And everyone else on the planet, I thought. But he said, “I’m not mad at you. Gilly fools people all the time. So does my dad.” He sighed. “I wish I didn’t live in Las Piernas.”
“Why not?”
“Everybody knows what happened to my mom. Kids at school, it’s like, the only thing they know about me. They either want to ask me about it — like, if it’s true my mom’s finger was cut off, shit like that — or they’re all freaked out about it. I can’t just be a normal person.”
“They’ve acted like that for four years?” Jack asked.
“No,” he acknowledged. “Just when it first happened. And now.”
“So they might get over this?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Maybe they’re just scared that the same thing might happen to their moms,” Jack said.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I still hate living here.”
“Where would you like to live?” I asked.
“With Grandma,” he said. “I miss her. I wish I could go live with her.”
“Have you asked your dad if you could?” I asked.
“He says he would miss me too much. I think he’s just worried about what people will think.”
“Do you remember when Nick Parrish lived in the neighborhood?”
He shook his head. “I was little when he moved. Gilly remembers him. I think she used to go over there to see the lady or something.”
“The lady? His sister?”
“Yeah.” He hesitated, then said, “I knew it was Nick Parrish a long time ago. Before the cops knew.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t know his name,” Jason said, “but I had seen him.”
“When?”
“Before my mom was killed. He was staring at our house one time when Gilly was baby-sitting. I was kind of little then, too — well, a third-grader, is all — but it scared me.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“I told Gilly. She went out and looked for him. But by then there wasn’t anybody there.”
“You didn’t tell the police?”
“I didn’t get too good a look at him,” he admitted.
“What did you see?”
“I just saw this man in a car. But later, I figured it out — you know, when Gilly remembered he used to live on our street. It was too late,” he said sadly. “Besides, who’s going to believe a kid? It’s like Gilly said, no one would take a kid seriously.”
He reached into the bag of fruit and picked out an orange. He studied it in his hand, then hurled it hard against a tree trunk, where it landed with a pulpy thunk, then managed to cling to the tree for a few seconds before dropping to the ground. When I turned to look at Jason in surprise, he ducked his head, but not before I saw that his face was twisted up — in anger, but not anger alone.
“The other day, I threw something hard like that,” I said. “I thought it would make me feel better, but it didn’t, really.”
“What did you throw?” he asked, talking to his ankles.
“A computer monitor.”
He looked up, eyes damp but wide. “Get out!” he said admiringly. “A computer monitor?”
“Yes. Really stupid thing to do. Someone could have been seriously injured by what I did. I ended up feeling worse than I did before I threw it.”
“So why did you throw it?”
“I was angry. Angry and blaming myself for things that had gone wrong, I suppose.”
“Things that were your fault?”
“Some of them. Some were things that I really could have changed, could have done better. But a lot of it probably would have turned out the same way no matter what.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for example, I thought I should have figured out what Nick Parrish had planned up in the mountains.”
“How could you? Even the cops didn’t know. A bunch of them died.”
“Yes, and maybe that was my fault, because I suspected Nick Parrish of being up to no good. Sort of like you suspected the guy in the car of being up to no good.”
“But maybe if I had told my dad instead of Gilly . . .”
“Was your dad home?”
“No.”
“So maybe the man in the car would have been gone by the time your dad got home. Even if your dad had called the police that night, they would have said, ‘Is the man in the car doing anything?’ and if your dad said, ‘No,’ that would have been that. Maybe it wasn’t even Parrish out there that night.”
“Maybe,” he said, without conviction.
“It troubles you anyway, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I kept hoping that the thoughts that were troubling me would just go away. They didn’t. So now I’m trying to talk about them a little more. It’s hard.”
“Really hard,” he said, looking back at his shoes.
“Who do you talk to when you’re upset?”
He didn’t answer for a long time, but he finally said, “My grandmother, sometimes.”
“Maybe you should call her a little more often. Maybe talk to your dad about visiting her for a while.”
“Okay.”
We picked up our trash — including the smashed orange — and left the park. Before taking him home, Jack stopped at a hardware store to buy a length of wire. Next he drove us to an Italian restaurant where he was apparently well known. Although the dining room was empty at this late afternoon hour, we were welcomed back into the kitchen, where Jack talked the busy cook into giving him the other essentials for a tin can telephone. The cook even washed out the cans, and added supervision to Jason’s efforts to assemble the parts.
When it was finished, the cook urged Jason to take one end into the dining room while he held the other end in the kitchen. What they whispered back and forth, I’ll never know, but it caused a great deal of amusement on both sides.
With some difficulty, and only with promises to return soon, were we able to leave without eating a meal. Jason was quiet on the way home, and when we pulled up in front of the house, he said, “Don’t tell Gilly what I said about her, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, relieved to see some sign of brotherly affection in him after all.
Jack told him that he’d ask Giles if Jason could go with him to the Italian restaurant some time.
“That would be fun,” he said, but he seemed subdued, perhaps not believing Jack would follow through.
He thanked us and said good-bye, taking the tin can phone with him. As he walked into the house, I saw him speaking into one end, while holding the other to his ear, absorbed in some private conversation with himself.
46
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 15
Las Piernas
Nicholas Parrish surveyed his new workroom with pride. A vast improvement over the last one.
Again, he had to give his little Moth credit. His Moth had seen that he was hampered in his work, and had suggested this alternative. This was infinitely more suitable to his needs. The workbench was larger, there was a sink nearby, and even — to his delight — a freezer.
The dwelling itself was more comfortable than his last, but that was of little matter to him. He was not a soft man, after all. Like any other artist, he was most concerned with the space in which he would do his creative work. He had spent several days getting this place shaped up to his satisfaction — emptying the freezer of its previous contents and so on — and now — voilà! Perhaps it was not a studio worthy of his masterpieces — Alas, could there ever be such a place? — but he would be able to carry on very well here.
He could not help feeling a sense of pride in the way things were going lately. Irene was actually seeing a shrink! Obviously, he had her on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Delightful! What good were shrinks when one’s terrors were real? She was terrified, all right! Just as he had promised.
Witness the woman’s reaction to those bones! It made him wish he had stayed around to see what had happened when she got the roses.