Phantom Nights (5 page)

Cecily came down the back stairs with the brandy bottle and a change of diapers from the nursery. She silently cleaned up and changed Brendan on the kitchen table while Bobby poured a thimbleful of brandy into a saucer.

"How about a couple of biscuits with your eggs, and I think there's sawmill gravy from last night I could heat up." She hesitated. "Honey, would you like a beer? Out of Bud, but there's Blue Ribbon left over from our barbecue Sunday."

"Okay," Bobby said, stopping and making a show of looking under the checkerboard oilcloth on the kitchen table, pretending to see if Bernice was hiding there, putting another check after his name in her Day of Reckoning book, the one she kept for the Lord's benefit in case He overlooked something. Cecily caught Bobby's drift and retaliated by booting him in the rear with a slippered foot.

Bobby grinned and took Brendan from her, moistened a fingertip in the brandy and rubbed where the baby's gums were fiery, touching the merest edge of a tooth about to come through. It made him feel happy. Brendan suckled, his eyes on Bobby's face. He could pull himself erect now using a sofa or a wall for support, stand for half a minute without wavering, looking around. The schedule he was keeping, Bobby thought, eighty hours or more a week away from the house, probably he would miss Brendan's first steps. That troubled him, so much time apart from the two loves who gradually had separated him from the ongoing despair of his loss. Occasionally Bobby's mother still sang in his dreams: she'd had one of those true and glorious voices that are the beauty part of humaness. Always he awoke in tears.

Cecily levered the cap off a sweaty-cold bottle of Blue Ribbon and set it on the table, smiling a little at the two of them, and Bobby knew she was thinking
Wouldn't it be perfect if . . .

Bobby glanced at the clock on the wall, then at the cork message board where Alex was supposed to post his intended whereabouts day or night. But he seldom knew where he was going when he left on his bike. Like many friendless kids, he was a wanderer.

Cecily put the omelette pan on a low flame to warm and cracked three eggs, whisked them in a stainless-steel bowl.

"When was the last time you saw Alex?" Bobby asked her, figuring just to get it over with so he could eat in peace and not have heartburn to keep him awake at three a.m.

"I told you already; middle of the day, which is when . . . I caught him upstairs in Brendan's room just after Brendan went down for his nap!"

"Doing what?"

"Sitting on the window seat, staring at the crib." Whatever resolve Cecily had to keep bitter feelings from pouring out vanished when her voice broke. She turned to Bobby. "But he was
told
. Wasn't he? Never to go near Brendan again! If he wants to go on staying with us."

"I'll take care of it, Cecily."

"How many times have you said, 'Oh, I'll take care of it,' and Alex goes right on doing just what he pleases! He pays no attention to any of us, Rhoda included, and Bobby—I'm s-sorry, but your brother has me in such a state—"

Brendan's eyes were closing, the brandy drawing fever from his gums, numbing them. Bobby said, "I've almost got him asleep. I'll put him upstairs now. Then, okay, we'll talk."

"Thank you," she said with a wan show of grace, took a deep breath, and whipped eggs furiously before pouring them into the heated skillet. "That's all I'm asking. I know you have your hands full with this situation, Bobby."

The Situation. Well, he couldn't lie to himself, that's what it came down to.

When Bobby returned to the kitchen, Cecily had served him and was sitting at the table buttering a biscuit from that morning's breakfast.

"Sound asleep," Bobby said, sitting opposite her. "Did you get in some tennis today?"

"Marcy couldn't play. And it was hot as the hinges from nine o'clock on. Bobby, Priest Howard died."

He nodded. "Calls for a big funeral. Saturday, I'd say. I'll have to work." He dug into his omelette, took a bite of the biscuit she extended to him. "Cecily, he's not, talking about Alex now, he doesn't mean Brendan any harm."

She sat back abruptly in her ladderback chair as if an attack had been signaled.

"I don't understand how you can say that! You know he was crazy jealous when Brendan was born, sulking around here all the time . . . Then when he took Brendan from his playpen when I was out shopping and Rhoda had her back turned a minute and we didn't know where either of them were for
three hours
—what do you think was on his mind that day if he didn't intend to, I don't know, maybe what Mom says, drown Brendan in Fulkerson's pond?"

"Jesus Jumping Christ, Cecily, that is so like your mother; she's been doing it to you all your life—"

Cecily dodged the accusation with a side twist of her head.

"Doing
what
to me?"

"Sabotaging your relationships. Your best friend and roommate at Sweet Briar. Bernice takes a dislike; she spreads dirt like a nigger gravedigger. Then, when we started going together—"

"We won't get into it about my mother; this is about Alex."

"Not to say Alex didn't show poor judgment, but he only wanted to show Brendan those huge goldfish that have been in Fulkerson's since I was a kid."

"Which you know for sure because you can read his mind."

"Alex can't defend himself very well against ridiculous accusations. The way he is."

"Bringing that up again. Bobby, don't lawyer me, please."

"Try to imagine what it must be like. Hearing 'dummy' most all his life. If kids aren't acting mean, they're being malicious."

"Not my Brendan. He won't ever act like that."

"So Alex withdraws, doesn't have, what do you call it, social skills, and you interpret his reaction to the shit he has to put up with as hostile behavior."

"He is hostile, and I'm not imagining. Please don't curse in our house, as I've reminded you a thousand times. Ugly words create an atmosphere; they bring trouble."

"Just make an effort, why don't you? Show Alex a little affection like when you first met him. Where'd that go to?"

"And when did you start saying 'nigger' again? I hate that in you."

"You were raised in Wisconsin. Only black you ever saw was dairy cows. This is the South. Down here they are what they are. Show him some honest affection again, Cecily, instead of that grim look you put on whenever he's around. Alex is probably out late tonight because he knows Wednesdays I don't get back from Memphis 'til after ten."

"Bobby?" Near tears. "All I want is to have a happy home, a
normal
home, is that asking too much of you?"

Bobby laid his fork down, already feeling hot twinges in his esophagus. He picked up the bottle of Blue Ribbon and had a couple of swallows. They made an okay beer up there in Milwaukee, but nothing compared to Budweiser.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't want Alex in my house anymore! I'm afraid of him and what he might do. Can I make it any plainer?"

"I made a promise. To my dying mother."

"It was okay when we were first married," Cecily said, hoping to ignore what she knew they were about to get into. Sometimes talking to Bobby was like knocking down a hornets' nest. "Alex was younger then. But now we've got Brendan, and Alex is big. Going on fourteen. And he—"

"Burnt over seventy per cent of her body. Daddy never even made it out of the house." Army Transport Command had flown Bobby back from Heidelberg, where he was stationed, a military policeman. He was granted a hardship discharge a year early to look after Alex, who had been spending the night in a cousin's treehouse three blocks away. But he ran home in time to witness the worst of it, his house a glowing pyre collapsing into the cellar. "Fuckin' faulty space heater," Bobby said, a burning reflected in his own eyes.

Cecily overlooked his profanity this time. Better for him to get it out now, or he'd be grinding his teeth in his sleep. She hadn't been acquainted with his parents. They had met nearly two years after the house on Old Durham Trace was destroyed. The property was now a vacant lot, worked over by a bulldozer so that no sign of the tragedy remained except for a bronze memorial plaque on a flowering quince tree Bobby had had transplanted on that plot of ground, which would never be for sale while he had anything to say about it.

Getting back to Alex. "Another thing he's been doing. He masturbates."

Bobby was going to say
Don't we all
but thought better of it. Cecily had been in fragile shape emotionally for the months since Brendan's birth, which had not gone smoothly, and the truth was she still couldn't handle much stress. Since puberty she had suffered from monthly migraines: they blanched her in a way that tore his heart.

"How do you know?" he asked in a reasonable tone. "Catch him at it?"

"Rhoda does Alex's laundry too."

"Fact is Alex is having what I've heard called 'nocturnal emissions.' I can vouch for those, my pajama pants used to get—"

"Not talking about pajama pants, Bobby. And there's nothing nocturnal about it. Does it in his handkerchiefs, then leaves them wadded up under his bed." Cecily shuddered at the thought.

Bobby let out a slow breath and looked at his wife, not knowing what to say anymore. That bulge of muscle had reappeared in Cecily's small jaw, and the hollows of her eyes were moist. Usually hers was a lively, humorous face, streaked blond hair brushed back from her brow in a neat arrowhead, emeralds in her earlobes the exact shade of lazy-looking eyes that always seemed to be on low simmer.

Humor had largely been missing lately, the hijinks in her smile.

"There is an answer, Bobby. I was talking to Dr. Leathers about it yester—"

"No. Promises are sacred to me, Cecily."

"What about your wedding vows? It isn't like you wouldn't be taking care of Alex anymore! You would be doing exactly what needs to be done for him if he's going to grow up and amount to something instead of climbing radio towers and getting into fights."

"You know those schools cost a ton of money we don't happen to have."

But as soon as he spoke he realized what was up. "Mom said she would loan us whatever is needed to do the right thing for Alex."

"Out of the goodness of her heart," Bobby said slowly, stalling, trying to think how he was going to get out of this. An opportunity had been presented to his mother-in-law, and obviously she had pounced on it. Bernie, as her friends called her, had realized a profit of nearly forty thousand dollars when she sold her late husband's printing business. She was sixty-two and still looked good when she was dolled up. But arthritis was evident in both her hands. Prospects for another husband, given what was available in Evening Shade, looked dim. Cagey as always, she had to be thinking ahead to a safe haven in which to spend her declining years. What could be more appealing than to ensure Alex Gambier's absence and move into the roomy house Bobby had bought Cecily as a wedding present with the insurance money? Spend the rest of her life with her two most precious possessions, Cecily and Brendan, while Bobby found himself slowly relegated to the status of odd man out in his own household? He had wryly observed the same thing happening to other married men; it was like being squeezed to extinction by one of those big South American snakes.

Bobby smiled at Cecily as if he'd been enlightened instead of outmaneuvered, then put the brakes on.

"It's worth thinking about," he said.

"Seriously, Bobby?"

"Sure I'm serious."

"Because you know—when it was just the two of you, Alex and Bobby, you had all the time in the world for him, and it was what he needed after the trauma. But now it isn't true anymore. You don't have the time to play baseball and fix cars together and take fishing trips. I think that's what he resents so deeply and has him doing reckless things to try to get your attention back." Bobby nodded, knowing the truth when he heard it, quick flush of guilt in his face, which encouraged Cecily all the more. "And resents Brendan and me for—we've taken you away from him, probably is how he sees it. That's why I think Alex needs a complete change of scene, a school with other kids who have handicaps. Kids he can relate to, not some of the bullies around town. But of course his hostile attitude. I think Alex
wants
to get into fights."

"Just give me a little time with this, Cece."

She took a breath, relief in her eyes, getting ready to wind it down. "Mutism isn't such a terrible burden, after all. What about polio, or—I know it's a big decision, but you'll see there isn't a better one you can make. Aren't you having any more to eat, Bobby? There's tapioca Rhoda made."