Saving Elijah

convinced my husband to give him another chance. Drew drove up on that big motorcycle of his, breezed in here that day like a cloud of bad air, hair down his back, bell-bottoms, black leather, boots, the whole hippie thing. I suppose some girls my age would have found him attractive."
    "You didn't like hippies?" Sam asked.
    She shrugged. "Hippies were rich people's kids. My friends when I was growing up were shipped out to Vietnam—I lost my high school sweetheart there, in some godforsaken place called Da Nang. Rich daddies kept their hippie kids out of 'Nam. There were a lot of us back then who couldn't afford to sneer at everything worthwhile, the way rich kids did."
    "You didn't grow up this way, I take it," Sam said.
    "Right. Lawrence City was just like Greenwich."
    Not so very different. "Go on, Mrs. Cantrell," I said.
    "Virginia, please. We had dinner together that night, just the three of us, right in that dining room." She took a long drag on her cigarette. "Well, you didn't have to be a psychiatrist to see that the young man was seriously disturbed. I was only twenty-three myself, and I knew some bad kids, growing up. But my husband's son? I've never met anyone like him, before or since." She looked out the windows for a moment, then back at us. "My husband's son was evil. Truly."
    "Evil?" Sam glanced at me.
    "I don't like to use that word, but I can't think of another way to describe it. My husband's son was evil just because that's what he wanted to be, no other reason. Being corrupt, depraved, nasty, hurtful, hateful, whatever—it turned him on."
    She took another deep drag and blew the smoke away. "The evening didn't start out too badly, with Drew telling us about his interest in the arts. He said he had a new girlfriend, was in a theater group, doing a little filmmaking. Now, my husband, who was the CEO of a huge company, church deacon, pillar of the community, would have had higher aspirations than artsy college dropout for a son of his, but he listened without saying a word. Then Drew told us he played lead guitar in a rock band called Death Rap—no, it was Death Trip. That was one too many for my husband. He said, 'Why don't you go back to school, Drew? You're a smart kid, you could finish up in a year or two.' So Drew says, 'Go back to school, so I can end up like you?' Nasty and sneering, the way he said it. Still, my husband kept his cool. 'I just want what's best for you, son. That's all.'
    " 'You wouldn't know what's best for me if it bit you in the fucking head,' Drew said, excuse my language. 'I told you this was a bad idea,' my husband says to me. Then Drew starts imitating him, 'I told you this was a bad idea,' and then he starts calling names. Called his father an asshole, and me? Well, he called me a little gold-digging whore." She looked down at her lap.
    "You realize I'm a good deal younger than my late husband."
    We both nodded. She was just a little older than me, which meant she'd been married to a man thirty years her senior. What was it Seth had said in the theater that day, that his father liked young women?
    "Well, my husband just lost it. He stood up and backhanded his son across the mouth. Twice, he did it. And the weirdest thing was Drew just sat there and took it, hair hanging in his face."
    Maybe because it had happened before, maybe so many times, he was numb to it.
    "What would you do with a kid like that?" Virginia Cantrell had caught Sam and me exchanging looks. "My husband ordered his son out of the house. Drew says, 'Fine. I'll leave, this is a fucking bore, anyway. Maybe we could liven up the party, have the'... well, I can't use the word he called me... 'service us both, maybe at the same time.' Well. I could see the smoke coming out of my husband's ears, but all he did was tell Drew, 'We don't use those kinds of words in this house, for Christ's sake.'
    "Suddenly, Drew stands up and looks his father in the eyes and says, 'You know what I think about your Christ, Dad? I think he's shit. I think he's nothing.' And then he started to say some words, it was sort of a prayer, something like, 'He who stands on the most skulls sees the furthest.' And 'I lift up my eyes to stand before the Dark Gods.' My husband told him to get out and never, ever come back.
    "Drew says, 'Fine. Here's a little something to remember me by.' And he hauls out this disgusting pornographic photograph, and lays the thing on the dinner table. Says, 'One for your collection, Dad. My girlfriend.