Chapter 7

Except for the liquor cupboard and the tool drawer, the kitchen was unfamiliar territory to Kettering. It was Mavis's domain. It was she who decided where things ought to go, and she saw to it that they stayed where they belonged. This arrangement got no opposition from Kettering, who had never been comfortable around kitchen utensils and uncooked groceries.

Now he was hungry, and no one was there to provide him with something to eat. He rummaged around on the shelves until he found a can of vegetable soup.

"I ought to be able to manage this," he muttered to the empty house.

It took another five minutes to locate a can opener. He handled that task without cutting himself, poured the contents into a pot, and added a can of water as instructed on the soup-can label. He set it on the gas range and turned up the burner.

"Nothing so tough about cooking," he said, then went out and forgot about it until he smelled scorched aluminum.

"Shit!" he said, burning his hand on the pot as he hustled the smoking mess from the stove to the sink. He ran the cold water and let the pot sit there with the gummy mess soaking in the bottom. What the hell, he decided, he wasn't all that hungry anyway.

Kettering turned away from the sink and walked to the liquor cupboard. There were times, he reflected, when even a dedicated nonabuser of alcohol had to adjust to extraordinary circumstances. He poured himself a generous shot of bourbon, dropped in ice cubes, and wandered off through his house with the drink in his hand.

He should be feeling more deeply the imminent breakup of his marriage, Kettering thought, and the dissolution of his home. There should be pain. Guilt. Regret. But he felt strangely numb.

He wandered around touching the furniture, trying to remember when the different pieces were bought, trying to feel some emotion about them. No good. All he felt was that he did not like most of the stuff to begin with, and only agreed to buy it because Mavis wanted it. Aside from his taped-up old reclining chair, there was not a stick here that he felt was really his. Nothing he would miss if he never saw it again.

He carried the drink to the back of the house and into their bedroom. The bed was neatly made, as always, and cold looking. On Mavis's dressing table everything was arranged with geometric precision. In contrast, the top of the bureau that held his clothes was littered with the jetsam of a man's pockets. Coins, matchbooks, receipts, paper clips, business cards, crumpled scraps of paper. Mavis had long ago given up on keeping that area uncluttered.

He walked back out and down the short hallway to Trevor's room. It was here that a sense of loss and loneliness finally hit him.

His son's room was not at all like Brian's when he was a boy. There, in the upstairs bedroom of the solid brick house, he had had model airplanes, pictures of baseball players - mostly Chicago Cubs - sports equipment, comic books, assorted toys and games. Trevor's room reflected another generation. There was the elaborate stereo system, of course, with the newly added compact-disk player. Records, tapes, and CDs lay everywhere. They were recorded by groups with names like Twisted Sister, Maniac, The Grateful Dead, X. Wild, pounding music that disgusted the father but must have said something to the son.

When he was a boy, Kettering had never been much interested in music. Had his father lived, he probably would have encouraged his children to listen to Pat Boone. And like the rest of the nation's youth, young Brian would probably have opted for Elvis.

The sounds he liked to listen to now were the big swing bands, led by men now dead. When Brian was born at the end of World War II, the big bands were already on their way out. The singers and small combos were crowding them off the record racks, shortly to be followed by early rock 'n' roll.

Although he was not personally around for the heyday of Benny Goodman, Harry James, the Dorsey brothers, and the rest, Kettering felt a kinship with their music. Straight, clean chords. Uncomplicated rhythms. Harmonic but exciting.

Kettering sighed and looked around his son's room. Clothing was draped here and there without organization, but not really messy. There was a framed poster of a red-lacquered Corvette, another of a teenage television star looking determinedly sexy. There was a rubber monster mask from last halloween. A Day-Glo orange skateboard. A video game that had never worked properly. A Sony Walkman.

Almost nothing here that Brian Kettering could relate to. And yet he felt there was something of himself in this room. Something of him in his son that neither the man nor the boy had been able to bring out. If they ever did, he wondered if they would recognize it. Or admit it.

Trevor's closet contained far more clothes than his father's had ever had. Peer pressure, even on boys, seemed to dictate an entirely new wardrobe every year. If your jeans or your running shoes were last season's brand, your social life was in the toilet.

There were a few books. John D. MacDonald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King. There might still be hope for the kid. At least he could read.

So Trevor wasn't the perfect son. Kettering sure as hell was no Ward Cleaver as a father. He hadn't wanted the kid in the first place, and during the infant years, he had stayed away from home on the slightest excuse and let Mavis do the dirty work. Small wonder that when he did start to take an honest interest in his son, the boy wanted no part of him. Was there still time, he wondered, or was it already too late?

He considered for a moment giving the room a thorough shakedown. He knew all the hiding places where a kid would stash his dope paraphernalia. No, he decided, Mavis was right about that. You had to stop being a cop somewhere.

Kettering left the boy's room and carefully closed the door. He returned to the kitchen and refilled the glass, which had somehow been drained on his stroll through the house.

The emptiness of the place closed around him like a fog bank. He went back to the patched old recliner. The chair received him like a longtime friend.

Kettering settled back, sipped the bourbon, and closed his eyes. Was it possible to think of nothing? Make your mind a void? He tried it. Think blackness. Think silence. Think ...

The blast of cold hit him in the face like the icy wind of an Indiana winter. Kettering sat up fast, his eyes snapping open. The cubes rattled against the glass in his hand. What the hell?!

His left leg began to quiver. He looked down at it and it began to shake, the foot bouncing up and down in a crazy hopping dance. It was like the thing didn't even belong to him. Kettering dropped the whiskey glass and grasped his thigh with both hands. He strained, his fingers sinking into the quadriceps muscle, but he could not keep the limb still. A hoarse voice shouted, echoing through the empty house. It took him a moment to recognize it as his own.

Abruptly as the jerking had started, it stopped. The leg rested inert, quiet. Gradually, cautiously, he relaxed the grip of his fingers. He could feel the bruises they left on the thigh.

What the fuck is happening to me? Damn good thing Doc Protius hadn't seen that, he thought. He'd have me on medical leave before I could hiccup.

He was sweating? Sweating? A minute ago it felt like an arctic blast was blowing through his house. Kettering looked down at the spilled glass of bourbon. Booze had never hit him like that. Anyway, he had barely tasted it. A dream? Something like that. It had to be. Stress. Good old stress, this season's answer for what's wrong with you if you don't have a clue.

He sat back and took half a dozen long, slow, deep breaths. Okay, he was in control again. Nothing to worry about. Nothing really happened.

Except that his right thigh ached like hell, and he knew that when he dropped his pants tonight there would be blue-black bruises where he had gripped it.