Beautiful Ruins (68)

She stared at him, looking for some sign that he was lying, but his eye contact was as unwavering as ever.

“Maybe you’re just looking for an excuse to not go out,” Pat said.

That was like him, too, to turn it around on her, and to peg it on some real insight; it was true, she probably was looking for an excuse to not go out.

“Loosen up,” he said. “Go have fun. I’ll tell you what: you can borrow my P.E. clothes. Steve especially likes tight gray shorts.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “I think I’ll just go with what I’m wearing, thanks.”

“He’s gonna make you shower afterward, you know.”

“You think?”

“Yep: roll call, stretching, floor hockey, shower. That’s P.E. Steve’s dream date.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep. The guy’s fatuous.”

“Fatuous?” That was Pat, too, showing off his vocabulary while calling her date a moron.

“But don’t ask him if he’s fatuous, ’cause he’ll say, ‘Boy I hope so. I paid a lot for this vasectomy.’ ”

She laughed again in spite of herself—and wished, as always, that she hadn’t. How much trouble had Pat squirmed out of at school this way? Female teachers were especially helpless. He got As without books, talked other kids into doing his work, convinced principals to waive rules for him, ditched school and invented fabulist reasons for his absence. Debra would cringe during school conferences when the teacher asked about her diagnosis, or about Pat’s trip to South America, or about the death of his sister—Oh, and his poor father: murdered, disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, dead of exposure on Everest. Every year, poor Alvis died all over again, of some new cause. Then, around his fourteenth birthday, Pat seemed to realize that he didn’t need to lie to get things, that it was more effective, and more fun, to simply look people in the eye and tell them exactly what he wanted.

She wondered sometimes if having a father around would have balanced her indulgence of him; she’d been overly charmed by his precociousness when he was little, and probably too lonely, especially in those dark years.

Pat set his guitar down and stood up. “Hey. I’m kidding about Steve. He seems nice.” He walked over. “Go. Have fun. Be happy.”

He really had grown in this last year. Anyone could see it. He’d gotten in less trouble at school, hadn’t snuck out of the house, had gotten better grades. Yet she was still discomfited by those eyes, not by their structure or color, but some quality in his stare—what people called a glimmer, a spark, a thrilling watch-this danger.

“Do you really want to make me happy?” Debra said. “Be here when I get home.”

“Deal,” he said, and stuck out his hand. “Okay if Benny comes over to practice?”

“Sure.” She shook his hand. Benny was the guitar player Pat had recruited for his band. This was the thing turning Pat around: his band, the Garys. She had to admit (after a couple of school events and a battle of the bands in Seattle Center), the Garys weren’t bad. In fact they were pretty good—not as punk as she’d feared, but kind of grubby and straightforward (when she’d likened them to Let It Bleed–era Stones, Pat rolled his eyes). And her son onstage was a revelation. He sang, preened, growled, joked; he exuded something up there that shouldn’t have surprised her but did: an effortless charm. Power. And ever since the band got together, Pat had been the picture of calm. What does it say about a kid that joining a rock band settles him down? But it was undeniable: he was focused and engaged. His motivation still worried her—he talked a lot about hitting it big, about becoming famous—and so she’d tried to explain the dangers of fame, but she couldn’t really be specific, could only make flat, bland speeches about the purity of art and the trappings of success. So she worried that her talk was all a waste of time, like warning a starving person about the dangers of obesity.

“I’ll be home in three hours,” Debra said now. It would be five or six hours, but this was a habit; cutting the time in half so he might get in only half the trouble. “Until then, don’t . . . um . . . don’t . . . uh . . .”

As she looked for the proper scale of warning, Pat’s face broke into a smile, eyes tipping before the corners of his mouth began their slow climb. “Don’t do anything?”

“Yes. Don’t do anything.”

He saluted, smiled, put his headphones back on, grabbed his guitar, and plopped back on the bed. “Hey,” he said when she turned away. “Don’t let Steve talk you into jumping jacks. He likes to watch the jiggly parts.”

She eased the door closed and had just started down the hallway when she looked down at the pipe in her hands. Now, why would he take a pipe out of its hiding place if he didn’t have pot for it? And when she’d asked what he’d been doing, Pat had to dig around in the drawer for the pipe. Wouldn’t it be on top if he’d just thrown it in there? She turned in the hallway, went back, and threw the door open. Pat was sitting back on the bed with his guitar, the nightstand dresser open again. Now, though, he had open on the bed the thing he’d actually been hiding from her: his songwriting book. He was bent over it with a pencil. He sat up quickly, red-faced and furious: “What the hell, Mom?”

She stalked over and grabbed the notebook from his bed, not really sure what she was looking for, her mind going to that place parents’ minds went: Worst-case-scenario-land. He’s writing songs about suicide! About dealing drugs! She flipped to a random page: song lyrics, a few notations about melody—Pat had only a rudimentary understanding of music—fragments of sweet, pained lyrics, like any fifteen-year-old might write, a love song, “Hot Tanya” (awkwardly rhymed with I want ya), some faux-meaningful tripe about the sun and moon and eternity’s womb.