Michael looked down at the leaves, then around at his yard. Beneath the
hedge and under the overhang of the garage, cold snow glimmered in the
coming dark, livid and stubbornly waiting for reinforcements. Waiting for
32 REGINA AND MICHAEL
She's real fine, my 409,
My four-speed, dual-quad, Positraction 409.
— The Beach Boys
Regina was tired—she tired more easily these days, it seemed—and they
went to bed together around nine, long before Arnie came in. They made love
that was dutiful and joyless (lately they made love a lot, it was almost
always dutiful and joyless, and Michael had begun having the unpleasant
feeling that his wife was using his penis as a sleeping pill), and as they lay in
their twin beds after, Michael asked casually: "How did you sleep last
night?"
"Quite well," Regina said candidly, and Michael knew she was lying. Good.
"I came up around eleven and Arnie seemed restless," Michael said, still
keeping his voice casual. He was deeply uneasy now—there had been
something in Arnie's face tonight, something he hadn't been able to read
because of the damned shadows. It was probably nothing, nothing at all, but it
glowed in his mind like a baleful neon sign that simply would not shut off.
Had his son looked guilty and scared? Or had it just been the light? Unless he
could resolve that, sleep would be a long time coming tonight and it might not
come at all.
"I got up around one," Regina said, and then hurried to add, "Just to use the
bathroom. I checked in on him." She laughed a little wistfully. "Old habits die
hard, don't they?"
"Yes," Michael said. "I guess they do."
"He was sleeping deeply then. I wish I could get him to wear pyjamas in cold
weather."
"He was in his skivvies?"
"Yes."
He settled back, immeasurably relieved and more than a little ashamed of
himself as well. But it was better to know… for sure. It was all very well for
him to tell Arnie that he knew the boy could no more commit a murder than
he could walk on water. But the mind, that perverse monkey the mind can
conceive of anything and seems to take a perverse delight in doing so. Just
maybe, Michael
thought,
lacing his hands behind his head and looking up at
the dark ceiling, just maybe that's the peculiar damnation of the living. In the
mind a wife can rut, laughing, with a best friend, a best friend can cast plots
against you and plan backstabbings, a son can commit murder by auto.
Better to be ashamed and put the monkey to sleep.
Arnie had been here at one o'clock. It was unlikely Regina was mistaken
about the time because of the digital clock-radio on their bureau—it told the
time in numbers that were big and blue and unmistakable. His son had been
here at one o'clock, and the Welch boy had been run down three miles away
twenty-five minutes later. Impossible to believe that Arnie could have
dressed, gone out (without Regina, who had surely been lying wakeful,
hearing him), gone down to Darnell's, gotten Christine, and driven out to
where Moochie Welch had been killed. Physically impossible.
Not that he had ever believed it to begin with.
The mind-monkey was satisfied. Michael rolled over on his right side, slept,
and dreamed that he and his nine-year old son were playing miniature golf on
an endless series of small Astro-Turfed greens where windmills turned and
tiny water-hazards lay in wait and he dreamed that they were alone, all alone
in the world, because his son's mother had died in childbirth—very sad;
people still remarked on how inconsolable Michael had been—but when
they went home, he and his son, the house would be theirs alone, they would
eat spaghetti right from the pot like a couple of bachelor slobs, and when the
dishes were washed they would sit at a kitchen table hidden beneath spread
newspapers and build model cars with harmless plastic engines.
In his sleep Michael Cunningham smiled. Beside him, in the other bed,
Regina did not. She lay awake and waited for the sound of the door that
would tell her that her son had come in from the world outside.
When she heard the door open and close when she heard his step on the
stairs… then she would be able to sleep.
Maybe.
