John Connolly - The Lovers

After the chief left, Daniel held his wife as she wept in his arms. He was not sure why she was crying, and he was only surprised that she had any tears left to shed. Perhaps she was weeping at the horror of it, or because this was a new grief caused by the knowledge that her son had not taken his own life, but that his life had instead been taken from him by others. She did not say, and he did not ask her. But when he felt the first of his own tears slide down his cheek, he understood that his were not tears of loss, or of horror, or even of anger. He was relieved. In that moment, he realized that he had felt a kind ofas Ñlt a kind hatred for his son for killing himself. He had been raging at him for the selfishness of the act, for the stupidity of it, for not turning to those who loved him in his moment of direst need. He had hated his son for rendering his father powerless, and for leaving his parents to bear the weight of his awful grief in his stead. For the time that he had believed his son had died at his own hand, Daniel had contemplated the horror of the act during the long, still days and nights, the hours creeping by with relentless sloth. Grief, it seemed, was a kind of matter: it could not be created or destroyed, but merely altered in form. In dying, the sadness that might have driven Bobby to such an act had not dissipated, but had merely transferred itself to those left behind. There had been no note, no explanation, as though any explanation could have sufficed. Instead, there had only been unanswered questions, and the gnawing sense that they had failed their son in some way.

And Daniel’s first instinct had been to blame the girl. His son had not been the same since she had broken off their relationship. Despite his size, and his apparent ease with the world, there was a sensitivity to him, a softness. He had dated before, and there had been breakups and teenage traumas, but he had fallen heavily for the slim young woman with the dark hair and pale green eyes. She was a few years older than Bobby, and she had something special; that was undeniable. There had been rivals for her affections, but she had chosen him. His son knew that. The power had been hers, and he had always struggled slightly with the imbalance that it created in the relationship.

Daniel believed, as most fathers did, that his son was the finest young man in town, maybe even the finest young man he had ever known. He deserved the very best in life: the most rewarding of jobs, the most beautiful of women, the most loving of children. That Bobby did not share this view was both one of his best and worst qualities: admirable in its natural humility, yet frustrating in the way in which it stifled his ambition and caused him to doubt himself. Daniel believed that the girl was clever enough to play on that disparity, but then that was true of all her sex, for Daniel Faraday had always been suspicious of women. He admired them, and was deeply attracted to them (in truth, more than his wife knew, or pretended not to know, because he had acted on that attraction with others more than once during their marriage), but he had never come close to understanding them, and by engaging in casual conquests and then casting them aside he was able to balance this lack of comprehension with a degree of contempt, although he would never have been able to acknowledge his actions to himself in quite those terms. He had watched as the girl manipulated his son, twisting and turning him as though he were caught on a silken thread that could be used to draw him closer or keep him dangling at a distance, as she chose. Bobby knew what was being done, and yet he was so smitten that he could not bring himself to break the bond. His father and mother had discussed it more than once over a bottle of wine, but had differed in their interpretations of the relationship. While Daniel’s wife had acknowledged that the girl was clever, still she felt that there was nothing unusual in her behavior. She was merely doing what all young girls did, or what those who understood the nature of the balance of power between the sexes generally did. The boy wanted her, but as soon as she gave herself to Bobby unconditionally, she would cede control of the relationship to him. Better to force him to prove his loyalty to her before she surrendered herself fully.

Daniel had to concede that his wife had a point, but he disliked seeing his son being played for a fool. Bobby was comparatively naive and inexperienced, even though he was almost twenty-twom tÑt twenty-. He had not yet had his heart truly broken. Then the girl had ended the relationship after Bobby came back from college for the holidays, and that experience had been forced upon him. There had been no warning, and no explanation was given beyond the fact that she believed Bobby was not the man for her. His son had taken it badly, to the extent that it had caused him actual, physical pain, he said: an ache deep in his belly that would not subside.

The breakup had also plunged him into depression, a depression exacerbated by the fact that this was a small town: there were only so many places one could go to drink, to eat, to see a movie, to pass the time. The girl worked behind the bar at Dean’s Place, and Dean’s was where the young people of the town-and many of the older ones too-had for generations gone to congregate. If Bobby wanted to socialize, then Dean’s could be avoided for only so long. Daniel knew that following the breakup there had been encounters at Dean’s between the two young people. Even then, the girl had enjoyed the upper hand. His son had been drinking, while she had not. After one particularly loud exchange, old Dean himself, who ruled his bar like a benevolent dictator, had been forced to warn Bobby against bothering the staff. As a result, Bobby had stayed away from Dean’s for a week, returning home from work each evening and heading straight for his basement hideaway, barely pausing to greet his parents and only emerging to raid the refrigerator or to share an awkward meal at the kitchen table. Sometimes, he even slept on the couch instead of in the adjoining bedroom, not even bothering to undress. Only after some of his friends came by and cajoled him out did the clouds above his head seem to break for a time, and then only for as long as he avoided seeing the girl.

When his body was discovered, Daniel’s first thought was that he had killed himself out of some misplaced devotion to Emily. After all, there seemed to be nothing else troubling him in life. He was saving for college, and seemed to have every intention of returning to further study, hinting that perhaps Emily might come with him and get a job in the city; he was popular with his friends both there and at home; and his natural disposition had always tended toward the optimistic, or had until the dissolution of his relationship.

Emily should have stayed with his son, thought Daniel. He was a fine boy. She should not have hurt him. She should not have broken his heart. When she had arrived at the death site, just as the body was being carried across the fields to the waiting ambulance, Daniel had been unable to speak to her. She had approached him, her eyes glistening, her arms raised to hold him and to be held in turn, but he had turned away from her, one hand outstretched behind him, the palm raised in a gesture that was plain not only to her but to all who had witnessed it, and in that way he had made it clear where he felt the blame for his son’s death lay.

And so Bobby’s mother had wept tears of grief and pain at the news that her son’s life had been taken from him by others, of incomprehension at the manner of her son’s death, while his father had felt some of the weight lifted from his shoulders, and he marveled at his own selfishness. Now, in the basement, the anger came back, and his hands formed themselves into fists as he raged at the faceless thing that had killed his son. Somewhere above him the doorbell rang, but he barely heard it over the roaring in his head. Then his name was called, and he allowed the tension to ease from his body. He released a ragged breath.