Lost Boy Lost Girl. Peter Straub
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