Page 35 of The Ghostwriter
May 30, 1975
I sit in my room, my camera still on my lap, my mind playing out the fight between my brothers. The way Vince had torn into Danny. The sound of their bodies as they hit the wall, their grunts. The spit that flew out of their mouths, the twisted rage on their faces. What Danny had said to Vince that started the fight, his voice floating through the thin wall that separates our rooms. All of it swirls around inside of me. The way Vince lunged at me when he caught me filming them. As if I was the next person he wanted to destroy.
It’s quiet now, but not resolved. Not even close. That wasn’t a fight over space in their room, or Vince listening to one of Danny’s records without permission. It had been vicious. Relentless.
A knock on my door startles me, making me glad I’d wedged my chair beneath the knob.
“Let me in, .” Vince’s voice is low.
I scurry to hide my camera, burying it under a pile of sweaters in my closet before sliding the door closed.
Vince enters, carrying his pillow and blanket, and drops it all onto the floor. “I can’t sleep in there with him.”
“What happened?”
Vince shakes his head and doesn’t answer.
“Is this about Lydia?” I ask.
His gaze shoots up at me, eyes narrowed. “What makes you think that?”
I hold my hands up in front of me, as if I have nothing to hide. I saw what he’d done to Danny, and I want no part of it. “No reason,” I say. “But I can’t think of anything else that would make you that mad.” There’s no way I’m going to tell him I know about Lydia’s abortion. Or that it wasn’t his baby.
Vince settles onto the floor, his back against the wall, and closes his eyes.
“If you want to talk about it, you can,” I say.
“Shut up, .”
“This is my room. I don’t have to shut up if I don’t want to.”
He ignores me, too tired to respond. I stare at him, wondering how long he plans to sleep on my floor. I think again of Ricky Ricardo and wonder what he might do to me.
Next door, Danny has put on his new Aerosmith record, setting the needle on the sixth track, “Sweet Emotion.” We listen to the quiet way it starts, to the escalation of the guitar. Suddenly the volume shoots up when Steven Tyler sings the line about a girlfriend who’s a liar.
“I hate him,” Vince says. “I wish he was dead.”