The boy had noticed that when his parents packed, they took with them a number of things that he had never seen anyone use but his aunt. He saw a woman’s watch, rings and necklaces, a silver tea set, a couple of antique clocks from her bedroom, a set of hairbrushes and a mirror with mother-of-pearl inlays. He knew from the many suddenly empty surfaces in the house that there was more that he had not seen them pack.
As he grew, the event diminished in his memory: his effort had turned out to have been of little consequence or advantage. He had acted well and decisively, but the forces of the universe were not easily moved. He was still not given the kind of attention that he felt his parents should give him. They were still just as distracted and, if anything, busier than before. Gradually, he came to see that they were simply that way: people of little account. After that they bustled about in the usual way, frantic and occasionally noisy, but he knew it was of no importance to him.
When their scheming and hustling seemed to gain them some money, they would squabble over it, because they had each spent it in their minds already. His mother would have a new dress, usually, and his father would be in a bad mood because he had bet his share on something that had not behaved as he had predicted: a horse, a team, some cards.
At some point the next year, a change took place, but it was minor too. His father disappeared. The noises in the periphery had been louder lately, but had not changed in character. After one of the small temporary victories, his father had gone out as usual, but he simply hadn’t come back. The boy at first assumed that he had gone off somewhere to get over his usual remorse in solitude. A few days later he noticed that his father was still not around, but the boy assumed that he’d come and gone without his noticing. The next time the boy thought of it, he asked his mother where his father was, and she gave him an unusually sour look. She said, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” He waited for a moment, suspecting that she did care. Because he did not ask, she added, “I guess life is too much for him. Things were fine for him when I was at his beck and call anytime. But after you came along, I was too busy to take care of two babies.” There followed a day or two of dire mutterings, at times against his father, and at times against him.
The man he was used to was gone, but he was replaced by others. Some would stay for a month, but others would simply be a knock on the door or a phone call. Late at night there would be whispers, creaking stairs, or the thump of a shoe dropping on a floor above his head. It didn’t matter which it was, because the ones who came were empty, just more people of no account to keep his mother occupied at the edge of his vision.
The good part was that the constant squabbling about money had ended. Whatever negotiations she had with the men who stayed or passed through were carried on out of earshot, and seemed to be resolved mostly in her favor. The things she liked—new dresses, makeup, hair and nail work—were in plentiful supply. But he still was alone most of the time. He got up and went to school, came home, ate what was left over from the dinners she had shared with her male guests, washed the dishes, and went out again. If he was home in time to be gone again by the time she woke up, he had nothing to fear from her displeasure.
For years, he made no further forays into the world of adventure he had glimpsed in the death of Aunt Toni. He prepared. He got up in the morning and did his sets with weights, chinned himself, did crunches and push-ups, showered, and went to school. Then he came home, did his homework, ate what he could find around the house, and went out to run a few miles. When he came back he did a second workout, showered, and went out again to walk the night streets.
He detested the weak, so he worked and sweated to be strong and hard and fast. Failure was humiliating and brought unwelcome attention, so he avoided trouble by doing his homework and getting good grades.
In the second month of his senior year of high school, it seemed to occur to his mother, all at once, that he existed. It was as though while he was young and small he was able to be invisible, but by that October, he had grown too big to ignore. He had to endure detailed recitations of her daily life. He had to endure less specific lists of sacrifices she had made for his sake. He had always had to hear her say that having him around was such a terrible burden that she could not stand it any longer. But now he had to experience a strange new set of indictments: the complaints against his father that had been silently refined in her mind during six years of resentment were now delivered to the boy as though the transgressions were his.
Varney waited. He concentrated on his routines, for he was of a curiously disciplined temperament. He worked harder and longer, and maintained his silence. This was a method he had perfected in order to stay invisible when he was small, and he found it worked nearly as well now that he had been rediscovered. He lasted until June. On the afternoon of his graduation he came home with a diploma and began to pack for his life of adventure just as his mother was waking up.
She came out of her bedroom and stared at him, then went back in to get her robe. When she came out this time, she had tied it so tight at the waist that her eyes were bulging. She said in a voice like cracking glass, “What do you think you’re doing?”
He shrugged. “I just graduated. Time to go.”
She shrieked at him, “You bastard!” Then she began to pace. “I raised you all by myself! I gave you everything you ever had! Everything you ever did was because I did it for you! Now you’re just going to leave?”
He looked at her, puzzled. She had always said that he was a burden and she wanted him to leave. “What else?”
“What else? You ask me what else? You can get a job and do the same for me. You can—”
He was already shaking his head. “No.” He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t interested in any more trouble. He went on packing. He had not anticipated this. From the moment when he had been old enough to decipher her words, she had said she couldn’t wait until this day. But the fact that her reaction was the opposite wasn’t enough of a surprise to disturb him. It simply explained a few of her most recent tirades. She had noticed he was grown into a man. She had not been trying to hasten his departure. She had simply identified him as an adult male—someone who could be induced to get money for her.
He had almost finished packing, since he owned very little that he wasn’t wearing. She saw the diploma and it seemed to outrage her, as though the piece of paper was what had caused him to offend her. She snatched it off the couch, tore it in four pieces, and tried to hurl it at his face, but the pieces merely fluttered to the floor at her feet.
She looked around her, and then her eyes settled on the suitcase. She snatched the handle. “These are mine!” she shouted. “I paid for everything! You want to go, you’re not taking anything of mine with you.”
He looked at her for only a second, then picked up the pieces of his diploma and walked to the door.
She screamed, “You’ll be back! You’re going to need me!”
He thought for a moment. “If cannibalism comes back in style, I might come back to cut up your fat ass and sell it. Otherwise . . .” He shrugged, stepped out, and closed the door. His life of adventure began.
That had been ten years ago, and Varney did not often think about those days anymore. He finished his breakfast in the hotel dining room, reread the editorial in the Columbus Dispatch, folded the paper, and returned to his room. For the next half hour, he packed and made leisurely preparations to leave, glancing now and then at the television set and feeling pleased. In the editorial, they had referred once more to the “senseless massacre of thirteen people in a Louisville restaurant.” Senseless meant that they still had not seen the sense of it: the job was a clean one. Senseless was good.