Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [91]
(“Grandpa talked to me . . .”)
“Oh . . . yeah?” I whispered back, my throat constricted.
“He told me to name him that.” She kept whispering.
I could do nothing but stare at the thing. From outside, as if on cue, we could hear Victor barking, and then he stopped.
“Is Terby alive, Daddy?”
(Go ahead, look at the scab on your palm. It had gone for the wrong hand, Bret. It was aiming for the hand with the gun in it, but it bit the wrong hand.)
“Why?” I asked hesitantly. “Do you think he is?” My voice was quavering.
She held the doll up to her ear and listened carefully to it and then she looked back up at me.
“He says he knows who you are.”
This forced me to speak up quickly. “Terby’s not real, honey. It’s not a real pet. It’s not alive.” I was intensely aware that I was still glaring at the thing, shaking my head slowly back and forth as if consoling myself.
Sarah held the doll up to her ear once again as if it asked her to.
I restrained myself from grabbing it away from her (I could smell its rotten scent) as she sat up to listen more carefully to what the doll was telling her. And then she nodded and looked back up at me.
“Terby says not in a human way but”—and now she giggled—“in a Terby way.”
She clutched the thing, rocking back and forth, delighted.
I said nothing and looked to Robby for help, but he was lost in the video game or pretending to be, and over the sounds of gunfire and groans I could hear Marta’s car pulling out of the driveway.
“Terby knows things,” Sarah whispered.
I kept swallowing. “What . . . things?”
“Everything he wants to know,” she said simply.
“Honey, it’s time for you to go to sleep,” I said, and then, looking over at Robby, “And I want you to turn that off and go to bed too, Robby. It’s late.”
“You don’t need to worry about me getting enough sleep,” he muttered.
“But it’s my job to worry,” I said.
He turned away from the television and glared at me. “About who?”
“Well,” I said in a tender voice. “About you, bud.”
He muttered something else and turned back to the TV screen.
I had heard what he said. And even though I did not want him to repeat it, I couldn’t help myself.
“What did you say, Rob?”
And then he repeated it without difficulty or shame.
“You’re not my father so don’t boss me around.”
“What are you . . . talking about?”
“I said”—and now he spoke very clearly, his back still to me—“you’re not my father, Bret.”
I was so weakened by this admission—something resentful that had been building up for a long time—and the entire day leading up to it that I was rendered silent. I was exhausted. I carefully stood up from the bed when Jayne entered the room and Sarah shouted out “Mommy!” and instead of saying, I am your father, Robby, and I always have been and I always will be I simply floated out of his realm, letting their mother replace me.
I walked down the hallway, the wall sconces flickering as I passed, and went into the master bedroom, closing the door behind me, and then I leaned against it, and for one brief, awful moment I had no idea who I was or where I was living or how I had ended up on Elsinore Lane, and I checked my jacket pocket for the Xanax that was always there and swallowed two, and then, very carefully and with great purpose, began undressing. I pulled a robe over the boxer shorts and T-shirt I was wearing and then I stepped into my bathroom and closed the door and started to weep about what Robby had said to me. After about thirty minutes passed and I came out of the bathroom, I simply said to Jayne, who was standing in front of a full-length mirror inspecting her