Stranglehold (15 page)

"What was?"

"That one word. The word you just used."

He leaned back in the chair.

"
Always
," he said.

January 1995

It took until two weeks after Christmas for the divorce to come through, not because Arthur was contesting anything but because the wheels of justice nearly stopped turning entirely that time of year.

The terms were fine as far as she was concerned. She hadn't asked for support beyond however long it took her to get back to work again, just as she hadn't in her first marriage. But the child support was generous and she had little doubt that he'd comply with the order.

If Arthur cared for anyone it was his parents and his son.

At Christmas, Arthur had always gone overboard on presents but this year it bordered on the ridiculous. A new four-speed bike. A basketball hoop and net. Rollerblades. A Sega Genesis Game Gear and six game cartridges at about forty dollars apiece. A TV set for Robert's room to play them on.

If he was trying to buy her son's affection, Arthur was at least going about it in a big way. The only thing she hadn't much cared for was having to send Robert over on Christmas Day to collect all this stuff. It was their day, she thought, mother and son, in the only home he'd known all his life. Arthur was intruding on that.

But the settlement naturally included visitation—one overnight a week and one weekend a month and a reasonable split on the holidays. So Robert sat around his father's Christmas tree in his newly rented house for the afternoon, opening presents with Ruth and Harry. So what. Lydia had him Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. The important times. She guessed she could live with that. She guessed she'd have to.

She'd gotten the house and furniture and sufficient funds to buy a new car. She'd been meaning to buy one in better shape than hers for a long time anyway.

"What we have here, though," she was saying to Barb on the telephone a few weeks later, "is a funny kind of situation."

"How so?"

"Well, half the time he doesn't seem to want to go visit Arthur. Christmas was really an exception."

"
Robert?
"

"I know. He's always been crazy about his father. But I don't think that's true anymore. It sure isn't lately. You know what he said to me when the papers came through? He smiled and said, `Mom?
Are we divorced now?
' Can you believe that?"

"So what are you doing?"

"If it were up to me I'd let him do whatever he wants to do. Stay home if he feels like it. But you know Arthur, he's going to insist upon his rights."

"Is he still doing that weird knee-chest thing?"

She sighed. "Sometimes. Yeah, I'm afraid he is."

"And...the other?"

"That too. And the stuttering and the nightmares and all the rest of it. Nothing's changed."

"Well, it might be the divorce. He might just be mad at Arthur for breaking up the family. I know it happens with a lot of kids. Or maybe there's just nobody around to play with over at Arthur's place."

"He complains about that. All the kids that live around there are older."

"Maybe that's the problem, then."

"Maybe, I don't know. All I know is I feel terrible having to send him over there when he doesn't feel like going just because the court says I've got to. I mean, Robert should have some say in this too."

"Kids never get say. Kids are still pretty much property. You know that."

"I know. But every time it happens I feel like I'm kicking the family dog or something. I feel like shit."

She heard a car pull up into the driveway.

"That's Arthur, Barb. I gotta go."

"Okay. Phone me."

"I will."

She hung up and called upstairs.

"Robert! Your father's here."

Arthur walked in wearing the blond
shearling
jacket she'd given him for Christmas the year before. Maybe it was supposed to be a reminder to her, some kind of reproach. That no gifts had passed between them this year or ever would again. She didn't know and didn't want to know.

He was kicking the snow off his boots on the lip of the doorstep, and when he finished that he turned around and she saw that he was also wearing a pistol in a cowboy-style tooled leather holster on his belt.

"What the hell is that for, Arthur?"

"What?"

"You come to pick up your son with a gun on your hip?"

"I'm carrying some cash from the restaurant. It's out in the car. I have a permit,
Liddy
."

"I know you have a permit. Just don't do it again, Arthur. Ever."

"Oh, for chrissake."

"I mean it."

She called up to Robert again. It was hard keeping the anger out of her voice but she tried.

This time he came downstairs. He was carrying a small box of his plastic guys and some copies of
Cracked
and
Mad
. His boots and jacket were on so he was ready. She was relieved. He didn't look quite so reluctant to be going along this time. Which meant she didn't have to feel so guilty.

"When will you be back?"

"I'll have him back by dinnertime."

"Fine."

She bent down to give him a kiss and a hug. Pretty soon, she thought, she wouldn't be bending anymore. She'd be standing on tiptoe the way he was growing.

"Bye, honey. Have a good time."

"Bye, Mom." He kissed her back. His lips were still wet and smooth. Like a baby's lips.

"Arthur?"

He turned to her.

"Lose the gun, please."

He nodded and they left together out into the lightly falling snow.

Ellsworth, New Hampshire

He'd come here often as a boy. The property was just off his parents' property. There was a hill leading down to a winding solitary stream where you could catch crayfish in summer and which, even now in the dead of winter, slashed its arterial way down the mountain like an open wound, defeating the freezing flesh of ice which attempted to close over it.

You passed the stream, crawled up the banks, and you were in a field of tall brown grass and low scattered scrub. He'd hunted here many times—quail and the occasional rabbit. He wasn't supposed to. But Old Man
Wingerter
never got down this way very often back then and he was dead now, his property in dispute between his surviving daughters. Nobody was going to give a damn what he did here these days.

"Quiet now," he said to the boy.

They both were breathing hard from the climb up over the banks and the boy was cold, he was shivering. But Arthur could see he was excited too. What kid wouldn't be? Out here with his dad and his dad's brand-new AK-47? Like Cowboys and Indians. Only better. Because the weapon was starkly, coldly real and even the quiet kids like Robert had some sense of its power. Hell, the kid had seen the
Rambo
movies, right?

But it took over an hour of moving slowly and carefully through the grass and brush before they saw anything. And by then it was clear that Robert was getting bored with the game. Kids these days had lousy attention spans, he thought. When he was a kid he could go all day with a pitiful little .22 in his hands. It had all the stopping power of a gnat. But he loved the .22 anyway. You had to have patience to hunt. Patience and desire.

It was obvious his kid had neither.

He heard Robert sigh behind him. Like Arthur was putting him through something.

The kid had no appreciation.

At least he was basically keeping quiet about it. Not tramping around screwing up the hunt like a lot of kids might do. He was good for that much, anyway.

When the rabbit bolted out of the brush not four feet away from them, Arthur was ready, the weapon on full automatic, spraying the ground in a short tight arc that exploded through the bare dry brush, turning it to powder, and exploded the rabbit too—a wet furry brown-and-red mess lying in the snow.

One ear gone.

A leg almost shot away.

"Jesus! Jesus!" Robert was saying behind him.

The kid was astonished. The kid couldn't believe what he'd seen.

Arthur whooped and laughed and held the rabbit up for their inspection. Robert wouldn't think that hunting was boring now. No way. Not anymore.

"Did you see that? We damn near stepped on him! Most times you've got to have yourself some dogs to get one of these guys. We got lucky!"

Jeez, God
was all the kid was saying.

Shaking his head. Eyes wide like he'd seen a ghost.

And he realized then that it wasn't just astonishment that he was seeing on his son's face, though that was there too. It was also—inexplicably—horror.

Plymouth, New Hampshire

By 6:45 she was beginning to get mad. Dinnertime was normally 6:00/6:30, and he knew that, and even though the sautéed chicken would do just fine on simmer she still had the rice to make once Robert got home and she still had to steam the vegetables, and the point was, anyway, that he deliver him back on time, not whenever he damn well felt like it.

At just before seven she heard the car pull in, heard its door slam and then heard it pull right out again. That Arthur was leaving quickly was probably just as well. She'd been nearly ready to go out there and make the kind of scene that Robert probably didn't need.

He came in slamming the door behind him and ran for the stairs.

"Robert?"

She smelled it right away.

He'd soiled himself
.

He never did this during the day.

"Robert?"

She put down the pan of vegetables and followed him. The bathroom door was closed. His coat lay on the floor. "Robert? Are you all right?"

She heard him crying.
To hell with privacy
, she thought. Even though she'd always been careful to provide it for him. She opened the door.

His soiled pants and underpants were lying on the floor. He was on the toilet.

No. Not quite on it
.

He was braced above it, hands clutching either side of the seat holding him up just over it, as though.

She looked at him, tears running down his cheeks.

"It
hurts
!" he said.

 
...
as though he couldn't bear to put his full weight down and
...

She felt the room begin to reel and she knelt in front of him, her hands fluttering out to him, to his arms, to his legs, like the wings of strange trapped birds—she didn't know where to touch him.