Needful Things (Page 35)

All of those things and none of them. Mostly it was just a buzzer that had gone off inside, the way a buzzer in an airport metaldetector goes off when a guy with a steel plate in his skull steps through.

The lie neither angered nor worried him. There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them… and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth. He thought that Polly’s lie about Kelton was of this last kind, and he was content to wait.

In time, she would decide to show him her secrets. There was no hurry.

No hurry.- the thought itself seemed a luxury.

Her voice-rich and calm and somehow just right as it drifted out of the living room-also seemed a luxury. He was not yet over the guilt of just being here and knowing where all the dishes and utensils were stored, of knowing which bedroom drawer she kept her nylon hose in, or exactly where her summer tan-lines stopped, but none of it mattered when he heard her voice. There was really only one fact that applied fiere, one simple fact which ruled all others: the sound of her voice was becoming the sound of home.

"I could come over later if you wanted, Nettle… You are?

… Well, rest is probably the best thing… Tomorrow?"

Polly laughed. It was a free, pleasing sound that always made Alan feel as if the world had been somehow freshened. He thought he could wait a long time for her secrets to disclose themselves if she would just laugh like that every now and then.

"Gosh, no! Tomorrow’s Saturday! I’m just going to lie around and be sinful!"

Alan smiled. He pulled out the drawer under the stove, found a pair of pot holders, and opened the conventional oven. One potato, two potato, three potato, four. How in God’s name were the two of them supposed to eat four big baked potatoes? But of course he had known there would be too many, because that was the way Polly cooked. There was surely another secret buried in the fact of those four big potatoes, and someday, when he knew all the [email protected] most of them, or even some of them-his feelings of guilt and strangeness might pass.

He took the potatoes out. The microwave beeped a moment later.

"I’ve got to go, Nettle-"

"That’s okay!" Alan yelled. "I’ve got this under control! I’m a policeman, lady!"

"-but you call me if you need anything. You’re sure you’re okay, now?… And you’d tell me if you weren’t, Nettle, right?…

Okay… What?… No, just asking… You too… Goodnight, Nettle."

When she came out, he had set the chicken on the table and was busy turning one of the potatoes inside-out on her plate.

"Alan, you sweetheart! You didn’t need to do that!"

"All part of the service, pretty lady." Another thing he understood was that, when Polly’s hands were bad, life became a series of small, hellacious combats for her; the ordinary events of an ordinary life transformed themselves into a series of gruelling obstacles to be surmounted, and the penalty for failure was embarrassment as well as pain. Loading the dishwasher. Stacking kindling in the fireplace. Manipulating a knife and fork to get a hot potato out of its jacket.

"Sit down," he said. "Let’s cluck."

She burst out laughing and then hugged him. She squeezed his back with her inner forearms instead of her hands, the relentless observer inside noted. But a less dispassionate part of him took notice of the way her trim body pressed against his, and the sweet smell of the shampoo she used.

"You are the dearest man," she said quietly.

He kissed her, gently at first, then with more force. His hands slid down from the small of her back to the swell of her bu**ocks.

The fabric of her old jeans was as smooth and soft as moleskin under his hands.

"Down, big fella," she said at last. "Food now, snuggle later."

"Is that an invitation?" If her hands really weren’t better, he thought, she would fudge.

But she said, "Gilt-edged, and Alan sat down satisfied.

Provisionally.

5

"Is Al coming home for the weekend?" Polly asked as they cleared away the supper things. Alan’s surviving son attended Milton Academy, south of Boston.

"Huh-uh," Alan said, scraping plates.

Polly said, a little too casually: "I just thought, with no classes Monday because of Columbus Day-"

"He’s going to Dorf’s place on Cape Cod," Alan said. "Dorf is Carl Dorfman, his roomie. Al called last Tuesday and asked if he could go down for the three-day weekend.

I said okay, fine."

She touched him on the arm and he turned to look at her. "How much of this is my fault, Alan?"

"How much of what’s your fault?" he asked, honestly surprised.

"You know what I’m talking about; you’re a good father, and you’re not stupid. How many times has Al been home since school started again?"

Suddenly Alan understood what she was driving at, and he grinned at her, relieved. "Only once," he said, "and that was because he needed to talk to jimmy Catlin, his old computer-hacking buddy from junior high. Some of his choicest programs wouldn’t run on the new Commodore 64 I got him for his birthday."

"You see? That’s my point, Alan. He sees me as trying to step into his mother’s place too soon, and-"

"Oh, jeer," Alan said. "How long have you been brooding over the idea that Al sees you as the Wicked Stepmother?"

Her brows drew together in a frown. "I hope you’ll pardon me if I don’t find the idea as funny as you apparently do."

He took her gently by the upper arms and kissed the corner of her mouth. "I don’t find it funny at all. There are times-I was just thinking about this-when I feel a little strange, being with you. It seems too soon. It isn’t, but sometimes it seems that way. Do you know what I mean?"

She nodded. Her frown smoothed out a little but did not disappear. "Of course I do. Characters in movies and TV shows always get to spend a little more time pining dramatically, don’t they?"

"You put your finger on it. In the movies you get a lot of pining and precious little grief. Because grief is too real. Grief is…" He let go of her arms, slowly picked up a dish and began to wipe it dry. "Grief is brutal"

"Yes."

"So sometimes I feel a little guilty, yeah." He was sourly amused by the defensiveness he heard lurking in his voice. "Partly because it seems too early, even though it isn’t, and partly because it seems I got off too easy, even though I didn’t. This idea that I owe more grief is still there part of the time, I can’t deny that, but to my credit I know that it’s nuts because part of me-a lot of me, in factis still grieving."

"You must be human," she said softly. "How weirdly exotic and excitingly perverse."

"Yeah, I guess so. As for Al, he’s dealing with this in his own way. It’s a good way, too-good enough for me to be proud of him.

He still misses his mother, but if he’s still [email protected] I guess I’m not completely sure he is-then it’s Todd he’s grieving for. But your idea that he’s staying away because he doesn’t approve of you… or us… that’s way off the beam."

"I’m glad it is. You don’t know how much you’ve relieved my mind.

But it still seems…"

"Not quite right, somehow?"

She nodded.

"I know what you mean. But kids’ behavior, even when it’s as normal as ninety-eight-point-six, never seems quite right to adults.

We forget how easy they heal, sometimes, and we almost always forget how fast they change. Al is pulling away. From me, from his old buddies like jimmy Catlin, from The Rock itself. Pulling away, that’s all. Like a rocket when the third-stage booster kicks in. Kids always do it, and I guess it’s always kind of a sad surprise to their parents."

"It seems early, though," Polly said quietly. "Seventeen seems early to pull away."

"It is early," Alan said. He spoke in a tone which was not quite angry. "He lost his mother and his brother in a stupid accident. His life blew apart, my life blew apart, and we got together the way I guess fathers and sons almost always do in those situations to see if we could find most of the pieces again. We managed pretty well, I think, but I’d be blind not to know that things have changed. My life is here, Polly, in The Rock. His isn’t, not anymore. I thought maybe it was going to be again, but the look that came into his eyes when I suggested that he might like to transfer to Castle Rock High this fall set me right on that in a hurry. He doesn’t like to come back here because there are too many memories. I think that might change… in time… and for now I’m not going to push him. But it has nothing to do with you and me. Okay?"

"Okay. Alan?"

"Hmmm?"

"You miss him, don’t you?"

"Yeah," Alan agreed simply. "Every day." He was appalled to find himself suddenly on the verge of tears. He turned away and opened a cupboard at random, trying to get himself under control.

The easiest way to do it would be to re-route the conversation, and fast. "How’s Nettle?" he asked, and was relieved to hear that his voice sounded normal.

"She says she’s better tonight, but it took her an awfully long time to answer the phone-I had visions of her lying on the floor, unconscious."

"Probably she was asleep."

"She said not, and she didn’t sound like it. You know how people sound when the phone wakes them up?"