Read Online Private Screening by Richard North Patterson - Free Book Online

largesse through which they graced some corner of their city with an artifact or cherry tree or performance by a new soprano; the pleasant backdrop of familiar faces who shared this same communal purpose, to make the place where their parents and children alike were rooted something finer than it was. Their house on Broadway overlooked the soothing sameness of the water, and the window where they took their drinks filtered sunset into shafts, casting the spell of the only time and place Colby ever wished to know. But in the calm with which Alexis looked through this same window, Parnell sensed that part of her was still in Hollywood, or somewhere else beyond his reach, with Robert.
    As soon as he could speak she began inventing plays for him, acting but each role in turn as Robert clapped in pleasure or watched her with bright black eyes. By four he too was wildly inventive, ascribing each trampled flower or broken dish to some imagined friend so sharply realized that it struck Parnell as eerie. When Alexis bought him a television, he began appearing at the dinner table as whatever singer or actress he had seen, demanding to be called by her name. Parnell said little; Alexis was delighted.
    As if excited by this dual response, Robert began smearing on his mother’s lipstick. “We’ve got to stop this,” Parnell suggested over cocktails, “before he finds your sanitary napkins.”
    She smiled at the window. “He’s imaginative. I of all people should understand the impulse.”
    â€œThis is no impulse. It isn’t normal.”
    â€œDoes that mean I’m not either?” She turned on him. “He’s your son too, Colby.”
    Parnell sipped his manhattan. “That’s why I’m concerned about him.”
    â€œI understand. Just please try to be that without becoming your father.” When Parnell looked up again, she had turned back to the window.
    His puzzlement seemed to make her smile more at Robert. The five-year-old would follow her even when she undressed: she would hold him close and murmur, “Lexie-love,” until he would repeat it as his name. Parnell grew more detached.
    One evening, leaving the paper, it struck Parnell that, like his father, he did not play with his son. On the way home, he bought a baseball bat, and took it up to Robert. “Here,” he said.
    For an instant, Robert’s wish to grasp the hand-tooled bat was palpable. Then he looked up at his father. With a bright, peculiar smile, Robert ran away.
    That night, the pattern of his bedtime started.
    Still hurt, Parnell wandered into the darkened room. But as he bent to kiss his son, Robert drew one hand across his eyes. The boy’s face and body were quite stiff; Parnell did not know if this was fear or theater or dislike. Shaken, he rose to leave. In the several years of nights to come, as Robert would cover his face, Parnell would recall the child’s voice behind him saying, “Lexie-love …”
    As Robert grew, Alexis listened to fantasies which ranged from being Laurence Olivier to president of his own republic. The music room became his province.
    Accomplished at classical pieces, Alexis played piano for him. Robert’s favorite was the Paganini Variations; again and again, he asked for it, watching until Alexis placed his chair nearer the keyboard. But for reasons he could not define, Parnell avoided joining them, until he told himself there was no reason he should not. Returning from work, he heard Alexis playing the variations. He entered the music room, standing behind his son until his wife had finished. As she gazed down at the keys, lost in what she had played, the ten-year-old Robert stood, and touched her face.
    Alexis smiled to herself, then saw her husband. Following her embarrassed glance to the father at his back, Robert bolted from the room. The two parents looked at each other. Murmuring, “I’m sorry,” Alexis went to find their