NOS4A2(81)

“Manx isn’t worth thinking about. He doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

“But why would someone want to talk to Mom about him?”

“You have to ask your mom on that one,” he said. “I really shouldn’t say anything. If I do, like, I’ll be the one in trouble. You know?”

Because this was the deal, his bargain with Victoria McQueen, the one they had settled on after she knew she was pregnant and decided she wanted to have the baby. She let Lou name the kid; she told Lou she’d live with him; she said she’d take care of the baby and when the baby was sleeping, the two of them could have some fun. She said she would be a wife in all but name. But the boy was to know nothing of Charlie Manx, unless she decided to tell him.

At the time Lou agreed, it all seemed reasonable enough. But he had not anticipated that this arrangement would prevent his son from knowing the single best thing about his own father. That his father had once reached past his fear for a moment of real Captain America heroism. He had pulled a beautiful girl onto the back of his motorcycle and raced her away from a monster. And when the monster caught up to them and set a man on fire, Lou had been the one to put out the flames—admittedly too late to save a life, but his heart had been in the right place and he had acted without any thought to the risk he was taking.

Lou hated to think what his son knew about him instead: that he was a walking fat joke, that he made a mediocre living towing people out of snowbanks and repairing transmissions, that he had not been able to hold on to Vic.

He wished he had another chance. He wished he could rescue someone else and Wayne could be watching. He would’ve been glad to use his big fat body to stop a bullet, as long as Wayne was there to bear witness to it. Then he could bleed out in a haze of glory.

Was there any human urge more pitiful—or more intense—than wanting another chance at something?

His son heaved a sigh, tossed himself onto his back.

“So tell me about your summer,” Lou asked. “What’s the best part so far?”

“No one is in rehab,” Wayne said.





Beside the Bay


LOU WAS WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO DETONATE—IT WAS COMING, any moment now—when Vic wandered over with her hands shoved down in that army jacket of hers and said, “This chair for me?”

He glanced over at the woman who had never been his wife but who had, incredibly, given him a child and made his life mean something. The idea that he had ever held her hand, or tasted her mouth, or made love to her, even now seemed as unlikely as being bitten by a radioactive spider.

To be fair, she was certifiable. There was no telling who a schizophrenic would drop her pants for.

Wayne was on the stone wall overlooking the harbor with some other kids. The entire hotel had turned out for the fireworks, and people were crammed onto the old red bricks facing the water and the Boston skyline. Some sat in wrought-iron deck chairs. Others drifted around with champagne in flutes. Kids ran around holding sparklers, drawing red scratches against the darkness.

Vic watched her twelve-year-old with a mix of affection and sad longing. Wayne hadn’t noticed her yet, and she didn’t go to him, did nothing to let him know she was there.

“You’re just in time for everything to go boom,” Lou said.

His motorcycle jacket was folded into the empty seat next to him. He grabbed it and put it over his knee, making room for her beside him.

She smiled before she sat—that Vic smile, where only one corner of her mouth turned up, an expression that seemed somehow to suggest regret as much as happiness.

“My father used to do this,” she said. “Light the fireworks for Fourth of July. He put on a good show.”

“You ever think of making a day trip to Dover with Wayne to see him? That can’t be more than an hour away from The Lake.”

“I guess I’d get in touch with him if I needed to blow something up,” she said. “If I needed some ANFO.”

“Info?”

“ANFO. It’s an explosive. What my dad uses to take out stumps and boulders and bridges and so on. It’s basically a big, slippery bag of horseshit, engineered to destroy things.”

“What is? ANFO? Or your dad?”

“Both,” she said. “I already know what you want to talk about.”

“Maybe I just wanted us to have Fourth of July together as a family,” Lou said. “Couldn’t it be that?”

“Did Wayne say something about the woman who turned up at the house yesterday?”

“He asked me about Charlie Manx.”

“Shit. I sent him inside. I didn’t think he could hear us talking.”

“Well. He caught a bunch of it.”

“How much? Which parts?”

“This and that. Enough to be curious.”

“Did you know that Manx was dead?” she asked.

Lou swiped damp palms on his cargo shorts. “Aw, dude. First you were in rehab, then your mom was dying—I didn’t want to lay another thing on you. I was going to tell you at some point. Honestly. I don’t like to stress you out. You know. No one wants you to go . . .” His voice faltered and trailed off.

She gave him her lopsided smile again. “Batshit crazy?”

He stared off through the dark at their son. Wayne had lit a new pair of sparklers. He waved his arms up and down, flapping his hands, while the sparklers burned and spit. He looked like Icarus just as everything began going wrong.