felt insulted or mocked, and it would take Mark that much longer to open up.

He knows more than Philip about his mother’s suicide, Tim thought. The boy glanced at him again, and Tim saw some locked-up knowledge surface in his eyes, then retreat.

‘This guy look familiar to you, Tim?’ Philip asked him.

‘Yes, he does,’ Tim said. ‘Mark, I saw you from my window at the Pforzheimer early this afternoon. You and your friend here were walking toward the movie setup on Jefferson Street. Did you stay there long?’

A startled, wary glance from Mark; Jimbo opened and closed his mouth.

‘Only a little while,’ Mark said. ‘They were doing the same thing over and over. Your room was on that side of the hotel?’

‘I saw you, didn’t I?’

Mark’s face jerked into what may have been a smile but was gone too soon to tell. He edged sideways and pulled at Jimbo’s sleeve.

‘Aren’t you going to stay?’ his father asked.

Mark nodded, swallowing and rocking back on his heels while looking down at his scuffed sneakers. ‘We’ll be back soon.’

‘But where are you going?’ Philip asked. ‘In about an hour, we have to be at the funeral home.’

‘Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.’ Mark’s eyes were sliding from his father to the front door and back again. ‘We’re just going out.’

He was in a nervous uproar, Tim saw. His engine was racing, and he was doing everything in his power to conceal it. Mark’s body wanted to behave exactly as it had on Jefferson Street: it wanted to wave its arms and leap around. In front of his father these extravagant gestures had to be compressed into the most minimal versions of themselves. The energy of misery was potent as a drug. Tim had seen men uncaringly risk their lives under its influence, as if they had been doing speed. The boy was aching to get through the door; Jimbo would soon have to resist more high-pressure pleading. Tim hoped he could stand up to it; whatever Mark had in mind almost had to be reckless, half crazy.

‘I hate this deliberate vagueness,’ Philip said. ‘What’s out? Where is it?’

Mark sighed. ‘Out is just out, Dad. We got tired of sitting in my room, and now we want to walk around the block or something.’

‘Yo, that’s all,’ Jimbo said, focusing on a spot in the air above Philip’s head. ‘Walk around the block.’

‘Okay, walk around the block,’ Philip said. ‘But be back here by quarter to seven. Or before. I’m serious, Mark.’

‘I’m serious, too!’ Mark shouted. ‘I’m just going outside, I’m not running away!’

His face was a bright pink. Philip backed off, waving his hands before him.

Mark glanced at Tim for a moment, his handsome face clamped into an expression of frustration and contempt. Tim’s heart filled with sorrow for him.

Mark pivoted away, clumped to the door, and was gone, taking Jimbo with him. The screen door slammed shut.

‘Good God,’ Philip said, looking at the door. ‘He does blame me, the little ingrate.’

‘He has to blame someone,’ Tim said.

‘I know who it should be,’ Philip said. ‘Killed herself three times, didn’t she?’

Nodding meaninglessly, Tim went toward the big front window. Mark and Jimbo were moving north along the sidewalk much as they had proceeded down Jefferson Street. Mark was leaning toward his friend, speaking rapidly and waving his hands. His face was still a feverish pink.

‘You see them?’

‘Yep.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘Philip, I think they’re walking around the block.’

‘Didn’t Mark seem awfully tense to you?’

‘Kind of, yes.’

‘It’s the viewing and the funeral service,’ Philip said. ‘Once they’re history, he can start getting back to normal.’

Tim kept his mouth shut. He doubted that Philip’s concept of ‘normal’ would have any real meaning to his son.

On the grounds that the overall roominess more than made up for the added cost, whenever possible Tim Underhill rented Lincoln Town Cars. At a quarter to seven, the boys having returned from their walk in good time, he volunteered to drive everyone to Highland Avenue. They were standing on the sidewalk in the heat. Philip looked at the long black car with distaste.

‘You never got over the need to show off, did you?’

‘Philip, in this car I don’t feel like I’ve been squeezed into a tin can.’

‘Come on, Dad,’ put in Mark, who was looking at the car as if he wanted to caress it.

‘Not on your life,’ Philip said. ‘I’d feel like I was pretending to be something I’m not. Tim, you’re welcome to ride along with us in my Volvo if you don’t think you’d feel too confined.’

Philip’s twelve-year-old Volvo station wagon, the color of a rusty leaf, stood ten feet farther up the curb, as humble and patient as a mule.

‘After you, Alphonse,’ Tim said, and was pleased to hear Mark chuckle.

The Trott Brothers Funeral Home occupied the crest of a hill on Highland Avenue, and to those who looked up at it from the street after they left their vehicles – as did the four men young and old who left the leaf-colored Volvo – it looked as grand and dignified as a great English country house. Quarried stone, mullioned windows, a round turret – a place, you would say, where the loudest sounds would be the whispers of attendants, the rustle of memorial pamphlets, and some quiet weeping. Mark and Jimbo trailed behind as the little group walked toward the imposing building.

A languid man with a drastic combover waved them toward a muted hallway and a door marked TRANQUILLITY PARLOR. On a stand beside the door was a fat white placard.

Mrs Nancy K. Underhill

Viewing: 6:00–7:00 P.M.

Loving Wife and Mother

There, in the Tranquillity Parlor, lay the mortal remains of Nancy K. Underhill within a gleaming bronze coffin, the top half of its lid opened wide as a taxi door. The soft, buttoned interior of the coffin was a creamy off-white; Nancy K. Underhill’s peaceful, empty face and folded hands had been painted and powdered to an only slightly unrealistic shade of pink. None of the four people who entered the small, dimly lighted chamber approached the coffin. Philip and Tim drifted separately to the back of the room and picked up the laminated cards prepared by the funeral home. On one side was a lurid depiction of a sunset over rippling water and a flawless beach; on the other, the Lord’s Prayer printed beneath Nancy’s name and dates. Philip took another of the cards from the stack and handed it to Mark, who had slipped into a seat next to Jimbo in the last row of chairs.

Mark snatched the card from his father’s hand without a word.

When Jimbo looked around for a card of his own, Tim passed one to him. Both boys were deep in contemplation of the Pacific sunset when a brisk, rotund little woman bustled into the room. Joyce Brophy was the daughter of the last, now-deceased, of the Trott Brothers.

‘Well, here we are, Mr Underhill, isn’t that right? It’s a pleasure to see you, sir, and to welcome you back to our humble establishment, despite the sadness of the circumstances. I think we can all say that what we’re doing is the best we can, wouldn’t you agree, Mr Underhill?’

‘Um,’ Philip said.

She turned a brisk, meaningless smile upon Tim. ‘And a heartfelt welcome to you, sir. Are you a member of the family circle?’

‘He’s my brother,’ Philip said. ‘From New York.’

‘New York, New York? Well, that’s wonderful.’ Tim feared that she would take his hand, but she merely patted his arm. ‘The hubby and I had a lovely weekend in New York City, oh, it was nine – ten years ago now. We saw Les Mis, and the next day we saw Cats. You New Yorkers never run out of things to do and places to go, do you? Must be like living in an anthill, ants ants ants, all running running running.’

Having disposed of Tim, she transferred her hand to Philip’s arm. ‘Feeling a little bit shy, are we? You’d be surprised how many of our people feel that exact same way, but the minute you go up and commune with your late missus, you’ll understand there’s no need at all for that sort of thing.’

She placed her free hand on his elbow and piloted him down the aisle between the rows of empty chairs. Loyally, Tim came along behind.

‘Now, see, Mr Underhill? Your little bride looks every bit as peaceful and beautiful as you could ever want to remember her.’

Philip stared down at the effigy in the coffin. So did Tim. Nancy appeared to have been dead since birth.

In a strangled voice, Philip said, ‘Thank you for all you’ve done.’

‘And if you will take the advice of someone who is pretty much an expert in this sort of thing,’ Joyce Brophy whispered close to Philip’s ear, ‘you make sure that handsome boy of yours comes up here and communes with his mama, because believe you me, if he misses this chance he’ll never have another and he’ll regret it all the rest of his life.’

‘Excellent advice,’ said Philip.

With a neighborly pat of his wrist, she bustled out of the room.

‘Mark, this is your last chance to see your mother,’ Philip said, speaking in the general direction of his left shoulder.

Mark mumbled something that sounded unpleasant.

‘It’s the reason we’re here, son.’ He turned all the way around and kept his voice low and reasonable. ‘Jimbo, you can come up or not, as you wish, but Mark has to say good-bye to his mother.’

Both boys stood up, looking anywhere but at the coffin, then moved awkwardly into the center aisle. Tim drifted away to the side of the room. Halfway to the coffin, Mark looked directly at his mother, instantly glanced away, swallowed, and looked back. Jimbo whispered something to him and settled himself into an aisle chair. When Mark stood before the coffin, frozen-faced, Philip nodded at him with what seemed a schoolmaster’s approval of a cooperative student. For a moment only, father and son remained together at the head of the room; then Philip lightly settled a hand on Mark’s shoulder, removed it, and without another glance turned away and joined Tim at the side of the room. In wordless agreement, the two men returned to their earlier station next to the dark, polished table and the stacks of memorial cards. A few other people had entered the room.

Slowly, Jimbo rose to his feet and walked up the aisle to stand beside his friend.

‘You have to feel sorry for the poor kid,’ Philip said softly. ‘Terrible shock.’

‘You had a terrible shock yourself,’ Tim said. At Philip’s questioning glance, he added, ‘When you found the body. Found Nancy like that.’

‘The first time I saw Nancy’s body, she was all wrapped up, and they were taking her out of the house.’

‘Well, who …’ A dreadful recognition stopped his throat.

‘Mark found her that afternoon – came home from God knows where, went into the bathroom, and there she was. He called me, and I told him to dial 911 and then go outside. By the time I got home, they were taking her to the ambulance.’

‘Oh, no,’ Tim breathed out. He looked down the aisle at the boy, locked into unreadable emotions before his mother’s casket.

Inside his brother’s house on the following afternoon, after the sad little funeral, a good number of the neighbors, many more than Tim had anticipated, were sitting on the furniture or standing around with soft drinks in their hands. (Most of them held soft drinks, anyhow. Since his arrival at the gathering, Jimbo’s father, Jackie Monaghan, whose ruddy, good-humored face was the template for his son’s, had acquired a dull shine in his eyes and a band of red across his cheekbones. These were probably less the product of grief than of the contents of the flask outlined in his hip pocket. Tim had witnessed two of the other attendees quietly stepping out of the room with good old Jackie.)

Jimbo’s mother, Margo Monaghan, had startled Tim by revealing that she had read one of his books. Even more startling was her extraordinary natural beauty. Without a trace of makeup Margo Monaghan looked like two or three famous actresses but did not really resemble any of them. She looked the way the actresses would look if you rang their bell and caught them unprepared at three o’clock on an ordinary afternoon. Amazingly, the other men in the room paid no attention to her. If anything, they acted as though she were obscurely disfigured and they felt sorry for her.

Part of the reason Tim had expected no more than three or four people to gather at his brother’s house was Philip’s personality; the remainder concerned the tiny number of mourners at the grave site in Sunnyside Cemetery. The pitiless sunlight had fallen on the husband, son, and brother-in-law of the deceased; on the Rent-a-minister; on Jimbo, Jackie, and Margo; on Florence, Shirley, and Mack, Nancy’s gas company friends; on Laura and Ted Shillington, the Underhills’ next-door neighbors to the right, and Linda and Hank Taft, the next-door neighbors to the left. The Rent-a-minister had awaited the arrival of additional mourners until the delay became almost embarrassing. A grim nod from Philip had finally set him in motion, and his harmless observations on motherhood, unexpected death, and the hope of salvation lasted approximately eight endless minutes and were followed by a brief prayer and the mechanical descent of the casket into the grave. Philip, Mark, and Tim picked up clayey brown clods from beside the open grave and dropped them onto the lid of the coffin; after a second, Jimbo Monaghan did the same, giving inspiration to the other mourners, who followed suit.

Back on Superior Street, Laura Shillington and Linda Taft stopped off to pick up the tuna casseroles, Jell-O and marshmallow salad, ambrosia, and coffee cake they had prepared. Florence, Shirley, and Mack partook of the banquet and the Kool-Aid and left soon after. Their departure had an insignificant effect on the assemblage, which by that time had grown to something like thirty. Tim wondered if so many people had ever before been in Philip’s house at the same time. Whatever his experience as a host, Philip now moved easily through the various groups, talking softly to his neighbors and the other guests. The Rochenkos, a pair of young elementary school teachers incongruous in matching polo shirts and khaki trousers, showed up, and so did a sour-looking old man in a plaid shirt who introduced himself to Tim as ‘Omar Hillyard, the neighborhood pest’ and seldom moved out of the corner from which he eyed the action.

Four people from John Quincy Adams arrived. After his colleagues turned up, Philip spent most of his time with them. Their little group settled at the far end of the dining room, within easy striking distance of the table.

Tim was introduced to Linda and Hank, Laura and Ted, the Monaghans, and a few other neighbors whose names he did not remember. When Philip attempted to reintroduce him to Omar Hillyard, the old man held up his hands and retreated deeper into his corner. ‘Neighborhood pest,’ Philip whispered. In the dining room, Tim shook the hands of Philip’s coworkers, Fred and Tupper and Chuck (the guidance counselor, the school secretary, and the administrative secretary) and Mr Battley, the principal, a man set apart from the others by the dignity of his office. Philip seemed perfectly comfortable with this group, despite his evident concern for Mr Battley’s ongoing comfort. Like Philip, his superior wore a slightly oversized suit, a white shirt, and a tie with a tie tack. Mr Battley’s rimless eyeglasses were identical to Philip’s. And like Philip, Fred, Tupper, and Chuck, Mr Battley quietly suggested that they owned a higher, nobler calling than the salesmen, factory foremen, clerks, and mechanics around them.

Almost always flanked by Jimbo Monaghan, Mark filtered through the little crowd, now and then stopping to say something or be spoken to. Men settled their hands on his shoulder, women pecked him on the cheek. Not for a moment did he seem at ease or even at home. What you saw when you looked at Mark was a young man who longed desperately to be elsewhere. He concealed it as well as he could, which is to say not very successfully. Tim was not sure how much of what was said to him Mark actually took in. His face had never quite lost the frozen, locked-up expression that had overtaken it in the Tranquillity Parlor. He nodded, now and again offered his handsome smile, but behind these gestures he remained untouched and apart; remained also, Tim thought, under the sway of the amped-up energy, that inflammatory recklessness, which had made him leap up and spin around when he was alone on the sidewalk with his red-haired friend.

This was the quality that most made Tim hope that Philip would find it in himself to aid his son. He was afraid of what Mark might do if left to himself. The boy could not bear what he had seen, and without sensitive adult help, he would break under its fearful weight.

Spotting Mark for once standing by himself near the living room window, Tim pushed his way through the crowd and sidled next to him. ‘I think you should come to New York and stay with me for a week or so. Maybe in August?’

Mark’s pleasure at this suggestion gave him hope.

‘Sure, I’d love that. Did you say anything to Dad?’

‘I will later,’ Tim said, and went back across the room.

While being introduced to Philip’s principal, Tim glanced again at Mark, and saw him shrug away from a wet-eyed elderly couple and cut through the crowd toward Jimbo. Whispering vehemently, Mark nudged Jimbo toward the dining room.

‘I understand you’re a writer of some sort,’ said Mr Battley.

‘That’s right.’

Polite smile. ‘Who do you write for?’

‘Me, I guess.’

‘Ah.’ Mr Battley wrestled with this concept.

‘I write novels. Short stories, too, but novels, mostly.’

Mr Battley found that he had another question after all. ‘Has any of your stuff been published?’

‘All of it’s been published. Eight novels and two short-story collections.’

Now at least a fraction of the principal’s attention had been snagged.

‘Would I know any of your work?’

‘Of course not,’ Tim said. ‘You wouldn’t like it at all.’

Mr Battley’s mouth slid into an uneasy smile, and his eyes cut away toward his underlings. In a second he was gone. On the other side of the space he had occupied, Philip Underhill and Jackie Monaghan stood deep in conversation, their backs to their sons. The boys were a couple of feet closer to them than Tim, but even Tim could hear every word their fathers said.

‘Wasn’t Nancy related to this weird guy who used to live around here? Somebody said something about it once, I don’t remember who.’

‘Should have kept his mouth shut, whoever he was,’ Philip said.

‘A murderer? That’s what I heard. Only, there was a time when people called him a hero, because he risked his life to save some kids.’

Mark swiveled his head toward them.

‘I heard they were black, those kids. Must have been one of the first black families around here. It was back when they weren’t accepted the way they are now.’

Tim waited for his brother to say something revolting about acceptance. At the time he’d sold his house in the suburbs and bought, at what seemed a bargain price, the place on Superior Street, Philip had been unaware that the former Pigtown was now something like 25 percent black. This had simply escaped his notice. It was Philip’s assumption that the neighborhood would have remained as it had been in his boyhood – respectable, inexpensive, and as white as a Boy Scout meeting in Aberdeen. When the realization came, it outraged him. Adding to his wrath was the presence of a great many interracial couples, generally black men with white wives. When Philip saw such a couple on the sidewalk, the force of his emotions often drove him across the street. No black people of either gender had bothered to drop in for the ‘reception,’ as Tim had overheard Philip describing the gathering.

‘I’d say we’re still working on that acceptance business,’ Philip said. ‘To be accepted, you have to prove you’re worthy of acceptance. Are we in agreement?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘When I have my vice principal’s hat on, I am scrupulously fair. I have to be. I never make any decision based on race. Here in the privacy of my own home, I believe I am entitled to my own opinion, however unpopular it may be.’

‘Absolutely,’ Jackie repeated. ‘I’m with you one hundred percent. Don’t say any of this stuff to my wife.’

Their sons looked at each other and began to back away.

‘But whatever you hear about my wife’s family – my late wife’s family – take it with a grain of salt. Those people were as crazy as bedbugs. I should have known better than to marry into a bunch of screwballs like that.’

His face white, Mark silently glided around the two men and vanished into the kitchen. Jimbo followed, looking stricken. The men never noticed.

When Tim flew back to New York the next day, it was with the sour, unpleasant feeling that Philip might after all have driven Nancy to suicide.

Half an hour before they landed at La Guardia, a delicious aroma filled the cabin, and the flight attendants came down the aisle handing out the chocolate-chip cookies. Tim wondered what Mark was doing and how he felt. Philip was incapable of doing what was right – the boy might as well have been all alone. Tim’s growing anxiety made him feel like hijacking the plane and making it return to Millhaven. He promised himself to send the boy an e-mail the minute he got home; then he promised himself to get Mark to New York as soon as possible.