Miller's Valley - Anna Quindlen Page 0,51

with an undertone.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” said Eddie, and he stood up and the two of them shook hands, as though they were strangers meeting in an insurance office or something. My mother used to say sometimes that when they were little they were close, but it was hard to believe. Looking at them you couldn’t even imagine they were related. One looked like a cop and the other like a criminal.

“What brings you to this neck of the woods?” Tommy said, pulling up a chair while my mother made him a plate.

“Work, believe it or not. We’re doing the engineering on a new development off 502.”

“Off 502? None of the construction guys have said anything about that.”

“It’s early yet,” said Eddie, and the way he said it made me understand he didn’t want Tom to mention it to anyone.

“How many houses?”

“A good many,” said Eddie, shutting the discussion down and chasing cake crumbs with his fork. “What’s happening with you, brother?”

Tommy mumbled with his mouth full, “Ah, a little of this, a little of that.” It was small-talk city, but that was the way my brothers liked it, I guess.

“How’s your wife doing?”

“She’s good. You should come down and visit. She’s teaching herself to cook. She’s getting pretty good. Mom and Dad drove down and she made them a roast beef dinner.”

I remembered. My mother said Debbie had gotten the wrong cut of meat, made mashed potatoes from a box and gravy from a jar. “The carrots were good,” my father said. “Frozen,” my mother said.

“Maybe I will,” said Tom, in that way you say you’re going to do something you’re never going to do. He handed his plate back to my mother, who refilled it. Eddie asked for a second piece of cake.

“I want to take you two for a ride,” Eddie said to my parents when he was done with his cake, standing up and taking his jacket off one of the hooks by the back door.

“We safe in that tin can?” my father said.

“Ah, man, don’t get him started on Japanese cars,” Tommy said.

“I bet you’d feel the same if people started driving Vietnamese cars,” our father said.

“I don’t care who drives what as long as no one is trying to kill me.”

When we were alone I said to Tommy, “You don’t look dressed for a wake.”

“Yeah, right?” he said. “You want to make a pot of coffee?” He went upstairs and when he came down he was wearing one of my father’s sport shirts, a dark plaid with short sleeves. The fabric pulled across his wide shoulders. I didn’t know exactly what Tommy did with himself all day, but he was still in basic-training condition. All the other guys at the VFW had big bellies sloping over their belts. “Baby likes beer,” they would say, rubbing their midsections like a genie would show up and they would get three wishes. The wishes being three more boilermakers lined up on the bar.

Tommy still didn’t look like he was going to a wake. No tie, hair curling down around his collar and over his ears, mustache drooping around his mouth. He poured himself some coffee and his hands shook just a bit.

“So you and Stevie,” he said.

“So?”

“I didn’t see that coming,” he said.

“Are you okay with it?”

“I mean, yeah. I’m just not sure he’s right for you. Don’t get sidetracked.”

“From what?”

“Anything. Everything. Be like Ed. Get out of here. Don’t get stuck.”

“What about you?”

“Never mind about me, Meems.” He took two sips of coffee and put his cup in the sink. “I’m rolling out,” he said.

A boy three years ahead of me at the high school had joined the Army earlier in the year. He’d been in Vietnam for three weeks when he got killed. Nobody knew exactly how, except that it was a closed-casket wake, and Miller’s Valley wasn’t a place that was big on closed-casket wakes. He was the second soldier from Miller’s Valley to die there. Tom was so far the only one to come back alive.

I did the dishes and thought about whether Tommy was going to make it to McTeague’s Funeral Home and figured that he wouldn’t. There were two bars between here and there, and a little cinder-block box of a house that one of Tommy’s semiregular girlfriends lived in. He’d get sidetracked. He usually did.

I walked back to Ruth’s with a slab of cake on a paper plate. I figured my mother would think Tommy had eaten it.