Hearts in Atlantis(80)

'I said I didn't want it, we didn't need it, they could keep their money. I said . . . I told them . . . '

'That's good, Mom,' he said. 'That's good. Put me down.'

'Where have you been? Are you all right? Are you hungry?'

He answered her questions back to front. 'I'm hungry, yeah, but I'm fine. I went to Bridgeport. I got this.'

He reached into his pants pocket and brought out the remains of the Bike Fund money. His ones and change were mixed into a messy green wad of tens and twenties and fifties. His mother stared at the money as it rained down on the endtable by the sofa, her good eye growing bigger and bigger until Bobby was afraid it might tumble right out of her face. The other eye remained squinched down in its thundercloud of blue-black flesh. She looked like a battered old pirate gloating over freshly unburied treasure, an image Bobby could have done without . . . and one which never entirely left him during the fifteen years between that night and the night of her death. Yet some new and not particularly pleasant part of him enjoyed that look - how it rendered her old and ugly and comic, a person who was stupid as well as avaricious. That's my ma, he thought in a Jimmy Durante voice. That's my ma. We both gave him up, but I got paid better than you did, Ma, didn't I? Yeah! Hotcha!

'Bobby,' she whispered in a trembly voice. She looked like a pirate and sounded like a winning contestant on that Bill Cullen show, The Price is Right. 'Oh Bobby, so much money! Where did it come from?'

'Ted's bet,' Bobby said. 'This is the payout.'

'But Ted . . . won't he - '

'He won't need it anymore.'

Liz winced as if one of her bruises had suddenly twinged. Then she began sweeping the money together, sorting the bills even as she did so. 'I'm going to get you that bike,' she said. Her fingers moved with the speed of an experienced three-card monte dealer. No one beats that shuffle, Bobby thought. No one has ever beaten that shuffle. 'First thing in the morning. Soon as the Western Auto opens. Then we'll - '

'I don't want a bike,' he said. 'Not from that. And not from you.'

She froze with her hands full of money and he felt her rage bloom at once, something red and electrical. 'No thanks from you, are there? I was a fool to ever expect any. God damn you if you're not the spitting image of your father!' She drew back her hand again with the fingers open. The difference this time was that he knew it was coming. She had blindsided him for the last time.

'How would you know?' Bobby asked. 'You've told so many lies about him you don't remember the truth.'

And this was so. He had looked into her and there was almost no Randall Garfield there, only a box with his name on it . . . his name and a faded image that could have been almost anyone. This was the box where she kept the things that hurt her. She didn't remember about how he liked that Jo Stafford song; didn't remember (if she had ever known) that Randy Garfield had been a real sweetie who'd give you the shirt right off his back. There was no room for things like that in the box she kept. Bobby thought it must be awful to need a box like that.

'He wouldn't buy a drunk a drink,' he said. 'Did you know that?'

'What are you talking about?'

'You can't make me hate him . . . and you can't make me into him.' He turned his right hand into a fist and cocked it by the side of his head. 'I won't be his ghost. Tell yourself as many lies as you want to about the bills he didn't pay and the insurance policy he lost out on and all the inside straights he tried to fill, but don't tell them to me. Not anymore.'

'Don't raise your hand to me, Bobby-O. Don't you ever raise your hand to me.'

In answer he held up his other hand, also fisted. 'Come on. You want to hit me? I'll hit you back. You can have some more. Only this time you'll deserve it. Come on.'

She faltered. He could feel her rage dissipating as fast as it had come, and what replaced it was a terrible blackness. In it, he saw, was fear. Fear of her son, fear that he might hurt her. Not tonight, no - not with those grimy little-boy fists. But little boys grew up.

And was he so much better than her that he could look down his nose and give her the old la-de-dah? Was he any better? In his mind he heard the unspeakable crooning voice asking if he wanted to go back home even though it meant Ted would have to go on without him. Yes, Bobby had said. Even if it meant going back to his bitch of a mother? Yes, Bobby had said. You understand her a little bit better now, do you? Cam had asked, and once again Bobby had said yes.

And when she recognized his step on the porch, there had at first been nothing in her mind but love and relief. Those things had been real.

Bobby unmade his fists. He reached up and took her hand, which was still held back to slap . . . although now without much conviction. It resisted at first, but Bobby at last soothed the tension from it. He kissed it. He looked at his mother's battered face and kissed her hand again. He knew her so well and he didn't want to. He longed for the window in his mind to close, longed for the opacity that made love not just possible but necessary. The less you knew, the more you could believe.

'It's just a bike I don't want,' he said. 'Okay? Just a bike.'

'What do you want?' she asked. Her voice was uncertain, dreary. 'What do you want from me, Bobby?'

'Pancakes,' he said. 'Lots.' He tried a smile. 'I am so-ooo hungry.'