Devil House(41)

“You’re going to college at whichever one of these offers you the best loan package,” said Diane, who was in the living room, on the sofa; at work, save for the hour she spent charting and another half hour at lunch, she spent the whole day on her feet.

“Kenyon!” Derrick said, opening the envelope. “Isn’t it kind of cold in Ohio?”

“It gets cold most places,” said his mother, coming in and picking up the other two envelopes. “There’ll be some more of these. I tried not to overdo it, but they say to apply to as many as you can. I’ll send everything in if you just fill out your forms. You have the grades.”

Derrick thought about Anthony Hawley, setting up a clean but grim office somewhere in San Jose where he’d try to sell God knows what to old people over the phone; he hated to think of Hawley’s life as a cautionary tale. People liked him well enough, didn’t they? He lived in a nice enough duplex, didn’t he? But his mother’s aspirational zeal had a sort of glow to it. Other ways of thinking about the world tended to look a little bloodless in that light.

He looked at the return addresses on the other envelopes she’d handed him: New York University. Wesleyan. These were among the schools his friends in AP English would be applying to, the big names his advisor had recited to him just a few weeks back during their obligatory “what’s next for you” talk. September wasn’t even over yet. It felt like things were moving fast.

“I do have the grades,” Derrick said, measuring his response; his mother’s vigilance about his college applications felt a little smothering, but he knew this was important to her. He slipped the envelopes gently into his backpack. “We’re real early with these.”

She gave him a hard look. “Early bird gets the worm,” she said.

He smiled. “I got it, Mom, I got it,” he said, already heading down the hall to his room with the posters, and the stereo, and the notebooks, and the box full of Sharpies.

She exhaled only after he was safely out of sight. She had no desire to put her only son on a flight bound for New York or Ohio or Connecticut next August; the house would feel empty, and her life would require a new ground plan. She wouldn’t go idle when he was gone: she’d find things to do. She always kept busy. But all versions of her life, for almost nineteen years, had involved Derrick: if she’d been absent from the house more than she might have liked, that was because she was in the process of building something special and safe for his future.

That future was almost upon her now, she knew. She saw his potential; he could already take care of himself, if he’d needed to. But teaching your children to take care of themselves and letting them do it are two different things. The former is a long labor of patience, and focus, and forbearance. The latter requires skills you never have time to learn when you’re busy practicing patience, maintaining focus, and picking battles. Most parents are unprepared for the time to let go; even if they’ve managed to find time and space to contemplate the arrival of the moment, it seems to come too soon. Diane Hall was different from many parents in a lot of ways, but not in this one.

TRIBUTE

A few days later, Derrick pedaled over to Monster Adult X on his bicycle; a breeze cooled his face as he rode. He vanished into the feeling, the action of his legs pushing the bike over the blacktop, the blur of the world going by. Would there ever be a day when this feeling didn’t evoke fond memories of childhood—his father teaching him to ride a bicycle on the playground at school in early January; telling his friends, on the first day back after Christmas break, about his new bike, how he’d arrived at the foot of the Christmas tree at 5:30 a.m. and seen it there, foil garlands wound around it, light from the tree sparkling in the foil like magic; the day some time later when, at last, the training wheels came off. These images rode with him every time he began to work the pedals; they set the stage.

He mulled over Hawley’s news as he rode. He was privately a little relieved; he’d felt certain more than once that his parents were ready to call him into the living room one evening and tell him they knew everything—about the store, the hours after school, the money under the table. We’re disappointed you’d try to keep secrets from us, they would say—that would be Dad’s word, delivered slowly and with resonance handed down over generations: disappointed. His mother would be angry, but anger was different. Anger passes. Disappointment vibrates.

The bell dinged when he opened the door; Derrick noticed that Hawley looked oddly chipper for a weekday afternoon inside a dark bookstore where people came to do things in secret. “Hey, now,” he said.

“Hey, now, yourself,” said Hawley. He smiled broadly; he was never unfriendly in his aspect, but this felt like an unusual look.

“Everything all right?” Derrick asked. He was already headed for the supply closet, but Hawley stopped him: physically stopped him, gently but firmly putting his hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t want you cleaning up back there anymore,” he said.

“Come on,” said Derrick. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”

“No,” said Hawley, “it’s not like that. It’s just—I want to be out of here by the end of the month. I don’t trust them to prorate me if I’m still here even a minute into October. And I’m not taking anything with me. So it doesn’t matter if we take care of this place now, and there’s no need for you to give everything the Cadillac treatment like you do.”