Escape the Night Read Free Page A

would grow taller than Black Jack Carey, his features more fine. He had his father’s cobalt-blue eyes. They were as watchful as his father’s, his bearing—slim, straight back, chin tilted up—often as still. He was quiet near his mother. At other times he would careen down the grassy slopes in Central Park, arms flailing and hair bouncing in corn-blond waves as he fled the unnamed enemy he sensed that Charles watched for, until he ran out of control, stumbling and falling and rolling in a laughing frenzy of imagined terror while he looked back toward his father for help. In his fantasies, Charles Carey always rescued him.
    They teased each other endlessly. One fine April Sunday Peter fell with his face pressed in the fresh-smelling grass until Charles came near, springing up with childish inspiration to shout, “Fluffy head!” and run laughing from his father’s outrage.
    â€œPeter Carey,” Charles called after him, “did you call your father a ‘fluffy head’?”
    Peter chuckled deep in his throat as he slowed to ensure that Charles could catch him, and then charged forward as his father swooped with outstretched arms to pull him to the ground and pin his shoulders, demanding, “Did you call your father—ex-war hero, former publishing genius and onetime escort of Audrey Hepburn—a ‘fluffy head’ ?”
    They laughed into each other’s eyes. “Yes!” Peter shouted and Charles began tickling his ribcage and roaring, “Promise you’ll never call me ‘fluffy head’ again,” as Peter wriggled and squirmed until, his heart pumping, helpless from excitement, laughter and the need for a bathroom, he yelped, “I give up!” and they rose to take the winding path home, holding hands as they walked past fresh green trees and strangers who smiled at them—lean, striking man in a blazer, blond, laughing boy—until they reached their tall brick town house on East 60th, Charles sternly reminding Peter, “No more ‘fluffy head,’” before dashing upstairs to change and await Adlai Stevenson, for dinner.
    It was pheasant, served by candlelight in the Careys’ dining room. Afterwards, they remained at the table—Stevenson and the Careys—sipping cognac beneath the crystal chandelier and watching tongues of orange and blue spit from the fireplace. Sensing his campaign was hopeless and liking Charles Carey, Stevenson gave himself up to laughter, hoping wistfully that John Foster Dulles might get caught with a chorus girl before November. “Perhaps a Russian ballerina,” Charles was suggesting lazily, when Peter appeared in his wool sleepers to say goodnight. He kissed his mother’s cool, turned cheek with a senatorial gravity that drew a wry smile from Stevenson, before edging from the room and Alicia’s sight to where only Charles could see him. He stood motionless, head tilted in watchful replication of his father, until Charles turned. Face suddenly alight, Peter cupped his hands to his mouth and whispered sotto voce, “Fluffy head,” as his father’s eyes widened in mock horror and he scampered away, triumphant.
    Watching the blond head disappear around the corner, Charles Carey knew at that moment that he loved his son more deeply than he had ever loved anyone, or ever would again. Remembering the crosscurrents that had seemed to flow from his conception, Charles hoped this love would be enough.
    Alicia Carey turned from the softness in her husband’s face.
    Peter Carey first learned guilt from his mother’s eyes.
    Their green opacity followed him, even in his sleep; he could find neither love nor hate. Haunted by the suspension of their judgment, he came to fear his own actions for the anger they might hold.
    Doubting himself, Peter became preternaturally sensitive to the moods of others. He watched his parents, divining from their silences an intricate skein