Son of Destruction

9




Steffy McCall


The next person to meet Dan Carteret is Steffy McCall. The last thing Steffy wants to do is meet anyone. Not today, not with her mom and dad running around crazy, all ragged and disrupted. Something happened last week, and they have gone to a place that there’s no getting back from.

Steffy saw her very own mother from upstairs in this deserted house. Her mom came wandering out of the Publix lot and across the street. She was way too close to where Steffy and them hide out and smoke weed, like, right down there in the yard. She was this close! She plopped down under the banyan tree underneath the attic window, which scared the shit out of Steffy. Your mother, outside your private place!

Mom! She’d wreck everything if she found out.

Steffy and Carter Bellinger that she is secretly in love with, plus Billy and lascivious Jen, have been hanging out here ever since the day Carter broke in. For the first time, Steffy had her own safe place and it was wonderful. Then, last week – last week! – her clueless, fat-assed mom wandered across the street from the Publix and sat down under the big old banyan; you could see the top of her head from here.

They were all loaded by that time, out of their heads on Jolt Cola and weed and it was killing Steffy, but she had to play mean bitch and shush them before Mom heard. ‘Shut your hole,’ she told Carter who she really is in love with, and she almost f*cking cried. ‘That’s my mother, so shut your f*cking hole.’

If she saw them it would be the end of parties in this house, and Mom would be up her ass with a fine-toothed comb. As it turned out Mom’s mind was on something else. She just flapped like a confused penguin and went tottering off, so, whew.

It was good she was too distracted to hear them, but as it turns out, Mom was distracted by something really bad. By the time Steffy got home that day she had written a whole cover story that her folks were too upset to hear. Dad was dragging the rollaway bed to the far end of the house and everything was different.

Thank God for this place. She and Carter and them were rolling out of the Publix with the trunk full of beer and munchies that day. Instead of driving out to Pierce Point to get loaded like always, he broke into this creaky old house and they ran everywhere. In the attic, Carter said, ‘This is the place.’ It was like fate. Yang.

Steffy was all ying, ‘And we are the ones.’

They scavenged outside the big places on Coral Shores and Carter stole some great stuff from his pool house. Jen had an air mattress and pillows and a step-on pump to keep it fat and Billy brought the beer. Their attic looks like home now – except for this ancient dressmaker’s dummy, saying a snotty f*ck you to their X-Box posters and Cinemart lobby cards which are kind of mocking her now that she is here alone and everybody else is on the bus.

If Carter really loved me, he’d have stayed back. But no, he was like, ‘Come on, it’s fun!’

Fun just doesn’t seem right to her, given the way things are at home.

Nobody knows where she is.

Mom thinks she’s on the class trip to Busch Gardens. Her friends think she’s at the dentist. If Carter really cared, he’d have known that Steffy was too messed up to go. He’d have stayed back with her and they’d be kissing now. They might even be, oh, Steffy’s too young, but she thinks about Doing It; she thinks about it all the time. Alone in the dry attic, she has to wonder: do other kids sneak in here when we’re not around?

If Carter had stayed back today . . . Yeah, right. Shit. If he wants to get with Jen Cashwell in the back of the bus, OK, let him, Steffy is on to bigger things.

Like personal space. She only just found out she had one – it was in a magazine Mom had. Unless this is her own personal down time, which people need more than they need beer or weed or even Carter, that she loves so much, heavy-breathing in their ear. It’s hot in here, but she’s cool. Some people would say Steffy was hiding, but she’s not. She just doesn’t want to be around anybody right now, not even Carter Bellinger.

All Steffy wants to be in the world . . . All she wants to be is alone, which is what she is. Or she thinks she is. Even in a town as safe and sleepy as Fort Jude, you never know.

Another girl would think the attic was creepy, but Steffy and Carter and them have had so many beers and smoked so much weed and told so many secrets in this old place that it’s like home.

At this point, it’s better. No parents all undertones, hissing and spitting over things they don’t want her to know about, and no Dad desperately pretending it’s not a fight. No Mom, all smirched from crying and, like, trying to be brave.

Steffy can hardly bear the sight of her mother these days, trotting around in her perky pastel outfits and heavy makeup, with a lipstick line that she can’t keep straight because her mouth won’t hold still. No Mom for Steffy for a while, thank God, and please, no Dad. She doesn’t know how she feels about Dad, the way he is. He is not bearing up well under the p-ssy whip, and, what Steffy can’t stand?

All this, everything that’s coming down on him? Davis brought it on himself. She found out about him and Aunt Gayle before Mom did, you know, from that time they flew out to California? Mom dyed her hair and bought outfits for the trip – gaudy colors that she hated, so she must have known something was up. You’d have to be blind, deaf and stupid not to see it. Like, from the minute they walked into the house in Toluca Lake. A blind wombat would pick up on the loaded looks, that cunty smile on Gayle, and if Steffy didn’t know it for sure, by the time they got back from a day in Ventura she did. Gayle took Stef and her folks and her second husband Clueless Ed and their assorted kids for a day at the beach. After lunch she sent Ed off for charcoal and some obscure item that she knew would take him forever to find, sunscreen SPF 2000, maybe, or eye of newt. That left Steffy and her sort-of cousins beached while Gayle took Dad body surfing and Mom sat on a rock looking confused.

That night Mom went to bed early and everybody else sat on the back deck of the house Ed built, listening to Gayle and Dad talk about the great times they had when they were kids back at the family camp in Myrtle Beach, the cousins just played and played. Grampa McCall was Superintendent of Schools in Columbia, South Carolina, and Dad never lets you forget it. He built the camp so the generations could gather, Dad said, and Aunt Gayle said, We had the best time. It was like an opera or some half-assed sentimental duet that went on and on.

Dad hardly noticed when Mom stuck her head out the upstairs window, he and Aunt Gayle laughed and talked while Clueless Ed cleaned up and toasted marshmallows for the kids, and they talked on while the kids lit sparklers and ran around screaming in the dark and they went on talking instead of putting the kids to bed, which they were supposed to do, so Steffy was up almost all night. After all, Mom said later, it’s the only thing I asked you to do. This was a first in both households, surprise. The forgetting. They got laughing so hard that around midnight Mom came out in her bathrobe and rasped, ‘Keep it down.’

After that trip Mom bought a whole ’nother wardrobe; she even lost a couple of pounds, but by then it was too late.

No time for that now, Abernathy, Steffy thinks, Dad’s joke.

She is in a really strange mood. If she goes home any time between now and 5:30, when her folks are out the door for Patty Kalen’s engagement party, they’ll drag Steffy, even though the whole town knows Patty and her dad are hardly speaking because he was so drunk that he tried to pick her up outside Mook’s Bar. ‘You’re going,’ Mom said. ‘Everybody who’s anybody is. After all, that poor girl lost her mother. Cecilia Kalen was one of our nearest and dearest.’

Steffy couldn’t say, Mr Kalen creeps me out, although it’s true. ‘Do I have to?’

‘Yes. We’re giving it.’

By ‘we,’ she does not mean her and Dad, Nenna means her and her girlfriends that she hangs out with because he and Mom live in separate worlds.

It’s like Dad is here, but he isn’t, and Steffy has no idea whose fault this is. If she goes home now he will be lying in wait. He doesn’t pounce, it’s more like lurking. Or melting into a puddle that you could fall in, which he’s been doing a lot this week. Get too close and you’ll sink. He schlumps around with every line in his body screaming Hit Me, unless it’s Forgive Me, and Mom . . . Mom will tell her, ‘Go put on something decent, you’re not going out looking that.’

She’s been to those parties, and those parties are crap. So are her parents, both of them. It’s crap being with them right now.

She’s better off here.

This is her place, if Steffy has a place, but late afternoon sun chased the last bit of shade off the roof and now it’s too hot. Hell with it. I’m not moving until the party’s started and I’m sure Mom and Dad are gone. It’s harder to breathe than it was when she first lay down on the air mattress, trying to get up the strength to sob out her heart.

She’ll sit out the next hour out back.

By the time Steffy hits the back porch she’s gasping for air like one of those girls some creep stole and buried alive.

Oh, shit.

There’s a guy on the steps. Just sitting there.

Perv alert!

Why am I not scared?

Whoever he is, he’s cute. Not scared. I am sooo not scared.

Be cool. Breathe. Ask, like you belong here and he doesn’t, ‘Who are you?’

He looks up. Nice, like it’s no big deal being a grownup, more like he’s another kid. ‘Oh, sorry. I didn’t know there was anybody home.’

‘Somebody lived here but she’s dead.’ Steffy ought to be on guard right now, hopping off the porch for a head start in case he lunges, but he is not that guy. ‘Nobody lives here.’ He is hanging in place like a sentence ready to be completed or a song waiting to be sung. She almost smiles. ‘Not even me.’

His head comes up. Noted: this is not her house.

‘But I sort of do,’ she says, to forestall questions.

Nice guy, he doesn’t ask. ‘I see,’ he says, waiting for whatever comes next.

God he is cute sitting there with the sunlight on his hair. God he is too old for her. Steffy should get out of this conversation and off the premises, but she won’t. Not yet. ‘I thought you would say, “What are you doing here?”’

‘That would be a no.’ He gets up. ‘None of my business, right?’ He shakes one foot and then the other to see if they’re still working, like you do when you need to get the blood running so you can move on.

‘It’s OK, you can stay.’

‘Can’t.’ He grimaces. ‘I’ve got stuff to do.’

Steffy discovers that she’ll say anything to keep him. ‘No problem if you want to hang in. Really.’ Question, keep him with a question. ‘So. What got you here?’

‘Long story.’

‘Want to tell it?’

‘Not really. Well, part of it.’

‘Which part?’

‘We’ll get to that.’ He has this sweet, wide open look; it’s what Steffy’s guidance counselor tries and fails to hit with her because he’s a jerk. Guidance guy strikes out in spite of all the heavy eye contact and trust exercises he makes them do in fifth period Sex Ed, never mind that it’s humiliating. But this guy . . . The smile.

Steffy is sort of smiling too.

‘So. Can I see inside?’

‘Not really,’ Steffy says. It’s not her house, but it is, and they both know both these things.

‘Look, I’m down here for a newspaper? It would be a big help if you let me look around inside.’

‘Are you writing a story or what?’

‘If you’re worried I can show you my press pass.’

‘I believe you,’ she says. ‘I just can’t . . .’

‘Like you’re not allowed to . . .’

‘Talk to strangers? Not really.’ She lifts her head in that proud, cocky way her mother hates. ‘I can talk to anyone I want.’

He almost-laughs. ‘Because you’re a big girl.’ He’s not being condescending or anything, he is doing a great job of imitating Mom.

‘Pretty much.’ How can she not grin?

‘Look, if this a bad time, no problem. I can come back.’

‘That won’t make it OK.’ Don’t go.

‘Me talking to you?’

‘Me letting you in.’

‘Did you know this Mrs Archambault?

‘Not really.’

‘This is her house.’

She bristles. ‘Not any more.’

‘I’m doing a story about some bad old stuff that happened here.’

Right, Carteret. Early American History. ‘When?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Not really.’

Instead of hitting on her or trying one of those sinister things the TV teaches you to beware, he backs away from the house, pointing up. ‘That’s the room where it happened.’

Steffy moves out into the yard so she can see where he is pointing. ‘Where what happened?’

‘The last spontaneous human combustion.’

‘Holy crap!’

‘Crash, bam. Whammo, she just. Burned up.’ As though he already has her cooperation, he says, ‘That’s why I have to get inside.’

If Carter came by right now he would be jealous, seeing the two of them standing together here. Steffy backs into the steps and sits down. He is still out there studying the second floor. ‘So, what are you looking for?’

‘That’s the trouble. I don’t know.’ Unlike grownups, he doesn’t sweep the step with his hand; he isn’t scared of sitting on something gross. ‘Why this woman burned down to grease spot, I suppose.’

‘Ewww.’

‘First they thought it was the husband.’ He pulls a notepad out of a pocket on his thigh. Cool cargo pants. Muttering, he runs his pencil down the page. ‘Harold P. Archambault.’ He taps the eraser on the note.

‘You have notes?’

‘Big story. Research.’ He looks up. ‘They were divorced.’

Steffy hates that word. Divorced. ‘Like, he set her on fire?’

‘No. Nobody knows what did it, that’s the thing.’ Frustration makes him squint. ‘But, you’ve gotta wonder. What if he was here and they had a fight?’

‘People fight all the time,’ Steffy says uneasily. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘These things, it’s usually the husband.’

‘Just because they had a fight?’ She is really uncomfortable now.

‘Because usually, it is. But this guy was with his girlfriend at the Prince Edward, out at the beach, it’s on the Web. They were together all night.’

Steffy gulps. Oh God. Oh, God. She’s not afraid of this gentle guy with eyes that turn green in direct sunlight, but she is afraid. She’s scared of something that she won’t name and hates to think about. ‘Like, he set her on fire because they had a fight?’

‘No. It was spontaneous. I’m not creeping you out, am I?’

Yes. ‘No.’

‘Sitting there one minute,’ he says thoughtfully, ‘and the next minute – whoom.’

‘Ewww!’

He ticks off another point. ‘But the room was untouched.’

She has quit breathing. It comes out in a rush. ‘Up there?’

‘Yeah. And I’m here because . . .’ Steffy has no way of knowing that this is not a sentence he can finish. After some thought he says, ‘If I can just get into that room and mail back a couple of screen shots . . . I can buy some time.’

‘Time?’

His face changes. ‘It’s hard to explain.’ When she doesn’t say anything he says helpfully, ‘If you want, I really can show you my press pass.’

Steffy would like to see it; she’d like to follow up with a question but she’s squirming. It’s nothing he said. Something else is gnawing at her. ‘So they were divorced. She burned up and it’s the husband’s fault.’

‘The girlfriend said he was with her all night.’

Oh God. ‘Girlfriend.’

‘“Other woman,” they called it back in the day.’

Oh, God.

‘He opened a magnum and turned up the music and that was it. They didn’t know until the police came.’

‘So it couldn’t be him.’

Bemused, he says, ‘It wasn’t anybody. It just happened.’ He’s waiting for her to follow with another question, say something, but Steffy is too far gone to speak. He jogs her arm. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yeah.’ But she is thinking, thinking, boy is she thinking. The sun burns hotter. The breeze stops. She gets up. ‘So. Want to see inside?’

‘I thought it was your private place.’

‘Not really.’ She is never coming back here. ‘Not any more.’

‘I did creep you out. I’m sorry.’

Still sitting, she opens the screen door. ‘Really. Feel free.’

Nice, he says carefully, ‘Are you sure? After all, it’s, like, your house.’

She gets up. ‘Come on, it’s anybody’s now.’

Now that she knows, the house is over with for her, but she sort of owes it to him to show him where this lady burned up and in its own way the prurient, curious part of her has to see. In school she flunked spatial relations on the standardized tests, which means she never knows where she is in a building, which is weird. Between that and the house being all cut up after this divorced person burned up, she has a hard time leading him to the right room. Plus, she’s a little scared. Like, what if the old lady is still up there, like they’ll open some door and her skeleton will spring out and chase them outside and all the way down to the bay.

Upstairs, there are so many partitions that she can’t tell which window he was pointing at or whether it’s on this side of the dividing wall or somewhere else. Plus, she’s freaking. Nothing this nice guy did, nothing he said.

The Archambaults had a fight and then the mother caught fire. After the divorce.

She says, miserably, ‘I don’t know which room.’

‘It’s that one. There.’

Everything in her sinks. ‘Oh.’

He’s very nice about it, really. There is nothing special or different about the right room, only that it’s the right one. Yellowed window shades sag at half mast and the linoleum is pocked with dents where generations of different furniture stood after she died. The wallpaper has faded to nothing. There are no smoke marks, no charred woodwork. Just water stains and nail-holes where pictures used to be. It’s as if nothing ever happened here. He studies the sketch in his notebook while Steffy fidgets. He paces, considering, until she snaps, ‘Are you done?’

‘What? Another minute. If you don’t mind.’

Her mind roams out and when it comes back, Steffy is disrupted and writhing, so her voice comes out all freaky and weird. ‘I have to go.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Matter? Nothing. I’m fine. It’s just. I have to go!’ Gulp. Start over. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

‘Five.’

‘Shit. I’m supposed to be home.’ She isn’t but she has to be; she has no idea why she’s so scared.

‘No prob,’ he says easily. ‘I’ll take you.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘No way.’

‘Right. Never get into a stranger’s car.’

‘That isn’t it. OK, I really have to go.’ Steffy isn’t exactly crying when she bolts, it’s just sweat running down, it’s . . . OK, if she starts in front of this guy she will totally lose it. What scares her second most in the world is that if she does cry, she won’t be able to stop. Shit, he’s following! Her voice trickles out. ‘Take your time. Look around all you want.’

‘You’re upset.’

‘I’ve gotta go.’

‘It’s too hot to walk.’

‘It isn’t far.’

‘At least let me buy you a Coke for the road.’

‘Can’t,’ Steffy says urgently. ‘Can’t!’

‘What’s so important that you can’t wait and I can’t take you?’

Grief boils up in Steffy and runs over. ‘I have to get dressed for this stupid party, OK?’

She walks until she’s sure he’s gone back inside, where he can’t see her. Then she starts to run. When she gets home nothing has happened and everybody is fine.