Page 79 of Going Home in the Dark

“No! No, No, No! I don’t hear the Lord asking for any such thing.”

“Your anger is sorrowful, son. I will pray for your soul.”

Defensively, Spencer said, “It’smyhat.” When he repeated those words, his emphasis shifted. “It’s myhat.”

Sensing some deep psychological need, Pastor Larry tried to upend the situation, seize the advantage. “In the end, son, when your time comes, everything belongs to the Lord.”

“The Lord admires my hat? The Lord God wants myhat?”

“He doesn’t want it, son. He can’t want what is already His. All things are His. He already owns your hat.”

The color of Spencer Truedove’s face was approximately like that of a Delicious apple. More precisely, it was nearly the color of a luscious but not overripe tomato. “I paid for this hat,me, not anyone else. It wasmyidea to make it part of my image. I’ve bought adozenhats like it.A dozen!I take care of them. Nobody takes care of my hats but me. I have a cleaning kit I take everywhere I take my hat,which is everywhere. God gave me life, and that’s a big deal, but no one’s evergivenme anything else, not eventhe people who had a responsibility to take care of me when I was a child. I was left to live alone without resources. I had to sell off the furniture, the appliances, the dishes,the draperies!I felt like such a thief, but there was nothing else. I sure would like to sell the furniture here. This is prime stuff. This stuff would bring in some real cash.”

From the mohair sofa, Bobby gaped at Spencer as, earlier, he had gaped at Pastor Larry.

The reverend’s dreamy half smile had become a smug full smile. “Son, my best advice to you—the thing you most need to do to find comfort—is honor thy father and mother.”

Rebecca erupted from the sofa. Her eyes were the searing blue of natural-gas flames, and her hands were curled into fists, and her face was set in an expression that even dull-witted people should at once see meantstand back if you value your life.

Looming over Pastor Larry’s armchair, staring down at him with venomous contempt, she said, “You little worm, you cockroach, you snake, you liar, you pathetic excuse for a human being, you’re going to tell us the whole truth, everything you know, you reeking lump of animated sewage. I once killed a man, planted the blade of a pickax in his shoulder, shot him with a dozen two-inch steel spikes from an industrial nail gun, set him on fire with an acetylene torch, and while his face burned like candle wax—like candle wax—I blew him up with an entire boxful of dynamite. There was nothing left of him but bloody sludge and one intact ear. If you screw with us anymore, you piece of shit, I’ll start with you by pulling down your pants and tearing off your tiny little testicles and feeding them to you with one of your eyes.”

Such withering fury expressed by anyone would be intimidating; for whatever reason, when coming from a beautiful woman,it was flat-out terrifying, especially when she had won two Emmys and knew how to deliver her lines.

During Rebecca’s tirade, Pastor Larry shrank in his armchair until he could shrink no further, whereupon he began to cry. Sobs racked him. Tears flooded down his cheeks. His face was pasty white and looked as soft as bread dough. He bawled, blubbered, ululated, begged for mercy, until strings of snot hung from his nostrils.

As Pastor Turnbuckle subsided to mere weeping and soft pleading noises, another voice arose in the house. Somewhere upstairs a woman began to sing a pleasing melody but not the words that went with it. She lah-lah-lahed and nah-nah-nahed and otherwise hummed through John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The singer seemed to be descending the stairs. While the tune was recognizable, it was performed in a voice so eerie that the three amigos turned to stare at the parlor archway beyond which lay the ground-floor hall, their expressions suggesting that they expected a ghost to manifest.

45Mother

She came into the parlor, tall and willowy, weirdly seductive in a sapphire-blue silk robe, wearing high heels but perhaps nothing under the softly shimmering robe. She regarded Pastor Larry with a pained expression signaling frustration, disgust, and contempt, as one would regard an abject coward who had responded to a challenge by soiling his pants. Pastor Larry might well have soiled his pants, but as yet there was no olfactory evidence of it.

When she was done fixing the reverend with a desiccating stare that should have left him as dry and crisp as an autumn leaf, Britta Hernishen turned her attention to Rebecca. “Quite a performance. Are you sure you didn’t leave out a few proofs of your savage rage that occurred before the dynamite? Perhaps you broke the villain’s feet with a sledgehammer, pulled his hair, gave him a wedgie, forced him to eat scorpions.”

“I’d like to forceyouto eat scorpions,” Rebecca said, “but the venom in your blood suggests you already eat them every day for breakfast.”

Bobby knew better than to insert himself into a confrontation between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, yet he stepped forward and said, “What are you doing here? No, don’t tell me. But please tell me this sorry pile of human debris”—he indicated the reverend—“isn’t Ernie’s father.”

Ignoring him, Britta tapped the venom in her heart to respond to Rebecca. “You are a naive little girl who has foolishly gone to war with a power greater than you can comprehend.”

“It worked for Joan of Arc. But I will admit you’re more of a man than I could ever be.”

“Is it your habit to respond to unpleasant truths with juvenile insults? Perhaps that could be a consequence of reading nothing but summaries of summaries of illiterate screenplays. What do you think? Is that a credible hypothesis?”

Bobby said, “Please tell me Larry isn’t Ernie’s father.”

“What I think,” Rebecca said, “is you’re a phony intellectual. If they revoked the degrees you faked and cheated your way through, you’d be on the dole or making a living by scavenging discarded soda cans from dumpsters.”

“If I were you,” Britta said, “I would not blithely challenge the academic achievements of others when your only education has been acquired while lying on your back for a series of producers.”

“Please tell me Larry isn’t Ernie’s father,” Bobby pleaded.

Spencer said, “Tell him. Please. Please tell him.”

No more bowed than George Washington was in the dark days at Valley Forge, Rebecca declared, “You browbeat people, bully them, so they won’t dare call you out on all the mean, stupid things you say and do. Is that an assessment we can agree on? What is your position on the matter?”

“My position, Ms. Movie Star,” said Britta, “is that you are an empty vessel who makes her way through life by playing roles. For example—”

“Me? Your entire life is pretense,” Rebecca countered. “The wise and confident professor has no wisdom.”

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