Mystic River

They were all dead now. All eleven of his father's brothers and sisters. And here was the baby of the family, closing in on seventy-five, and holed up here in the suburbs by a golf course he'd never use. The last one left, and yet still the youngest, always the youngest, squaring off at all times against even the whiff of condescension from anyone, particularly his son. Blocking out the whole world, if he had to, before he'd endure that, or even the perception of it. Because all those who'd had the right to behave that way toward him had long since passed from the earth.

His father glanced at Sean's beer and tossed some singles onto the table for a tip.

"You about done?" he said.

* * *

THEY WALKED BACK across Route 28 and up the entrance road with its yellow speed bumps and sprinkler spray.

"You know what your mother likes?" his father said.

"What?"

"When you write to her. You know, a card every now and then for no good reason. She says you send funny cards and she likes the way you write. She keeps them in the bedroom in a drawer. Has ones going back to when you were in college."

"Okay."

"Every now and then, you know? Drop one in the mail."

"Sure."

They reached Sean's car and his father looked up at the dark windows of his duplex.

"She gone to bed?" Sean asked.

His father nodded. "She's driving Mrs. Coughlin to physical therapy in the morning." His father reached out abruptly and shook Sean's hand. "Good seeing you."

"You, too."

"She coming back?"

Sean didn't have to ask who "she" was.

"I dunno. I really don't."

His father looked at him under the pale yellow street lamp above them, and for a moment, Sean could see that it pierced something in him, knowing his son was hurting, knowing he'd been abandoned, damaged, and that that did something permanent to you, spooned something out of you that you'd never get back.

"Well," his father said, "you look good. Like you're taking care of yourself. You drinking too much, anything like that?"

Sean shook his head. "I just work a lot."

"Work's good," his father said.

"Yeah," Sean said, and felt something bitter and abandoned rise up in his throat.

"So?"

"So."

His father clapped a hand on his shoulder. "So, okay then. Don't forget to call your mother Sunday," he said, and left Sean by the car, walked toward his front door with the stride of a man twenty years younger.

"Take care," Sean said, and his father raised his hand in confirmation.

Sean used the remote to unlock the car, and he was reaching for the door handle when he heard his father say, "Hey."

"Yeah?" He looked back and saw his father standing by the front door, his upper half dissolved in a soft darkness.

"You were right not to get in that car that day. Remember that."

Sean leaned against his car, his palms on the roof, and tried to make out his father's face in the dark.

"We should have protected Dave, though."

"You were kids," his father said. "You couldn't have known. And even if you could have, Sean?"

Sean let that sink in. He drummed his hands on the roof and peered into the dark for his father's eyes. "That's what I tell myself."

"Well?"

He shrugged. "I still think we should have known. Somehow. Don't you think?"

For a good minute, neither of them said anything, and Sean could hear crickets amid the hiss of the lawn sprinklers.

"Good night, Sean," his father said through the hiss.

"'Night," Sean said, and waited until his father had gone inside before he climbed into his car and headed home.

21

GOBLINS

DAVE WAS SITTING in the living room when Celeste came home. He sat on the corner of the cracked leather couch with two columns of empty beer cans rising up beside the arm of the chair and a fresh one in his hand, the remote control resting on his thigh. He watched a movie where everyone, it seemed, was screaming.

Celeste took her coat off in the hall and watched the light flicker off Dave's face, heard the screams grow louder and more panicked, intermingled with Hollywood sound effects of tables shattering and what could only be the squishing of body parts.

"What are you watching?" she said.

"Some vampire movie," Dave said, his eyes on the screen as he raised the Bud to his lips. "The head vampire's killing everyone at this party the vampire slayers were having. They work for the Vatican."

"Who?"

"The vampire slayers. Oooh, shit," Dave said, "he just tore that guy's head clean off."

Celeste stepped into the living room, looked at the screen as a guy in black flew across the room and grabbed a terrified woman by the face and snapped her neck.

"Jesus, Dave."

"No, it's cool, 'cause now James Woods is pissed."

"Who's James Woods?"

"The lead vampire slayer. He's a bad-ass."

She saw him now? James Woods in a leather jacket and tight jeans as he picked up some sort of crossbow and started to point it at the vampire. But the vampire was too quick. He swatted James Woods all the way across the room like he was a moth, and then another guy came running into the room, firing an automatic pistol at the vampire. It didn't seem to do much good, but then they were suddenly running past the vampire, as if he'd forgotten where they were.

"Is that a Baldwin brother?" Celeste said. She sat on the arm of the couch, up by where it met the back, and leaned her head against the wall.

"I think so, yeah."

"Which one?"

"I don't know. I lose track."

She watched them run across a motel room strewn with more corpses than Celeste would have thought could fit in such a small space, and her husband said, "Man, the Vatican's going to have to train a whole new team of slayers."

"Why's the Vatican care about vampires again?"

Dave smiled and looked up at her with his boyish face and beautiful eyes. "They're a big problem, honey. Notorious chalice thieves."

"Chalice thieves?" she said, and felt an urge to reach down and run her hand through his hair, the whole horrible day dropping away in this silly discussion. "I didn't know that."

"Oh, yeah. Big problem," Dave said, and drained his beer as James Woods and the Baldwin brother and some drugged-up-looking girl raced down an empty road in a pickup truck, the vampire flying after them now. "Where you been?"