Read Online Extraordinary by David Gilmour - Free Book Online Page B

left the road, rolled down an embankment, turned over three or four times, killed Jerry and killed the dog. The police picked up Kyle half a mile away, hitchhiking.”
    Here Sally cocked her head as if she were trying to recall something, a gesture I remembered from my childhood. “Chloe and I gave up the house in San Miguel a little while after. The town was haunted for me, like a before-and-after photograph. And when Freddie died (his cleaning lady found him on his bed in a blue linen jacket: he must have lain down for a moment to catch his breath and never gotten up again, dear Freddie), there was nothing to keep me there.
    â€œI rented an apartment at the edge of Forest Hill Village. The poor part. Still, it was comforting to be neighbours to so many Mercedes and pretty gardens. It was an old-style brick building in slight disrepair, with lead windows. Remember those? Kyle was back in Toronto too. He wanted to move in with us. At first, I said no. Absolutely not.
    â€œThere were tears, of course, then accusations. I’d deserted him in Mexico, left him with a harsh father. Had loved Chloe more than him. While he was talking, I had, for the first time ever, a sensation in my body that I was dealing with a pathological liar. A liar whose charm and intelligence had become a sort of lubricant for getting whatever he was trying to get. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m saying for the first time it occurred to me that for my beloved son Kyle, language, the words that you actually
use,
was simply a kind of camouflage that allowed him to be a predator without seeming to
be
a predator. Even his tears seemed self-serving. As though he was lying, knew he was lying, but didn’t care. Was only concerned with the success of the performance.”
    â€œBut you loved him.”
    â€œYes. Everything just flew out the window in his presence, and I’d think, He’s so fabulous. I kept thinking, This is circumstantial. But then I’d overhear him on the phone and I’d think, Who is this? Is this a mask? Where is the little boy who was scared of ghost stories, and who was so shy at summer camp that he was scared to ask where the toilets were?”
    â€œDid it occur to you that he was crazy or an addict?”
    â€œIt occurred to me he was a little pig with his nose in the trough. A shameless, self-gratifying bag of appetites. And that once he understood this—that that was how the world was coming to see him—his vanity would stop him.”
    â€œMakes sense.”
    â€œOnly on paper.
Only on paper.
I took him out to dinner. Taxis, crutches, the whole business. I wanted to be somewhere fresh with him, somewhere that didn’t smell like my apartment. I asked him when was the last time he was happy. He lied at first, gave me some fiction he thought I wanted to hear. I stopped him. I said, ‘Stop lying to me. It’s killing me. It’s killing
us.
’
    â€œSo he said with this goofy grin, ‘Breaking into a car, I suppose. Well, not exactly breaking in, but that moment when you look in the window, see something you like, look up and down the street, the coast is clear, and then you
do
it.’
    â€œI asked if he was saying that to shock me. It wasn’t the criminality of it that was so distressing, it was the vulgarity, the sheer vulgarity of it, and the strange gleam of pleasure that he got in his eyes when he said it. He looked . . .
feral.
I said, ‘Was
that
really the last time you were happy?’
    â€œHe thought for a moment and he said, ‘Yeah, it really was, Mom.’
    â€œâ€˜Don’t you want to change your life?’ I said. ‘No, not really.’ I asked him if he thought he was going to live to be an old man. He said he didn’t think about it much. I said, ‘What
do
you think about, Kyle, when you wake up at four o’clock in the morning and you’re in some dirty little rooming house with needles on the