NOS4A2(68)

The real-estate agent sent a half dozen full-page glossies, and Vic climbed up onto her mother’s bed to look at them with her.

“See the carriage house? I’ll clean it out and make an artist’s studio. I bet it smells great in there,” Vic said. “Bet it smells like hay. Like horses. I wonder why I never went through a horse phase. I thought that was mandatory for spoiled little girls.”

“Chris and me never exactly killed ourselves spoiling you, Vicki. I was afraid to. Now I don’t even think a parent can. Spoil a child, I mean. I didn’t figure nothing out until it was too late to do me any good. I never seemed to have much of a feel for parenting. I was so scared of doing the wrong thing I hardly ever did the right thing.”

Vic tried out a few different lines in her head. You and me both was one. You did your best—which is more than I can say of myself was another. You loved me as hard as you knew how. I’d give anything to go back and love you better was a third. But she couldn’t find her voice—her throat had gone tight—and the moment passed.

“Anyway,” Linda said. “You didn’t need a horse. You had your bike. Vic McQueen’s Fast Machine. Take you farther than any horse ever could. I looked for it, you know. A couple years ago. I thought your father stuck it in the basement, and I had an idea I could give it to Wayne. Always thought it was a bike for a boy. But it was gone. Don’t know where it disappeared to.” She was quiet, her eyes half closed. Vic eased off the bed. But before she could get to the door, Linda said, “You don’t know what happened to it, do you, Vic? Your Fast Machine?”

There was something sly and dangerous in her voice.

“It’s gone,” Vic said. “That’s all I know.”

Her mother said, “I like the cottage. Your lake house. You found a good place, Vic. I knew you would. You were always good at that. At finding things.”

Vic’s arms bristled with gooseflesh.

“Get your rest, Mom,” she said, moving to the door. “I’m glad you like the place. We should go up there sometime soon. It’s ours for the summer after I sign the papers. We should break it in. Have a couple days there, just the two of us.”

“Sure,” her mother said. “We’ll stop at Terry’s Primo Subs on the way back. Get ourselves milkshakes.”

The already dim room seemed to darken briefly, as if a cloud were moving across the sun.

“Frappes,” Vic said, in a voice that was rough with emotion. “If you want a milkshake, you have to go somewhere else.”

Her mother nodded. “That’s right.”

“This weekend,” Vic said. “We’ll go up there this weekend.”

“You’ll have to check my calendar,” her mother said. “I might have plans.”

The rain stopped the next morning, and instead of taking her mother to Lake Winnipesaukee that weekend Vic took her to the graveyard and buried her beneath the first hot blue sky of May.


SHE CALLED LOU AT ONE IN THE MORNING EAST COAST TIME, ELEVEN o’clock Mountain time, and said, “What do you think he’ll want to do? It’s going to be two months. I don’t know if I can keep Wayne entertained for two days.”

Lou seemed utterly baffled by the question. “He’s twelve. He’s easy. I’m sure he’ll like all the things you like. What do you like?”

“Maker’s Mark.”

Lou made a humming sound. “You know, I guess I was thinking more like tennis.”

She bought tennis rackets, didn’t know if Wayne knew how to play. It had been so long for herself that she couldn’t even remember how to score. She just knew that even when you had nothing, you still had love.

She bought swimsuits, flip-flops, sunglasses, Frisbees. She bought suntan lotion, hoping he wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time in the sun. In between her stints in the crazy house and rehab, Vic had finished getting her arms and legs fully sleeved in tattoos, and too much sun was poison on the ink.

She had assumed that Lou would fly to the East Coast with him and was surprised when Lou gave her Wayne’s flight number and asked her to call when he got in.

“Has he ever flown alone?”

Lou said, “He’s never flown at all, but I wouldn’t worry about it. Dude. The kid is pretty solid at taking care of himself. He’s been doing it for a while. He’s, like, twelve going on fifty. I think he’s more excited about the flight than he is about getting there.” This was followed by an awkward, embarrassed silence. “Sorry. That totally came out more douchey than I meant it to.”

“It’s okay, Lou,” she said.

It didn’t bother her. There was nothing Lou or Wayne could say that would bother her. She had every bit of it coming. All those years of hating her own mother, Vic had never imagined she would do worse.

“Besides. He isn’t really traveling alone. He’s coming with Hooper.”

“Right,” she said. “What’s he eat anyway?”

“Usually whatever is on the floor. The remote control. Your underwear. The rug. He’s like the tiger shark in Jaws. The one Dreyfuss cuts open in the fisherman’s basement. That’s why we named him Hooper. You remember the tiger shark? He had a license plate in his stomach?”

“I never saw Jaws. I caught one of the sequels on TV in rehab. The one with Michael Caine.”