Truth in Advertising Page 0,49
says, “Get the fuck out of my room”? Won’t I feel like an asshole. Still, I’m going to say no. Because it’s awkward. Because I’d be imposing. Because I don’t know Phoebe’s family.
“That sounds really nice,” I say.
• • •
I do the dishes and talk with Phoebe’s mother, Judy.
Dinner was a rack of lamb and parmesan potatoes and green beans, followed by pumpkin and pecan pies for dessert with ice cream from Brigham’s, a Boston institution. They talked and listened and laughed. No one said a single mean or sarcastic thing.
Phoebe and her father are in the living room. Her brothers and their wives have left. They hugged on their way out. Judy’s putting away the dishes I wash. She says, “But here’s what I don’t understand. I’m going to buy mayonnaise anyway. Why does someone need to go to all that trouble to advertise it? I’ve bought the same brand of mayonnaise for forty years and not once do I remember an ad for it.”
The dishes are old and can’t go in the dishwasher. I take my time with them. The hot water and the soap and the sponge feel good. The window above the sink looks out onto the expansive backyard, mature trees, bare branches. It’s the house Phoebe grew up in, a stately old pale yellow Victorian at the end of a wooded road in Brookline, a leafy town next door to Boston.
“Judy. You’re calling into question my very existence.”
She grins and sips from her wineglass, moves clean cups and saucers back into the cupboards.
We had drinks in the living room. They opened presents. There was one for me, wrapped in today’s newspaper. An old scarf that could not have been uglier. I smiled, they laughed. Her brother said, “Everyone in this family has worn that scarf, Fin. And every one of us has tried to pawn it off on someone else.” I wrapped it around my neck.
Mr. Knowles stood and said, “Fin, I seem to have accidentally spilled my drink down my throat. Getting a refresher. Top you off?”
He’s clean-shaven with a gray crew cut. Phoebe told me that he saved a friend’s life once when skating on a pond. The ice cracked, the friend fell in and disappeared. A deep pond. Mr. Knowles went in after him. This was a few years ago. Tonight he wears a sports coat and a tie.
They are a family of golfers and there was talk of the new greens-keeper at the club. He comes highly recommended—did Winged Foot, did Baltusrol, did Myopia. I have to assume that these are golf courses, though for all I know they could be Broadway shows. I merely nod.
Her brothers asked me questions about making TV commercials. They wanted to know about Gwyneth Paltrow. Phoebe’s father said, “Is she the one who adopts all the African children?” Judy said, “No, Stu, that’s Angelina Jolie.”
I watched her parents watch Phoebe. It is a lie that parents have no favorites among their children.
I’m on the last of the pots now and reach under the sink for a fresh Brillo Pad.
Judy says, “Leave that. Come look at these.”
She sits down at the kitchen table and opens a photo album. She pours out two small glasses of wine.
I do a final wipe-down of the counter and sit down next to her. Judy leafs through the album and turns it toward me.
Pictures of Christmases past. Of birthdays. Of cookouts, vacations, weekends. Smiling people. Happy people. I could use these shots for ads. Baby pictures. Phoebe sitting in Stu’s lap as a five-year-old, in her pajamas, while he reads her a story. Stu and Phoebe on the beach. Phoebe and her brothers on skis.
Judy says, “I love that one. That’s up in Woodstock.”
“New York?” I ask.
“Vermont,” she says. “We have a small place up there. It was Stu’s father’s.”
A picture of Phoebe and Judy at a café in Paris.
A picture of Judy and Phoebe and a swarthy, handsome man at the same café, his arm around Phoebe. I feel a surprise twinge of jealousy.
Judy raises her eyebrows, rolls her eyes, and says, “We won’t talk about that.” She turns the page.
I scan each one, find Phoebe, page after page, watch as she grows up.
Judy turns another page and laughs. It’s a picture of Phoebe with chicken pox, age fourteen. Pale, miserable, little bumps all over her face and neck and arms.
She keeps scanning, turning. She’s smiling.
“This is in Wellfleet,” Judy says. “Last year. Labor Day weekend.”
It’s a picture of Phoebe,