The Servants of Twilight Read Free Page B

“Here you are, honey. Dry your eyes, blow your nose, and be brave for Mommy. Okay?”
    “Okay,” he said, accepting the tissue. Shortly, he was composed.
    “Feeling better?” she asked.
    “Yeah. Sorta.”
    “Scared?”
    “I was.”
    “But not now?”
    He shook his head.
    “You know,” Christine said, “she really didn’t mean all those nasty things she said to you.”
    He looked at her, puzzled. His lower lip trembled, but his voice was steady. “Then why’d she say it if she didn’t mean it?”
    “Well, she couldn’t help herself. She was a sick lady.”
    “You mean . . . like sick with the flu?”
    “No, honey. I mean . . . mentally ill . . . disturbed.”
    “She was a real Looney Tune, huh?”
    He had gotten that expression from Val Gardner, Christine’s business partner. This was the first time she’d heard him use it, and she wondered what other, less socially acceptable words he might have picked up from the same source.
    “Was she a real Looney Tune, Mom? Was she crazy?”
    “Mentally disturbed, yes.”
    He frowned.
    She said, “That doesn’t make it any easier to understand, huh?”
    “Nope. ’Cause what does crazy really mean, anyway, if it doesn’t mean being locked up in a rubber room? And even if she was a crazy old lady, why was she so mad at me? Huh? I never even saw her before.”
    “Well . . .”
    How do you explain psychotic behavior to a six-year-old? She could think of no way to do it without being ridiculously simplistic; however, in this case, a simplistic answer was better than none.
    “Maybe she once had a little boy of her own, a little boy she loved very much, but maybe he wasn’t a good little boy like you. Maybe he grew up to be very bad and did a lot of terrible things that broke his mother’s heart. Something like that could . . . unbalance her a little.”
    “So now maybe she hates all little boys, whether she knows them or not,” he said.
    “Yes, perhaps.”
    “Because they remind her of her own little boy? Is that it?”
    “That’s right.”
    He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. I can sorta see how that could be.”
    She smiled at him and mussed his hair. “Hey, I’ll tell you what—let’s stop at Baskin-Robbins and get an ice cream cone. I think their flavor of the month is peanut butter and chocolate. That’s one of your favorites, isn’t it?”
    He was obviously surprised. She didn’t approve of too much fat in his diet, and she planned his meals carefully. Ice cream wasn’t a frequent indulgence. He seized the moment and said, “Could I have one scoop of that and one scoop of lemon custard?”
    “ Two scoops?”
    “It’s Sunday,” he said.
    “Last time I looked, Sunday wasn’t so all-fired special. There’s one of them every week. Or has that changed while I wasn’t paying attention?”
    “Well . . . but . . . see, I’ve just had . . .” He screwed up his face, thinking hard. He worked his mouth as if chewing on a piece of taffy, then said, “I’ve just had a . . . a traumamatatic experience.”
    “Traumatic experience?”
    “Yeah. That’s it.”
    She blinked at him. “Where’d you get a big word like that? Oh. Of course. Never mind. Val.”
    According to Valerie Gardner, who was given to theatrics, just getting up in the morning was a traumatic experience. Val had about half a dozen traumatic experiences every day—and thrived on them.
    “So it’s Sunday, and I had this traumatic experience,” Joey said, “and I think maybe what I better do is, I better have two scoops of ice cream to make up for it. You know?”
    “I know I’d better not hear about another traumatic experience for at least ten years.”
    “What about the ice cream?”
    She looked at his torn shirt. “Two scoops,” she agreed.
    “Wow! This is some terrific day, isn’t it? A real Looney Tune and a double-dip ice cream!”
    Christine never ceased to be amazed by the resiliency of children, especially the resiliency of this