Tenderness by Robert Cormier

Author:Robert Cormier [Cormier, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Speculative Fiction Suspense
ISBN: 9780440220343
Publisher: Ember
Published: 1997-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

When Aunt Phoebe drove off to work every day, she ignored the crowds across the street. Eric remained inside the house, killing time, watching boring talk shows on television in which transvestites seemed to be the most popular guests, and game shows where people won speedboats they would never use or went into hysterics about winning a new kitchen set. After a few days, he did not bother watching anymore.

Heat held the house in a suffocating grip. Aunt Phoebe could not stand air-conditioning, or “artificial air,” as she called it, saying that it aggravated her sinuses. Eric wandered the rooms as if he were the only living thing in a museum. He opened the windows once in a while to allow fresh air, however hot, into the house.

The street was seldom without some kind of activity, although lulls occurred from time to time. In the first few days, television crews showed up, focused camcorders on the house while newscasters stood before cameras talking into space. He would later see them on the local news. Newspaper people also made regular visits, interviewing some of the spectators, scribbling in their notebooks. They occasionally crossed the street and rang the doorbell. Waited. Rang again. Then gave up. Eric never answered the doorbell or the telephone.

Once in a while, a parade of cars streamed by, horns blowing and brakes squealing. School vacations had begun, and kids either rallied to his cause or protested his freedom. Eric resented their intrusions, because they kept interest in him alive and their pictures turned up later in the newspaper or on television, brandishing the stupid signs that canceled each other out. Sometimes, when the street became suddenly deserted, he opened the door and stepped out on the front porch. He’d look with disgust at the debris left behind by the crowds—candy wrappers, McDonald’s cups and paper bags, soda-pop cans. The slobs are taking over the world, he thought contemptuously.

The Wickburg Telegram was deposited at the back door every morning by a carrier he never saw. Boredom led him to read the stories at first—Teen Murderer Refuses to Talk. After a while he ignored them, because they were mostly rehashes of earlier stories with nothing new added. He sensed that the publicity was coming to an end when he saw the headline Is Eric Poole in a New Kind of Prison? Reading the story that speculated on what his life must be like in his aunt’s house—what television shows he watched, what books he might be reading—he realized that the writers were stretching and running out of ideas. Which pleased him.

What the newspeople did not know was that Eric managed to leave the house occasionally. His aunt became a willing conspirator, driving the car while he sat, cramped and crouching on the floor of the backseat, sitting up only when they were out on the highway. They went on shopping excursions in the strip malls along Route 9. Bought camping equipment and clothes. “Isn’t this fun?” Aunt Phoebe asked, picking out an orange shirt that Eric knew he would never wear.

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