The Cutprice Guignol

What with it being the season of love, I knew there was only one way I wanted to celebrate: the toxic love between a man and his car (and maybe his slightly homoerotic best friend, but hey, we’ll deal with that as we come to it). That’s right, it’s time to get back into Christine!

We pick up where we left off last time, with a chapter focused on Arnie and his mother, and opening with Buick 59 by The Medallions:

Interestingly, the chapter is told from the point of view of Regina, who is up playing solitaire and waiting for Arnie to come home after Leigh (who is nice, but not quite good enough for her son) called her to tell her what happened to Christine. When Arnie gets back, he’s quick to accuse his mother of a similar animosity to Christine – “you’re probably happier about it than they are.”

Regina reflects on her parenting decisions in raising Arnie – her pridefulness at how good he’s been, which is to say, how little trouble he has caused her, in the face of other kids experimenting, exploring, and generally raising hell as they grow up. I really like this detail in Regina; it explains so much about Arnie as a character, for his lack of texture to be seen as such a virtue, and why Christine has had such an allure to him beyond the supernatural – finally, she’s something that’s just his, not his parents, not even something they approve of, something to upset the balance of their careful system. To Regina, in her words, parenting is a “game/business/vocation”, and her “good son is final vindication” that she’d done it right, despite their tight grip on Arnie’s life and future, much like the one her father exerted on her. And Christine has finally shattered this – he’s rebellious, with a new priority, one that he makes very clear to her.

“The only things I care about are Leigh and Christine and staying on the good side of Will Darnell so I can get her fixed up as good as new. I don’t care about college. And if you don’t get off my case, I’ll drop out of high school.”

She tries to argue with him, but he’s not having it, telling her that he’ll leave school when he turns eighteen if she doesn’t back off. He heads up to bed, the sound of his footsteps on the stairs reminiscent to Regina of her father’s boots heading to bed, “when she had thought to herself, the ogre’s going to bed.”. This comparison between Regina’s father and Arnie is not coincidence – at least in Regina’s eyes, this reaction is toxic and controlling, even if, in some ways, it’s just Arnie laying down his boundaries in the face of a huge personal upset.

She goes to look in on him when he’s asleep, and finds him looking far older than his years – “his hair was thinning, his sleep-gaping mouth without teeth”. That she sees him as this old man, I think, is as much a reflection of her own fear of her father as it is of Roland’s influence in Arnie, the way that Christine has been eating away at him, especially in the face of the recent attack on her.

The next chapter opens with The Who:

And Leigh, who has come to visit Dennis at the hospital to tell him what happened to Arnie and Christine. It’s the first appearance of Dennis in the novel in a while, and I think it’s really interesting that Leigh comes to him in the face of Arnie’s distress – the most important people in their lives bear a strong overlap, and what that brings out in both of them adds an intriguing wrinkle to both their characters.

“He’ll come if he needs me,” Dennis said.

“You’re so full of muh-macho bullshit!” she said, and then looked comically stunned at the words that had just come out of her mouth…she and Dennis looked at each other for a moment, and laughed.””

I love this little moment between Dennis and Leigh – I find their relationship really true-to-life, at least as far as my experiences being both the best friend and the girlfriend in this situation were. There’s that weird intimacy of sharing such love for the same person, even if you see completely different sides to them (well, not completely different, given how Dennis feels about Arnie, but you get my point). The way their relationship builds makes sense to me, and it starts here, as Leigh asks for guidance on how to handle what’s going on with Arnie.

They talk about Regina and Michael, both of whom have taken this falling-out with Arnie hard; it’s difficult to miss how bad a rap Regina gets here. Michael is treated as the hanger-on, “playing his recorder, looking melancholy”, while Regina takes control. It’s a really common trope, the overbearing mother and the tagalong father who just does as he’s told, and it’s always a pretty boring one to me – it strips the male figure of agency in a very unquestioning way that waters down the dynamic to something decidedly one-note, but anyway.

Leigh reveals that Arnie’s doing work on Christine that he’s funding with some unnamed business he’s taking care of for Will Darnell – who Dennis’ father implied was into some pretty shady shit, leading Dennis to wonder just how far Arnie is willing to go for this car. And then he ponders this about Leigh, which made me actually laugh out loud:

“Maybe she was learning something about being tough that she wouldn’t have learned otherwise, with her looks, for another ten years.”

Which…man, come on. I get it, I get it, this section is sort-of told from Dennis point of view, though it’s not in first person, so I can kind of forgive this as a comment made by an idiot teenager. But it’s so patently, obviously wrong it’s almost funny – yeah, attractive women don’t learn anything about being tough until their mid-to-late twenties. That’s how that works. Not like they start facing harassment and sexualization from grown men by the time they hit puberty, or anything. I get it, Dennis is a dumbass, but this feels a bit more like a Voice of God level of dumbassery in the context of Carrie and that atrocious misunderstanding of so much of teenage girlhood, you know?

And speaking of sexualization, Dennis can’t help but notice his attraction to her.

“He had a feeling, after her profession of love for Arnie, that he could do it; she was vulnerable…he only had to say something, the right something, maybe only come here, and she would come sit on the edge of the bed, they would talk some more, maybe about pleasenter things, and maybe he would kiss her.”

I love this moment; it’s such a bastard move from Dennis to even consider it, but speaks to both his attraction to Leigh and his love for Arnie. Leigh is the closest he can get to Arnie in a romantic sense, and it’s Arnie’s struggle that has brought Leigh to his bedside. He chooses not to make a move, of course, but the thought of that plan still lingers, a bridge to the woman he still really desires. For as much as he hates Christine, he loves Leigh, all of Arnie’s woman engendering Big Feelings in our Dennis.

Speaking of, Dennis isn’t the only one with Christine issues (Chrissues?):

“It’s not him I hate. It’s that frig- no, that fucking bitch, Christine.”

Leigh confesses her hatred of the car to Dennis, who confirms that he feels the same way. And, in their mutual hatred for Christine, the two of them share an understanding – an understanding that neither can with Arnie, a point of connection that’s unique to them. Which I’m sure won’t lead to anything unpalatable.

Anyway, next chapter: it’s Thanksgiving at the hospital as Dennis continues his recovery, and we’ve got some good ol’ Chuck Berry on the stereo:

Dennis is facing a pretty depressing Thanksgiving – his family visited, but his sister was clearly keen to get to their next engagement, and they only stuck around for an hour. After a post-dinner nap, Dennis wakes up to find Arnie visiting him – he initially takes it as a dream, as Arnie has been so distant, but soon realizes his friend has really, finally, stopped by.

And this scene with Arnie is so, so sweet – Dennis is clearly depressed, almost breaking down into tears when he tells Arnie he’s glad he came, and considering suicide if he’s still in the hospital at Christmas. But Arnie, remembering Dennis’ previous comments that turkey sandwhiches were the best part of Thanksgiving anyway, has raided his fridge for leftovers, a few candles, a candle-holder, and matches to serve him a candlelit Christmas makeshift Christmas dinner. After all the tension between them because of Christine, and Arnie’s personality shift after the attack on his car, to see them come back to this solid, lived-in friendship is so important at this point in the book – a reminder of what is at risk as things take a darker turn, and as Dennis’ desire for Leigh grows more prominent.

Afterwards, Dennis broaches the topic of the attack on Christine – shifting Arnie’s mood entirely.

“The friendship part was over. It had been here, warming the room and filling it…Arnie’s cheerful eyes were opaque.”

Arnie spins Dennis a story about working hard to bring Christine back to life, but Dennis is suspicious. Before Arnie leaves, Dennis asks him to sign his cast, which Arnie obliges to do – leading to one of my favourite moments in the whole book.

Arnie signed Dennis’ cast when he was first brought in to the hospital, and, of course, that cast is still on his leg – Arnie signs the other one at Thanksgiving. And, to Dennis’ shock, he realizes that the signatures are both different. Whatever Arnie signed the cast the first time, it isn’t the one who visited him that evening – no matter how well he seemed to know Dennis and how deeply he seemed to care for him, something else is under the skin of that Arnie Cunningham, and Dennis knows it. It’s such a great way to introduce the shift in Arnie’s personality, especially after such a sweet, heartwarming chapter – a gut-punch to close things out, and a really effective one at that.

Which is how we’ll close out this recap, too. As ever, catch up on the rest of them right here, and check in soon for another delve into the world of motoring horror! 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!