The New Yorker Stories (88 page)

Jim said that he would wake Francis early if he was sure he wanted to follow the truck. Why did he want to follow them? But Francis insisted that he did, and then Jim and Don hopped back in the truck to drive to a faraway but well-lit area that the clerk had said was for large vehicles. They went their separate ways without saying good night.

“Bern?” he said, sitting on the side of his bed.

“God! I thought you’d never call!” she said. “Where are you?”

“A Hampton Inn,” he said. “Has everything gone to hell?”

“It’s terrible,” she said. “Lucy’s mother calling, like a woman possessed, forgetting it’s three hours later on the East Coast, and poor Lucy at wit’s end, trying to calm her. And Francis, it is unbelievable to me, but Sheldon is no help whatsoever. He went out for a walk! A walk! If I were Lucy, I’d never speak to him again.”

The non-smoking room smelled of cigarette smoke. Did it come as a surprise to him that people did not follow rules, when unobserved? He pinched the tip of his nose between thumb and finger, let go, but the itching continued. He rubbed his nose. “What is her mother so upset about?” he said.

“The crash landing! What do you think she’s upset about? Three people died.”

Francis let his mouth drop open. “Crash landing? The plane crashed?”

“You heard it on the radio, didn’t you? Somewhere?”

“No,” he said.

“You didn’t? Then what did you mean by asking—”

“I thought there was trouble between them,” he said.

“I just assumed you’d heard. They almost didn’t let the passengers who survived leave the airport. The investigators are coming to our house, Francis, at the crack of dawn. Something about someone on the plane telling his seatmate it was going to happen. Francis, go turn on the television.”

Francis didn’t move. He took in what she’d said with dumb shock.

“And Francis,” she said, “I do not have the slightest idea how we raised a son who could not reach out and comfort poor Lucy—who stalked off, instead, to take a walk.”

“Maybe he lives in his own head, like his father.”

“This is not the time to reproach me for criticizing you, Francis. Whether you do or do not live in your own little world, in the larger world, poor Lucy was two seats behind someone who died.”

“Horrible,” he murmured. “He’s still on his walk? Would it help if I spoke to Lucy, do you think?”

“I’ve given her an Ambien, poor thing. Her mother is hysterical about the U.S. government and wants to give us all a civics lesson, dragging in the war in Iraq. She’s a terrible woman.”

“Lucy’s asleep upstairs?” he said. He suddenly felt quite exhausted himself.

“Yes, of course. What did you think—that I’d have her stretch out on the sofa?” His wife’s voice broke.

“We’re coming home first thing in the morning,” he said.

“Who is ‘we’?”

“The moving men. There was some confusion about my wallet and we were delayed. I thought it best to put us all up at a motel. We’ll set out first thing in the morning.”

“What do you mean, ‘confusion’?”

“One of them took my damned wallet, then felt remorse and returned it. But do not breathe a word of this to either of them, do you understand? I want to remain cordial and simply conclude this move.”

She sniffed. “I suppose it’s very late, and I might not be understanding you,” she said. “You have the wallet, you and the moving men will be on your way. All right. But tell me, Francis—what do I say to our son about his behavior, when he returns?”

“That he’s an insensitive asshole, I guess.”

“I don’t think I should cross him,” she said quietly. “He got very angry when Lucy’s mother upset her, as if that was Lucy’s doing.”

“Get some sleep,” he said.

“We’ve raised an immature idiot,” she said.

He nodded, but of course she could not see him. “Sleep,” he repeated.

“He has a screw missing,” she said.

“See you tomorrow, early,” he said.

“You have your wallet? That all worked out all right, did it?”

“It worked out,” he said.

She said, “For God’s sake, turn on the television.”

At the Continental-breakfast buffet, he saw Jim sitting alone at a circular table. Jim had piled two Danish pastries onto a napkin—for Don, Francis was sure. A cup of coffee sat on the table, with a lid on the cup. “Didn’t hear the news until this morning,” Jim said. “Seems like plane stuff happens a lot more than it ought to.”

“Do they know what caused it?” Francis asked.

Jim looked at him. He seemed more tired than he had when they checked in. He had circles under his eyes, dark, like a raccoon’s. “They tell us what they want us to hear,” he said.

“Your friend Don,” Francis said, pulling back a plastic chair. “He obviously looks up to you.”

“He wanted the two of us to spring my son and take care of him, you know that? Go on welfare and take care of him.” Jim shook his head. “He’s somethin’, ” he said.

“Would that not be at all possible?” Francis said.

“No, it wouldn’t,” Jim said. “You’d know that in one second.”

“He miscalculated, then. He obviously looks up to you,” Francis said again.

“Yeah, well, it’s no ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ ” Jim said, taking a big bite of his bagel.

Francis tried again: “I think he might do things—say things, maybe—to impress you.”

“Scare me, is more like it. My son’s a pretzel,” he said. “Not one doctor, ever, thought anybody could take care of him anywhere but in an institution.” He got up. “Ten minutes, out front,” he said.

Francis stood to get some coffee. “I hope I didn’t offend you by asking whether Don’s idea might have some viability,” he said.

“No, it’s just that Don’s not my kid and sometimes it feels like he is.” Jim started for the door, shaking his head. Then he turned back. “If he pressured you into saying you wanted one of the decoys and you don’t, no hard feelings.”

“He didn’t do that. I want one very much. You do beautiful work. You’re a real artist,” Francis said.

Jim nodded slowly. “My grandfather was better, back twenty years ago, but I stick with it, and every now and then I learn something.”

“The price is very reasonable,” Francis said.

“If I have more money or less money things are about the same, I notice.”

“You didn’t feel you had to quote me a low price, for any reason?” Francis asked.

Jim looked at him.

“You know, it might be a little tense at my house. My son’s girlfriend was on that plane. That’s bad enough, but she’s also pregnant, and he doesn’t want to marry her.”

A look of concern flickered over Jim’s face. “You’re full of surprises today,” he said. He seemed to be debating continuing on his way or staying rooted to the spot. “Tell him not to,” he said. “If he’ll listen to your advice.”

“I wanted to prepare you, because there might be a bit of tension in the air,” Francis said.

“We’ll just carry the furniture in. Leave,” Jim said. “We’re just the moving men.”

“My wife sometimes deals with her anxiety by remaining rather aloof.”

Jim nodded. “Not lookin’ to make friends with your wife,” he said.

“Five minutes?” Francis said.

“About,” Jim said, turning and walking across the breakfast area’s chaotic carpeting, which looked like shards from a broken kaleidoscope, the wild colors dusted with crumbs.

“Your friend Don,” Francis said, coming up behind Jim. “Is he like a bad kid, sometimes? Does the wrong thing?”

“That’s shit-shootin’ sure,” Jim said. “But what can you do?”

“I don’t know what to do about my son,” Francis said. “Like you said—he’s my son. He isn’t very likely to listen to me.”

Jim nodded. “Worth a try to stop him from marrying somebody he doesn’t want to marry,” he said. “Life doesn’t hold a lot of happy surprises.”

“That’s exactly what I think,” Francis said.

“Friends, family, they get you every time,” Jim said.

With that, Francis felt sure that Jim had known about Don and the wallet, or at least he’d known that Don was capable of having hidden the dropped wallet so that he could return for it later. Otherwise, what would they have been talking about? Friends and family?

Francis took a deep breath and entered the oppressively gray-walled bedroom where Lucy lay facing the window. She had told his wife that she and Sheldon had been writing and talking to each other, and that they had decided to separate, but at the last minute she’d e-mailed him from Japan and asked him to come to the airport. Then she had done a very bad thing: she had insisted, when she was finally allowed to leave J.F.K., that he wouldn’t have cared if she had died. She wanted it both ways: to break up with him, and also to have him love her. Lucy told Francis that Sheldon had pointed that out, calmly but coldly, and when she would not let up he had stalked out of the house. So it hadn’t been as simple as Bern had reported.

Still, he knew there was more. She did not look pregnant, but maybe she just wasn’t showing yet. Or maybe she had done something about it.

“Lucy,” he said, sitting down on the bed, “when I practiced law, I was often successful because I followed my instincts. I used to clear my head by closing my eyes and letting my mind drift until I admitted to myself what I knew. Lucy?”

“You and your wife have been very good to me. I don’t know why your son holds you at a distance, but when I was here I was imitating him, for no good reason. I guess I was wary, because I’ve always been overwhelmed by my parents. My mother, in particular.”

“Before we get off track,” he said. “Because my mind does wander and I do get off track when I shouldn’t. I quit practicing law before other people noticed that—good to quit when you’re still on top. But my mind wandered somewhere recently and it came to me that you were pregnant.”

She rolled toward him and stared, wide-eyed. Perhaps it was the background—the gray walls—that made her look unusually pale. “How could you know that?” she whispered.

“Do you want to know? Because of the bananas,” he said. “Though it was Bern who noticed the banana skins.”

“Oh my God,” Lucy said. She rolled away, facing the window again.

“But she didn’t put it together,” he said. “I didn’t either, at first. Maybe if you’d left out empty jars of marshmallow cream and pizza boxes, it would have been easier.”

“Just bananas,” she said.

He nodded.

“You know, and you hate me,” she said.

“Hate you? Bern and I like you. It’s our son whose behavior—even if you were mixed up, jet-lagged, scared to death . . . still. He should have been more understanding.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m not clairvoyant,” he said. “Sometimes I close my eyes and things come to me, but most times they don’t.”

“What are you going to do?” she said.

“Me? Would it be O.K. to ask what you’re going to do?” He looked at her long, thin legs. Her flat belly. “Or what you’ve done?”

She sprang up suddenly. She said, “I’m afraid to tell him. I don’t know if I missed him because I wanted to convince myself that I loved him, or whether I really do. My mother will kill me. She put me on birth-control pills when I was thirteen.”

“You returned early because you have to deal with this,” he said.

She nodded.

“He’ll come back, and you two have to talk it over.”

“Does your wife know?” she said.

“No.”

“You didn’t tell your wife?”

“I thought I was right, but I wasn’t sure,” he said. “In fact, if I’d been wrong, it would have taken me down a peg. It would have made me wonder whether something else I’d just recently figured out might not have been wrong, too.”

“What might have been wrong?” she said.

“Oh, that someone stole my wallet, then decided to look like a hero by finding it.”

“You knew the person who took it?” she asked. “Did you tell him that you knew?”

“Why would you assume it was a man?” he said.

“What?”

It wasn’t the time to play with her, she was in a bad way—she didn’t realize that he was trying to tease her into examining her assumptions. He said, “No, because I couldn’t prove it. But I more or less told his best friend, the one he wanted to impress, that I’d realized what was going on.”

He put his hands on his knees, getting ready to stand. She shifted her weight onto her hip, following him with her eyes. “Do you know what I should do?” she asked, as he stood. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

He thought about it. “I’d think you’d want to talk this over with Sheldon, as soon as he shows up.”

“Nothing tells you that he won’t show up?”

He smiled. He’d impressed her too easily, when usually he understood very little. Common sense told him that his son—his lazy, spoiled son—would return to the family home, if only because there was nowhere else for him to go. Even now, he could sense Sheldon watching, the way ducks circled decoys, waiting for some instinctive sense that everything looked right, that it was safe to move in; fooled by the sentry heads (that would be Bern, sitting in her chair with her embroidery, her head cocked in semi-disbelief at the way her life was turning out). The mallards would look harmonious, feeding as they bobbed on the water, much the way lawyers struck a pose to suggest how effortlessly they kept themselves afloat. Then the eye would travel to the oddly lovely egret, who just happened to have landed in his bed, having drifted in after a long flight. Francis smiled at his own conjecturing: who was really the writer in the family, he wondered. His son would keep himself apart a bit longer, making his calculations: Things in place? Feeding time? The most ordinary of things going on? The egret would verify the ordinary by interjecting something different. But then—to extend the metaphor—his son would be wrong, and he would fall into a trap, though not a deadly one: nothing worse than domesticity, nothing he couldn’t escape. Francis thought that he, himself, might have left long before, when he first realized that he’d married a good woman, but not a woman he would die for, and that their only child was deeply flawed. Did he regret having stayed? No. He had never believed in the idea of perfection. Nor did he believe that he was owed a reward for staying: Jim’s mallard would merely represent the receipt of something he had paid for.