About the Corvette, he was ready to pull out all the stops, fire all the triggers, to get what he wanted. Probably the most deadly ammunition he had was guilt. He’d remind Renny of how little they’d ever done for him and Lane compared to the other brothers and sisters and how they’d considered him a built in babysitter for her even though he was just a little kid himself and how he’d accepted that responsibility. He’d bring up his grades and his athletic accomplishments to show that he had lived up to Renny’s expectations despite getting almost no encouragement. God, he could almost feel his foot on the gas pedal. He just had to talk Renny into saying yes.
*
“Well, Son,” Renny told him, “tomorrow, you’ll be sixteen so I suppose it’s time to have the car discussion. Why don’t you come on into my study and we’ll talk about it.”
Renny took his place behind the huge mahogany desk, pointing Rafe to the burgundy club chair in front.
The study, with its elaborately carved walnut fireplace and walls of bookcases and curio cabinets filled with Vincennes memorabilia, had always been an intimidating room to the Vincennes young, who weren’t allowed to enter it without Renny’s permission. Usually, their father didn’t call them in here for a less than serious reason and if the talk regarded something about which Renny was displeased, whatever child was in the hotseat would leave here bleeding. Not physically, of course, but the old man could administer a tongue-lashing, without ever raising his voice, that wounded worse than any actual whip.
The elder and younger Vincennes regarded each other silently for a moment, a technique Renny employed deliberately to give himself an advantage. His father was the only person on earth who could make Rafe anxious.
“Dad…” Rafe started but his father held up his hand.
“Why don’t you let me say my piece first and then you can add your two cents worth. The way I’ve got you figured, Rafe, you’re going to ask for either a Shelby or a Corvette, probably the Corvette.”
Rafe, who was a master of disguised expression, couldn’t help but let his astonishment show a little.
“I’ve given some thought to what methods you’re going to use to talk me into it. I expect you’re going to bring up how your mother and I have never come to any of your parent-teacher conferences or any of your games and how we let you practically raise your little sister.”
Renny grinned at his son. It was the first time Rafe realized where his own smile had come from.
“How am I doing so far, Rafe?” he asked, before going on, “but we don’t have to go through all that. I freely admit to being a lousy parent to you and Laney. We did all the right things with the first seven. Do you know how many boring parent-teacher conferences I sat through in those years, Rafe, even though all they ever told me was that my kids were getting A’s? And do you know how many hours of my life have been spent on bleachers? Enough that I think my ass is permanently deformed. I’ve froze and roasted watching kids play football and baseball and tennis. I’ve watched them wrestle and run track and dribble basketballs. I’ve watched them show horses and dogs. I’ve watched them act and dance and play and sing in recitals. I’ve gone to their art exhibits. We thought we were done before you came along, Rafe. Your mother and I thought it was finally going to be our time. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t think I could sit there and nod to another teacher. I didn’t think I could subject my butt to another bleacher.
That’s not to say I haven’t been paying any attention at all, Rafe. I figured you and Lane were doing fine. She’s always on the honor roll and I assume you wouldn’t have been advanced through your classes as you have been if you weren’t excelling in school. If there had been a problem, I hope I would have moved to resolve it but it didn’t seem like there were any problems. At least, no principal has ever called me about either one of you. And I know what your record is in sports, Rafe. I know you’re considered a star in football and baseball and basketball.
I know other things about you too, Rafe. Like how often you have a girl up at the Cabin. I thought your brothers and sisters were a lusty bunch, but it appears that you get the trophy in that area.
I know that you had an affair with Mrs. Keating next door. I almost wondered if I shouldn’t step in at that point but if anyone ever seemed as if he could take care of himself, it was you, so I held off and soon I knew it was over.
The rumors about Bobby Kelly caused me some concern but then nothing more seemed to come of it.
I know you ride that stallion like a maniac and that you’ve been taking the boat out for years and that you go way too fast and way too far. I didn’t do anything about that either because I judged you to be a risk taker, not a reckless one, but one who calculates the odds and decides what chances are worth taking. I figured that was your innate nature and I probably couldn’t do anything to change it and I probably wouldn’t want to even if I could.
I know how much you’ve sacrificed to take care of your sister, Rafe, and that we let you do it because we no longer wanted to make our own sacrifices as parents. I know how close you two are, probably too close. I hope you’ve calculated those risks too, Rafe. I hope you never hurt her because the way she idolizes you, it would be so very easy for you to do.
So, anyway, the upshot of all this is that I’m going to buy you the car you want, Rafe. Was I right about it being the Corvette?”
His father had rendered him speechless so he just nodded his head yes.
“Do you have anything you want to add to this conversation, Son?”
“No, Dad.”
“Then you’d better get your jacket so we can go visit some dealerships. Oh, and by the way, Rafe…”
“What, Dad?”
“I’ll pay the requisite number of tickets but I do have a limit.”
*
He came home, exultant, behind the wheel of the ice blue Corvette. Of course, he drove slowly and carefully because Renny was right behind him in his black Mercedes. He didn’t go anywhere else that day. He had always been one who enjoyed anticipation, letting excitement build until when you finally reached your goal, it was almost like having a climax. He had the capacity to postpone gratification, patient as a spider in its web. So he let the car sit in its spot in the garage, not even looking at it again. And the next morning was Sunday and that meant church. Personally, he didn’t believe in a single thing the church tried to teach him. In fact, he thought all religion was a bunch of superstitious bullshit but going to church was the rent his parents charged any of their children who still lived at home. If you wanted to stay at Heron Point, you went to church every Sunday. End of discussion. He didn’t mind that much. He usually just sat there in the Vincennes pew at St James’ and thought his own thoughts, letting the priest’s words go in one ear and out the other, moving up and down in his seat, something he’d done so often, he could do it by rote. One good thing about their parents having lost interest in them was that they’d never insisted that he or Lane go to confession. Thank God (or whoever!) Wouldn’t that have been a fucking nightmare? He could have lied to Father O’Reilly without a qualm, of course, but he wasn’t so sure about Lane. He smiled to himself. As much as she loved him, he wasn’t quite sure he could win when God was on the other side.
After mass was over, the folks said they were going into Baltimore to shop and eat so the kids were on their own. Rafe told them he’d take Laney out to lunch in his new car, which he did. He stuck to the speed limit when she was with him although he felt an ache in his gut, he wanted so badly to put the gas pedal clear to the floor. After they’d eaten, he took her back to Heron Point and dropped her off.
And then he drove to an isolated highway, where he knew there was generally very little traffic and he’d never seen a cop, and he stomped on it. He felt the car respond instantly. It seemed to him it was like the stallion, reveling in a rider that would allow it to go all the way. And just as he thought, it was like riding or skiing or boating, only more of an adrenalin-rush than any o
f them. It was like sex, maybe even a little better, because he didn’t have to think about pleasing anyone but himself. He didn’t have to call the car Sweetheart for fear of hurting its feelings. Although, it was, of course.
He patted it on the dash, “Come on, Sweetheart, let’s take it on home.”
They raced down the road together. He wished they could just keep going to the end of the earth.
*
On his birthday night in his bed, Lane told him wistfully, “I wish I knew of a new thing to give you for your birthday, Rafe.”
He smiled, the genuine full out smile hardly anyone ever saw but her, “Honey, you don’t have to give me any new thing, I’m happy with just the all the old things.”
* *
The other kids at school figured he enjoyed rubbing their noses in it when he drove into the school parking lot in the Corvette on Monday morning. They would never have understood that, although he could definitely be calculating at times to achieve a desired end, he usually never even gave much thought to how things, like him having a particular car, would affect others. The Corvette was all about him and no one else. He was naturally so self-focused that the idea of wanting to possess something simply because it was prestigious wouldn’t even have occurred to him.
On the other hand, it didn’t take him long to realize that the car attracted girls like a 75 percent off sale at the Riverlook Mall. And he also realized that it opened vast new horizons in that he could now consider the younger girls who didn’t drive because he could take them to the cabin himself.
Rhonda Fisher felt her heart drop when she saw Rafe unwinding his lean brown body out of the Corvette in his tight jeans and leather jacket. She saw the lock of black hair hanging over his forehead. She saw the quick white smile gleam when someone whistled at the car. She knew exactly what it portended.
“Shit,” she said to herself, “as if it wasn’t bad enough already.”
*
“Guess what?” she told Linda Dee when they were having dinner at Big Wong’s that night. “Rafe Vincennes came to school today in a brand new blue Corvette.”
“If we’re lucky, maybe the little fucker will kill himself in it.”
* *
He didn’t though. When graduation night came, there he was. He was valedictorian of his class, of course. Technically, he’d had enough credits to graduate last year at 15. His senior year he’d only taken college prep courses. He also graduated with the highest ever grade point average, which would have been even higher if they hadn’t had an arbitrary ceiling beyond which no one could go. In addition, he’d racked up more athletic letters than any Benedict student ever had. He gave a short, funny speech, saying all the things adults like to hear from kids, almost none of which he believed. Rhonda Fisher knew he’d been inundated with offers from colleges wanting him to attend - on academic scholarships, baseball scholarships, football scholarships, basketball scholarships. He could have applied for other kinds of scholarships and grants as well, in math and science and English, although so far as she knew, he hadn’t tried for any of them. She assumed he’d be attending Princeton in the fall as all the other Vincennes boys, except for Wyatt, had.
A few of the Benedict staff noticed that Rafe’s parents weren’t in attendance. It was said they were on a Mediterranean cruise. Even the ones who weren’t big Rafe Vincennes fans thought it was rather sad that you could accumulate the honors he had and have parents who didn’t even bother to acknowledge it.
Rafael Alain Vincennes probably had no idea when he walked across the stage to receive his diploma how many sighs of relief followed his passage.
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER 3
He called his parents together. They were at the long rosewood table in the dining room with cups of coffee in front of them. Rafe, looking at Renny and Magdelene, hoped he’d inherited his parents’ genes. They were in their late 50’s now but it seemed to Rafe, they’d barely changed from his first memories of them. Renny, dressed in an immaculately tailored chalk gray suit, was still lean and flat-bellied, much like Rafe himself. His perfectly razor cut hair was the same except for some silvering around the temples. His dark eyes could still twinkle or spark depending on his mood. His smile was easygoing but it could sometimes lull you into a false sense of security. All Renny’s kids knew that trying to take on their dad was a lost cause. He’d let you go ahead and make your argument, let you think you just might be winning, then demolish you with a few well-chosen words. Rafe didn’t respect too many people, in fact, he couldn’t really think of anyone else besides his father but he definitely looked up to Renny, in the same way a young lion cub acknowledges the superiority of the leader of the pride.
As for Magdelene, she was still as beautiful as ever. If she’d been taller, she might have been a model with her slender, stylish figure and the pale blonde hair that curled softly around a face like a cameo - ivory skin and lapis lazuli eyes. Of course, she never would have been a model because being a model is hard work and Magdelene had never had to work. Her own family was wealthy and then she’d married Renny who he was even richer so she’d never known anything but abundance. Rafe figured the hardest thing she’d ever done was give birth to nine children, of course, that was probably no picnic….
“I’ve got a proposition for you,” he told them. “Let me talk first, okay, and then if there are flaws in my argument, you can point them out.”
Renny wondered what this most interesting of his kids was going to come up with now. Magdelene was noting how strong and brown and handsome he looked. She reached over and brushed a stray swatch of dark hair off his forehead.
“First, I want to put off going to Princeton for a year. I’d still only be 17 when I start. I’m tired of going to school and reading books and taking tests and pleasing teachers. I just want to take life easy and be a bum for a year. I want to spend my time doing physical stuff, stuff you do outside in the sun like boating and riding and skiing. I think I earned the time by graduating at 16.
There’s a second reason. If I went to college this fall, Laney would only be 14. I know, Dad, that you’ve gone into sort of semi-retirement and you and Mom have things planned like more cruises. You deserve it after raising all nine of us but it leaves Lane alone a lot in a 32-room house except for the staff. It’s hard to think about her wandering around in this place by herself like a lonesome little ghost. If it was me, I could do it but, you know, she doesn’t have my, my…”
“Self-sufficiency, Rafe?” His father supplied the words.
“Yes. So, I’d be living here for at least another year to watch out for her. Beyond that, I wish you’d think of just turning over some extra money to me for what she needs.” A smile flickered across his face. “I usually always have to remind you anyway when her lunch fees are due or her class is going on a field trip and she has to have a check. You know, she made the Cheer Squad for next year and there will be outfits to buy for that. I’m not bitching about any of this, I’m just trying to be practical. This way she can come to me and instead of being the middle man, I can just take her shopping or write a check or take her out to eat or whatever. It’s not that I’m trying to cadge more money out of you, Dad. Out of the $500 a month allowance you started giving me in high school plus other money I’ve gotten, I have almost $10,000 in the bank but I may have to spend that this next year if I want to play without having to get a job. And I don’t want a job because I don’t want to be on a schedule. I’m scheduled out for a while. So, that’s it. That’s what I have to say.”
Renny looked at Magdelene. “What do you think, Maggie?”
“It okay with me if that’s what he wants to do. I’d feel better about us going off if I knew Rafe was here with Lane. And he’s right, he’s the one she goes to when she needs anything so it would probably be more convenient for all of us if he handled it directly. One thing though, Rafie, next year, you absolutely, positively enter Princeton. No more trying to talk us into putting it off.”
Rafe nodded. “No, I won’t do that, Mom.”
Renny shook his head slowly. “I’m going to agree to give you your year, Rafe. It’s against my better judgment but it would seem rather hypocritical of me to go all concerned father on you at this late date. I’ll up your allowance to $750 a month. That will give you a little more spending money while you’re out there “finding yourself”. Lane will start getting her own allowance next year since she’ll be in high school. And I’ll give you another $1,000 a month for her. You buy her whatever she wants and needs and if there’s any left over, you can keep it for your trouble.”
“You know I’d never slack on Laney to keep extra money for myself, don’t you, Dad?”
“No, I’d never think of your doing that, Rafe. But, let me be crystal clear, Son. As your mother said, this won’t happen again. Next year at this time, you’ll be getting ready to go to Princeton, sick of school or not. And your sister is just going to have to learn to be less dependent on you. Just to focus your mind, I want you to remember one thing. That Corvette sitting out in the garage is titled in my name. I bought it and I can sell it and that will be the deal - no college, no car. Have you got that straight, Rafe?”
Sociopath? Page 7
