the evening before they left and was relieved to find they had both absolved me of blame in the affair of Arnie's car (which they still hadn't even seen). They had apparently decided it was a private obsession. That was fine by me.
Regina was busy packing. Arnie and Michael and I got their Oldtown canoe on top of their Scout and tied it down. When it was done, Michael suggested to his son - with the air of a powerful king conferring an almost unbelievable favour on two of his favourite subjects - that Arnie go in and get a few beers.
Arnie, affecting both the expression and the tones of amazed gratitude, said that would be super. As he left, he dropped a wink my way.
Michael leaned against the Scout and lit a cigarette. 'Is he going to get tired of this car business, Denny?'
'I don't know,' I said.
'You want to do me a favour?'
'Sure, if I can,' I said cautiously I was pretty sure he was going to ask me to go to Arnie, act the Dutch uncle part, and try to 'talk him out of it'.
But instead he said, 'If you get a chance, go down to Darnell's while we're gone and see what sort of progress he's making. I'm interested.'
'Why is that?' I asked, thinking immediately it was a pretty damn rude question - but by then it was already out.
'Because I want him to succeed,' he said simply, and glanced at me. 'Oh, Regina's still dead set against it. If he has a car, that means he's growing up. And if he's growing up, that means . . . all sorts of things,' he finished lamely. 'But I'm not so down on it. You couldn't characterize me as dead set against it anyway, at least not anymore. Oh, he caught me by surprise at first . . . I had visions of some dead dog sitting out in front of our house until Arnie went off to college - that or him choking to death on the exhaust some night.'
The thought of Veronica LeBay jumped into my head, all unbidden.
'But now . . . ' He shrugged, glanced at the door between the garage and the kitchen, dropped his cigarette, and scuffed it out. 'He's obviously committed. He's got his sense of self-respect on the line. I'd like to see him at least get it running.'
Maybe he saw something in my face; when he went on he sounded defensive.
'I haven't quite forgotten everything about being young,' he said. 'I know a car is important to a kid Arnie's age. Regina can't see that quite so clearly. She always got picked up. She was never faced with the problems of being the picker-upper. I remember that a car is important . . . if a kid's ever going to have any dates.'
So that's where he thought it was at. He saw Christine as a means to an end rather than as the end itself. I wondered what he'd think if I told him that I didn't think Arnie had ever looked any further than getting the Fury running and legal. I wondered if that would make him more or less uneasy.
The thump of the kitchen door closing.
'Would you go take a look?'
'I guess so,' I said. 'If you want.'
'Thanks.'
Arnie came back with the beers. 'What's the thanks for?' he asked Michael. His voice was light and humorous, but his eyes flicked between us carefully. I noticed again that his complexion was really clearing, and his face seemed to have strengthened. For the first time, the two thoughts Arnie and dates didn't seem mutually exclusive. It occurred to me that his face was almost handsome - not in any jut-jawed lifeguard king-of-the-prom way, but in an interesting, thoughtful way. He would never be Roseanne's type, but . . .
'For helping with the, canoe,' Michael said casually.
'Oh.'
We drank our beers. I went home. The next day the happy threesome went off together to New York, presumably to rediscover the family unity that had been lost over the latter third of the summer.
The day before they were due back I took a ride down to Darnell's Garage - as much to satisfy my own curiosity as Michael Cunningham's.
The garage, standing in front of the block-long lot of junked cars, looked just as attractive in daylight as it had on the evening we had brought Christine - it had all the charm of a dead gopher.