When The Bough Breaks

"In that sense, the sexual one," he said, "I was quite normal. I married, fathered a child, a son. I performed quite adequately. Stuart and Eddy continued as my chums, going about their perverted ways. It was live and let live. They never mentioned my - spells. I let them be. Stuart was really a fine fellow, not overly bright, but well - meaning. It was a pity he had to… Except for that one kink, he was a good boy. Eddy was, is different. A sense of humor but a mean one. A nasty streak runs through him. He is habitually caustic and sarcastic - that's why I'm sensitive to that type of thing. Perhaps it's because of his size…"

"Your tie to McCaffrey," I prompted.

"Small men often get that way. You're - I can't see you now, but I recall you as being medium - sized. Is that correct?"

"I'm five - eleven," I said wearily.

"That's medium - sized. I've always been large. Father was large. It's just as Mendel predicted - long peas, short peas - fascinating field, genetics, isn't it?"

"Doctor - "

"I've wondered about the genetic impact on many traits. Intellect, for example. The liberal dogma would have us believe that environment makes the largest contribution to intelligence. It's an egalitarian premise, but reality doesn't bear it out. Long peas, short peas. Smart parents, smart children. Stupid parents, stupid children. I, myself, am a heterozygote.

Father was brilliant. Mother was an Irish beauty, but very simple. She lived in a world where that combination served to create the perfect hostess. Father's showpiece."

"Your tie to McCaffrey," I said sharply.

"My tie? Oh nothing more serious than life and death."

He laughed. It was the first time I'd heard his laugh and I hoped it would be the last. It was a vacant discordant note, a blatant musical error screaming out in the middle of a symphony.

"I lived with Lilah and Willie Junior on the third floor of the Jedson dormitory. Stuart and Eddy shared a room on the first. As a married student I was given larger quarters - really a nice little apartment, when you got down to it. Two bedrooms, bath, living room, small kitchen. But no library, no study, so I did my reading at the kitchen table. Lilah had made it a cheerful place - bunting, trim, curtains, womanly types of things. Willie Junior was a little over two at the time, I remember. It was my senior year. I'd been having trouble with some of the premedical courses - physics, organic chemistry. I've never been a brilliant person. However, if I apply myself and keep my attention span steady I can do quite well. I desperately wanted to get into medical school on my own merits. My father and his father before him were doctors, all had been brilliant students. The joke, behind my back, was that I'd inherited my mother's brains as well as her looks - they didn't think I heard but I did. I wanted so much to show them that I could succeed on my own merits, not because I was Adolf Towle's son.

"The night it happened Willie Junior had been feeling poorly, unable to sleep. He'd been screaming and crying out, Lilah was frazzled. I ignored her requests for help, plunging myself into my studies, trying to shut out everything else. I had to bring my science grades up. It was imperative. The more anxious I got, the less able I was to pay attention. I tried to deal with it by embracing a kind of tunnel vision.

"Lilah had always been patient with me, but that night she became furious, started to come unglued. I looked up, saw her coming at me, her hands - she had tiny hands, a delicate woman - rolled up into fists, mouth open - I suppose she was screaming - eyes full of hatred. She seemed to me a bird of prey, about to swoop down and pick at my bones. I pushed her away with my arm. She fell, tumbling back, hit her head on the corner of a bureau - a hideous piece, an antique her mother had given her - and lay there, simply lay there.

"I can see the whole thing clearly now, as if it had just happened yesterday. Lilah lies there, motionless. I rise out of my chair, dreamlike, everything is swaying, everything is confusing. A small shape coming at me from the right, like a mouse, a rat. I swat it away. But it's not a rat, no, no. It's Willie Junior, coming back at me, crying for his mother, hitting me. Only dimly aware of his presence I strike out at him again, catch him on the side of his head. Too hard. He falls, lands, lies still. Unmoving. A large bruise masks the side of his face… My wife, my child, dead at my hands. I prepare to find my razor, cut my wrists, be done with it.

"Then Gus's voice is at my back. He stands in the doorway, huge, obese, sweaty, in work clothes, broom in hand. The janitor, cleaning the dormitories at night. I smell him - ammonia, body odor, cleaning fluids. He's heard the noise and has come to check. He looks at me, a long hard look, then at the bodies. He kneels over them, feels for a pulse. "They're dead," he tells me in a flat voice. For a second I think he's smiling and