Peter Straub - Lost Boy Lost Girl

The bass notes booming through the ceiling wavered in the air like butterflies.

Through the windows came the sound of cicadas, but Superior Street had never seen a cicada. Something else, Tim thought – what? Overhead, a door slammed. Two pairs of footsteps moved toward the top of the staircase.

‘Enter the son and heir, accompanied by el sidekick-o faithful-o.’

Tim looked toward the staircase and saw descending the steps a pair of legs in baggy blue jeans, closely followed by its twin. A hand slid lightly down the railing; another hand shadowed it. Loose yellow sleeves, then loose navy sleeves. Then Mark Underhill’s face moved into view, all eyebrows, cheekbones, and decisive mouth; just above it floated Jimbo Monaghan’s round face, struggling for neutrality.

Mark kept his gaze downward until he reached the bottom of the staircase and had walked two steps forward. Then he raised his eyes to meet Tim’s. In those eyes Tim saw a complex mixture of curiousity, anger, and secrecy. The boy was hiding something from his father, and he would continue to hide it; Tim wondered what would happen if he managed to get Mark into a private conversation.

No guile on Jimbo’s part – he stared at Tim from the moment his face became visible.

‘Looky here, it’s Uncle Tim,’ Philip said. ‘Tim – you know Mark, and his best buddy-roo, Jimbo Monaghan.’

Reverting to an earlier stage of adolescence, the boys shuffled forward and muttered their greetings. Tim sent his brother a silent curse; now both boys felt insulted or mocked, and it would take Mark that much longer to open up.

He knows more than Philip about his mother’s suicide , Tim thought. The boy glanced at him again, and Tim saw some locked-up knowledge surface in his eyes, then retreat.

‘This guy look familiar to you, Tim?’ Philip asked him.

‘Yes, he does,’ Tim said. ‘Mark, I saw you from my window at the Pforzheimer early this afternoon. You and your friend here were walking toward the movie setup on Jefferson Street. Did you stay there long?’

A startled, wary glance from Mark; Jimbo opened and closed his mouth.

‘Only a little while,’ Mark said. ‘They were doing the same thing over and over. Your room was on that side of the hotel?’

‘I saw you, didn’t I?’

Mark’s face jerked into what may have been a smile but was gone too soon to tell. He edged sideways and pulled at Jimbo’s sleeve.

‘Aren’t you going to stay?’ his father asked.

Mark nodded, swallowing and rocking back on his heels while looking down at his scuffed sneakers. ‘We’ll be back soon.’

‘But where are you going?’ Philip asked. ‘In about an hour, we have to be at the funeral home.’

‘Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.’ Mark’s eyes were sliding from his father to the front door and back again. ‘We’re just going out.’

He was in a nervous uproar, Tim saw. His engine was racing, and he was doing everything in his power to conceal it. Mark’s body wanted to behave exactly as it had on Jefferson Street: it wanted to wave its arms and leap around. In front of his father these extravagant gestures had to be compressed into the most minimal versions of themselves. The energy of misery was potent as a drug. Tim had seen men uncaringly risk their lives under its influence, as if they had been doing speed. The boy was aching to get through the door; Jimbo would soon have to resist more high-pressure pleading. Tim hoped he could stand up to it; whatever Mark had in mind almost had to be reckless, half crazy.

‘I hate this deliberate vagueness,’ Philip said. ‘What’s out ? Where is it?’

Mark sighed. ‘Out is just out, Dad. We got tired of sitting in my room, and now we want to walk around the block or something.’

‘Yo, that’s all,’ Jimbo said, focusing on a spot in the air above Philip’s head. ‘Walk around the block.’

‘Okay, walk around the block,’ Philip said. ‘But be back here by quarter to seven. Or before. I’m serious, Mark.’

‘I’m serious, too!’ Mark shouted. ‘I’m just going outside, I’m not running away!’

His face was a bright pink. Philip backed off, waving his hands before him.

Mark glanced at Tim for a moment, his handsome face clamped into an expression of frustration and contempt. Tim’s heart filled with sorrow for him.

Mark pivoted away, clumped to the door, and was gone, taking Jimbo with him. The screen door slammed shut.

‘Good God,’ Philip said, looking at the door. ‘He does blame me, the little ingrate.’

‘He has to blame someone,’ Tim said.

‘I know who it should be,’ Philip said. ‘Killed herself three times, didn’t she?’

Nodding meaninglessly, Tim went toward the big front window. Mark and Jimbo were moving north along the sidewalk much as they had proceeded down Jefferson Street. Mark was leaning toward his friend, speaking rapidly and waving his hands. His face was still a feverish pink.

‘You see them?’

‘Yep.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘Philip, I think they’re walking around the block.’

‘Didn’t Mark seem awfully tense to you?’

‘Kind of, yes.’

‘It’s the viewing and the funeral service,’ Philip said. ‘Once they’re history, he can start getting back to normal.’

Tim kept his mouth shut. He doubted that Philip’s concept of ‘normal’ would have any real meaning to his son.

On the grounds that the overall roominess more than made up for the added cost, whenever possible Tim Underhill rented Lincoln Town Cars. At a quarter to seven, the boys having returned from their walk in good time, he volunteered to drive everyone to Highland Avenue. They were standing on the sidewalk in the heat. Philip looked at the long black car with distaste.

‘You never got over the need to show off, did you?’

‘Philip, in this car I don’t feel like I’ve been squeezed into a tin can.’

‘Come on, Dad,’ put in Mark, who was looking at the car as if he wanted to caress it.

‘Not on your life,’ Philip said. ‘I’d feel like I was pretending to be something I’m not. Tim, you’re welcome to ride along with us in my Volvo if you don’t think you’d feel too confined.’

Philip’s twelve-year-old Volvo station wagon, the color of a rusty leaf, stood ten feet farther up the curb, as humble and patient as a mule.

‘After you, Alphonse,’ Tim said, and was pleased to hear Mark chuckle.

The Trott Brothers Funeral Home occupied the crest of a hill on Highland Avenue, and to those who looked up at it from the street after they left their vehicles – as did the four men young and old who left the leaf-colored Volvo – it looked as grand and dignified as a great English country house. Quarried stone, mullioned windows, a round turret – a place, you would say, where the loudest sounds would be the whispers of attendants, the rustle of memorial pamphlets, and some quiet weeping. Mark and Jimbo trailed behind as the little group walked toward the imposing building.

A languid man with a drastic combover waved them toward a muted hallway and a door marked TRANQUILLITY PARLOR. On a stand beside the door was a fat white placard.

Mrs Nancy K. Underhill

Viewing: 6:00–7:00 P.M.

Loving Wife and Mother

There, in the Tranquillity Parlor, lay the mortal remains of Nancy K. Underhill within a gleaming bronze coffin, the top half of its lid opened wide as a taxi door. The soft, buttoned interior of the coffin was a creamy off-white; Nancy K. Underhill’s peaceful, empty face and folded hands had been painted and powdered to an only slightly unrealistic shade of pink. None of the four people who entered the small, dimly lighted chamber approached the coffin. Philip and Tim drifted separately to the back of the room and picked up the laminated cards prepared by the funeral home. On one side was a lurid depiction of a sunset over rippling water and a flawless beach; on the other, the Lord’s Prayer printed beneath Nancy’s name and dates. Philip took another of the cards from the stack and handed it to Mark, who had slipped into a seat next to Jimbo in the last row of chairs.