The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [56]
His thoughts turned to his graduation from high school, which seemed as bucolic and naïve—and lost—as a Donovan song. If his experience at boarding school had generally allowed him to appreciate his parents from afar, on this morning, with them present, Jane’s pronouncements on art and aesthetics had frustrated him almost as much as Hank’s crude pragmatism. Also bothersome were Jane’s false sighs of commiseration about his breakup with Amanda—whose appeal she had never grasped—while for his part, Hank could not stop bleating a stream of trivia and advice about Martin’s upcoming year. College hockey, Hank recalled more than once, had been the best experience of his life, not to mention the route by which he met—nudge, nudge—the best woman in his life.
When the ceremony was over, good-byes issued, and everything packed, Martin was relieved to be driving home in his own car, where he and Suzie surfed for radio stations and made fun of their parents. They even laughed at Jane when the family stopped at a rest area in Ohio and—because she had always hated thunderstorms—she suggested they get a hotel.
Hank brushed her off. “It’s just a few little clouds,” he scoffed. “We’re only a couple hours away.”
Martin, still impatient with his parents, had basically ignored this conversation and instead amused himself by reaching around his sister’s back to tap her on the shoulder, the way he had done years earlier, until Jane looked at her children. “You two all right?”
“Uh—yeah, sure—quite all right.” Martin saw himself answer coolly and robotically, the way he used to talk to his mother to disguise his true feelings, which back then he would have characterized as annoyance or irritation but which he now understood to be something closer to fear, not of the storm but of Jane’s ability to glean information about him that he was just beginning to understand himself.
None of this was mentioned at the time; instead Suzie entered the scene, just as he expected her to, because as often as Martin tried to forget all of this, it was engrained in his memory like the lyrics of an odious pop song from an otherwise forgotten era of his youth. “No offense, Dad, but I’m sticking with Martin,” she informed them.
Nor could Martin forget how, in response, Hank stuck out his tongue and trotted back to his car.
Nor how a few seconds later, Martin was in his old car, the make, model, and year of which he noted with aching precision, along with the garish cranberry hue of the upholstery and even the chrome buttons of the tape deck and radio, which like any stereo worth hearing at the time was “customized.”
They were back on the highway, and as usual—because Hank had a heavy foot—Martin was following. He saw the blur of the first heavy, thick drops of rain hitting the windshield and could feel Suzie beside him as she watched the side of a truck roar past about six inches from her window. “Check it out, big brother,” she said, putting her palm against the glass. “The water’s coming right through—it’s a miracle.”
“It’s called condensation, Sherlock,” Martin corrected her, “but I’m glad it makes you happy.”
Martin whispered the word happy at the same moment he heard it now. In his memory it was like a gunshot instantly followed by his sister’s scream, which reverberated across these many years, joined not only by the vulture screech of the brakes but by Martin’s own involuntary cry, as if he were reacting for the first time. It happened fast—two seconds at most, maybe three—and he pounded the arms of his chair, an involuntary echo of his chest slamming against the steering wheel, constrained only by the seat belt as he skidded to a stop and—hands shaking—threw open the door.
Numb with panic, he stumbled forward a few steps but then caught