Castle: A Novel (15 page)

It is difficult to remember what, precisely, was going through my mind at that moment. I had just been through an unprecedented experience, but I cannot say that I was ever actually frightened, in spite of my mother’s apparent breakdown. This may seem like a strange thing for me to say, but it is true. My father, of course, had never moved from his chair, and had never once seemed worried as events unfolded. And there was something about Doctor Stiles’s hand, the particular way it gripped my shoulder—firm, of course, nearly to the point of injury, but also somehow reassuring. I was not often touched by my parents; ours was an undemonstrative family. Perhaps I was simply unaccustomed to this kind of contact and relished it for its novelty. At any rate, I was not afraid, merely puzzled. I had no idea what had just happened, or why, and understood only that, in the wake of an unpleasant minute, I was being offered something I wanted.

I raised my hand to take the train.

“Don’t touch that, Eric,” said my mother.

I looked at her, my hand frozen in the air, waiting for her to change her mind. Her anger was fully realized now, enveloping her face like a mask.

My father spoke now, sitting up straight with a little grunt. His voice was quiet, cowed, and strained. “Oh, now, how about—”

“Don’t touch it, Eric,” she said again, and then shifted her gaze over my shoulder, to where Professor Stiles was standing. “And you get out of my house.”

“Now, Cybele,” my father began with a sigh.

“Out!” she spat. “You’re sick. You’re a sick man.”

“Mrs. Loesch,” the Professor said quietly, taking a step away from me. The train went with him, and I watched it slip back into his jacket pocket. “I was merely illustrating that—”

“I don’t care what you were illustrating,” my mother said. “I want you to leave. You’re terrible, horrible. How could you do that to a boy?”

“Look at him, Cybele, he’s fine!” It was my father, his open hand thrust out toward me. “He knew it was a trick, you were the only one who was fooled!”

She scowled at me, as though I had betrayed her. But I had done nothing other than sit there, waiting for it to end.

“He might have choked to death on his food,” she offered weakly.

“Come on,” my father said with a nervous chuckle. “There was never any chance of that.”

My mother leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, and I watched as her anger and fear gave way to exhaustion. She let out a long breath. The battle was over; she had lost.

But Professor Stiles did not return to his seat. Instead, he apologized to my mother. “Mrs. Loesch, I’m sorry. I never dreamed that this demonstration would have such an effect on you. Of course you’re right; it was rude of me. I’ll leave you to finish your meal in peace.” My mother opened her eyes to stare at him, and for a moment I thought that she would actually insist that he stay—would get up, take him by the arm, and lead him back to his chair. But she could not capitulate so completely. She stayed where she was. Perhaps she was just too tired.

Professor Stiles patted me on the head, then walked around behind me to shake my father’s hand. My father rose and accompanied him to the door. A few moments later, he returned to the table.

There was no question of finishing our meal. No one had any appetite anymore. We sat in silence as we listened to Professor Stiles’s car start up and drive away.

During this interval, I watched my father change. He had sat down a defeated and humiliated man, the architect of a crashing failure. But he crossed his arms over his chest, as if gathering together the parts of himself, and began to concentrate. His brow furrowed, his lower lip stuck out, and his jaw first twitched, then trembled, and finally settled into a slow grind. As the minutes went by, his eyes regained their luster, and the angles came back into his face, and I could see that he was to emerge from his trance in a state of righteous indignation.

The transformation filled me with both pride and unease. I did not like to see my father defeated, and it pleased me to watch the life return to him. But I understood that it was my mother who would be forced to bear the brunt of this new vitality. It had only taken perhaps ninety seconds—he began to shift his body and to emit small, outraged grunts. My mother, hearing them, stiffened in her chair, sat up a bit straighter, stared with greater intensity at a meaningless spot on the tablecloth.

“A
professor,
” was the first thing my father said.

“A
distinguished professor
of psychology,” he elaborated a few seconds later. “Run out of our home.”

He waited a long half minute to speak again, this time to the ceiling, his head tipped far back, the tendons on his neck sticking out in sharp relief. “That’s who she decided she was smarter than,
Doctor
Avery Stiles. She decided she knew better than
Doctor
Avery Stiles. Because, after all,
she
is a brilliant professor with many advanced degrees, isn’t she? Isn’t she?

“Oh, that’s right,” he went on. “No. No, she’s not. She’s a plain old regular housewife who didn’t even finish high school. But of course she knows better anyway.

“Maybe she’s just embarrassed that she didn’t catch on? Maybe she’s upset because
Professor
Avery Stiles
proved
how stupid she is? Maybe that’s why she threw him out of her house. Because he told her a
truth
that she didn’t want to hear.

“Well, Doctor Stiles is used to that. Perhaps that’s why he was so polite, even after being told to
leave our humble home.
Because he’s used to telling people things they don’t want to hear. That’s why his colleagues have abandoned him. With their communist ideas. They don’t like being told they’re weak. They don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to admit that the
enemy is them.
”

My father was shaking his head slowly, his face compressed, as though he were crushing his teeth together inside his closed mouth. My mother, for her part, was highly alert, her eyes wide, her body very still.

“I want to tell you something,” he said now, speaking to her directly. He stood up, and his chair slid back and rattled against the breakfront. My mother flinched. “I want to tell you something about that man you kicked out. The man you threw out of our home—who you just expelled from our family.
That
man has no family, Cybele. You know why? They died. His daughter, his wife—they got sick and they died. He has been
alone
for
five years.
What kind of man is that, who can bear the death of his whole family? If it was me, I know what I would do—I would put an end to it all right then and there. I would just put an end to it. And don’t think I haven’t considered it anyway, Cybele, because I barely even
have
a family as it is. I have a daughter who’s never home, and a wife who doesn’t care, and doesn’t respect me. And I have a son who just sits there”—his arm was thrust out now, pointing at me, and he had raised his voice nearly to a shout—“doing nothing,
saying
nothing, like some kind of goddam zombie. And whose fault is that, Cybele? Who does he get that from? Who just sits and says nothing, and does nothing, and never shows any sign of life?”

He walked around the far end of the table, past Professor Stiles’s abandoned meal, and stood beside her, his hands on his hips. He was shouting at her hung head.

“It’s
you,
Cybele! It’s you! And what do you have to say to that, hah? What do you have to say!”

My mother was frozen now, silent, her eyes squeezed shut.

“That’s what I thought,” my father spat. “Eric, go outside.”

I didn’t hear at first—or, rather, I heard, but it was unclear that he was talking to me. I remained in my seat through several seconds of silence.

His head snapped up, the face red and folded over itself like a pug’s.
“Go outside!”
he screamed, and I jumped down from my chair and ran out the door.

It was a lovely evening in early spring, a bit cold to be out without a jacket, but I intended to keep moving, and would likely feel no particular discomfort. The sun had set, but there was still light in the near-cloudless sky, enough to see by until I reached the streetlights. I walked the three blocks down Jefferson, turned onto Main, and strolled into town; the closer I came to the park, the busier were the streets—there was Pernice’s; there was Old Gerry’s Diner. The marquee above the movie theater entrance was illuminated, and high school boys and girls were lined up there for tickets, the boys pushing one another and laughing, the girls huddled into little clusters, whispering to one another. Some kids a little older than I were playing touch football in the park, and I went to a bench and sat down to watch them. On the sidewalk in front of me, a crow was eating a dropped piece of bread.

I woke up shivering to the sound of a man’s voice. “Son,” the man said, but it wasn’t my father. It was a policeman.

“Shouldn’t you be going to bed about now? Where do you live?”

I blinked. There was a bit of drool on my face, which I wiped with my sleeve. “Jefferson Street, sir,” I said.

“Well, what are you doing here?”

“Going for a walk, sir.”

The policeman was short and heavy, and the gray hair underneath his hat was cut close, in the military style. He leveled a skeptical look and said, “You’re not walking, son, you’re sleeping.”

“I just … I fell asleep.”

“Your parents know you’re here?”

“Yes, sir.”

The policeman sighed. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll give you a lift home.”

“I can walk, sir,” I said, getting to my feet. I began to inch around him. I noticed my shoe was untied, but that would have to wait.

“I don’t think your parents want you walking home in the dark,” he said. He put his hand on my shoulder and led me to the edge of the park, where his patrol car was parked. He ushered me through the passenger side door, got in behind the wheel, and pulled away from the curb.

I bent down and tied my shoe. The police car reached the end of Main. The radio quietly squawked and spat.

“Left or right?”

“Right, sir.” I hesitated before adding, “Please don’t do the lights and siren.”

He hazarded a sideways glance. “I wasn’t going to.”

“Thank you, sir.”

When my house was still a block away, I asked him to stop. He reached across me to open the door of the car, and I stepped out.

“Anything you want to tell me, son?” the policeman asked.

“No, sir.”

“Sure about that?”

“Yes.”

I stood on the sidewalk as he turned around and drove slowly back toward downtown. When the car was out of sight, I hurried the last block to my house, climbed the unlit front steps, and silently opened the front door.

The house was dark, save for the cold glow coming from the kitchen. I could hear water running. The clock on the mantel said it was a quarter to ten, past my bedtime by more than an hour. I was uncertain how aware they would have been of my absence—it was possible that, in the heat of their argument, they would have assumed I had merely gone up to bed and stayed there. But then again, my mother might be worried about me, and would want to know I was home safe.

I decided that, on balance, it was best to sneak up to my room. If my mother thought I was out, she would have had the porch light on, and would have been looking for me through the front window. I crept down the hall and hurried past the archway that led to the dining room.

There, however, I stopped. It was possible to see through the archway, across the dining room, and through a second archway to the kitchen, and I had caught a glimpse of my mother in her familiar position in front of the sink. She didn’t turn—the sound of the running water had obscured my footsteps. But something about the scene didn’t appear right, and I leaned back for another look.

The dining room table still had not been cleared, though the candles were out, and several glasses had been knocked over, staining the tablecloth. In addition, the tablecloth was crooked, hanging almost to the ground at one corner, and some dishes and silverware had fallen, spattering the floor with food and shards of porcelain. This was unusual, of course. But it was
my mother’s appearance that was most strange. I was accustomed to seeing her bent over in a laborer’s stance, her head hung, her shoulders rolling, arms working at the dishes. She had been, of all things, a golf prodigy in high school—in fact, had dropped out in order to join the tournament circuit, in the hope of becoming a professional—but, according to family lore, had chosen my father over the greens, and put away her clubs for good. I had always been impressed by my mother’s athleticism, and her willingness to have abandoned her ambitions for the smaller accomplishments of home. But now I was given to doubt, for the first time, whether this life was what she really had wanted. She stood motionless at the sink, her head high, as though she were staring out the window. The window, however, was curtained. The honey-colored chignon into which she had arranged her hair was half-undone across one shoulder, and she was leaning slightly to one side.

I watched for a good minute, expecting her to break out of her reverie and return to work. But nothing happened. The water was running at full blast, making quite a racket in the otherwise silent house, and I began to grow nervous.

“Mother?” I said.

There was no response. I walked into the dining room and made my slow way around the table, warning her of my presence. “I’m home,” I called out. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”

I peered into the kitchen. Up close, her stillness seemed even stranger. I could see now that her dress hung crookedly across her shoulders, and the heel of one of her shoes was missing. That accounted for the lean.

“Mother?”

I entered the kitchen, treading heavily, so as not to shock her when I tapped her shoulder. Soon I was standing beside her, looking up.

“Mother!” Her right hand was hanging beside her, and I took it in mine. It was cold. She didn’t look at me.

Her left hand was in the sink, under the water. It alarmed me at first to notice that only the hot was turned on—I thought she must be burning. A few plates and forks were stacked under the flow, and her hand lay on top, the water cascading over it. I reached out and moved the faucet over to the opposite sink. It, too, was ice cold. I turned off the water and pulled my mother’s hand out.