Sociopath? (9 page)

*

“Well, Son,” Renny told him, “tomorrow,
you’ll be sixteen so I suppose it’s time to have the car
discussion. Why don’t you come on into my study and we’ll talk
about it.”

Renny took his place behind the huge mahogany
desk, pointing Rafe to the burgundy club chair in front.

The study, with its elaborately carved walnut
fireplace and walls of bookcases and curio cabinets filled with
Vincennes memorabilia, had always been an intimidating room to the
Vincennes young, who weren’t allowed to enter it without Renny’s
permission. Usually, their father didn’t call them in here for a
less than serious reason and if the talk regarded something about
which Renny was displeased, whatever child was in the hotseat would
leave here bleeding. Not physically, of course, but the old man
could administer a tongue-lashing, without ever raising his voice,
that wounded worse than any actual whip.

The elder and younger Vincennes regarded each
other silently for a moment, a technique Renny employed
deliberately to give himself an advantage. His father was the only
person on earth who could make Rafe anxious.

“Dad…” Rafe started but his father held up
his hand.

“Why don’t you let me say my piece first and
then you can add your two cents worth. The way I’ve got you
figured, Rafe, you’re going to ask for either a Shelby or a
Corvette, probably the Corvette.”

Rafe, who was a master of disguised
expression, couldn’t help but let his astonishment show a
little.

“I’ve given some thought to what methods
you’re going to use to talk me into it. I expect you’re going to
bring up how your mother and I have never come to any of your
parent-teacher conferences or any of your games and how we let you
practically raise your little sister.”

Renny grinned at his son. It was the first
time Rafe realized where his own smile had come from.

“How am I doing so far, Rafe?” he asked,
before going on, “but we don’t have to go through all that. I
freely admit to being a lousy parent to you and Laney. We did all
the right things with the first seven. Do you know how many boring
parent-teacher conferences I sat through in those years, Rafe, even
though all they ever told me was that my kids were getting A’s? And
do you know how many hours of my life have been spent on bleachers?
Enough that I think my ass is permanently deformed. I’ve froze and
roasted watching kids play football and baseball and tennis. I’ve
watched them wrestle and run track and dribble basketballs. I’ve
watched them show horses and dogs. I’ve watched them act and dance
and play and sing in recitals. I’ve gone to their art exhibits. We
thought we were done before you came along, Rafe. Your mother and I
thought it was finally going to be our time. I just didn’t want to
do it anymore. I didn’t think I could sit there and nod to another
teacher. I didn’t think I could subject my butt to another
bleacher.

That’s not to say I haven’t been paying any
attention at all, Rafe. I figured you and Lane were doing fine.
She’s always on the honor roll and I assume you wouldn’t have been
advanced through your classes as you have been if you weren’t
excelling in school. If there had been a problem, I hope I would
have moved to resolve it but it didn’t seem like there were any
problems. At least, no principal has ever called me about either
one of you. And I know what your record is in sports, Rafe. I know
you’re considered a star in football and baseball and
basketball.

I know other things about you too, Rafe. Like
how often you have a girl up at the Cabin. I thought your brothers
and sisters were a lusty bunch, but it appears that you get the
trophy in that area.

I know that you had an affair with Mrs.
Keating next door. I almost wondered if I shouldn’t step in at that
point but if anyone ever seemed as if he could take care of
himself, it was you, so I held off and soon I knew it was over.

The rumors about Bobby Kelly caused me some
concern but then nothing more seemed to come of it.

I know you ride that stallion like a maniac
and that you’ve been taking the boat out for years and that you go
way too fast and way too far. I didn’t do anything about that
either because I judged you to be a risk taker, not a reckless one,
but one who calculates the odds and decides what chances are worth
taking. I figured that was your innate nature and I probably
couldn’t do anything to change it and I probably wouldn’t want to
even if I could.

I know how much you’ve sacrificed to take
care of your sister, Rafe, and that we let you do it because we no
longer wanted to make our own sacrifices as parents. I know how
close you two are, probably too close. I hope you’ve calculated
those risks too, Rafe. I hope you never hurt her because the way
she idolizes you, it would be so very easy for you to do.

So, anyway, the upshot of all this is that
I’m going to buy you the car you want, Rafe. Was I right about it
being the Corvette?”

His father had rendered him speechless so he
just nodded his head yes.

“Do you have anything you want to add to this
conversation, Son?”

“No, Dad.”

“Then you’d better get your jacket so we can
go visit some dealerships. Oh, and by the way, Rafe…”

“What, Dad?”

“I’ll pay the requisite number of tickets but
I do have a limit.”

*

He came home, exultant, behind the wheel of
the ice blue Corvette. Of course, he drove slowly and carefully
because Renny was right behind him in his black Mercedes. He didn’t
go anywhere else that day. He had always been one who enjoyed
anticipation, letting excitement build until when you finally
reached your goal, it was almost like having a climax. He had the
capacity to postpone gratification, patient as a spider in its web.
So he let the car sit in its spot in the garage, not even looking
at it again. And the next morning was Sunday and that meant church.
Personally, he didn’t believe in a single thing the church tried to
teach him. In fact, he thought all religion was a bunch of
superstitious bullshit but going to church was the rent his parents
charged any of their children who still lived at home. If you
wanted to stay at Heron Point, you went to church every Sunday. End
of discussion. He didn’t mind that much. He usually just sat there
in the Vincennes pew at St James’ and thought his own thoughts,
letting the priest’s words go in one ear and out the other, moving
up and down in his seat, something he’d done so often, he could do
it by rote. One good thing about their parents having lost interest
in them was that they’d never insisted that he or Lane go to
confession. Thank God (or whoever!) Wouldn’t that have been a
fucking nightmare? He could have lied to Father O’Reilly without a
qualm, of course, but he wasn’t so sure about Lane. He smiled to
himself. As much as she loved him, he wasn’t quite sure he could
win when God was on the other side.

After mass was over, the folks said they were
going into Baltimore to shop and eat so the kids were on their own.
Rafe told them he’d take Laney out to lunch in his new car, which
he did. He stuck to the speed limit when she was with him although
he felt an ache in his gut, he wanted so badly to put the gas pedal
clear to the floor. After they’d eaten, he took her back to Heron
Point and dropped her off.

And then he drove to an isolated highway,
where he knew there was generally very little traffic and he’d
never seen a cop, and he stomped on it. He felt the car respond
instantly. It seemed to him it was like the stallion, reveling in a
rider that would allow it to go all the way. And just as he
thought, it was like riding or skiing or boating, only more of an
adrenalin-rush than any of them. It was like sex, maybe even a
little better, because he didn’t have to think about pleasing
anyone but himself. He didn’t have to call the car Sweetheart for
fear of hurting its feelings. Although, it was, of course.

He patted it on the dash, “Come on,
Sweetheart, let’s take it on home.”

They raced down the road together. He wished
they could just keep going to the end of the earth.

*

On his birthday night in his bed, Lane told
him wistfully, “I wish I knew of a new thing to give you for your
birthday, Rafe.”

He smiled, the genuine full out smile hardly
anyone ever saw but her, “Honey, you don’t have to give me any new
thing, I’m happy with just the all the old things.”

* *

The other kids at school figured he enjoyed
rubbing their noses in it when he drove into the school parking lot
in the Corvette on Monday morning. They would never have understood
that, although he could definitely be calculating at times to
achieve a desired end, he usually never even gave much thought to
how things, like him having a particular car, would affect others.
The Corvette was all about him and no one else. He was naturally so
self-focused that the idea of wanting to possess something simply
because it was prestigious wouldn’t even have occurred to him.

On the other hand, it didn’t take him long to
realize that the car attracted girls like a 75 percent off sale at
the Riverlook Mall. And he also realized that it opened vast new
horizons in that he could now consider the younger girls who didn’t
drive because he could take them to the cabin himself.

Rhonda Fisher felt her heart drop when she
saw Rafe unwinding his lean brown body out of the Corvette in his
tight jeans and leather jacket. She saw the lock of black hair
hanging over his forehead. She saw the quick white smile gleam when
someone whistled at the car. She knew exactly what it
portended.

“Shit,” she said to herself, “as if it wasn’t
bad enough already.”

*

“Guess what?” she told Linda Dee when they
were having dinner at Big Wong’s that night. “Rafe Vincennes came
to school today in a brand new blue Corvette.”

“If we’re lucky, maybe the little fucker will
kill himself in it.”

* *

He didn’t though. When graduation night came,
there he was. He was valedictorian of his class, of course.
Technically, he’d had enough credits to graduate last year at 15.
His senior year he’d only taken college prep courses. He also
graduated with the highest ever grade point average, which would
have been even higher if they hadn’t had an arbitrary ceiling
beyond which no one could go. In addition, he’d racked up more
athletic letters than any Benedict student ever had. He gave a
short, funny speech, saying all the things adults like to hear from
kids, almost none of which he believed. Rhonda Fisher knew he’d
been inundated with offers from colleges wanting him to attend - on
academic scholarships, baseball scholarships, football
scholarships, basketball scholarships. He could have applied for
other kinds of scholarships and grants as well, in math and science
and English, although so far as she knew, he hadn’t tried for any
of them. She assumed he’d be attending Princeton in the fall as all
the other Vincennes boys, except for Wyatt, had.

A few of the Benedict staff noticed that
Rafe’s parents weren’t in attendance. It was said they were on a
Mediterranean cruise. Even the ones who weren’t big Rafe Vincennes
fans thought it was rather sad that you could accumulate the honors
he had and have parents who didn’t even bother to acknowledge
it.

Rafael Alain Vincennes probably had no idea
when he walked across the stage to receive his diploma how many
sighs of relief followed his passage.

~ ~ ~

He called his parents together. They were at
the long rosewood table in the dining room with cups of coffee in
front of them. Rafe, looking at Renny and Magdelene, hoped he’d
inherited his parents’ genes. They were in their late 50’s now but
it seemed to Rafe, they’d barely changed from his first memories of
them. Renny, dressed in an immaculately tailored chalk gray suit,
was still lean and flat-bellied, much like Rafe himself. His
perfectly razor cut hair was the same except for some silvering
around the temples. His dark eyes could still twinkle or spark
depending on his mood. His smile was easygoing but it could
sometimes lull you into a false sense of security. All Renny’s kids
knew that trying to take on their dad was a lost cause. He’d let
you go ahead and make your argument, let you think you just might
be winning, then demolish you with a few well-chosen words. Rafe
didn’t respect too many people, in fact, he couldn’t really think
of anyone else besides his father but he definitely looked up to
Renny, in the same way a young lion cub acknowledges the
superiority of the leader of the pride.

As for Magdelene, she was still as beautiful
as ever. If she’d been taller, she might have been a model with her
slender, stylish figure and the pale blonde hair that curled softly
around a face like a cameo - ivory skin and lapis lazuli eyes. Of
course, she never would have been a model because being a model is
hard work and Magdelene had never had to work. Her own family was
wealthy and then she’d married Renny who he was even richer so
she’d never known anything but abundance. Rafe figured the hardest
thing she’d ever done was give birth to nine children, of course,
that was probably no picnic….

“I’ve got a proposition for you,” he told
them. “Let me talk first, okay, and then if there are flaws in my
argument, you can point them out.”

Renny wondered what this most interesting of
his kids was going to come up with now. Magdelene was noting how
strong and brown and handsome he looked. She reached over and
brushed a stray swatch of dark hair off his forehead.

“First, I want to put off going to Princeton
for a year. I’d still only be 17 when I start. I’m tired of going
to school and reading books and taking tests and pleasing teachers.
I just want to take life easy and be a bum for a year. I want to
spend my time doing physical stuff, stuff you do outside in the sun
like boating and riding and skiing. I think I earned the time by
graduating at 16.