Ask Again, Yes (39 page)

He told her to leave him alone, that he needed ten minutes to think. But thinking only made it worse.

“Let’s get the kids out of here,” Peter said when he understood it was truly happening. Kate picked up her phone to call a friend who had two kids the same ages as Frankie and Molly, but she didn’t end up dialing because she couldn’t think of what reason she’d give for suddenly needing childcare in the middle of a summer Saturday afternoon. She thought about calling Sara, who’d moved to Westchester a few years before and who wouldn’t mind coming to get the kids, but that would mean telling Sara what was happening. In the end, they decided to let
the kids stay. After breakfast, Kate put on her brightest expression and told them she had something exciting to tell them, that Daddy’s mommy who lived very far away was coming to visit that day, and was looking forward to meeting them, so they had to be very, very good.

Peter, pale and steely at the sink, crossed his arms tight and nodded. He forced a pleasant expression and her heart squeezed for him.

“You have a mommy? I can’t believe it!” Molly said, throwing her arms around Peter as if to congratulate him on his good fortune. When the kids left the kitchen, Kate asked for a second time if he might think about calling George. Having another buffer there might make it easier.

“She won’t like it,” Peter said. “She’s never liked him.”

“She owes him.”

“Exactly. That’s why she won’t want to see him.”

“But you want George here. I can tell.”

He did want George there but he didn’t want to rattle her, not when she’d be nervous already. It was an old habit, anticipating her moods, and it came back easily. Kate said she’d seemed calm but that didn’t mean she’d be the same person when she turned up that afternoon.

“Okay, you call him,” Peter said. George had called Peter’s cell phone at least a dozen times since the night he fired his gun, and that told Peter he’d already heard what happened. Mrs. Paulino, probably. She lived on the first floor of George and Rosaleen’s building and her grandson was in the Fifth Precinct. He pictured the confusion on George’s face, like she might have gotten her facts mixed up. For all he knew he’d show up at the house anyway, and at exactly the wrong time.

“No, wait,” Peter said. “I’ll call him.”

George whistled down the line when he heard who was coming to lunch. Peter blurted it out so they’d move right past what did or did not or could have happened when he discharged his weapon. But George
circled back. “Mrs. Paulino keeps asking me if I’ve spoken to you,” he said. “Something happen?”

Peter told him, quickly.

“But you’re on restricted duty? Not modified? A shrink has to clear you?”

There were only a few civilians who knew the difference between modified duty and restricted, but George was one of them.

“Yes.”

“Something else happen?”

What else happened, Peter said, steering the ship right back around, was that his mother was coming to lunch in a matter of hours, and Peter would appreciate it if George could be there.

“Me?” George nearly shouted. “You want me to be there while she’s there? Oh, God. Rosaleen is going down the shore later. Her friend has a beach house in Avalon. A ladies’ weekend or something.”

Peter didn’t see what that had to do with anything, but if George wanted an out, Peter understood.

“Okay, well, don’t worry about it. I’ll let you know how it goes and we’ll make plans with you guys soon.”

“Oh no, I’m coming,” George said. “You gotta give a guy a minute to think out loud. I got shook for a second is all. I’m coming. I’ll just come by myself.”

“Really?” Peter dipped his head and pressed the phone to his ear with both hands.

“You kidding me? Last time I ate a meal with Anne Stanhope she swung a vacuum at me. Can’t imagine it’ll go worse than that. And by the way, you should think about shipping the kids to a neighbor or something.”

Peter laughed, and Kate leaned out from the kitchen as if he’d cried out in pain.

“They’re staying. Kate and I already discussed it.”

“More bodies if this goes bad.”

“George,” Peter said, but he laughed again. “Jesus, why am I laughing?”

“What else can you do?”

“Don’t joke like that to Kate.” Peter glanced toward the kitchen. “She’s a wreck though she’s pretending she’s not.”

“I wouldn’t. Anyway, what do you want me to bring?”

“Nothing.”

“And what about the restricted duty? What’s that about? I’m confused.”

“Oh,” Peter said. The dread that had been lifted for a second or two felt heavier as it settled in again. “That’s a mix-up. We’re working that out now.”

Kate cleaned up the breakfast dishes, wiped down the counters. She checked that the London broil in the fridge was covered with marinade, closed the fridge door, opened it again to check that the pasta salad was tightly wrapped. Then she did all of those things a dozen more times. She asked Peter what he wanted, what he envisioned for the afternoon, but he didn’t know how to begin to answer the question, so he didn’t respond.

Kate followed him around the house to their bedroom and then into the bathroom as he turned on water for a shower. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet while the bathroom filled with steam, and waited for him to talk to her, but he only washed himself, dried himself, got dressed.

“I keep thinking of what my father will say.”

“You’re the one who was all for this. You’re the one who said yes.”

“I know.”

“So don’t tell him.”

“He’ll hear.”

“How?”

Kate shrugged. “He hears everything, eventually.”

“Because you’ll tell him.”

Kate sighed. “It’s like my mind is splitting into two. One part knows she’s your mother and I’m willing to see her because of that. She must have done something right because here you are.”

“But?”

“But the other part thinks of her as the crazy neighbor who almost killed my father. If it weren’t for her, he’d have put in thirty years. He wouldn’t have had an affair. Maybe my mother wouldn’t have gotten cancer.”

Peter put down the razor he was swiping across his cheeks. “Do you really think that? Even about the cancer?”

“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. There’s evidence cancer cells multiply at a faster rate when a patient is stressed.”

He continued shaving. “She has a lot to be sorry for already. I’m not sure we have to add all that.”

“But those are my things. You have your things. I’m not going to take away mine just because your list is long, too. She’s a destructive person. And here we are getting ready to have her over for lunch.”

“So why’d you agree to this?”

Kate got up and rubbed a circle in the steamed mirror so she could look at her own face alongside his. She met his eyes, but didn’t say a word.

All morning he’d been trying to imagine how he’d feel if his mother didn’t show, or if she called and canceled. Would he be disappointed? Relieved? Both? The problem was that he didn’t know what he wanted, he didn’t know which way to root.

At one point, he thought they should invite more people. Neighbors. The kids’ teachers. College friends. They should fill the house with guests so that they wouldn’t have to look at each other and talk. But then in the next instant he thought that he should take her over to the beach to sit in the sand, just the two of them. She wouldn’t be herself in front of Kate, in front of George. He kept remembering the kid he’d been—looking at the train schedule and trekking all the way to Westchester to see her—and he understood why he’d given up his Sundays. He loved her
and he didn’t like to think of her alone. But she was no more alone than he was, sleeping on George’s pullout. She was no more alone than he’d been the day he walked across the hospital parking lot in Albany, already forgiving her for sending him away.

Thinking so much about his mother that morning also made him think about his father. When Frankie was first born, Peter would spend a whole weekend with him, then get to work on Monday and take out his phone to look at his picture. Would Frankie change so much over the next few years that Peter, too, might be willing to walk away from his son and never see him again? He wondered if Brian Stanhope ever thought about Peter, about Anne, about the life he used to have. He tried to recall his father’s face but he couldn’t see it. He remembered objects better. His father’s car. His father’s gun. The nail clipper his father kept hanging from his key chain. Not long ago, Peter had told Frankie to keep his back elbow up when he was at bat, and to always let the first pitch go by. Who had taught him that? His father, he supposed, though he couldn’t remember when. He wondered if, standing in whatever southern city he’d settled in, his father ever marveled that there was once a day in March when he’d shoveled four feet of snow from his driveway. And that he’d had a son, who’d helped him. Peter had already brought both of his children to Citi Field, and he wanted his father to know that, somehow. To know that it was not actually all that hard to say you’re going to do a thing and then to do it. How many times had he told Peter he’d bring him to Shea? And the craziest part was that Peter believed him every single time.

As soon as the digital clock on the cable box flipped to noon, he went down to the kitchen with Kate close on his heels. Without looking at her or in any way hiding what he was doing, he reached behind the cereal boxes above the fridge and, to Kate’s amazement, withdrew a bottle. He reached up again to a different cabinet, to the topmost shelf where they stored a line of shot glasses they’d collected over the years, and he took out one small glass. Then, turning to consider her for a second, he took
out another. He poured from the bottle into each, and Kate, realizing what a hypocrite this made her, threw hers down in one go.

“One more,” she said, returning her glass to the counter. “For you, too. And then that’s it.”

The shots worked. Kate slowed down, stopped following him, stopped opening and closing the refrigerator door. Peter felt a calm settle over him. He had one more when Kate went upstairs to change her hair again. It was being observed that he hated, and so he decided when his mother arrived he’d listen to whatever it was she wanted to say in private. But then he remembered that Kate said she really wanted to see the kids, and that threw him off. Maybe it was them she wanted to see and not him. And why not? They were great kids. Funny and weird and smart. When one o’clock arrived the kids were outside playing tag with the neighbors. Molly fell trying to keep up with them and got a grass stain all down her dress. Kate brought her upstairs to help her change, to wipe her face, and they were still upstairs when a car slowed down in front of their house.

“Kate?” Peter called from the bottom of the stairs. “Kate? I think she’s here. Are you coming?”

He knew she was up there, standing at the top of the stairs, listening. She was going to make him go out there alone. He swallowed, squared his shoulders. What did he care? He had everything. He had Kate and his children. She couldn’t hurt him.

“Kate?” he tried, one more time.

Upstairs, Kate hugged Molly tight, and buried her face in their child’s warm neck. Then, peering through the space between the windowsill and the bottom of the blind, she watched Peter cross the lawn. She watched
him run his hands through his hair as he waited for his mother to open the car door. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, Kate thought, and was instantly sorry she’d done this to him, forced his mother on him, ambushed him like this. She clutched Molly hard as she watched Anne step out of her car and face him. She’d looked so frail and haggard during their middle-of-the-night conversation two weeks earlier, but now, her face was shining, full of light, and she turned all that light toward Peter. She’d gotten a haircut. Her clothes looked freshly pressed. She reached up and patted him on the back, so he patted her on her back. They didn’t embrace. They just kept patting each other, like a person might do to an upset stranger. Kate narrowed her eyes and could see that Peter was fighting like hell not to cry, his chest rising and falling. When he turned he had an expression on his face that she’d never seen before.

“What are we doing?” Molly whispered eventually, and Kate told her to count to thirty, slowly. Then she set her free to clatter down the stairs before her, to say hello to this grandma she’d never met.

As if the terms had been decided in advance, they didn’t make any reference to the past. Without discussing it aloud, they all agreed they’d wind their way there, as slowly as they needed to go. They spoke of the kids, what each one was good at. Frankie looked like Peter but he also looked like Francis Gleeson, Anne said, and hearing her father’s name come out of Anne’s mouth gave Kate a jolt. Peter looked over at her. He’d felt it, too. But they recovered, moved on. They talked about the distance from their house to the beach, the quickest routes. Peter said they used to live in Manhattan, when they were first married, and Kate avoided Anne’s eyes. They talked about the upcoming presidential election, how what had seemed like such a long shot a year earlier now seemed like a real possibility. They didn’t ask Anne about what her life was filled with now, how she passed her days. Peter knew that she didn’t like too many
questions. Once they sat and had talked long enough—a tray of cheese and crackers on the coffee table, music turned on low so that the room would never get too quiet—Anne told Peter that she heard he was taking some time off, that he’d had a rough patch at work.

Peter looked quickly to Kate.

“Yes,” Peter said. “We’re working it out.” To Kate, he already had that peeled-back look he got when he drank. She thought of the bottle behind the cereal boxes and wondered how many others were stowed around the house. He got up, left the room. Kate heard the rattle of the freezer door swinging open and without seeing she knew the frost on the Stoli bottle would melt where he placed his fingers, four brilliant fingertips and a thumb in the spots where he clutched the bottle in his warm hand and poured. The women met eyes and the problem they’d agreed to face together squatted there between them.