I took a deep breath, watching the TV. The Simpsons was back on, no less manic with the sound turned off. "What did he say?”
"He told me that you ..." She looked at me. She was about forty years old, which she claimed was actually quite young, but on a night like this, arguing in the sickly light of the TV, her if black hair pulled back, green eyes lined with worry, she looked beaten and weathered. "He told me that you think you're going to kill somebody." She shouldn't have looked at me. She couldn't say something like that and look at me at the same time without a flood of emotion rushing to the surface. I watched it redden her face and sour her eyes.
"That's interesting," I said, "since that's not what I told him. Are you sure those were the words he used?"
"The words aren't the issue here," she said. "This isn't a joke, John, this is serious stuff. The . . . I don't know. Is this how it's all going to end for us? You're all I have left, John."
"The actual words I used," I said, "were that I followed strict rules to make sure I didn't do anything wrong. It'seems like you'd be pretty happy about that, but instead you're yelling at me. This is why I need therapy."
" 'Happy' is not a son who has to follow rules to keep himself from killing people," she shot back. " 'Happy' is not a psychologist telling me that my son is a sociopath. 'Happy' is—"
"He said I was a sociopath?" That was kind of cool. I'd always suspected, but it was nice to have an official diagnosis.
"Antisocial personality disorder," she said, her voice rising.
"I looked it up. It's a psychosis." She turned away. "My son's a psychotic."
"APD is primarily defined as a lack of empathy," I said. I'd looked it up, too, a few months ago. Empathy is what allows people to interpret emotion, the same way ears interpret sound; without it you become emotionally deaf. "It means I don't connect emotionally with other people. I wondered if he was going to pick that one."
"How do you even know that?" she said. "You're fifteen years old, for goodness' sake, you should be ... I don't know, chasing girls or playing video games."
"You're telling a sociopath to chase girls?"
"I'm telling you not to be a sociopath," she said. "Just because you mope around all the time doesn't mean you've got a mental disorder—it means you're a teenager, maybe, but not a psycho.
The thing is, John, you can't just have a doctor's note to get you out of life. You live in the same world as the rest of us, and you've got to deal with it the same way the rest of us do."
She was right, I could see a lot of benefit in being officially sociopathic. No more annoying group projects at school, for one thing.
"I think this is all my fault," she said. "I dragged you into that mortuary when you were just a kid, and it messed you up for life. What was I thinking?"
"It's not the mortuary," I said. I bristled at the mention of it—she couldn't take that away from me. "You and Margaret have worked there for how long? And you haven't killed anybody yet."
"We're not psychotic, either."
"Then you're changing your story," I said. "You just said the mortuary messed me up, and now you say it messed me up because I was already messed up? If you're going to be like that, then I can't win no matter what I do, can I?"
"There's plenty you could do, John, and you know it. Stop writing homework assignments about serial killers, for one thing—Margaret told me you did it again."
Margaret, you dirty snitch. "I got full points on that paper,"
I said. "The teacher loved it."
"Being really good at something you shouldn't be doing doesn't make it any better," Mom said.
"It's a history class," I said, "and serial killers are a part of history. So are wars and racism and genocide. I guess I forgot to sign up for the 'happy stuff only' history class, sorry about that."
"I just wish I knew why," she said.
"Why what?"
"Why you're so obsessed with serial killers."
"Everybody's got to have a hobby," I said.
"John, don't even joke about this."
"Do you know who John Wayne Gacy is?" I asked.
"I do now," she said, throwing up her hands, "thanks to Dr. Neblin. I wish to God I'd named you something different."
"John Wayne Gacy was the first serial killer I ever learned about," I said. "When I was eight years old, I saw my name in a magazine next to a picture of a clown."
"I just asked you ten seconds ago to stop obsessing about serial killers," she said. "Why are we talking about this?"
"Because you wanted to know why," I said, "and I'm trying to tell you. I saw that picture and I thought maybe it was a clown movie with the actor John Wayne—Dad used to show me his cowboy movies all the time. -It turns out John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer who dressed up as a clown for neighborhood parties."
"I don't understand where you're going with this," said Mom.