In the Middle of the Night by Robert Cormier
When she hung up, she came and stood beside my bed. I knew she was there because I heard the soft slap of her slippers on the floor as she approached.
I opened my eyes and looked up at her.
I won’t call him anymore, she said.
A sigh escaped me, like a ghost abandoning my body.
Now it’s the son, she said. The sin of the father will be visited upon the son.
Oh no, Lulu, I said. Please don’t do that.
I have to do it, she said.
No you don’t.
I was the one who died, she said, not you.
She turned away from me, letting herself be swallowed up in the nighttime gloom.
The usual morning scene: Denny, his mother and his father.
His mother at the stove, waiting for the coffee to bubble in the little glass knob of the percolator; his father with the newspaper in front of him, rippling the pages as he turns them; Denny eating the tasteless shredded wheat like trying to swallow hay.
Back to his mother: still pretty but in a fading way, turning pastel. Streaks of gray lacing her still blond hair. Her skin like ivory, pale. Everything about her pale except for her eyes. Brown-black, sharp, radiant. Her best feature, she always says, although she has never done anything to enhance them.
He always checked his mother’s eyes when he wanted to confirm what she was really thinking. She was always aware of what he was doing, though it remained unspoken between them. When she’d turn away, he’d know instinctively that she was hiding something from him. Most often it had to do with his father.
His father. Behind the newspaper. Hiding behind the newspaper, especially this morning. Was he really reading the paper? He never discussed what he read in the paper. Did not react. The Red Sox lose another ball game, blowing it in the final inning? No reaction. Another senseless death on the streets over in Boston? A beating? A drive-by shooting? A gang rape? No reaction. Did he actually read the paper or was he only using it as a barricade?
Himself. What did his mother and father see when they looked at him? The obvious: dutiful son, good student—not brilliant, not a genius (definitely not a genius), but a regular kid. Did not give them cause for alarm. Polite. Oh, sarcastic sometimes when things piled up and no one spoke or said anything. Uncoordinated, awkward at sports, quiet. Spent a lot of time in his room. Reading, mostly junk but some good junk, too—the 87th Precinct novels he was racing through.
That’s what someone would see, peeking in the window: a regular family. Breakfast time. Mother at the stove. Father reading the newspaper. Son dutifully eating the dreaded shredded wheat because his mother said it was good for him.
But anyone looking in would not know about the telephone call.
He pushed the bowl away. The coffee began to percolate. His father ruffled the paper to show that he had not finished reading it. If he lowered the newspaper, he would encounter his son, his wife.
Denny had been in the kitchen for fifteen minutes and nobody had said anything except “good morning.” They seldom spoke much as a family, particularly at breakfast. His father preferred silence to a lot of talking and his mother took her cue from him. The silences were comfortable most of the time. This morning’s silence was different, however, and he wanted to break it.
Which is exactly what he did, finally.
“I heard the phone ring during the night.”
Dropped the words on the table, like stones striking a surface.
The newspaper trembled in his father’s hands.
“Or was I dreaming?” Hoping his father caught the sarcasm.
More silence. More waiting. Then more sarcasm: “Or was it a wrong number?”
He was tired of pretense, silences, a “failure to communicate” (a phrase he’d heard in an old late-night movie on television).
Finally, his father spoke from behind the newspaper. “It was not a wrong number.” He lowered the newspaper and began to fold it, slowly and methodically.
His father was a small slender man, compact, neat. Shoes always shined, shirt never wrinkled. He could fool around with a car engine or work outside and never soil his clothes. Never a dab of dirt or grease on his face. Denny attracted dirt and grime, and his shirts and trousers began to wrinkle the moment he put them on, before he’d even taken a step.
“The telephone rang at exactly three-eighteen,” his father said, in his formal precise manner. He seldom used slang. Spoke as if he was trying out the words for the first time. He was still folding the newspaper, had not raised his eyes to either Denny or his wife.
Denny waited for his father to say more, but his father signaled for his coffee to be poured. His mother didn’t look at Denny. She didn’t look at his father, either, concentrating on serving the coffee as if she were conducting some important experiment in pouring.
Denny took a deep breath and plunged. This year, this time, had to be different.
“So it’s started again,” he said.
His father smiled, a wisp of a smile, the saddest smile Denny had ever seen. In fact, not a smile at all but a mere alteration of his expression.
“Again,” his father said, nodding heavily, as if his head was too heavy for his shoulders.
His mother spoke from the sink. “This year, we ought to take the phone out. Or at least change the number. Unlisted. Unpublished.”
His father looked at his mother. Denny knew that look. Knew what it meant. We are not taking the phone out.
“Especially this year,” she said turning and meeting his eyes.
“It’s just another year, Nina,” his father said.
“No it isn’t.” Her face grim, determined. Which surprised Denny because his mother was usually quick to agree with his father, always willing to smooth things over.
He hated to see his parents at odds with each other. He had never really seen them argue except about this one thing. Even then the argument mostly took the form of silences. But certain silences, he’d found, could be worse than yelling and shouting.
She ran the faucet. “We hardly use the phone anyway. How many people know us here? How many other people call us?”
Other people. Terrible words that emphasized who really called them.
His father said: “We keep the phone. And we are not going to move anymore. We found this place, it’s nice, and we are staying. No more moving.” He looked at Denny’s mother, then at Denny, then back to Denny’s mother. “So, everything stays the same.”
Brave words. Denny wanted to cheer his father on. But the moment passed and he pressed his lips together, thinking of all the nights ahead and all the telephone calls to come. Along with everything else.
Everything else, he thought, as he made his way through the warmth of the sunny morning to the bus stop. Meaning: the letters his father barely read before either burning them in the sink or flushing them down the toilet; reporters ringing the doorbell; the newspapers with his father’s name in headlines along with that old picture of him as a boy; his father’s face flashing on television. Not all the time, of course, and not every year. But certainly this year, a special year, the twenty-fifth-anniversary year.
Arriving at the bus stop, he looked dismally at the kids waiting there. Humiliating, starting every school day like this, the only high-school student in the neighborhood. The others at the bus stop were elementary-school students, the oldest sixth-graders, some of them younger. It was a maverick bus, picking up unassigned and stray students.
“Hey, Denny, when are you gonna get a car and drive us all to school?”
Same old questions every day from Dracula, to whom Denny had confessed one day that his father wouldn’t allow him to get his license until he was seventeen. Too many crazy teenagers on the road, his father said. Denny had planned to wage a campaign for the license, to get it now and not wait. But that telephone call and all it meant complicated the situation.
“Hey, Denny, you need a license before you get a car, right?” Dracula persisted.
De
Frankenstein and The Wolfman were really going at it now, grappling and scuffling and falling to the ground. Denny watched without emotion.
“Why don’t you do something?”
He turned at the words to confront a girl whose eyes were flashing with anger. She looked at him with the same kind of disgust he reserved for the little monsters. “They’re going to kill each other …”
“So—let them kill each other,” he said. But did not mean what he said, of course, letting his anger toward the kids, the girl, himself, come to the surface. Who was this girl to challenge him like that? He didn’t care if she was pretty or not. Actually, she was beautiful.
Shaking her head in disgust, she proceeded to stop the fight. She put down her bookbag, and began to tug at The Wolfman, who was on top of Frankenstein. While Dracula and Ygor and everybody else cheered them on.
Denny watched, astonished, as the girl wrenched The Wolfman away from Frankenstein and swung him around by the shoulders. When she let go, he tumbled to the sidewalk in a yelp of pain and humiliation.
She bent over Frankenstein. “Are you okay?” she asked.
He kicked out at her. “Let me alone, bitch,” he yelled, scuttling away.
The girl picked up her bookbag and looked toward Denny. “Thanks for all your help,” she said, voice dry as playground sand.
“You didn’t seem to need any,” he said.
Two other kids started pushing and shoving, calling each other names.
“See?” he said to her. “It’s like a war. You win one battle but the war goes on …” He thought that sounded pretty clever.
She did not reply. She walked to the other end of the bus stop. Surreptitiously, he glanced at her. Her blue bookbag hung from her shoulder. Her hair was as black as midnight. She wore a white blouse and a beige skirt.
On the bus, he sat alone as usual.
He was surprised when she sat down beside him. There were plenty of empty seats; she could have sat anywhere.
“Mind?” she asked, but already settling in.
“Free country,” he said, shrugging, his pulse leaping in his temple.
“Thank you.” Was she being sarcastic?
The bus lurched to a start. One of the little monsters slid off his seat and landed on the floor with a yelp. He was cheered and jeered.
“Why do you look so sour?” the girl asked.
“What?” he replied, startled. Did he actually look sour?
“I said: You look sour. What do you see out the window that makes you so sour?”
“The trees,” he said. Having to say something. “Trees?”
“Right. Look at them out there. Mutilated. The power company cuts the branches, hacks away at them, so that they don’t interfere with the wires. The trees all look … wounded.”
“But the wires bring electricity to the houses,” she said.
He shrugged, did not bother to answer. Was in no mood to argue.
“Would you rather be without electricity?” she asked. “Stumble around in the dark? Use candles instead of lightbulbs?”
The bus stopped for more passengers, doors opened and closed, exhaust smells filled the air.
They should bury the wires. That would protect the trees. Also would prevent limbs coming down during storms and interrupting the power. Made sense, didn’t it? But he did not say any of this to the girl. Did not want further conversation.
“Well?” she said. Was she waiting for his reply?
“Look, what do you want from me?” Still not looking at her. Heat filled the bus. Hot for September.
“Nothing,” she said. “I don’t want anything from you. Except perhaps a bit of civility.”
Civility. Such an odd word to use in conversation. Meaning: Be civil, be civilized. Be nice.
Actually, he wanted to be nice. Wanted to be charming and witty and clever. She was beautiful in a way that made him ache. He could smell her perfume. Not perfume really but a clean outdoors kind of smell. Reminded him of breezes rippling across a pond. Miserably, he concentrated on the scenery outside the window. Not scenery at all but buildings and stores and commuter traffic. People hurrying along the sidewalk, going to their jobs. Inhaling the girl’s scent, he thought of Chloe. Hadn’t thought of her for weeks. Angry at himself now for thinking of her, angry at this girl for making him think of Chloe.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
He shook his head, not daring to answer, not trusting himself to speak.
She did not press him to talk. Did not ask any more questions or make any attempt at further conversation. He kept looking out the window.
The bus stopped at Barstow High. She rose from the seat, slung her bookbag over her shoulder. She stood there, looked down at him in an attitude of waiting. Waiting for what?
“Hey,” she said.
He glanced up at her, caught her eyes, which were not crackling with anger like at the bus stop but soft, her expression gentle.
“I think that’s kind of nice.”
What’s kind of nice, he wondered, mystified.
“That you worry about the trees.”
And she was gone, making her way down the aisle and out the door, ignoring the shouts and whistles of the little monsters. He settled back in his seat, waiting to be dropped off at Normal Prep.
Normal Prep.
It was the nickname for Norman Preparatory Academy, named for Samuel J. Norman, a deceased Barstow millionaire, whose former home, a three-story mansion, now served as the academy’s administration building. It was so damn normal, which is exactly what Denny liked about it. And hated about it. Both at the same time.
The school looked almost too normal: two classroom buildings, located at right angles to the mansion, bright red brick with clinging climbing ivy, two stories in height. The lawn between the buildings was mowed to such perfection that it resembled artificial turf, although no one would dare play football on its surface or even walk across it. An iron gate guarded the entrance to the academy.
The students, all boys, wore navy blue blazers and gray trousers, the official school uniform. Students were allowed to wear shirts and ties of their own choosing although the official Norman catalog asked that these be “tasteful in design and color.”
Denny’s father was enthusiastic about Norman Prep, even though the tuition meant that he had to work overtime at the factory to earn extra money. He said he wanted the best possible education for Denny, and Norman promised small classes and individual attention.
Denny didn’t want any individual attention, however. Just the opposite: he wanted to blend in and not call attention to himself. In his first nine days at Norman, he had not made any friends, hadn’t, in fact, tried to make any. He was a shadow without substance, gliding through his hours in the corridors and classrooms like a ghost, unseen and unheralded. In the classrooms, he tried to sit as far back as possible. He did not volunteer answers.
During lunch, he sat alone in the cafeteria. Actually, there were other guys at the table but he ate quickly, kept his eyes on his plate and faded out of the place as soon as possible. The athletic field was located behind the residence and he made his way there, jogging slightly. Then sat in the bleachers, looking down at the vacant field.
He liked being alone and didn’t like it, which was true of his entire life. Being pulled two ways. For instance, he was often lonely and wished for a best friend, above all for a girlfriend. No opportunities for a girlfriend at Norman. He wondered if he really wanted a friend.
He did not want to have happen here what had happened at other places, especially a
Small and dark and energetic, she was like a hummingbird, going sixty miles an hour while standing still. Eager, talkative, on the move. Let’s do this, let’s do that. They wrote notes to each other. She signed one: love. Which made his heart a dancer, a line from one of his father’s old records. All of it wonderful. Until it happened. Damn it.
Shaking off that particular thought, he got up and headed back to school, taking his time, because his next class was a study period and Mr. Armstrong played it loose with attendance.
At the school steps, he was stopped by Jimmy Burke, one of the few students Denny knew by name. Jimmy was senior class president and had given a “Welcome to Norman” speech at the academy’s opening ceremonies. He’d seemed like a nice guy, the right combination of confidence and modesty, as he’d stood on the stage.