Never Look Back. Robert Ross

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ “How many times have I told you not to read this kind of garbage?”

      He stuck out his jaw. “I liked it. Besides, Philip Kaye lives here. I got it from the library.”

      She shook her head. “Go to your room and stay there. We’ll talk about this tomorrow when I’m not so angry.” That was one of her rules of good parenting. Arguments were counterproductive and did no one any good. If someone was angry in the Muir family, discussions were to be tabled until everyone had calmed down and could talk rationally.

      The following morning, when Chris came down to breakfast, his mother had sat down with him at the table and told him, in a calm, reasonable voice, why he shouldn’t read those kinds of books. He knew what was required—he shut his mind off and didn’t listen to anything other than her vocal inflections, taking her cues to nod and agree when called for.

      It was the same old lecture, anyway, the one he always got when he was late, whether it was five minutes or an hour. Kids disappear all the time, Chris, so when you don’t come home when we’re expecting you, we fear the worst. Yes, I know you’re a big boy and you think you can take care of yourself, but that’s probably what all those kids on the milk cartons thought, too. Do you understand me? We gave you a cell phone so you could call us from anywhere, at any time, so we wouldn’t worry. And when you have it turned off and we can’t reach you, well, of course we expect the absolute worst. We don’t want to have to go down to the police morgue and identify your body sometime. You know we worry—do you enjoy making us worry?

      And on and on it would go, until she finally wound down. Finally, Chris mumbled an apology and slipped out of the house to the gym. As he went through his workout, he wondered, for maybe the thousandth time that summer, why his parents couldn’t be more normal.

      That night, when he was getting ready for bed, his mother stuck her head in his bedroom door. “Your father and I are going into Boston tomorrow, and probably will just stay the night there. Do you want to come in with us?”

      Her face was slathered with some green gunk that was supposed to keep her skin young and wrinkle-free; her long blond hair (he suspected she dyed it) was pulled back into a ponytail.

      “No. I want to go to the gym in the morning.”

      “Chris…” She walked into the room and put her hands on his shoulders. “I’m a little concerned about this”—she fumbled for a moment—“obsession you’re developing about exercise. Your father and I think maybe you shouldn’t go every day—”

      “I like going.” He stuck his jaw out firmly. “And besides, it’s not a bad thing to exercise. Isn’t that better than just lying around and getting fat?”

      He smiled to himself. He knew his mother was terrified of losing her figure, but would never admit it. That would be admitting she bought into the “patriarchal, impossible standard of female beauty foisted on women by Madison Avenue and Hollywood.” She thought he didn’t know, but she took aerobics classes regularly in Boston. You’re a hypocrite, Mom, he thought. It’s not about me working out, it’s about control—you just want to control my life, and it kills you that you can’t. The older I get, the less control you have, and you just hate it, don’t you?

      “It’s not that we think it’s a bad thing, Chris, but anything in excess isn’t good for you. You need more social interaction. You’ve been here all summer and you haven’t made any friends…” Her voice trailed off.

      If you’re so worried about me not having any friends, why did you ship me off to boarding school?

      Chris bit his lip. No point in bringing up that he’d had a lot of friends in grade school, but after being shipped off to prep school he’d lost touch with them all. And the kids at More Prep—he didn’t have much in common with them. They were all spoiled rich kids who spent their summers in Europe. If he’d known it wouldn’t cause a nuclear blowout, he would’ve told his mother: You sent me to More Prep so I would mix with a better class of people, but they’re worse than any kids from the city. They’re mean, for one thing, and selfish and spoiled and arrogant, and they drink and use drugs and treat girls like dirt—if you could just hear them talking in the locker room, you’d pull me out of there so fucking fast my head would spin. They make fun of me, and surely that can’t be good for the self-esteem you always seem to be so goddamned concerned about.

      But he knew better than to say anything to her. His mother never changed her mind once she’d made it up. She knew what was best for everyone. Her whole life was predicated on being right.

      The silence grew more pointed, until finally she threw up her hands and walked out of the room, muttering to herself. He knew she’d complain about him to his father, and Joe would just listen to her, the way he always did. Dad had obviously learned early in their marriage that there wasn’t much point in disagreeing with her.

      Chris washed his face and pulled on a pair of crimson sweatpants with BOSTON COLLEGE in gold lettering running up the left leg. His parents had already left. The house was silent, other than the sound of the rain. There was another loud crack of thunder. He switched on the kitchen light and started a pot of coffee. There was a note on the refrigerator from his mother, in her scrawling script: Chris, honey, didn’t want to wake you up, we probably won’t be back until tomorrow morning, Love, Lois.

      He sighed. Why can’t I have normal parents who just want me to call them Mom and Dad, like everyone else?

      Joe and Lois considered themselves to be “enlightened parents”—which meant he’d always been able to call them by their first names since he turned ten. The rule about yelling was just another example. Nothing he ever did was “bad,” either—nothing was bad. Things were merely “inappropriate.” Once, when he was seven, he’d taken his crayons and started doodling on his bedroom wall. Rather than screaming at him—like other kids’ parents would have—they merely sat him down and reasoned with him. We don’t want to interfere with your need to express yourself creatively, Lois had said, it’s just inappropriate to color on the walls. Crayons are for use on paper, not walls—that’s the appropriate way to express your artistry. That way you can show your art to other people so they can appreciate it.

      Of course, the “appropriate” punishment for him was to paint over it so the walls all matched again, but she’d given him a sketchbook. All the same, Chris never used his crayons again.

      Lois also wanted him to be self-sufficient as an adult, so he always had chores. He knew how to do the laundry, how to cook, how to iron, how to dust and vacuum. “We’re a team,” Lois was fond of saying. “Joe and I make the money and provide a nice home for you, and you keep the house going for us so we don’t have to worry about that.”

      Of course, when he was in the wilds of rural Connecticut at Thomas More Prep they had a maid come into the town house in Back Bay. Chris suspected Lois just didn’t want to be bothered with doing her own housekeeping. That’s what his grandmother thought: Why do you make him do all the housework, Lois? He’s just a child, let him have some fun! Chris had never seen his mother turn quite that shade of purple before, but rather than yelling she’d merely taken a few breaths and started mouthing her mantra about teaching him “responsibility.”

      He walked into the living room while the coffee brewed and pulled the curtains on the big picture window to let in some more light. He started to turn away, when he saw something out of the corner of his eye that drew him back to the window.

      “What the hell?”

      He wiped some of the fog off the window to get a better look.

      A СКАЧАТЬ