CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Well, wasn’t that a kick in the butt?” Roy mused after Tab flopped into the back seat of his mom’s car and buckled his seatbelt. The boy glared at him, nostrils flaring.

“You’re not real,” he said. “You’re just my anxious thoughts trying to make me afraid. Go away.”

He caught his mother watching him in the rearview mirror. When their eyes met, she whispered, “Good job.”

Roy bellowed laughter. “I’m as real as you are, buddy. Ask your cat. Better yet, ask your mom.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not. Okay, I fibbed a little when I showed you your mom and the stupid old doctor getting it on. Your mom didn’t have an affair with him. She had an affair with me. And you are the result.”

Tab’s mouth fell open. “LIAR!”

In the driver seat, Sandra twitched, startled by the outburst. “Okay, son, talking back to Roy doesn’t mean you need to shout out loud. I almost ran off the road!”

“Sorry, Mom, but he’s telling me bad things.”

“Oh, your mom wasn’t bad,” Roy said, smiling. “She was damned good, in fact. We had a great time together. Made you, didn’t we? Your so-called dad? He was a real piece of shit. Murdered me when he found out about us. Gored out my eyes and everything.”

Tab scoffed. “Now I know you’re lying. Dad would never do something like that. He just yells sometimes. He couldn’t hurt another person even if he wanted to. I can’t believe anything you tell me.” He eyed his mother’s reflection, seeking more approval of how capable he was at talking back to Roy. What he saw wasn’t helpful. A vertical line had formed in the middle of her forehead. She stared straight ahead, not acknowledging him or what he’d said.

“Y’see, boy? Your mom knows it’s true. You don’t believe I’m really real? Watch this.”

He passed a hand through the driver’s seat headrest and pressed his enormous palm against the back of Sandra’s crown. Although the headrest obscured it somewhat, Tab could see Roy’s fingers laying against his mother’s head. The ghost turned his hand so that the backs of his index and middle fingers pressed there, in a spot where Tab could see. After dipping his middle finger into her hair, he stroked downward, lightly tugging on the long strand. Tab’s mother took one hand away from the wheel, reached behind, and swatted and scratched at her scalp as if she had detected a bit of dryness or the nip of an insect there.

Tab glared at Roy, unsure of what to say. His mom’s reaction didn’t prove anything. If Dr. Clifford was here, he might say that Tab had subconsciously noticed a housefly or a breeze from the Accord’s A/C that tickled her scalp and then attributed it to Roy in his imagination. It was as good an explanation as any, he supposed, although something about it didn’t feel realistic. Dr. Clifford had a way of explaining how things could happen that felt more real. Tab’s rational explanation felt less rational and more like rationalization. Although he did not yet know that word, he would have understood the context. He felt like he was lying to himself.

“Still don’t believe me, huh?” Roy said. “Get a load of this then.” Roy grimaced, straining like he was constipated and trying to force a shit. With the palm of the same hand that had stroked the back of Sandra’s head, he shoved her. Tab saw her head snap forward, nearly causing her to strike her forehead against the top of the steering wheel. Sandra gasped and yelped in surprise. She threw her head back against the headrest. Her arms locked straight against the wheel, veins standing out along her forearms and in the crook of her elbows. Tab felt his legs lock against the rear floorboard. The Accord veered over the center line briefly as Sandra tried to regain control. Within one second, she had returned to the car to her lane and straightened it. She’d broken out in a sweat, and her breaths came in heaving gasps.

“Sorry!” she heaved. “Sorry, sorry! I must have nodded off for a second! I’m awake now. We’re fine. We’re fine.” Something in her voice indicated that she didn’t quite believe her own story.

Tab snarled at Roy. “Go away!” he said, careful this time to ramp up his volume instead of distracting his mother again with a full-throated outburst. He closed his eyes and cupped a hand over each ear. “I’m not listening to you anymore. You have no place in my head. You have no place in my life. Go away!”

A few seconds passed before Tab realized Roy had not responded. He uncapped his ears and examined the seat beside him. Nothing there. He sighed. A wave of exhaustion overcame him, provoking a jaw-straining yawn.

“He’s gone, Mom,” Tab said. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the door panel. “I think he’s gone now.” His mother, eyes wide and knuckles white where she clutched the wheel, did not reply at first. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you, Tab,” she said. There was some amount of ice in her voice. “Listen, we have a long drive home. I want you to do something for me in the meantime. I want you to open your sketchbook and draw a portrait of Roy for me. Can you do that?”

“I already drew him once for Dad when he was watching my closet.”

“I know. But I’d like more details about him. Do you know what a portrait is?”

Tab laughed. “Of course I do! It’s a close-up of someone’s head down to the shoulders.”

“Right,” Sandra said. “That’s what I want you to draw for me. Try to remember as much detail as you can about what Roy looks like and draw him. I think it’ll help me figure out exactly what kind of OCD we’re dealing with here.”

“But what if it brings him back?” Tab asked.

His mother’s response was quick and short. “If he comes back we’ll figure it out. Right now, I need to see what you see.”

Tab took the hint. “Don’t expect it to be museum quality,” he said. The road home was sometimes a little bumpy, especially after a hard rain. His mother wanted his silence for the rest of the trip. He was able to glean that much from her tone. He opened the sketchbook to a blank page, carefully avoiding the mysterious drawing of his father’s hand emerging from the grave.

With a snowy fresh page in his lap, he tapped his pencil eraser three times against his bump before he set the point. Then he was in the zone, although without eye rolling and unconsciousness. It was nice to be aware of what he was creating for once. He neither stopped drawing nor glanced up from the page until his mother announced their arrival home. She did not ask about the drawing’s status.

“I have to make dinner. It’s getting late. You need any help getting out of the car?”

He shook his head. “No. I’ve got everything.” He piled out with her and vanished to his room. He would not come out until his mother called him for the meal. His sketchbook he left on his desk. The empty eye sockets of the emerging face of Stinkeye Roy stared at the ceiling, unmoved and unblinking.