Needful Things - Stephen King [82]
"You must be human," she said softly. "How weirdly exotic and excitingly perverse."
"Yeah, I guess so. As for Al, he's dealing with this in his own way. It's a good way, too-good enough for me to be proud of him.
He still misses his mother, but if he's still grievin@and I guess I'm not completely sure he is-then it's Todd he's grieving for. But your idea that he's staying away because he doesn't approve of you or us that's way off the beam."
"I'm glad it is. You don't know how much you've relieved my mind.
But it still seems "
"Not quite right, somehow?"
She nodded.
"I know what you mean. But kids' behavior, even when it's as normal as ninety-eight-point-six, never seems quite right to adults.
We forget how easy they heal, sometimes, and we almost always forget how fast they change. Al is pulling away. From me, from his old buddies like jimmy Catlin, from The Rock itself. Pulling away, that's all. Like a rocket when the third-stage booster kicks in. Kids always do it, and I guess it's always kind of a sad surprise to their parents."
"It seems early, though," Polly said quietly. "Seventeen seems early to pull away."
"It is early," Alan said. He spoke in a tone which was not quite angry. "He lost his mother and his brother in a stupid accident. His life blew apart, my life blew apart, and we got together the way I guess fathers and sons almost always do in those situations to see if we could find most of the pieces again. We managed pretty well, I think, but I'd be blind not to know that things have changed. My life is here, Polly, in The Rock. His isn't, not anymore. I thought maybe it was going to be again, but the look that came into his eyes when I suggested that he might like to transfer to Castle Rock High this fall set me right on that in a hurry. He doesn't like to come back here because there are too many memories. I think that might change in time and for now I'm not going to push him. But it has nothing to do with you and me. Okay?"
"Okay. Alan?"
"Hmmm?"
"You miss him, don't you?"
"Yeah," Alan agreed simply. "Every day." He was appalled to find himself suddenly on the verge of tears. He turned away and opened a cupboard at random, trying to get himself under control.
The easiest way to do it would be to re-route the conversation, and fast. "How's Nettle?" he asked, and was relieved to hear that his voice sounded normal.
"She says she's better tonight, but it took her an awfully long time to answer the phone-I had visions of her lying on the floor, unconscious."
"Probably she was asleep."
"She said not, and she didn't sound like it. You know how people sound when the phone wakes them up?"
He nodded. It was another cop thing. He had been on both the giving and receiving end of a lot of telephone calls that broke someone's sleep.
"She said she was sorting through some of her mother's old stuff in the woodshed, but-" "If she has intestinal flu, you probably called while she was on the throne and she didn't want to admit it," Alan said dryly.
She considered this, then burst out laughing. "I'll bet that was it. It's just like her."
"Sure," he said. Alan peered into the sink, then pulled the plug.
"Honey, we're all washed up."
"Thank you, Alan." She pecked his cheek.
"Oh, say, look what I found," Alan said. He reached behind her ear and pulled out a fifty-cent piece. "Do you always keep those back there, pretty lady?"
"How do you do that?" she asked, looking at the half-buck with real fascination.
"Do what?" he asked. The fifty-cent piece seemed to float over the gently shuttling knuckles of his right hand. He pinched the coin between his third and fourth fingers and turned his hand over. When he turned it back the other way again, the coin was gone. "Think I ought to run away and join the