The Second Son (39 page)

He practically screamed, “Shut up, you dirty pervert or I’ll show you — ”

My mother knew I wouldn’t listen to him. “Mike, please, for your father’s sake. Stop this.”

I smiled at them and moved closer to Jean. “Tell me, Jean, when you were making love, when he was lying on top of you, was there ever a time when he rested his forearm across your neck just a little too hard . . . for just a little too long? And you found yourself gasping for breath, wondering what he was doing, wondering if he was ever going to let you go?”

She looked worriedly at Andrew, then back again, “What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do. I can see it in your eyes. You’re married to him. You know what he’s like. You know why he went up to the dam that afternoon. He needed to own that girl, to control her, to pin her down, like the beautiful butterfly she was — until he was sure she belonged to him, and nobody else. Only with Gail he was losing her. And he couldn’t bear to let her go.”

My mother was the first to react. “Oh my God, how can you say such a thing? Jean, make him stop. Michel Landry, how can you say such a thing? Have you no heart left in you?”

“He said it himself, Mother.” I moved in front of her and pulled up my shirt. “Look at it. It’s her name. How could I ever put her name over my heart, if I had killed her? Tell me that.”

Brother Andrew yelled, “You son of a bitch!”

I swung in front of him before he could move, my shirt still pulled up. “How about you, Prince Andrew? Got anything to say?” I let the shirt drop and started jabbing him in the chest with my finger. “Eh? Eh?”

He swatted at my finger. “Stop it!”

I kept crowding him, jabbing down at his chest. “What’s the matter? Got something on your chest you’d like to get off?”

“Stop it!”

I kept jabbing. “Huh? Huh?”

“You son of a bitch,” he yelled, “I’m warning you!” His face had turned crimson but I still didn’t believe him, not until he launched himself out of the chair and bowled me over. I landed on my back with him and his fifty-pound advantage kneeling on my chest. I could feel his hands around my throat. I was laughing. Laughing because I knew I had him, as I listened to the two women screaming once again. This time for the right reason.

I WAS STILL LAUGHING
when they pulled him off me. I guess the touch of his wife and mother together was enough to calm him down. It would have calmed me down. I watched from my place on the floor as Jean soothed him and led him back to the table. My mother was whimpering by the time she dropped herself into a chair, leaving Jean to speak in motherly tones about self-control, self-respect, and all those other expectations the world had for the saint called Andrew.

I was thinking of that night Chief Kennedy came calling, when I raised myself on one elbow and addressed my mother, “I guess it’s time for a pot of tea, Lorna, dear.”

She covered her face and began to cry in earnest. Jean moved beside her and put an arm around her shoulder while she shook her schoolteacher head at me. “I can’t believe you, Mike Landry. Sometimes I think you really are a monster.”

I grinned and pushed myself to my feet, rubbing my neck. “Why? You think it’s me that made her cry?” She refused to react as she pulled up a chair and tried to concentrate on comforting my mother. I persisted, “You’ve been sleeping with the real monster. I can’t believe you never figured it out.”

She shook her head some more and turned to her husband. “For God’s sake, Andrew, say something. Tell us your brother is demented. Tell us this is a nightmare. Tell us
something
!”

Andrew looked at me, hoping I suppose to find some relief in my eyes, some indication I would draw back and save him once again. I don’t know what he saw but it couldn’t have been good. “Yes,” he whispered.

Jean slammed a fist down on the table, making everybody jump but me — after all, it was my volcano that was bubbling. Her voice was as hard as her fist when she yelled at him, “Yes, what? Dammit, man, say something that makes sense.”

He croaked, “I told you, we should call the police. He’s dangerous.”

I laughed and rubbed my throat again. “Yeah, it’s about time we get the police in here. Tell them he hasn’t lost his grip.” I punctuated that sentiment with a calm walk to the cupboard, where I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee.

My mother wasn’t keen on the police idea. She stifled her tears and addressed her son, “Now, Andrew, I know he provoked you, but you did attack him.” I lifted my cup in mock salute to her sudden conversion to fairness.

“Andrew,” Jean interjected, “what is he talking about? I want to know.”

He tried to ignore her. “But mother, he’s a danger to all of us. You know — ”

“You got that right, turkey,” I snarled as I slid into a chair and took out a cigarette. I stuck it in my mouth and lit it up.

Andrew’s eyes went wide. “You can’t smoke in here.”

I took a drag. “Fuck off. One won’t kill you.” They all looked at me and shook their heads. In disgust, in dismay, I didn’t care which. I needed a smoke and wasn’t about to go outside. They’d probably lock me out. “And forget about calling the cops.” I slid over a saucer for my ashes. “I own you.”

Jean reacted to my confidence. “Andrew, what really happened up there?”

“What do you mean?” he whined, still eyeing my cigarette.

She shrugged off his fake confusion. “The newspaper stories said Gail MacDonald suffocated to death, from a broken bone in her throat, that she wasn’t molested. Is that true?”

“Depends,” I offered, sipping some coffee until I had her full attention, “on what you mean by ‘molested.’ Right, Andrew?”

He glared at me. “You damn lying . . .”

I laughed from somewhere down in my gut, where the hate resided. “It’s obvious he’s not about to tell you, Jean.” I waited for an objection. All he could manage was a vicious stare, which I ignored as I spoke to his wife. “He did show up like he said. All the rest is bullshit. I didn’t knock him out with any stick, no such thing. He begged and pleaded until Gail agreed to talk to him. And then he coaxed her around the other side of the powerhouse, like it was some big mystery. After five minutes or so I heard a noise. I snuck around the corner and I saw them in the grass.”

Andrew tried one more time. “You better stop this, or I’ll come over there and make you.”

I favoured him with a soft smile. “Would you really like to try? I’d be glad to oblige. More than glad.” He cursed under his breath but stayed in his seat. I continued, “He was on top of her, touching her with his hands, kissing her on the neck, and she was making funny noises. I thought they were necking and she was going along with it. I was boiling mad at them both . . . but I couldn’t help getting excited. And I couldn’t stop looking at them, even when I got an erection.”

That was too much for my mother. “Stop it, stop it,” she murmured. “This is wrong.”

I shook my head in her direction. “Don’t be too upset, Mom. Maybe that’s partly what saved his ass, me being too ashamed to admit what a creep I’d been.”

“Oh, Mike,” she moaned.

I just shook my head some more and continued, “I kept staring and staring and hating myself at the same time. Then I had an orgasm that kind of woke me up.”

Again my mother pleaded, “Oh, Michel, stop that talk. You know I can’t stand that kind of — ”

Andrew jumped in, “You goddamn pervert, why don’t you shut your filthy mouth?”

I laughed. “What a pair you make.” I didn’t know if Jean was offended. She was staring at me with a funny look on her face. It didn’t matter. I butted my cigarette in the rose-painted saucer and sat back in the chair. “Like I said,” I went on, “it woke me up and I looked more closely and realized she’d stopped moving, so I ran over there and pulled him off. Then I saw she was turning blue, that she wasn’t breathing. He’s telling the truth about a couple of things, actually. I was crying. And I did pick up a stick and hit him with it. Only he didn’t black out from it. And he didn’t get a scratch from it. I hit him on the back.”

I stopped for some coffee, watching Jean’s eyes. She didn’t blink. I put the cup down. “It was Gail who scratched him, trying to get him off — he had his arm jammed against her throat. Remember what he said? That I did it to stop her from screaming? That part is probably true. He would know, because that’s probably how he broke that bone in her throat. You know, that famous temper of his.”

A feeble protest from my brother followed. “Don’t listen to him, Jean. He’s making this all up.”

And from my mother, “Make him stop, Jean. I just buried my husband, for God’s sake.”

I smiled when I saw how little attention Jean was paying them. Instead, she asked me, “Why didn’t you go for help, either of you? I don’t understand that.”

“Jean!” Andrew protested.

I sipped some more coffee and considered her question. I finally answered, “That’s what I wanted to know. Andrew said he would go for help. It made sense. He had the car. I stayed behind, in case Gail woke up. I took my shirt off and soaked it in the water, trying to wake her. When nothing happened and nobody came — it felt like hours — I decided to run home and get my parents. I left my shirt there, to keep the flies off her face.

“When I got home, Andrew was sitting right here at this table, with a glass of milk and some cookies, acting like nothing had happened. Told me he’d taken care of everything, not to worry. Turned out all he’d done was call Gail’s mother and disguise his voice, saying he’d seen Gail’s horse wandering loose up near the dam. He told me they’d probably think she fell off her horse and everything would be okay. That was his line. And his mommy would make it so.”

By the time I finished that last part the funny look on Jean’s face had disappeared. It seemed to me her face took on a kind of flat, resigned quality. I liked that. “Go ahead, ask him,” I prompted her.

She turned quietly to face her husband. “Andrew?”

He stuck his jaw out. “I won’t dignify that pack of lies with an answer. I told you. I was up there, that’s all. And all my mother did was ask him to leave me out of it. That’s all.”

I laughed. “Th-that’s all, f-folks. You sound like Porky the Pig.”

“Screw you,” he yelled.

That stuff went right by Jean. Like I said, she had gone kind of calm. She waited out our insults, then turned back to me and asked in the same flat voice, “And all through the questioning and the hearing you never told anyone about Andrew? That sounds — ”

“Goddammit, Jean,” Andrew shouted, “you’re talking like it could have happened.”

She wasn’t listening to him and I was happy to tell her more. “I told you. My mother came down to the courthouse and told me what I had to say. Crazy or not, I went along with it. There was no real trial. I told them I did it and they sent me to reform school. I did my time,” I smiled, “like a man. Or a kid. I’ve never been sure which.”

This time she did shake her head. “I find that hard to believe. You never told anyone?”

I thought about that for a few seconds. “You’ve got kids. What would they do for you? Maybe that was what I feared most. Imagine, if I had sent her beloved Andrew to jail,” I hooked a thumb toward the front door, “having to come back through that door and face the look in my mother’s eyes.”

“Yes, but — ”

“Don’t forget. He was fifteen. He would have been tried as an adult. Looking at it that way, what choice did I have?”

She turned once more to her husband. “What about it, Andrew? If the police had found out you were up there you would have been questioned, too. And quite possibly charged. It was his word against yours, right?”

“Hah,” he tried to guffaw but didn’t get much past the guff. “Are you kidding? Everybody in town knew he was a born liar. They would have believed me over him, any day.”

“But you were the one with the scratch,” I injected, “not me.”

“I told Mom what happened. She believed me.” He almost smiled at me.

I shook my head. “And what about you, fair Jean? Do you believe him? And do you believe my dear sweet mother?”

“Michel, please,” my mother implored.

Jean studied them both for a moment, before she turned back to me. “I’ve lived with them long enough to know one thing — if he did it, she would protect him.”

More whimpering from Mother. “Oh, Jean, don’t say that.”

Andrew tried another tack. “Any mother would have.”

Jean’s answer must have surprised him because he could only gulp when she gave him a long sad look and said, “I guess that’s what your brother must have hoped for, Andrew.”

Another salute with my coffee cup. “I’ll take that.”

Her eyes were still sad when she looked back at me. “Would it be enough? For one person to believe you?”

I smiled. “If it was the right person.”

She gave me a look that made me think she caught my meaning. I was disappointed when she deflected it with another question. “What are you really after, Mike?”

I stalled, “What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s say Andrew did this awful thing, and let you take the blame. Perhaps you’d be justified in wanting to destroy him. But is it really worth your while to come back to Alexandria? It doesn’t seem to me that they have anything to give you. Surely you can see that.”

I did. And I couldn’t help that tiny thread of suspicion that now lay across the fabric of our discussion. “And?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders like she didn’t care if I saw her point or not. “So, I guess you want to come back to watch him fall apart. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The longer you’re here, the more he drinks.”

That was too much for Andrew. “Jean, for Christ’s sake.”

“He’s been a good husband to you, Jean, and a good father to your children,” my mother reminded her.

She ignored them both as she continued to work her psychology on me — at least that’s what I suspected she was doing. “Lord knows, Mike, it’s a miracle you kept your sanity when they locked you up like that. I can’t imagine how you did it. Knowing you were innocent all along.”

“Stop it,” Andrew pleaded once more, “stop saying that. He was never innocent, never.”