up real early,' he said, seeming to lose interest. 'I'm going upstairs to catch about four hours, and then I'm going down to the garage again.'
'What for?'
He uttered a crazy laugh and flapped his arms under the kitchen's fluorescent bars as if he would fly. 'What do you think for? I got a lot of work to do! More work than you'd believe!'
'No, you have school tomorrow . . . I . . . I forbid it, Arnie, I absolutely - '
He turned to look at her, study her, and she flinched again. This was like some grinding nightmare that was just going to go on and on.
'I'll get to school,' he said. 'I'll take some fresh clothes in a pack and I'll even shower so I don't smell offensive to anyone in home room. Then, after school's out, I'll go back down to Darnell's. There's a lot of work to be done, but I can do it . . . I know I can . . . it's going to eat up a lot of my savings, though. Plus, I'll have to keep on top of the stuff I'm doing for Will.'
'Your homework . . . your studies"
'Oh. Those.' He smiled the dead, mechanical smile of a clockwork figure. 'They'll suffer, of course, Can't kid you about that. I can't promise you a ninety-three average anymore, either. But I'll get by. I can make C's. Maybe some B's.'
'No! You've got college to think about!'
He came back to the table, limping again, quite badly. He planted his hands on the table before her and leaned slowly down. She thought: A stranger . . . my son is a stranger to me. Is this really my fault? Is it? Because I only wanted what was best for him? Can that be? Please, God, make this a nightmare I'll wake up from with tears on my cheeks because it was so real.
'Right now,' he said softly, holding her gaze, 'the only things I care about are Christine and Leigh and staying on the good side of Will Darnell so I can get her fixed up as good as new. I don't give a shit about college. And if you don't get off my case, I'll drop out of high school. That ought to shut you up if nothing else will.'
'You can't,' she said, meeting his gaze. 'You understand that, Arnold. Maybe I deserve your . . . your cruelty . . . but I'll fight this self-destructive streak of yours with everything I have. So don't you talk about dropping out of school.'
'But I'll really do it,' he answered. 'I don't want you to even kid yourself into thinking I won't. I'll be eighteen in February, and I'll do it on my own then if you don't stay out of this from now on. Do you understand me?'
'Go to bed,' she said tearfully. 'Go to bed, you're breaking my heart.'
'Am I?' Shockingly, he laughed, 'Hurts, doesn't it? I know.'
He left then, walking slowly, the limp pulling his body slightly to the left. Shortly she heard the heavy, tired clump of his shoes on the stairs - also a sound terribly reminiscent of her childhood, when she had thought to herself, The ogre's going to bed.
She burst into a fresh spasm of weeping, got up clumsily, and went out the back door to do her crying in private. She held herself - thin comfort, but better than none - and looked up at a horned moon that was quadrupled through the film of her tears. Everything had changed, and it had happened with the speed of a cyclone. Her son hated her; she had seen it in his face - it wasn't a tantrum, a temporary pique, a passing squall of adolescence. He hated her, and this wasn't the way it was supposed to go with her good boy, not at all.
Not at all.
She stood on the stoop and cried until the tears began to run their course and the sobs became occasional hatchings and gasps. The cold gnawed her bare ankles above her mules and bit more bluntly through her housecoat. She went inside and upstairs. She stood outside Arnie's room indecisively for almost a minute before going in.
He had fallen asleep on the coverlet of his bed. His pants were still on. He seemed more unconscious than asleep, and his face looked horribly old. A trick of the light, coming from the hall and falling into the room from over her