Something to Be Desired Read Free Page B

upright, got to her feet and headed for the stairs. “You had better find something to eat, Lucien. I’m in no shape to help you men. Not today. Perhaps not ever.” Lucien felt the excitement return at these last words. He still felt the raw electricity in the air. He made a sandwich.
    When he had finished it, he went over to the guest room. His father was sitting on the edge of the bed like a man on his first night at boot camp. “I couldn’t let her go on like that, kiddo,” he said. “Not with you there.” He looked up to see if Lucien was buying it. Lucien let no expression cross his face. “I don’t even know whose side you’re on.” He flung himself on the bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. “Out in those wide open spaces … now, that was another thing entirely. Out where they don’t hamstring a man for standing a little tall.”
    Lucien took a pitcher of ice water up to his mother. She drank hungrily, as though she had come in from a long journey only moments before. “I wonder who the real ringleader on that Peru trip was. Now Clancy is dead. I guess I’ll never know, will I? Clancy would have told me because Clancy knew better than to cross swords with me. Do you follow, Lucien? Of course you don’t, you little angel with silver wings, you.… Brandy.”
    Lucien went downstairs and brought back the brandy and a snifter. His mother had a candle going in her room by now and swirled and heated her glass as she sipped. “No, Lucien, between your father and Art Clancy there wasn’t a stick of decency.” She held her glass so the candle danced on the other side of it. She squinted and continued. “Clancy? I hope he fries in hell.” Lucien shuddered at this, to him, wholly realistic idea. “Your father is not man enough to deserve such spectacular punishment.” She spat. “Did you have a lovely time out in the country?”
    “Yes, Mom.”
    “What did you see?”
    “Just this horse.”
    “Doesn’t sound like much of a trip.”
    “It’s hard to describe.”
    “Well,” she said, “at least you’re not old enough to have gotten into any trouble. Though that too, I suppose, is just around the corner.”
    His mother’s search for the combination that would tie them in an awful knot had begun to strike Lucien right in the stomach. His mother fished a mirror out of her purse and sized up the swelling on her face. Then she patted it with a powder puff, as though she wished it could not be seen. She drew out a picture and held itclose to her face. “Clancy,” she said. “Who would have ever thought?”
    There was something in the air that Lucien didn’t like, didn’t like at all. After this kind of talk, no one in the family would know to turn up the heat in the winter or close the windows when it rained or put antifreeze in the Thunderbird in November. No one would remember to send crazy Aunt Marie a thank-you note when she forgot to send a Christmas present, and Aunt Marie’s Christmas would be ruined.
    The long night got longer. First Lucien’s father stole down for a late snack and nearly collided with his mother. Lucien watched from the couch. The French bread under his arm, the six-pack of imported beer, the cheese and the fruit all fell to the floor. “It takes quite a bit to spoil your appetite, doesn’t it, Gene?”
    “Hunger and grief are absolutely compatible, you goddamned whore,” replied his father. “Lucien,” he added, “get your mother a sweater. It’s cold down here.”
    Lucien ran his hand up the long, cool banister and watched the candlelight from his mother’s room flicker on the carpet. First he got the sweater, the cableknit cardigan she wore when sick, then he rifled the purse for Clancy’s picture. He cut that up with his jackknife and flushed it down the toilet. He read a quick couple of pages from the Kinsey Report lying by the bed, and went downstairs, where he found his parents hugging and cooing. Tex Benecke’s band was