'Salem's Lot(70)

'I'm home. I got - '

'Come in here, Susan. I want to talk to you.'

She recognized the tone instantly, although she had not heard it to that precise degree since her high school days, when the arguments over hem lines and boy friends had gone on day after bitter day.

She put down her bags and went into the living room. Her mother had grown colder and colder on the subject of Ben Mears, and Susan supposed this was to be her Final Word.

Her mother was sitting in the rocker by the bay window, knitting. The TV was off. The two in conjunction were an ominous sign.

'I suppose you haven't heard the latest,' Mrs Norton said. Her needles clicked rapidly, meshing the dark green yam she was working with into neat rows. Someone's winter scarf. 'You left too early this morning.'

'Latest?'

'Mike Ryerson died at Matthew Burke's house last night, and who should be in attendance at the deathbed but your writer friend, Mr Ben Mears!'

'Mike . . . Ben . . . what?'

Mrs Norton smiled grimly. 'Mabel called around ten this morning and told me. Mr Burke says he met Mike down at Delbert Markey's tavern last night - although what a teacher is doing bar-hopping I don't know - and brought him home with him because Mike didn't look well. He died in the night. And no one seems to know just what Mr Mears was doing there!'

'They know each other,' Susan said absently. 'In fact, Ben says they hit it off really well . . . what happened to Mike, Mom?'

But Mrs Norton was not to be sidetracked so quickly. 'Nonetheless, there's some that think we've had a little too much excitement in 'salem's Lot since Mr Ben Mears showed his face. A little too much altogether.'

'That's foolishness!' Susan said, exasperated. 'Now, what did Mike - '

'They haven't decided that yet,' Mrs Norton said. She twirled her ball of yarn and let out slack. 'There's some that think he may have caught a disease from the little Glick boy.'

'If so, why hasn't anyone else caught it? Like his folks?'

'Some young people think they know everything,' Mrs Norton remarked to the air. Her needles flashed up and down.

Susan got up. 'I think I'll go downstreet and see if - '

Sit back down a minute,' Mrs Norton said. 'I have a few more things to say to you.'

Susan sat down again, her face neutral.

'Sometimes young people don't know all there is to know,' Ann Norton said. A spurious tone of comfort had come into her voice that Susan distrusted immediately.

'Like what, Mom?'

'Well, it seems that Mr Ben Mears had an accident a few years ago. Just after his second book was published. A motorcycle accident. He was drunk. His wife was killed.'

Susan stood up. 'I don't want to hear any more.' 

'I'm telling you for your own good,' Mrs Norton said calmly.

'Who told you?' Susan asked. She felt none of the old hot and impotent anger, or the urge to run upstairs away from that calm, knowing voice and weep. She only felt cold and distant, as if drifting in space. 'It was Mabel Werts, wasn't it?'

'That doesn't matter. It's true.'

'Sure it is. And we won in Vietnam and Jesus Christ drives through the center of town in a gocart every day at high noon.'

'Mabel thought he looked familiar,' Ann Norton said, land so she went through the back issues of her newspapers box by box - '

'You mean the scandal sheets? The ones that specialize in astrology and pictures of car wrecks and starlets' tits? Oh, what an informed source.' She laughed harshly.

'No need to be obscene. The story was right there in black and white. The woman - his wife if she really was - ?was riding on the back seat and he skidded on the pavement and they went smack into the side of a moving van. They gave him a breathalyzer test on the spot, the article said. Right . . . on . . . the spot.' She emphasized intensifier, preposition, and object by tapping a knitting needle against the arm of her rocker.

'Then why isn't he in prison?'

'These famous fellows always know people,' she said with calm certainty. 'There are ways to get out of every?thing, if you're rich enough. Just look at what those Kennedy boys have gotten away with.'

'Was he tried in court?'

'I told you, they gave him a - '

'You said that, Mother. But was he drunk?'

'I told you he was drunk!' Spots of color had begun to creep into her cheeks. 'They don't give you a breathalyzer test if you're sober! His wife died! It was just like that Chappaquiddick business! Just like it!'

'I'm going to move into town,' Susan said slowly. 'I've been meaning to tell you. I should have done it a long time ago, Mom. For both of us. I was talking to Babs Griffen, and she says there's a nice little four-room place on Sister's Lane - '

'Oh, she's offended!' Mrs Norton remarked to the air. 'Someone just spoiled her pretty picture of Mr Ben Big?shot Mears and she's just so mad she could spit.' This line had been particularly effective some years back.

'Mom, what's happened to you?' Susan asked a little despairingly. 'You never used to . . . to get this low - '

Ann Norton's head jerked up. Her knitting slid off her lap as she stood up, clapped her hands to Susan's shoulders, and gave her a smart shake.