Locust Lane(17)
She took her coffee to her sunny alcove, where she checked the news on her computer. No new facts, although on Twitter, speculation was running amok. There were claims that it was a burglary gone wrong. Someone else said the victim was Bill’s lover. There was a photo of squad cars and official-looking vans swarming Locust. It was an eerily discordant sight, like a school of sharks in the country club pool.
But the kids were safe. That was the main thing. Her thoughts returned to the more pressing problem of what she was going to do about her son when they released him from school. She didn’t like this part, imposing discipline. She had to be careful not to make too much of it. Celia had raised three teenagers—she knew that lying came with the territory. But in this case, it made no sense, at least none that she could understand. Why would Jack say he was at Hannah’s house if he wasn’t? He could go where he pleased. He was weeks away from turning eighteen, months away from attending college. He had all the freedom a boy could ask for. He’d traveled alone to tennis camp in Florida three years ago; he’d flown unaccompanied to London to visit his uncle last summer. Just a few days ago he’d spent the night in Boston with Hannah and Christopher. And yet he’d still looked her in the eye and lied.
She contemplated calling Oliver to see what he thought, but that risked reopening the old tensions between father and son. Things had been peaceful between them recently—there was no reason to shatter the cease-fire. Oliver had a tendency to overreact where Jack was concerned, turning misdemeanors into federal cases. He’d always been easier on Drew and Scotty. And why not? They idolized him. And they didn’t exactly present the same difficulties as their youngest brother. They would never deviate from Oliver’s plans for them. What sport to play (lacrosse and baseball), what college to attend (Dartmouth or, if absolutely necessary, Amherst), what career to pursue (law or finance)—they would always heed their father. It amazed her how easily he could command respect without ever being cruel, without even a hint of the brutality her own father, the fearsome John de Vissier, had inflicted on his own offspring.
But it had always been different with Jack. From the time he was little, he’d bucked against paternal authority. And Oliver, in his own calm and reasonable way, would never give an inch. He loved the boy, there was no doubt about that. Perhaps best of all. But he was hard on him. Maybe because, beneath their surface differences, they shared a stubborn streak. Drew and Scotty might be upset at their rare Little League strikeouts, but they were able to shake it off before making it back to the bench. Jack, however, would rage like Lear on his blasted heath over every missed swing.
Although she did not care for the tantrums, Celia sympathized with the boy. As the youngest, he was acutely aware of the examples set by his father and brothers. Not that Drew and Scotty were all that perfect. Not if you knew them as well as she did. Drew’s fierce blue eyes always seemed to be judging what was happening around him, and the verdict was usually guilty. His face was settling into a permanent scowl; he’d developed a rasping, solitary cough whose sole purpose was to express impatience. He’d taken to drumming his fingers, sometimes so loudly that it would stop people speaking. As a boy, the power in his broad shoulders and unbreakable wrists had been deployed for athletic triumph. Now, as he abandoned sports, she could see that his strength was transforming into that of a boardroom bully.
Scotty’s flaws went in the opposite direction. His once-sharp eyes were now smudged by a vacant satisfaction, his thin lips were always a little slack. He was every bit as strongly built as Drew, but he seemed to be in the process of powering down, as if he’d used his strength to exit the turbulent atmosphere of adolescence and was happy to glide through a frictionless manhood. Never a talker, he was now encased in a silence that she feared signified an expanding void. His friendly smile attracted people to him, yet it was distributed indiscriminately, as if it was more of a buffer against intimacy than an invitation to it.
But most people, including their little brother, only saw a pair of tall, broad-shouldered, strong-jawed young men who succeeded at everything they tried. Jack lacked their ability to hide his flaws. And he was well aware that big things were expected of him. But the world was not exactly proving to be his oyster. Fearing failure or, worse, invisibility, he drew attention to himself by misbehaving. Talking back to teachers. Staying out past curfew. Being a little too rough on the playground. Using his intelligence and sharp tongue as weapons.
Eighth grade had been particularly bad, his rebelliousness now fueled by puberty. His anger focused on the female of the species. There were tense phone calls from concerned mothers. It all reached a nadir when he came perilously close to getting suspended for calling his art teacher a bitch. Celia had to pull out all the stops to keep that from happening. She began to worry that the pressure that had turned her first two sons into diamonds was grinding her youngest into toxic dust.
His freshman year was worse. Scotty was a senior then, the big man on campus, whose triumphs Jack took as a personal affront. And so he acted out. First, he got kicked off the tennis team after throwing a profanity-laced, racket-splintering hissy fit that would have made McEnroe blush. There were more run-ins with faculty; more calls from parents. The most disturbing incident, however, came on the evening Celia stepped into his room to find him seated shirtless at his computer, his back to the door. She’d knocked, unheard—his earbuds played some brutal growling music. On-screen, a horrifying video clip played: a woman kneeled, naked, her breasts pinched painfully together by leather straps. Her gagged mouth and chest were smeared with blood that streamed from her nose. Her frightened eyes, rimmed with mascara or bruises or both, skittishly roamed the hooded, hairy-shouldered men encircling her, all of whom stroked grotesquely swollen members that they pointed at her like muskets.