Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [59]
Her face softened and for the first time this morning she smiled genuinely, without forcing it, without any affectation. It was spontaneous and unrehearsed.
This moved me to ask, “What? What is it?”
“You said something.”
“What did I say?”
“You said ‘our.’ ”
10. the mall
I had scanned the papers to see what was playing at the Fortinbras Mall sixteen-plex and chose something that wouldn’t confuse Sarah or annoy Robby (a movie about a handsome teenage alien’s disregard for authority and his subsequent reformation), and since I suspected there was no way Robby would have agreed to this excursion unless he’d been cajoled into it by Jayne (I didn’t even want to imagine that scene—her pleading versus his furtive begging) I anticipated that he wouldn’t come without a fight, so I was surprised by how calm and placid Robby was (after a shower and a change of clothes) as he shuffled out the front door and walked with his head bowed down to the Range Rover, where Sarah sat in the front seat, trying to open a Backstreet Boys CD (which I eventually helped her with and slipped into the disc player), and where I was staring out the windshield thinking about my novel. When Robby climbed into the back seat I asked how soccer practice had gone, but he was too busy untangling the headphones to the Discman in his lap. So I asked again and all I got back from him was “It’s soccer practice, Bret. What do you mean, how did it go?” This was not the way I wanted to spend my Saturday—Teenage Pussy was waiting for me—but I owed Jayne this outing (and besides, Saturdays weren’t mine anymore). The guilt that had been building since I moved into the house in July was announcing itself more clearly and it was coming down to: I was the one responsible for Robby’s misery, yet Jayne was the one trying to cut the distance between me and him. She was the one on her knees pleading, and this reminded me again of why I was with her.
“Seat belts on?” I asked cheerfully as I pulled out of the driveway.
“Mommy doesn’t let me sit in the front seat,” Sarah said. She was wearing a Liberty-print shirt with a Peter Pan collar and cotton velvet bootcut pants and a pure angora poncho. (“Are all six-year-olds dressing like Cher?” I asked Marta when she delivered Sarah to my office. Marta just shrugged and said, “I think she looks cute.”) Sarah was holding a tiny Hello Kitty purse that was filled with Halloween candy. She took a small canister and started popping Skittles into her mouth and throwing her head back as if they were prescription pills while kicking her legs up and down to the beat of the boy band.
“Why are you eating your candy that way, honey?”
“Because this is how Mommy does it when she’s in the bathroom.”
“Robby, will you take that candy away from your sister?”
“She’s not my real sister,” I heard from the back seat.
“Well, I’m not her real father,” I said. “But that has nothing to do with what I just asked you.”
I looked in the rearview mirror. Robby was glaring at me through his orange-tinted wraparounds, one eyebrow raised, while tugging uncomfortably at his crewneck merino sweater, which I was certain Jayne had forced him to wear.
“I can see that you’re very cold and withdrawn today,” I said.
“I need my allowance upped” was his response.
“I think if you were friendlier that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Doesn’t your mom handle your allowance?”
A huge sigh emanated from him.
“Mommy doesn’t let me sit in the front seat,” Sarah said again.
“Well, Daddy thinks it’s okay. Plus you look quite comfortable. And will you please stop eating the Skittles that way?”
We suddenly passed a three-story mock-colonial monstrosity on Voltemand Drive when Sarah sat up and pointed at the house and cried out, “That’s where Ashleigh’s birthday was!”
The mention of that party in September caused a surge of panic, and I gripped the steering wheel tightly.
I had taken Sarah to Ashleigh Wagner’s birthday party as a favor to Jayne, and there was a sixty-foot stegosaurus balloon and a traveling animal show and an arch made