The Whore's Child

himself was, for Mr. Christie, a ghost presence, both there and not there. Would it be possible, Lin wondered, for someone to get so close to him without him noticing? In the barbershop, for instance, would it have been possible for his father to watch him through a small hole in the ceiling? No, he decided, it didn’t work that way. Where the world was concerned—he felt this deeply—Linwood Hart was privileged.
    COST
    â€œThat Howard Christie up there?” his father wanted to know the next day. Their Sunday afternoon was already off to an unusual start, his father having arrived in Uncle Bert’s car instead of the two of them walking over there to pick it up.
    Mr. Christie had finished scraping the front and was painting now. When Lin acknowledged that this was precisely who was on the ladder, his father nodded thoughtfully. “Figures,” he said. “He always was a bird dog.”
    â€œWhat’s a bird dog?” Lin asked, but his father had already gotten out of the car. He now stood on the brown terrace, hands on his hips, sighting up the ladder, standing there until Mr. Christie noticed him.
    â€œHello, Thomas,” he called down, friendly, like he always was. “You and Linwood off to the lake?”
    That morning after Mass, Lin had mentioned that he hoped this was where his father might take him that afternoon.
    â€œDidn’t know housepainters worked weekends, Howard,” his father said.
    Mr. Christie chuckled. “Well, it’s kind of a short season, Thomas. You get a stretch of good weather, you need to take advantage.”
    â€œWell, if that’s your story, you should stick to it,” Lin’s father said. “You wouldn’t be charging my wife any time and a half or anything, would you?”
    â€œNo, nothing like that, Thomas.” Mr. Christie was still smiling for some reason. “In fact, she’s getting my discount parish rate.”
    Now it was Lin’s father’s turn to chuckle. “I might want to see the bill, just to make sure.”
    Mr. Christie turned back to painting now. “I keep an open book. Anybody that wants to can have a look.”
    â€œWell, I might want to.”
    â€œYou and Linwood enjoy your afternoon.”
    His father looked like he might have liked to continue this conversation, but apparently he couldn’t think of a way, so he got back into Uncle Bert’s car. The key dangled from the ignition, but he made no move to turn it. “Your mother inside?”
    Lin said she was. His father nodded, staring darkly at the front door. His prediction—that Lin’s mother would kiss his ass before he ever entered that house again—was weighing on him heavily, Lin could tell. He could probably predict—as could Lin himself—what his mother would say if he’d walked in right then: “Did somebody kiss your ass, Thomas? Because I have to tell you, it wasn’t me.” When his father finally decided it wasn’t worth it, he looked over at Lin, really taking him in for the first time. “What happened to you? Join the marines?”
    â€œHaircut,” Lin explained.
    â€œNo kidding,” his father said. “He call you Linwood all the time?”
    Lin admitted he did.
    â€œIf you don’t like it, tell him.”
    Lin said he didn’t mind. His name, he knew, had always been a bone of contention between his parents. He’d been named after Grandpa Foster, whose own father had also been named Linwood. “I’m just grateful he wasn’t named Jitbag,” Lin had once overheard his father remark. Lin was glad, too. Though he had no idea what a “jitbag” might be, he didn’t care for the sound of it.
    They immediately headed in the wrong direction for the lake, and Lin had just concluded they were in for another long afternoon at his grandmother’s when they passed the street they would have turned on if her house had been their destination. In fact they kept on going right out of town, finally pulling into a used-car lot out by the new highway. In its center was a tiny shack that looked like an outhouse, and a man wearing a plaid sport coat—who’d been leaning back on the hind legs of a chair and reading a magazine by the light of the open door— got to his feet and came out to greet them. “Slick Tommy,” he said wearily, as if the very sight had exhausted him. Quite a few of his