“So,” her father said. “Min, it never hurts to go over the possibilities. Whether or not the kids—”
“Let’s just say that whoever wants to go can get packed, and we’ll wait for the charter company to call,” her mother said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. They might not even want me up there tonight.”
“That’s ridiculous, honey.”
“It’s not,” her mother said. Her voice rose on the not. Knox noticed that the redness she’d seen in her mother’s face as she stood over the sink had either returned or never dissipated. Then, more quietly, she said, “Sorry. I just don’t want them to be overwhelmed.”
“I don’t have to go,” Robbie said. “I can come up next week, or before school starts.”
Knox thought she saw gratitude flash in her mother’s eyes. She wondered if her mother imagined having Charlotte all to herself, if she feared any possibility other than that.
“I don’t have to go either,” Knox said. The sound of her voice surprised her. “But I’d like to. Charlotte and I talked about it this afternoon.”
Her mother looked at her.
“You talked to Charlotte?” she said.
“Yes.”
“What did she say?” The innocence in her mother’s expression—the braced, expectant quality of it—made Knox momentarily wish she hadn’t spoken.
“That she wasn’t sure what was happening next. She told me it would be good if I came, actually.”
“She did?”
Knox nodded.
After a few seconds, her mother smiled in her direction. “Of course she wants you there. I think everyone should do whatever they feel they need to do,” she said.
“Okay.”
“As long as the center can spare you right now.”
“Okay,” Knox said. She felt exhausted. She buttered another piece of bread, then put it back down on her plate.
“Dinner was delicious,” her father said.
“Back to the subject,” Robbie said.
“What?” Knox said.
“The sexiest man alive takes baths with a Vietnamese potbellied pig.”
“I’ll mull that bit of fascinating crap over.”
Robbie rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her. Her mother covered her smile with her hand. “Jesus, tough crowd tonight,” Robbie said, just before the phone rang.
CHARLOTTE HAD LAID a wooden shelf across two stacks of bricks in front of the kitchen window. She had bought a small pot of basil, a pot of rosemary, a mint plant, an African violet in bright foil, and arranged them in a row on the shelf. She had bought a grapefruit-sized water mister, filled it at the tap, and placed it on the shelf beside the African violet. She had stood back and admired what she had done. She had placed one hand at the small of her back. Bruce had watched her from the hall. The sun was white in the kitchen and fell across her in a dazzling shard. He imagined it warm on her skin. That night Charlotte had twisted leaves from the basil plant, chopped them into a mossy pulp, made tomato and basil omelets for their dinner. He praised them extravagantly, appealing to the domestic pride that flowered from her in these tiny bursts.
Charlotte had stood on the bench in their living room, in the midst of a party she had given to mark some minor occasion—Cinco de Mayo, or Bastille Day, or the Derby that ran each year just an hour from her parents’ house, about which Charlotte seemed to know little other than that the rest of her family was always in attendance, sometimes with a horse running, and that more juleps needed to be made, please: more. The mint on the shelf in the kitchen was brown by then; papery leaves lay scattered on streaks of dirt. A new pot of mint was bought, ice, sugar syrup, bourbon by the handle. Charlotte stood on the bench and her friends cheered. The television blared in the background. She danced to the music someone had put on: some Spanish guitar, or Piaf, or “Fulsom Prison Blues.” The song would be a detail that got lost. Bruce would remember, though, Charlotte lifting her shirt until her breasts were exposed. He would remember that the television was louder than the music, that it was possible to keep track of the race from across the room. “They’re all in line … wait, number five, San Dee Dee is getting set, all right, the jock has got the colt calmed, and they’re—” From his place on the window seat Bruce could see the pale blue veins that stretched from the aureoles of Charlotte’s tits when they appeared from under the raised hem of