Christine Recaps: Part Two
by thethreepennyguignol
Hello, dolls, darlings, and other Stephen King fans – it’s time to get back to Christine! It’s taken a little longer than I thought to get to part two because I got a bit distracted talking about flayed skin and body-snatching, but we’re back at it now, and that’s all that matters. Here’s part one should you have missed it, and, without further ado, let’s trundle our beat-up old motors into the second part of this series, kicking off with the chapter four opener:
Dennis and Arnie go to pick up Christine from LeBay, Arnie “acting like a man waiting for his wife to have a baby”. Dennis ponders on Arnie’s appearance here in a way I find really interesting:
“His complexion that day was the worst I ever saw it, and I wondered (not for the first time or the last) what it must be like to be Arnie Cunningham, trapped behind that oozing face from minute to minute and second to second…”
I love Dennis and Arnie’s relationship in Christine because of the layers (not just of pustulant acne) it has; Dennis is as disgusted by Arnie as he is drawn to him, some part of him twistedly comparing himself, to positive effect, to his less attractive friend. Arnie, though, is distinctly aware of this, and when it comes to his reasons for buying Christine, it’s his ugliness he uses as the reason.
“For the first time…since I was eleven and started getting pimples, I’ve seen something uglier than I am.”
Dennis tries to protest this, but Arnie’s not having it. He knows as well as Dennis does that he’s ugly, an outcast, a pariah because of his looks and his inability to conquer social norms (relatable to me and my psoriasis-ridden teenage self, honestly). But, in Christine, he sees a chance to uncover a beauty and worth that he wants people to see in him: “there’s something underneath, Dennis. Something else. Something better”. It’s a great way to contextualize this obsession with the car so early on in the book, and I love the writing here between Arnie and Dennis: lived-in and no-bullshit, as close, long-term friendships often are.
But, when they reach LeBay’s place, to Arnie’s horror, the car is gone. Arnie is fuming, blaming his father and then confronting LeBay about the car’s absence “as if a rabbit had turned into a carnivore” – with the context of what Christine means to Arnie, it makes so much more sense for him to go off like this.
LeBay, however, has just taken Christine into the garage (better known as a car-hole) to change the oil, and he invites Dennis and Arnie in for a beer; Dennis declines, and slips into the garage in Arnie’s absence to get a look at Christine up close (and repeat “pleasantly” too many times in his internal monologue, which I’m surprised an editor didn’t catch).
For a moment, Dennis slips into the driver’s seat, and is confronted by an image of what Christine would have been in her prime.
“Let’s go for a ride, big guy…let’s cruise. The GM high-stepper was a dark minty green, not a speck of rust on her, big gangster whitewall tires…a Cadillac the size of a boat, and why not? Gas was as cheap as tap water.”
I love what this chapter does in using a car like Christine as a kind of gateway to another time – to LeBay’s prime, to a nostalgic, flourishing Americana. What at first is seductive soon spooks Dennis, and he hurries away from the car, disturbed by the vividness of the vision, and runs into Arnie and LeBay again. Arnie tries to start Christine up, but has trouble kicking her into gear, leading Dennis to ponder on the importance of cursing out a misbehaving car:
“”Come on, you whore” is a good one; “let’s go, cocksucker” has its merits…from your father you get magic, talismans, the words of power. If the car won’t start, curse it…and be sure to curse it female.”
There’s enough here for an entire conference, I tell you – the fact that Dennis immediately associates the terms “whore” and “cocksucker” with women, the fact that what he learned from his father (and considers most important in learning from all fathers) is how to throw misogynist language at random objects, and that he seems to put such talismanic, esoteric power in the hands of such degradation…I love it. I mean, no, I hate it, I would fight Dennis behind a pub in real life, but I love the character work, you know?
Either way, Christine eventually kicks into gear for Arnie, and they head down to a local automobile shop where Arnie plans to house her (“Arnie’s girl Christine”, as Dennis already calls her). But, as they’re driving away, Dennis notices that LeBay is watching them – and to Dennis’ horror, crying.
“It was horrible and it was grotesque and it was, most of all, pitiable…I don’t think people should have feelings like that often. You have feelings like that enough, and I guess they take you away to the funny-farm to make baskets.”
LeBay is such a curious, intriguing character at this point in the book; nasty and deliberately tricky (clearly enjoying Arnie’s distress when he thought he sold Christine out from under him earlier in the book), and yet oddly vulnerable, both physically and, in this moment, emotionally. Either way, it’s this image that brings us to the end of this chapter, and we’re into chapter five, opening with the, to quote a regional term, absolute choon of Surf City.
We start as Dennis and Arnie are shooed off the lawn of a woman who doesn’t want them parking up their cars there (a woman “in dire need of Weight Watchers”, according to Dennis, who is only racking up my reasons to fight him behind a pub), and Arnie admits he needs to get a new tire on Christine. When Dennis points out that he hasn’t got the money for it, Arnie turns “flinty”, the expression “a man gets on his face when you tell him the woman he loves is whoring behind his back” (whore count for this recap series so far: two. But a lifetime in questions about why Dennis is so obsessed with women getting their backs blown out!). Dennis eventually agrees to buy Arnie a tire for Christine, and finds himself faced with his rapidly-approaching senior year as he takes in the warm, late August light.
“I was getting ready to a grown-up, and I saw that somehow…If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is learning how to die.”
This sense of unease at the onslaught of adulthood is one of the themes I find really interesting in Christine, especially since the last time I read it, I was a teenager myself; as an adult woman (sort of, if you squint) now, I’m keen to see how it stands up. And, also, this is just a fucking fabulous turn of phrase. Sometimes, I’m reading something by King, and I just get caught off-guard by how great his writing is; it’s a reminder of why I love his work so much, and why I keep coming back to it, even after all these years.
This notion is reflected shortly in the chapter, when Dennis returns to find Arnie in a confrontation with the husband of Weight-Watchers-needing woman – “his cheeks were flushed the color of new brick, and above his gray twill workshirt, corded veins stood out on his neck”. It’s clear we’re seeing this through Dennis’ filter, all those indicators of work and adulthood serving as reminders of what he’s dreading in his own post-high-school years. Dennis manages to diffuse a violent confrontation between the man and Arnie, giving Arnie time to change his tire. Dennis is once again caught off-guard by Christine’s presence, unsettled by what he sees as “a snake that was almost ready to shed its old skin”.
Arnie and Dennis bolt for the autoshop, run by Will Darnell, a small-time drug dealer who Dennis’ family has warned him to keep away from. Darnell takes an instant dislike to Arnie and Christine, and lays into him about how he’s going to use Darnell’s autoshop, leading to Dennis silently willing his friend to stand up for himself:
“Arnie, I begged inside. Tell him to shove it and let’s get out of here. Stand up to him, Arnie. Don’t let him pull this shit on you. Don’t be a loser, Arnie…”
Arnie, however, defers to Darnell’s authority, leaving Dennis frustrated. I think it’s interesting to see these two immediate reactions to Christine outside of LeBay and Arnie: both Darnell and the husband react in a really extreme fashion to her presence, like she’s exuding something that’s drawing out that kind of reaction. Though Dennis puts it down to Arnie’s inability to stand up for himself, I think there’s more to it than that, a sort of noxious psychic cloud that Christine seems to emit to everyone around her aside from her owners. Even Dennis’ unease around her seems to suggest that, even as he was briefly drawn in by his earlier encounter with her.
And that’s where I’m going to leave this recap! I’m really enjoying the book so far, but I’m looking forward to getting in to some more of the juicy stuff in the upcoming chapters. I will check in with you – and Christine – soon!
If you enjoyed this article and want to see more stuff like it, you can support me on Patreon to help keep this blog running and keep my very demanding little cat in treaties, and me out of her clutches for another month yet, or consider checking out my fiction work!
(header image via Medium)
The Cutprice Guignol 