More Twisted

kids?”
    Phelan put on a tough face. They were getting close to something, Boyle could sense.
    “In a way.”
    Encourage him. Gentle, gentle.
    “How’s that?”
    “My mama died when I was ten.”
    “I’m sorry, James.”
    “I had two little sisters. Twins. They were four years younger’n me. I pretty much had to take care of them.My father, he ran around a lot, like I was saying. I sorta learned what it was like to be a father by the time I was twelve.”
    Boyle nodded. He’d been thirty-six when Jon was born. He still wasn’t sure he knew what it was like to be a father. When he told Phelan this the prisoner laughed. “How old’re your kids?”
    “Jonathon, he’s ten. Alice is nine.” Boyle resisted a ridiculous urge to flash his wallet pictures.
    Phelan suddenly grew somber. The chains clinked.
    “See, the twins were always wanting something from me. Toys, my time, my attention, help ’em read this, what does this mean? . . . Jesus.”
    Boyle noted the anger on the face. Keep going, he urged silently. He didn’t write any notes, afraid that he might break the stream of thought. That could lead to the magic why.
    “Man, it damn near drove me nuts. And I had to do it all by myself. My father was always on a date—well, he called ’em dates—or was passed out drunk.” He looked up quickly. “Hell, you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
    Boyle was stung by the sudden coldness in the prisoner’s voice.
    “I sure do,” the captain said sincerely. “Judith works. A lotta times I end up with the kids. I love them and everything—just like you loved your sisters, I’m sure—but, man, it takes a lot out of you.”
    Phelan drifted away for a moment. Eyes as glazed as Anna Devereaux’s. “Your wife works, does she? My mama wanted to work too. My father wouldn’t let her.”
    He calls his mother “Mama,” but his father by the more formal name. What do I make of that?
    “They fought about it all the time. Once, he broke her jaw when he found her looking through the want ads.”
    And when she passed me I hit her hard in the neck and she fell down.
    “What’s your wife do?” Phelan asked.
    “She’s a nurse. At St. Mary’s.”
    “That’s a good job,” Phelan said. “My mother liked people, liked to help them. She’da been a good nurse.” His face grew dark again. “I think about all those times my father hit her . . . . That’s what started her taking pills and stuff. And she never stopped taking ’em. Until she died.” He leaned forward and whispered, “But you know the terrible thing.” Avoiding Boyle’s eyes.
    “What, James? Tell me.”
    “See, sometimes I get this feeling . . . I sorta blame it all on my mother. If she hadn’t whined so much about getting a job, if she’d just been happy staying home . . . . Stayed home with me and the girls, then Dad wouldn’t’ve had to hit her.”
    Then I sat on her and grabbed this scarf she was wearing and pulled it real tight and I squeezed until she stopped moving, then I still kept squeezing.
    “And she wouldn’t’ve started drinking and taking those pills and she’d still be here.” He choked. “I sometimes feel good thinking about him hitting her.”
    The cloth felt good on my wrists.
    He blew a long stream of air from his lungs. “Ain’t a pretty thing to say, is it?”
    “Life ain’t pretty sometimes, James.”
    Phelan looked up at the ceiling and seemed to be counting acoustical tiles. “Hell, I don’t even know why I’m bringing all this up. It just kinda . . . was there. What was going through my mind.” He began to say something else but fell silent and Boyle didn’t dare interrupt his train of thought. When the prisoner spoke again he was more cheerful. “You do things with your family, Captain? That’s something I think was the hardest of all. We never did a single damn thing together. Never took a vacation, never went to a ball game.”
    “If I wasn’t talking to you here right now, I’d be with them all on a picnic.”
    “Yeah?”
    Boyle worried for a moment that Phelan would be jealous of Boyle’s family life. But the prisoner’s eyes lit up. “That’s nice, Captain. I always pictured us—my mama and my father, when he wasn’t drinking, and the twins. We’d be out, doing just what you’re talking about. Having a picnic in some town square, a park, sitting in front of the bandshell, you know.”
    I kept hearing this music when I cut back the throttle.