Christine Read Online Free PDF Page A

all the distressing physical symptoms of a family quarrel inside myself.
    "You can learn a lot about cars when you're fixing up art old one," I said. I suddenly sounded like a loony imitation of LeBay to myself. "And it'll take a lot of work before it's even street-legal." (If it ever is, I thought.) "You could look at it as a… a hobby… "
    "I look upon it as madness," Regina said.
    Suddenly I just wanted to get out. I suppose that if the emotional vibrations in the room hadn't been getting so heavy, I might have found it funny. I had somehow gotten into the position of defending Arnie's car when I thought the whole thing was preposterous to begin with.
    "Whatever you say," I muttered. "Just leave me out of it. I'm going home."
    "Good," Regina snapped.
    "That's it," Arnie said tonelessly. He stood up. "I'm getting the fuck out of here."
    Regina gasped, and Michael blinked as if he had been slapped.
    "What did you say?" Regina managed. "What did you—"
    "I don't get what you're so upset about," Arnie told them in an eerie, controlled voice, "but I'm not going to stick around and listen to a lot of craziness from either of you.
    "You wanted me in the college courses, I'm there." He looked at his mother. "You wanted me in the chess club instead of the school band; okay, I'm there too. I've managed to get through seventeen years without embarrassing you in front of the bridge club or landing in jail."
    They were staring at him, wide-eyed, as if one of the kitchen walls had suddenly grown lips and started to talk.
    Arnie looked at them, his eyes odd and white and dangerous. "I'm telling you, I'm going to have this. This one thing."
    "Arnie, the insurance—" Michael began.
    "Stop it!" Regina shouted. She didn't want to start talking about the specific problems because that was the first step on the road to possible acceptance; she simply wanted to crush the rebellion under her heel, quickly and completely. There are moments when adults disgust you in ways they would never understand; I believe that, you know. I had one of those moments then, and it only made me feel worse. When Regina shouted at her husband, I saw her as both vulgar and scared, and because I loved her, I had never wanted to see her either way.
    Still I remained in the doorway, wanting to leave but unhealthily fascinated by what was going on—the first full-scale argument in the Cunningham family that I had ever seen, maybe the first ever. And it surely was a wowser, at least ten on the Richter scale.
    "Dennis, you'd better leave while we thrash this out," Regina said grimly.
    "Yes," I said. "But don't you see, you're making a mountain out of a molehill. This car—Regina… Michael—if you could see it… it probably goes from zero to thirty in twenty minutes, if it moves at all."
    "Dennis! Go! "
    I went.
    As I was getting into my Duster, Arnie came out the back door, apparently meaning to make good on his threat to leave. His folks came after him, now looking worried as well as pissed off. I could understand a little bit how they felt. It had been as sudden as a cyclone touching down from a clear blue sky.
    I keyed the engine and backed out into the quiet street. A lot had surely happened since the two of us had punched out at four o'clock, two hours ago. Then I had been hungry enough to eat almost anything (kelp quiche excepted). Now my stomach was so roiled I felt as if I would barf up anything I swallowed.
    When I left, the three of them were standing in the driveway in front of their two-car I garage (Michael's Porsche and Regina's Volvo wagon were snuggled up inside they got their cars, I remember thinking, a little meanly; what do they care), still arguing.
    That's it, I thought, now feeling a little sad as well as upset. They'll beat him down and LeBay will have his twenty-five dollars and that '58 Plymouth will sit there for another thousand years or so. They had done similar things to him before. Because he was a loser. Even his parents knew it. He