He stretched his shoulders a little and turned the page. Now the story had turned to Lancelot and Guenever (which he pronounced in his mind to rhyme with “whenever”). He liked the line “Half the knights had been killed — the best half.” He read about the ones that were left, and saw that King Arthur was thinking about how, whenever you set out to do something, you use up the good stuff first, and then you are stuck with the bad stuff, whatever it is. This was kind of like Charlie’s experience on both the swim team and the diving team — they always did their best dives first, or swam the backstroke first and the breaststroke last, just to get so far ahead of the other teams that they maybe couldn’t catch up. But that meant that you had to do your worst dives when you were more tired, so that you got even lower scores than you might have. The next part he could only sort of picture — stuff about clothes people were wearing and how stupid they looked. But he understood perfectly the part about Guenever. All the good people were gone, and those that were left were like the kids at school — they mostly wanted to see her fuck up, not because they cared, but because they didn’t have anything better to do.
Charlie could not say that this section of the book was his favorite, even though he couldn’t stop reading. What he had really liked was the part about Merlyn turning the Wart into a fish and a hawk. Even though he had never been farther from St. Louis than Chicago, in one direction, and the Ozarks, in the other, he could read that part and imagine just what England was like — all the birds and castles and hills. There was also a place where he, Charlie, had cried, something that hadn’t ever happened before, even in a movie. When the kids — Gawaine and Gareth and the rest of them — killed the unicorn for their mom and dragged it home all dirty and wrecked, and their mom didn’t even let it in the house, he thought that was the saddest thing he had ever read or seen. He did not know why. But it looked like even sadder things were to come.
At four-fifteen, the book fell onto the quilt, and his head dropped back onto the edge of the headboard. He was perfectly comfortable — one of his skills was sleeping soundly no matter what his position. When he first went to camp on the Current River, the other campers would test him: Head out of the bunk? No problem. Feet on the floor? Feet tied to the upper bunk? Spread-eagled? If he was asleep, he was asleep, that was Charlie. The other kids came to respect that after he blackened a few eyes for them. And anyway, he was big — six foot three, 165 pounds, too big to dive anymore unless he faithfully lifted weights. But he didn’t mind that. He and Coach Lutz both knew he was coming to the end of his talents. Coach Jenkins had told him about a thousand times that Mark Spitz, who was six one, with an arm span of six two, weighed 170. Somehow, Charlie, six three, with an arm span of six four, could arrive at 182 pounds and win seven Olympic gold medals, or maybe only one. “You’re the hope!” Coach Jenkins said. But Charlie needed fear to keep him going, and breaststroke was a singularly unscary activity, unless maybe you were swimming to Cuba and there were sharks. He hadn’t done that yet.
When his mom came in at ten and woke him up by picking the book off the floor, turning it over in her hands, and then setting it on the bedside table without saying anything, they had a glance — one of those mom glances that said, “Now what?” Charlie smiled. His mom smiled. She knew better than to kiss him anymore, but she ruffled his hair and said, “Oh. The Once and Future King. I always wanted to read that.”
—
CLAIRE’S TROUBLE NOW, a year and a half after she first tried to serve Paul the papers, was that no one she had talked to would take on Paul’s lawyer. Claire’s lawyer was someone she never would have dated. His father had spent the lawyer’s entire Chicago childhood at the racetrack, scaring the pants off the kid with big bets that often went wrong and angry language about crooks and gangsters. He was now a brawny, tough-talking specialist in divorce, but every time Paul’s lawyer issued some sort of ultimatum, Claire’s lawyer would shake his head in despair, and say that they had to abide by it. Claire had no idea if they really did or not. She should have gotten Paul’s lawyer, a colder, more genial type, and she would have if she’d had any advice, but she had opened the phone book, run her finger down the column, and decided probably they were all about the same. Oh no, not even in Iowa, one of the first states to grant no-fault divorce. The very words “no fault” enraged Paul.
This did not mean she was unhappy. She had succeeded in confining Paul to a small corner of her world, mostly because, unbeknownst to everyone other than her lawyer and Paul, she had gone to the stockbroker’s office the day after Paul punched her and, with the aid of the secretary, a woman about her age, she had transferred $240,000 worth of money-market funds into a different account, which only she had access to. This account was now earning almost 20 percent, so she had plenty of dough. Part of the reason Paul was so bitter was that she had beat him to the draw. When he thought of this strategy as a way of preventing her from departing, he went to the stockbroker himself, and both he and the stockbroker were dumbfounded. The secretary had done a wonderful job, Claire thought, of being unable to imagine why she should have been at all suspicious or failed to cooperate with Mrs. Darnell.
Her apartment was very nice. And her car was running beautifully. Paul had trained her to adopt a strict maintenance schedule for every single aspect of her life, from hair to transmission, no matter how she felt, and it worked just the way he said it would, giving her something to do and preventing unforeseen breakdowns of every kind. She was forty-two now. Same age as Ali MacGraw, Lily Tomlin, and Tina Turner. Sometimes she decided that, while their careers were ending, peaking, or over, hers was just beginning. Other times, she envied them, that they had known what their careers were going to be, whereas she did not. Still did not.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she picked the boys up at school, took them to their after-school classes (Gray took German, Brad took Latin and driving). Then she took them out to eat and back to Paul’s, where she oversaw their homework. When Paul came in the back door, she went out the front door. At sixteen and thirteen, the boys, she thought, were old enough to stay by themselves, especially since they were both taller than she was, and Gray outweighed her by twenty pounds, but Paul most assuredly did not agree. On Saturdays, Paul dropped them at the skating rink at nine, and Claire picked them up at noon. In the afternoon, she dropped them at a movie or took them shopping, then out to supper again, then she dropped them at home unless Paul had a date, in which case she went in the front door while he went out the back door, and she stayed until he returned (always before midnight). Paul would not allow them to come to her apartment downtown, or even to know the address (which seemed especially absurd, given how old they were). It might have been uncomfortable if they were girls, or if they were not the sons of Dr. Paul Darnell, but following protocol had been so drilled into them over the years that protocols were comfortable if laid out carefully in advance. They were also not in the habit of asking questions, at least of her. She did not know what they asked their father. She was sure that, whatever it was, he lied through his teeth in response.