"I don't think you understand, Mark," I said. "It's too late for that face. I heard you on the escalator. I heard your voice. It's not the one I know, and even if I hadn't heard it, I've seen that expression a thousand times before. It's the one you put on for the grown-ups you've hurt, but you're not three years old anymore. You're a man. That puppy-dog face is inappropriate. No, it's worse than that. It's pathetic."
Mark looked surprised for a half a second. Then, as if on command, his expression changed. He withdrew his lip, and suddenly his face looked more mature. Altering his expression so quickly was a blunder on his part, and I felt a sudden advantage.
"It must be hard," I said, "to juggle so many feces, so many lies. I'm
sorry for
you—concocting that story about the gun and a murder just so Violet would send you money. How stupid do you think she is? Did you really imagine that she would wire you money after all you've done?"
Mark lowered his eyes and looked at the table. "It's not a story." He spoke to me in the voice I knew.
"I don't believe you."
Mark raised his eyes but not his chin. The blue irises were liquid with feeling. I recognized that look, too. I had fallen for it again and again. "Teddy told me he did it—that he killed him."
"But this was all long before you were at Hazelden. Why did you run off with Teddy now?"
"He asked me to come, and I was afraid to say no."
"You're lying," I said.
Mark shook his head vigorously. "No!" There was a little shout in his voice. Three tables away from us, a woman turned her head toward the sound.
"Mark," I said, keeping my voice very low, "do you understand how berserk you sound? You could have come back with me from Minneapolis. I was there to take you home." I paused. "I saw you in the wig, saw you get into the taxi with him..." I stopped when Mark smirked and shrugged his shoulders.
"What are you smiling about?"
"I don't know. You're acting like I'm a queen or something."
"Well, what's it all about? Are you telling me that you and Teddy aren't lovers?"
"It's just for kicks. It's nothing serious. I'm not gay—only with him…"
I studied Mark's face. He looked a little embarrassed, nothing more. I leaned toward him. "What kind of a person goes off with someone he thinks is a murderer, claiming to be afraid of him, and then has a few kicks on the side?"
Mark didn't answer me.
"That man destroyed one of your father's paintings. Doesn't that bother you? A portrait of you, Mark."
"It wasn't me," he said in a sulky voice. His eyes had gone blank.
"Yes,
it was," I said. "What are you talking about?"
"It didn't look like me," he said. "It was ugly."
I was silent. Mark's antipathy to the portrait blew like a breeze through me. It changed things. I wondered if it had affected Giles's motives. He must have known how Mark felt.
"Mom kept it in the barn all wrapped up. She didn't like it either."
"I see," I said.
"I don't get why it's such a big deal. Dad made lots of paintings. That was just one—"
"Just imagine how he would have felt," I said.
Mark shook his head. "He wasn't even around."
The word "around" set me off. Looking into Mark's shallow, dead eyes and hearing that moronic euphemism for his father's death made me furious. "That painting was better than you are, Mark. It was more real, more alive, more powerful than you have ever been or will ever be. You are the thing that's ugly, not that painting. You're ugly and empty and cold. You're something your father would hate." I was breathing loudly through my nose. My rage overwhelmed me. I made an effort to gain control of it.
"Uncle Leo," Mark simpered, "that's mean."
I swallowed. My face was shaking. "It's nevertheless true. As far as I can tell, it's the only thing that is true. I have no idea if anything you've said is true, but I know your father would be ashamed of you. Your lies don't even make sense. They're not rational. They're stupid. The truth is easier. Why not tell the truth for once?"
Mark was calm. He seemed fascinated by my anger. Then he said, "Because I don't think people will like it"
I grabbed Mark's right wrist and began to squeeze. I put all my strength into that grip, and as I looked into his startled eyes, I felt glad. "Why don't you try the truth now?" I said.
"That hurts," he said.
His passivity amazed me. Why didn't he shake me off? Keeping up the pressure, I grunted at him, "Tell me now. You've been faking it for years, haven't you? I've never really seen you, have I? You stole Matt's knife and then pretended to search for it, pretended to be sorry he lost it." I grabbed Mark's other wrist and gripped it so hard a pain flashed through my neck. I stared at his Adam's apple, at his soft, red lips and slightly flattened nose that I realized was identical to Lucille's. "You betrayed Matt, too."
"You're hurting me," he moaned.
I gripped him harder. I hadn't known I had it in me. I realized that I was panting for breath, but only because I heard myself gasp out the words, "I want to hurt you." I felt a lifting sensation inside my head, an intense pleasure of emptiness and freedom. I remembered the phrase "blind with rage" and thought to myself, that's wrong. I saw. every nuance of pain in his face and each one made me feel drunk.
"Let go of him, now." The man's voice startled me. I dropped Mark's wrists and looked up.
"I don't know what's going on here, but I'm going to call security and have you thrown out if you don't stop right now." The man had a bulbous nose and pink skin and was wearing an apron. "It's all right," Mark said. He had chosen his innocent look for the occasion. I saw his mouth tremble. "I'm okay now, really."
The man looked at Mark's face and then put his hand on Mark's shoulder. "Are you sure?" he said. After that, he turned to me. "If you lay a hand on that kid again, I'll come over here and knock your head off. Do you understand?"
I didn't speak. My eyes felt as if they had sand in them, and I stared down at the tabletop. My arms hurt. When I tried to sit up straight, a searing pain moved up my spine. I had somehow managed to throw my back out clutching Mark's wrists. I could hardly move. Mark, on the other hand, looked fine. He started to talk.
"Sometimes I think there's something wrong with me, that maybe I am crazy. I don't know. I want people to like me, I guess. I can't help it. Sometimes I get confused, like when I've met two different people in two different places and then I meet them at the same party or something, and I don't know how to act. It's pretty confusing. I know you think I didn't like Matt, but you're wrong about that. I liked him a lot. He was my best friend. I just wanted the knife. It wasn't personal or anything. I just took it. I don't know why, but I like stealing. Sometimes when we were little and we'd have a fight about something, Matt would get all sad and he'd start crying and say, 'I'm so sorry, Mark. Forgive me! Forgive me!' He talked like that. It was kind of funny. But I remember that I wondered why I wasn't like that I didn't feel sorry."
I tried to adjust myself so that I could look at him. I was hunched over but managed to lift my eyes toward his face. He continued to talk in a tone as vacant as his expression. "There's a voice inside my head. I hear it, but nobody else does. People wouldn't like it, so I use other voices for them. Teddy knows about me, because we're the same. He's the only one, but even with him it's not that voice, not the one in my head."
I pulled my hands back from the table. "What about Dr. Monk?" I said.
Mark shook his head. "She thinks she's smart, but she's not."
"Everything between us," I said, "has been a sham."
Mark squinted at me. "No, you just don't understand. I've always liked you, always, since I was a little kid."
I couldn't really nod. I wondered how I would stand up. "I don't know if anything happened to that boy or not, but if you think something did, if you really believe he's dead, you have to go to the police."
"I can't," he said.
"You have to, Mark."
"Me's in California," Mark blurted out. "He ran off with another guy. Teddy wanted to fool you and he got me to go along with it. There's no murder. It was all a big joke."
Well before he had finished speaking, I believed him. It was the only thing that made sense. The boy wasn't dead. He was alive in California. The cruelty of the story combined with my own gullibility shamed me, and my whole body felt hot. I moved my arms onto the table and tried to heave myself up and out of the chair. A shooting pain burned through my neck and down the middle of my back. There would be little dignity in my exit. "Are you coming back to New York?" I said to Mark. "Or are you staying here? Violet is finished with you if you don't come back. She wanted you to know that. You're nineteen. You can fend for yourself."
Mark looked at me. "Are you okay, Uncle Leo?"
I couldn't stand up. My body was wrenched to one side and my neck stuck out at an angle that must have made me look like a large injured bird.
Giles was suddenly in front of me, and I had the eerie sensation that he had been near us all along. "Let me give you a hand," he said. He sounded genuinely concerned and that frightened me. A second later, he took hold of my elbow. In order to prevent him from touching me, I would have had to shake my arm and realign my whole body. I couldn't do it. "You should see a doctor," he went on. "If we were in New York, I'd call my chiropractor. He's great. Once I screwed up my back dancing, if you can believe it."
"We'll take you to your room, Uncle Leo. Won't we, Teddy?"
"No problem."
It was a long, painful walk. Every step I took sent a jab of pain from my thigh to my neck, and because I couldn't lift my head, I saw very little of what was around me. With Teddy on one side and Mark on the other, I felt vaguely threatened. They led me forward with a display of courtesy and solicitude that made me think of actors who had been asked to improvise a scene with a crippled mute. Giles did most of the talking, carrying on a monologue about chiropractors and acupuncturists. He recommended Chinese herbs and Pilâtes, then moved from alternative medicine to art, mentioning his collectors, recent sales, and a feature article on him somewhere. I knew that his chatter wasn't really idle, that he was moving toward a turn, and then he took it. He brought up Bill's canvas.
I closed my eyes, hoping to block out his words, but he was saying that he hadn't meant to hurt anyone, that he wouldn't "dream" of it, that it had come to him as an inspiration, as an avenue of subversion as yet unexplored in art. He sounded just like Hasseborg. I think his choice of words might have been nearly the same as the critic's. As he talked, I thought he gripped my arm a little more tightly. "William Wechsler," he said, "was a remarkable artist, but the canvas I bought was a minor work." I was glad I couldn't look at him. "In my piece, I really think it transcended itself."
"That's rot," I said. I was nearly whispering. We had turned down the long corridor that led to my room, and its emptiness unsettled me more. A soda machine glowed in the dim hallway. I didn't remember passing it earlier and wondered how I had managed to miss that large incandescent object so close to my door.
"What you fail to understand," Giles continued, "is that my work, too, has a personal side to it. William Wechsler's portrait of his son, my own M&M, Me 2, Mark the Shark, is now part of a very special tribute to my own late mother."
I decided not to speak. All I wanted was to get away from them. I wanted to throw my wracked body into my room and slam the door behind me.
"Mark and I share the same regard for our mothers. Did you know that?"
"Teddy," Mark said, "forget it" His tone was gruff.
I was looking down at the carpet. They had stopped walking and I heard a soft click. Teddy was putting a card in a door.
"This isn't my room," I said.
"No, it's ours. Ours is closer. You can stay here. We've got two beds."
I took a breath. "No, thank you," I said as Giles began to push on the door. As the door moved, I anticipated seeing a room like mine, but instead I looked through the opening and saw that something was terribly wrong. The room smelled of smoke—not cigarette smoke but of something that had been burned. From the hallway I saw only part of the room, but the carpeted floor in front of me was strewn with refuse—a room-service tray littered with cigarette butts, a half-eaten hamburger that had drooled ketchup onto the carpet. Lying beside the tray were a woman's bikini underpants and a badly burned sheet that had been crumpled into a ball. I could see the ragged brown and ocher marks left by the fire, but there were also what looked like blood spots all over it, deep red stains that closed my throat when I saw them. Lying across the crumpled sheet were the coils of a pale nylon rope and, not far from the rope, a black revolver. I'm quite sure of what I saw, although my glimpse of that bizarre still life had the quality of a hallucination even while I was looking at it.
Giles tugged on my arm. "Come on in and have a drink."
"No," I said. "I'll find my room." I dug my heels into the carpet.
"Come on, Uncle Leo," Mark whined at me.
I straightened up, moving my spine through ratcheting pain and then shook my arm loose from Mark's hand. My lips were quivering. I moved back from the door, shuffled to the other side of the hallway, and leaned against the wall for a moment before I started to lope away, but Giles leapt toward me and flung out his arm. "Just working through a few new ideas," he said, pointing into the room. I had hunched over again. I simply couldn't endure standing erect. He leaned over me and whispered, "But Professor, aren't you curious about me?" Then Giles put his fingers on my head. I could feel his hand on my scalp, felt him playing with strands of my hair, and when I looked him in the eyes, he smiled. "Have you ever thought of using a little color?" he said. I tried to shake my head, but he grabbed me on either side of my face, pressing the sides of my glasses into my skin, and then he slammed my head against the wall. I grunted with pain.