Truth in Advertising Page 0,73

are round-toed, comfortable slip-ons. She rubs her hands.

“This is nice,” she says, looking around.

I nod and smile. Our mother called her Honey Bee. She read me stories when I was little. She said, “Don’t ever let Mum see you cry.”

The waitress takes her drink order.

“Did you drive in?” I ask, though I had no knowledge that these words were going to come out of my mouth. I have a smile on my face like a game-show host. I want to slap myself.

“No. No, I took the commuter rail. Paul didn’t want me driving. Supposed to get three to six inches tonight. I hope Kevin’s flight lands.”

Maura has four kids. They have names and ages and she stays at home, having left a job in something or other at Fidelity. She used to go to church a lot. We talked about it once, a long time ago. She felt a connection. She used to go with my mother. Then the monsignor of her church was sentenced to prison for molesting dozens of young boys over the course of thirty years. Now she cleans obsessively. She loathes newspapers in the house, she told me. Her husband, Paul, is an engineer or a scientist or a programmer or a hedge-fund guy who invented a software program. He made a lot of money. They live in a house slightly larger than Finland.

“You look good,” I say, though this is a lie. She looks tired and stressed, older than I remember, a woman in deep need of yoga and a massage and a beach and sexual healing.

She rolls her eyes. “I look old. There’s Eddie.” She waves toward the front of the restaurant and I look to see my oldest brother, the man who knows everything. I stand and shake his hand. He leans over for a perfunctory kiss on Maura’s cheek, both of them turning away, skin barely touching. The waitress brings Maura’s drink.

Eddie says, “Grey Goose rocks, olives, please.”

It is striking to me how much Eddie looks like our father, though I would never say that out loud. He would be insulted, as if that were a criticism, as if somehow he and not his DNA were at fault. Eddie is a real estate lawyer. Three kids, separated last I’d heard. I don’t think he’s looked either of us in the eye yet.

Maura sips her wine, puts it down. I smile at the salt shaker. Maura picks up her drink and sips again. Eddie looks around.

Maura says, “How are the kids, Eddie?”

Eddie nods to the table. “Good. Good.”

Check, please.

Eddie says, “Where’s Kevin?”

Maura says, “On his way, I guess. If his flight landed.”

Or if he ever got on it in the first place. It is hard to say who took the worst from our father. Certainly not me. And he left Maura alone for the most part. It was Eddie or Kevin or my mother. My mother, though, could calm him sometimes. And Eddie was tough. Kevin . . . Kevin was mostly just confused that his father would treat him like that, that his own father seemed to hate him. He applied only to schools on the West Coast after high school. He just wanted to get away. He studied graphic design, somehow got a job at Apple. Now he has his own firm. He lives with his boyfriend. I get a card from them at Christmas. He used to call me Finneus.

The waitress brings Eddie’s drink. He eats an olive off the pick, sips the drink, clears his throat. Who are you? Where’s the person I knew? Where did he go? And am I different to him, as well? To Maura?

Eddie says to Maura, “How’s Paul? The kids?”

Maura says, “Good. All good.”

Eddie looks down at his drink and says, “Did he say anything?” Then he looks up at me. It hits me that I’ve not seen him in a long time.

“No. He never regained consciousness.”

Eddie nods.

Maura and I are looking at Eddie, waiting for him to say something. The same dynamic for as long as I can remember. He’s the oldest. We watch and wait and follow his lead.

Eddie says, “Were you there when he died? In the room?”

Maura exhales loudly, looks away, sips deeply from her drink.

I say, “No. It was late. I was asleep at the hotel. They called me.”

“And you went there?”

“No. I went to the hotel gym at three in the morning, did the Stairmaster.”

“Don’t be a wise ass.”

“Don’t ask me stupid questions.” It comes out too loud.

He