his closet in a morocco frame. She doesn’t need to know that his yearbook is gone. He cares even though Lucy is long gone, so even though his sister is all too prone to psychic disruption he has to say, ‘No. Something’s missing.’
Her eyebrows shoot up but she decides to forget it, for now. ‘Dinner.’
At the kitchen table he sits with his head bent as though they are Pilgrims waiting for somebody to say grace. He is looking into a bowl of Margaret’s turkey soup, the last cube of a batch she froze in a post-Christmas fit. Glutinous rice, cubed celery and overcooked carrots float among shreds of white meat in gray broth. She’s waiting for him to say, ‘It looks great.’
‘It’s my specialty.’
Oh, God he is tired of sitting down to awful dinners under fluorescent light.
They’re going along safely enough, hiding behind his dutiful Q. and A. about Homosassa, when Margaret pounces. ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’
‘About what?’
‘Lucy had a baby, and he’s here!’
Even she knows. Like the soup, it is depressing. ‘What do you mean, what am I going to do?’
‘Is it yours?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. I saw you and him out there yesterday, talking. What’s he like?’
A direct answer would give her too much pleasure. He parries. ‘Like, you think he’d drop by? Just another stupid tourist, lost in Pine Vista.’
‘Did she have your baby, Bobby.’ It’s supposed to be a question but Margaret lets her voice drop at the end, like a person setting down a rock.
She doesn’t know. A part of him unclenches. ‘Where’s this coming from, Mag?’
‘Who else would come looking for you, Bobby? Who else could it be? Tourists don’t come here. Turns out Nenna invited him to the Kalen party so you saw him, what’s he like?’
This town, he thinks. This town. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
She removes his half-full soup bowl as if to punish him, and dumps it in the sink. Because her parts are not all that carefully strung together, he has to be careful not to let her see that this is a relief. She squints. ‘Were you finished?’
‘It’s wonderful, but I had a huge lunch.’
‘At the Flordana.’
‘No.’
‘That’s where he’s staying, I just thought . . .’
‘Who?’
He has to be grateful that she does not say ‘your,’ or ‘Lucy’s.’ Just, ‘The son. It’s time you and he connected.’
‘Margaret, I don’t know what you’ve heard or who you’ve been talking to, but they’re full of shit.’
She sets down bowls of canned peaches with blobs of Cool Whip. Margaret isn’t speaking to him, but he’s too preoccupied to notice. The missing yearbook, the Kalen disaster at the club, the last thing Brad said to him, run on a loop inside his head. He can’t stop cross-hatching the territory, chasing a question he can’t quite frame. OK, maybe he’s been silent for too long, but he’s closing on it.
Then his sister, who he thought he was being strong for, astounds him. Reaching across the table, she grips his arm in a spasm of sympathy, crying, ‘Oh, Bobby. How can you stand your life?’
I’m fine, eighteen months sober and still counting. Consolidating. Trimming the portfolio and fixing up the house for sale. Walking into that party was a piece of cake, so it won’t be hard to re-connect. ‘You know what, Mags? It’s probably time we got you to a better shrink.’
‘Oh, Bobby.’ When she raises her hand like that he thinks he can see light through it. ‘Don’t do me like that.’
‘No no, I mean, you’re doing so well. Al says you were great in Homosassa,’ he says, and the whole time his mind is racing after its quarry. ‘You’re getting strong.’
Her face clouds over. ‘You didn’t hear about the trouble. At the Dairy Queen.’
‘Even the best people have setbacks, Mag.’ Last night’s train wreck had common ingredients: Kalen. The kid. Pike. And . . .
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Eighteen months sober, remember?’ And the last element – Ionesco’s maid would be proud. The final ingredient is . . . ‘If somebody as lame as me can get my shit together, so can you!’
Margaret’s big problem is that in every respect, she’s too easy. Her eyes are brimming. ‘I’m so glad.’
The final ingredient is. Finally. Bobby knows. ‘I have to go out for a while, OK Mag? You’ll be fine.’
Performative utterance or self-fulfilling prophecy, she buys it. She says firmly, ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Hang in and tomorrow we’ll go out to lunch.’ Her face does that jerky, frightened thing. ‘Nowhere scary.