Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler Page 0,53
Bold as brass, Micah took his phone from his pocket and tapped Lorna’s number.
She answered before he heard a ring, even, giving him the impression that she had been holding her breath for his call. “Micah?” she said.
“Hey, Lorna. I’m putting Brink on.”
Without waiting to hear her reaction, he held out his phone to Brink. But Brink backed away, making rapid crisscrossing motions with both arms in front of his chest. “No,” he mouthed soundlessly. “No.”
Micah set the phone to his ear again. “On second thought, maybe not,” he told Lorna.
“What? But he’s there, right?” she asked him. “He’s at your place?”
“Right.”
“And he’s okay?”
“Yup.”
“Keep him. I’m coming,” she said. And she hung up.
Micah returned his phone to his pocket. “Way to make her feel better,” he told Brink.
“What did she say?” Brink asked.
“If you wanted to know what she said, you should have talked to her yourself.”
“Did she ask how I was? Was she mad at me? Tell me her exact words.”
Micah rolled his eyes.
“What? Was my dad with her? Could you tell?”
“All I could tell was she wants me to keep you here till she gets here.”
“She’s coming right now?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Did it sound like she was pissed?”
“I don’t know, Brink, okay?” Micah said. And then, “I think mainly she’s just concerned for you.”
“Yeah, right,” Brink said.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Oh, everybody thinks she’s so understanding and sympathetic,” Brink said, “but she can be really, really judgy; take my word for it.”
This didn’t come as such a surprise to Micah. He had a sudden flashback to the time Lorna had lectured him about his beer consumption; he recalled the solicitous expression she had put on, the way she seemed to enjoy the taste of her own words as she told him, “My faith won’t let me just stand by and watch you ruin your life, Micah.” “My faith”: he had felt a kind of jealousy every time he heard that phrase. He could see Brink’s side of things, briefly. But then Brink asked, “Why is it that everyone acts so critical of me?”
“It’s a mystery, all right,” Micah said.
“My parents, my granddad, even my goddamn lacrosse coach!”
Micah took two mugs from their hooks. He said, “Is your lacrosse coach why you left college?”
“What? No, I’m talking about high school.”
“Why did you leave college?” Micah asked, but he kept his back turned, so as not to seem too interested.
“I just felt like it, okay?”
Micah set the sugar bowl on the table.
Brink was checking his phone now. He seemed disappointed with the results. “I had to buy this rinky-dink charging cord from the Rite Aid,” he told Micah, returning the phone to his pocket. “It takes, like, three times as long to charge as my normal cord does.”
Micah tsked.
The percolator was going into its final fit now. As soon as it had finished, he filled the two mugs and handed one to Brink. “Thanks,” Brink said. He carried it over to the table to spoon in some sugar, but he didn’t sit down with it. “Okay if I watch TV?” he asked Micah.
“Be my guest,” Micah said.
At least it was a way to keep him here till Lorna arrived, he figured as Brink walked off. Although, who was he fooling? The kid was desperate to be kept. GROWN-UP or not, he was not the least bit equipped to make it on his own.
The TV came on in Micah’s office—first a succession of very adult voices discoursing seriously and then a sudden switch to the jaunty kind of music that accompanied cartoons. Micah began straightening the kitchen, pausing now and then to take a sip from his mug. When he was finished he went to his office, where he found Brink not on the couch, as he