were brought up, and I—well, there are some things I want to ask you and Steve, with no one else around. This will be a good time to do it. Bill’s not coming this year; he’s going to finish putting in our new bathroom. And Tessa won’t be there either; Steve said she’s got to be in Atlanta. Pete won’t mind if the three of us take off for a couple of hours, will he?”
I didn’t know whether to be worried or annoyed. “But . . . Caroline, just tell me, what do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t want to get into it now. But I’d really like to have us all get together. Would you just help me arrange it?”
“Well, yeah. We’ll pick a day when we’re there and just do it. It’s not that hard.”
“I’d hoped we could pick a day now. And then maybe you could call Steve and let him know. It’ll be harder for him to say no if you and I have already agreed to it. Would you please do that?”
“Fine. How about the second night we’re there? The first night we’ll have to hang around. But the next night we’ll go out somewhere. How about Snuffy’s; you want to go to Snuffy’s?”
“Anywhere. Thank you, Laura. So you’ll call Steve tonight?”
“It’s better with Steve if you don’t plan ahead. I’ll just tell him. He’ll come.”
“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I leaned over Pete to hang up the phone and lay down again. “Caroline wants to talk to me and Steve alone. I don’t know what about.”
“Is she upset about something?”
“No, I wouldn’t say upset, exactly, but she sounds kind of . . . intense.”
“Well. What else is new?”
“This felt different. She says she wants to talk about some things that happened when we were growing up. I hope she doesn’t mention the time I told her about Jesus on the cross. I hope she forgot about that.”
“Why, what did you say?”
“Oh, just . . . you know, I told her the story of the crucifixion. And made her cry.”
Pete turned out the bedside light, settled down under the sheets, yawned. “That’s not so bad.”
“No, you don’t understand. Religious education wasn’t the goal. Making her cry was. Not that it was hard. Caroline was always oversensitive. She cried if you looked at her wrong. Literally.” I moved closer to Pete, closed my eyes.
“I’m waiting,” he said.
“Why do you have to be such a good listener?”
“What did you say?”
“Well, I overdramatized a bit, okay? I talked about how it hurts when you stick a pin in your hand. And then I said, ‘And just imagine. They put NAILS in. They pounded NAILS in.’ Stuff like that.”
“You said that? That is pretty bad.”
“Yeah, I know. But you did some terrible things to your brother and sisters.”
“I can assure you I stayed out of the God area.”
“Yeah, but when Stella was only four, you told her you turned into a werewolf at night.”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me. And she also told me that you lined shoes up along the top of your door and then yelled for Danny to come quick, and when he pushed the door open all the shoes fell on him. And gave him a black eye.”
Silence.
“You robbed Tina’s piggy bank twice.”
“All right. Good night.”
“Oh. Oh! And you—”
He leaned over, kissed me. “Good night. We have an early morning.” He turned on his side, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. It’s amazing. Head on pillow, and he’s out.
I lay awake, wondering what was up with Caroline. I thought of the drive ahead of us, how the kids would ignore each other for the most part but how there would also be a few fights to contend with. It was only a five-hour drive, though, and then we’d be there. The garden would be perfectly tended, the bird feeders would all be full. There would probably be sheets and upside-down shirts and pants on the clothesline; my mother was a big believer in line drying. One summer I’d tried it myself, but the romance had drowned in the inconvenience.
The food would not be memorable, of course, but the setting would be nice. We’d eat out on the back porch on a green painted table with an embroidered tablecloth, nice old flowered china, a huge vase of flowers, and the cut-glass salt-and-pepper shakers that had belonged to my grandparents—whenever I saw them, I remembered those shakers being on their Formica kitchen table. I remembered, too,