Herb didn’t seem surprised to see Sarah when he got home from Westbrook. He welcomed her, made much of the baby, and then scolded Sarah for not bringing him down sooner.
“He has your color and complexion,” Herb said. “And I think he’s going to have your eyes, when they get done changing.”
“If only he has his father’s brains,” Sarah said. She had put an apron on over the blue wool dress. Outside, the sun was going down. Another twenty minutes and it would be dark.
“You know, the cooking is supposed to be Johnny’s job,” Herb said.
“Couldn’t stop her. She put a gun to my head.”
“Well, maybe it’s all for the best,” Herb said. “Everything you make comes out tasting like Franco-American spaghetti.”
Johnny shied a magazine at him and Denny laughed, a high, piercing sound that seemed to fill the house.
Can he see? Johnny wondered. It feels like it’s written all over my face. And then a startling thought came to him as he watched his father digging in the entryway closet for a box of Johnny’s old toys that he had never let Vera give away: Maybe he understands.
They ate. Herb asked Sarah what Walt was doing in Washington and she told them about the conference he was attending, which had to do with Indian land claims. The Republican meetings were mostly wind-testing exercises, she said.
“Most of the people he’s meeting with think that if Reagan is nominated over Ford next year, it’s going to mean the death of the party,” Sarah said. “And if the Grand Old Party dies, that means Walt won’t be able to run for Bill Cohen’s seat in 1978 when Cohen goes after Bill Hathaway’s Senate seat.”
Herb was watching Denny eat string beans, seriously, one by one, using all six of his teeth on them. “I don’t think Cohen will be able to wait until ’78 to get in the Senate. He’ll run against Muskie next year.”
“Walt says Bill Cohen’s not that big a dope,” Sarah said. “He’ll wait. Walt says his own chance is coming, and I’m starting to believe him.”
After supper they sat in the living room, and the talk turned away from politics. They watched Denny play with the old wooden cars and trucks that a much younger Herb Smith had made for his own son over a quarter of a century ago. A younger Herb Smith who had been married to a tough, good-humored woman who would sometimes drink a bottle of Black Label beer in the evening. A man with no gray in his hair and nothing but the highest hopes for his son.
He does understand, Johnny thought, sipping his coffee. Whether he knows what went on between Sarah and me this afternoon, whether or not he suspects what might have gone on, he understands the basic cheat. You can’t change it or rectify it, the best you can do is try to come to terms. This afternoon she and I consummated a marriage that never was. And tonight he’s playing with his grandson.
He thought of the Wheel of Fortune, slowing, stopping.
House number. Everyone loses.
Gloom was trying to creep up, a dismal sense of finality, and he pushed it away. This wasn’t the time; he wouldn’t let it be the time.
By eight-thirty Denny had begun to get scratchy and cross and Sarah said, “Time for us to go, folks. He can suck a bottle on our way back to Kennebunk. About three miles from here, he’ll have corked off. Thanks for haying us.” Her eyes, brilliant green, found Johnny’s for a moment.
“Our pleasure entirely,” Herb said, standing up. “Right, Johnny?”
“Right,” he said. “Let me carry that car-bed out for you, Sarah.”
At the door, Herb kissed the top of Denny’s head (and Denny grabbed Herb’s nose in his chubby fist and honked it hard enough to make Herb’s eyes water) and Sarah’s cheek. Johnny carried the car-bed down to the red Pinto and Sarah gave him the keys so he could put everything in the back.
When he finished, she was standing by the driver’s side door, looking at him. “It was the best we could do,” she said, and smiled a little. But the brilliance of her eyes told him the tears were close again.
“It wasn’t so bad at all,” Johnny said.
“We’ll stay in touch?”
“I don’t know, Sarah. Will we?”
“No, I suppose not. It would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”