instantly awake and alert, for he was anticipating Amy’s reaction to
the tarantula in her bed. He had set his alarm for one o’clock because
that was when she was supposed to come home, apparently she had
returned early.
Footsteps. Soft. Sneaky. Coming closer.
Joey tensed under the sheets, but he continued to feign sleep.
The footsteps stopped at the side of his bed.
Joey felt a giggle building in him. He bit his tongue and struggled to
hold back his laughter.
He sensed her leaning toward him. She was inches away.
He was going to wait a few seconds longer, and then, when she was on
the verge of tickling him, he was going to yell in her face and scare
the dickens out of her.
He kept his eyes closed, breathed shallowly and evenly, and counted off
the seconds: One . . . two . . . three . . .
He was just about to shout in her face when he realized that the person
bending over him wasn’t Amy. He smelled sour, alcohol-tainted breath,
and his heart began to pound.
Unaware that Joey was awake, his mother said, “Sweet, sweet, little
Joey.
ittle baby-boy angel. Sweet, precious little angel face.” Her voice
was eerie. She spoke in an odd, half-whispered, halfcrooned, throaty,
silky stream of slurred words.
He wished desperately that she would go away.
She was very drunk, worse than usual. She had come into his room
several other nights when she’d been in this condition. She had talked
to him, thinking he was asleep. Maybe she came in a lot more nights
than he knew, maybe some nights he was asleep. Anyway, he knew what
was coming. He knew what she was going to say and do, and he dreaded
it.
“Little angel. You look like a little snoozing angel, a baby angel,
lying there so innocent, so tender, sweet.” She leaned even closer,
bathing his face with her pungent breath. “But what’re you like
inside, little angel? Are you sweet and good and pure all the way
through?”
Stop it, stop it, stop it! Joey thought. Please, don’t do this again,
Mama. Go away. Get out of here. Please.
But he didn’t speak to her, and he didn’t move. He didn’t let her know
he was awake because when she was like this he was afraid of her.
“You look so pure,” she said, her alcoholthickened voice growing even
softer, even more blurry. aBut maybe that angel face is just the
surface . . . the mask. Maybe you’re just putting on an act for me.
Huh? Are you?
Maybe…
underneath . . . maybe you’re just like the other one. Are you,
little angel?
Under that sweet face, are you like the other one, the monster, the
thing he called Victor?”
Joey never had been able to figure out what she was talking about when
she sneaked in here at night and mumbled drunkenly at him. Who was
Victor?
“If I produced one like you, why not another?” she asked herself
aloud, and Joey thought she sounded a little bit afraid now. “This
time…
maybe it’s a monster inside. In the mind. A monster inside . . .
hiding in a normal body .
. . behind such a nice face . . . waiting. Waiting to come out when
no one’s looking. Just waiting patiently. Both you and Amy. Huh?
Wolves in sheep’s clothing. Could be. Sure. Could be that way. What
if it is? Huh?
When will it happen? When will the thing come out of you for everyone
to see?
Can I turn my back on you, little angel? Can I ever be safe? Oh,
God.
Oh, Jesus, Jesus, help me. Mary, help me. I should never have had
children. Not after the first one.
I can never be sure of what I’ve created. Never. What if . . .”
Increasingly numbed by the liquor she had drunk, her tongue and lips
became less and less able to form the words she wanted to say, and she
lowered her voice so far that Joey could barely hear her, even though
she was less than a foot from him. “What if . . . someday . . . what