Come Destroy Me by Vin Packer Read Free Book Online

too.”
    “What the — ”
    “Where have you been until eleven o’clock?”
    “I — took a walk after the library. What’s the matter with you, anyway?” He could not believe what he saw. His mother’s face was ripped with worry and he could not believe that she had really worried about him. His feeling was mixed with incredulousness and a slow, seeping pleasure. It was true he usually returned home immediately after the library closed, but he had never thought she would worry if he were late. It was a whole new idea to him and he was trying to adjust his thinking to this idea. A grin came uncontrolled to his lips and he said, “Why, Mom, what’s the matter? Why are you worried?”
    “It isn’t funny. It isn’t funny at all. If it weren’t for Russ, sometimes I think I’d have no one. No one I could depend on.”
    “You know you don’t have to worry about
me,”
Charlie said. If she did worry about him, he wondered what she imagined could happen to him. Did she imagine he would be in trouble? She was always saying he kept his nose in books and she never seemed to think he was — capable. That was the word that occurred to him.
Capable
of trouble. He was surprised and amused and proud too.
    “Well, you could be here when I needed you. Evie’s in trouble. Mr. Bates from the Golden Eagle called and said Evie left with Jim Prince over an hour ago, and they were both — intoxicated. He couldn’t stop them.” Mrs. Wright’s eyes were glassy with tears she tried to conceal, and she turned her back on Charlie again and stared out the window. Her shoulders shook slightly with sobs she held back. “I had to call Russ, and then you weren’t around and Russ didn’t want me alone and we didn’t know where you were.”
    The realization that it was Evie his mother was worrying about hit Charlie like a rock in his stomach and he felt weak and sick and he thought he didn’t give a goddamn what happened to Evie and Prince. He didn’t give a good goddamn what they were doing. He could imagine. He could just imagine. And she was worrying about them. Lofton was out chasing them and she was worrying about them.
    “Where’d they go?”
    “How do
I
know? It’s the most embarrassing — Mr. Bates calling me to tell me my daughter — ” She could not finish the sentence and Charlie sighed heavily and stood looking at her back, at the jade-green dressing gown and the gnarled brown hair, the quivering shoulders. “Well, heck, what am I supposed to be able to do?”
    “Just be here when you’re supposed to be.”
    He was not used to being talked to that way by his mother. She had never said anything like this to him before, and it paralyzed his thinking, made him go numb. He had seen once in a movie how he was supposed to act. He was supposed to go to her and put his arm around her shoulder and say, “Don’t cry, Mom,” or say, “Cry it out, Mom. You’ll feel better.” The idea was repugnant to him and he could not move. He just stood there.
    “Since when have you been taking walks?”
    It was unfair. He was sixteen and he had a right to take a walk. God, he wasn’t out doing what Evie was doing! He was not sure what she was up to, but he thought it must be dirty. Not very dirty, but dirty. Somewhere in a car. The thought made him feel excited, but mad too — at his mother.
    “I’ve got a right,” he answered feebly.
    “Now you stand and argue with me when you know I’m upset.”
    Charlie said earnestly, “Well, what can I do?”
    “Nothing! That’s just it. You’re the only man in the house and you’re helpless.”
    Her words cut him up inside like a knife. He thought, why does she hate me, why does she really hate me now? I am a man, he thought. I’m not Jim Prince, either, out with Evie. I am a man. He felt as though he were going to cry and he wanted to get out of the room. Angrily he walked to the hall. He shouted back, “Treat me like a man and I’ll be one someday,” and his voice