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wrong,” he said. “I can buy it with no trouble at all. I couldn’t finance it, but buying it for cash presents no problems. Of course, registering a car at seventeen is something else entirely. For that I need your permission.”
    They were looking at him with surprise, uneasiness, and—I saw this last and felt a sinking sensation in my belly—rising anger. For all their liberal thinking and their commitment to the farm workers and abused wives and unwed mothers and all the rest, they pretty much managed Arnie. And Arnie let himself be managed.
    â€œI don’t think there’s any call to talk to your mother that way,” Michael said. He put back the yogurt, held onto the Granny Smith, and slowly closed the fridge door. “You’re too young to have a car.”
    â€œDennis has one,” Arnie said promptly.
    â€œSay! Wow! Look how late it’s getting!” I said. “I ought to be getting home! I ought to be getting home right away! I—”
    â€œWhat Dennis’s parents choose to do and what your own choose to do are different things,” Regina Cunningham said. I had never heard her voice so cold. Never. “And you had no right to do such a thing without consulting your father and me about—”
    â€œConsult you!” Arnie roared suddenly. He spilled his milk. There were big veins standing out on his neck in cords.
    Regina took a step backward, her jaw dropping. I would be willing to bet she had never been roared at by her ugly-duckling son in her entire life. Michael looked just as flabbergasted. They were getting a taste of what I had already felt—for inexplicable reasons of his own, Arnie had finally happened on something he really wanted. And God help anyone who got in his way.
    â€œConsult you! I’ve consulted you on every damn thing I’ve ever done! Everything was a committee meeting, and if it was something I didn’t want to do, I got outvoted two to one! But this is no goddam committee meeting. I bought a car and that’s . . . it!”
    â€œIt most certainly is not it ,” Regina said. Her lips had thinned down, and oddly (or perhaps not) she had stopped looking just semi-aristocratic; now she looked like the Queen of England or someplace, jeans and all. Michael was out of it for the time being. He looked every bit as bewildered and unhappy as I felt, and I knew an instant of sharp pity for the man. He couldn’t even go home to dinner to get away from it; he was home. Here was a raw power-struggle between the old guard and the young guard, and it was going to be decided the way those things almost always are, with a monstrous overkill of bitterness and acrimony. Regina was apparently ready for that even if Michael wasn’t. But I wanted no part of it. I got up and headed for the door.
    â€œYou let him do this?” Regina asked. She looked at me haughtily, as if we’d never laughed together or baked pies together or gone on family camp-outs together. “Dennis, I’m surprised at you.”
    That stung me. I had always liked Arnie’s mom well enough, but I had never completely trusted her, at least not since something that had happened when I was eight years old or so.
    Arnie and I had ridden our bikes downtown to take in a Saturday afternoon movie. On the way back, Arnie had fallen off his bike while swerving to avoid a dog and had jobbed his leg pretty good. I rode him home double on my bike, and Regina took him to the emergency room, where a doctor put in half a dozen stitches. And then, for some reason, after it was all over and it was clear that Arnie was going to be perfectly fine, Regina turned on me and gave me the rough side of her tongue. She read me out like a top sergeant. When she finished, I was shaking all over and nearly crying—what the hell, I was only eight, and there had been a lot of blood. I can’t remember chapter and verse of that bawling-out, but the