Empire Falls (38 page)

“I suggested he wear orange, this being moose season.”

“Miles is right, David. You shouldn’t fuck with him,” Charlene said, as if, despite this advice, she fully understood the impulse. “He’s a cop. It’s not like these guys have a sense of humor.”

David shrugged. “Actually, we got along fine. I invited him in for a cup of coffee so he could tell me about all his suspicions. Turns out he’s fond as hell of us Robys, our families going all the way back to the old neighborhood and all. Hell, his kid’s sweet on Miles’s kid.”

David was good enough at mimicking Jimmy Minty’s smarmy voice and obsequious mannerisms that Miles could feel the rage rising from the pit of his stomach. Clearly, the policeman had paid no attention to Miles’s warning to stay out of his family’s affairs. Worse, to judge from what David was saying, he’d taken the warning as a challenge.

“Hell, the last thing in the world he wants is trouble,” David was saying. “That’s how come he was out in my woods. Just trying to head off trouble. You know the way he looks at it? He figures his duty is to be a good neighbor first and a police officer second.”

Charlene guffawed. “What’d you say to that?”

David shrugged. “I may have told him I thought he was an asshole first, last and in between. I may have hurt his feelings.”

“This is not funny,” Miles said, meaning it.

“So I guess you didn’t see his car parked across the street from the restaurant tonight?” David said, meeting his brother’s gaze.

Miles hadn’t seen any police cars that night, not that he was sure he’d have noticed if there had been one, busy as they were. “The cruiser?”

“No,
his
car,” Charlene said. “The red Camaro.”

Miles just looked at her.

“I’m sorry, Miles. I can’t help it,” she said. “You know I always notice guys in fast cars.”

He turned his attention back to his brother.
“Are
you growing marijuana?”

“Mind your own business, Miles.”

“It
is
my business, David,” he said, feeling a lifetime’s worth of resentment welling up dangerously. Every time he allowed himself to imagine that his brother had finally turned the corner, that ingrained irresponsibility would surface again. “Minty probably thinks you’re dealing out of the restaurant. Probably that’s why the dimwit thinks we’ve gotten busy.”

“We
are
dealing out of the restaurant, Miles,” David said, suddenly serious and more than a little pissed, as if he too had just recalled something about his brother’s character that he despaired would never change. “What we’re dealing is
flautas
. And you know what? I was just talking to Audrey back in the kitchen and she said this place was slow tonight. So was the Eating House out on Ninety-Two. The only restaurant in Dexter County that did any volume tonight was the Empire Grill. Instead of worrying about Jimmy Minty watching the restaurant and me growing weed, think about this. Even on a slow night this place will outgross us, because they’ve got a liquor license. We did good tonight, Miles, but we’ll never do any better, because we can’t fit in any more tables, and we can’t fit any more people at the tables we’ve already got. The only way for us to have a real restaurant and make a real living is to sell booze. And don’t tell me about Mrs. Whiting, either,” he added, eerily anticipating the name that was forming on Miles’s lips, “because I don’t want to hear it.”

“Well, the Empire Grill is her—”

But David had grabbed his coat off the back of the booth and was sliding out. “She summons you two or three times a year to make sure you’re right where she left you. You say, Mother May I? and she says, No, You May Not, and then you put your tail between your legs and back out the door, and that’s the end of it. All those years of Catholic school have damaged you, Miles. They taught you obedience. Somebody says you can’t have something and you just accept it.”

“David—” It was Charlene who tried to break in now, but David was having none of it.

“Has it ever occurred to you that every time you return from that woman’s house you have scratch marks on you?” To illustrate, he reached down and grabbed Miles’s wrist, holding his brother’s hand up to the light. The scratch he’d gotten from Timmy the Cat had scabbed over and was even uglier now. It looked like a trench filled in with sand. “Have you ever thought about what that means?”

“That she has a psychotic cat?” Miles ventured.

“No. That’s
not
what it means. It means she’s toying with you. You’re like a moth she’s stuck through the chest with a pin. Every now and then she takes you out and watches you flail around for a while, then she puts you away again.

“And don’t tell me you’re not the only one with scratch marks, either,” David continued, which was exactly what Miles had been about to point out. “I know half the town has scratch marks. I
know
she owns most of what’s worth owning in Empire Falls. But my point is that she owns you only because you let her. You could wiggle off that pin if you wanted to.”

“David,” Charlene tried again.

“I mean, it just breaks my heart to watch this. Every year you go off to that island to visit your dreams for two whole weeks. Think about it, Miles. A little island, another world, miles away, at safe yearning distance. Something you can desire without ever being expected to strive for. And you know what? That’s not even the sad part. The sad part is that
you
don’t love Martha’s Vineyard. It was
Mom
who loved it.
She’s
the one who went there and fell in love, Miles, not you. You were just a little boy who tagged along, who got to ride in the little yellow sports car. And you’re still that little boy.”

“David,
please
,” Charlene pleaded.

“Don’t, Charlene,” David snapped. “Somebody should’ve said all of this a long time ago.”

He turned back to Miles. “Yeah, we had a good night, Miles. In fact, we had a great night. The trouble is you’re so blind you can’t see what that means, so I’ll tell you. It means you’ve finally got a chance to take the wheel. So, take it, Miles. Take the damn wheel. If you crash”—he held up his damaged arm—“so what? Do it. If not for yourself, for Tick. She’s soaking up your passivity and defeatism every day. When she’s thirty, she’ll be saving all year long for a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, because she’ll think it was the place
you
loved.”

“David,” Charlene said quietly, “look at your brother. Stop talking for a second and look at him.”

In fact, by now everyone in the lounge was looking at them. Even the big-haired pianist had stopped playing. David’s voice had risen until it commanded the attention of everyone in the room, a fact he only now became aware of. “Shit,” he said, taking out some money and tossing it on the table. “I’m going home. I’m sorry I spoiled the celebration.”

“You don’t have to go, David,” Miles heard himself say in a voice he barely recognized.

“Actually, I do,” he said. “Time I got back and tended to my pot empire.”

When Miles said nothing and Charlene just shook her head, David leaned forward until his face was only inches from his brother’s. “That was
a joke
, Miles. I’ve got one plant down in the basement under a heat lamp. Come down and see for yourself, any time you want. Nobody fucks with you over one plant. Not even Jimmy Minty.”

“Y
OU KNOW,”
Charlene said when she returned to the booth, “if you and your brother talked to each other every so often, you wouldn’t have these blowups. You both store up about a year’s worth of shit, and then you explode.”

“I didn’t explode,” Miles pointed out. “He exploded.”

“True,” Charlene admitted. “But tonight was more words than he’s spoken in months, and right now he’d like to have at least half of them back.”

“You think?”

“Yes, Miles, I do.”

Maybe she was right. Following David outside to his pickup, she’d been gone for about fifteen minutes, and Miles would’ve concluded that she’d gone home if he hadn’t peered through the window slats behind the booth and seen the two of them standing in the parking lot, Charlene giving him hell. While she was gone, Horace Weymouth, who must’ve heard most of what David had said, sent over a vodka martini, which Miles drank in about three swallows. Then he ordered two more, sending one back to Horace, who raised his glass in grim acknowledgment that the night seemed to call for extraordinary measures. Miles was finishing up the second martini when Charlene reappeared in the booth, noting both the martini glass and the change in his condition.

“Your brother loves you,” she now explained. “He wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. He just worries about you, same as you worry about him. You exasperate each other, is all.”

“He’s got a right, I guess. I exasperate
myself
sometimes,” he said, immediately regretting the self-pitying tone.

“That’s kind of his point, Miles. He thinks you should get exasperated with someone else.”

“Mrs. Whiting.”

“Yeah, her, but he thinks you’re too nice to people in general. He thinks you eat too much shit.”

“You think he’s right?” he asked.

“Oh, hell, Miles, I don’t know. It’s true that you’re about the most cautious man I’ve ever run across. You’re kind and patient and forgiving and generous, and you don’t seem to understand that these qualities can be really annoying in a man, no matter what the ladies’ magazines say.”

“I haven’t been reading many of those, Charlene,” he assured her.

“I know you haven’t, hon.” She took his hand. “It’s just, you know … like what David always says about your family.”

Miles had no idea that David ever said anything about their family. If he’d come to any conclusions about the Robys, he never shared them with Miles.

“David has this theory that between your mom and dad and him and you there’s, like, one complete person. Your father never thinks about anybody but himself, and your mom was always thinking about other people and never herself. David thinks only about the present and you think only about the past and the future.”

“I’ve never heard any of this,” Miles said truthfully. “When did he tell you that?”

Charlene ignored his question. “His point is you could all learn something from the others, and you’d be better off. Take the way your father’s been left out of you entirely. That’s a shame.”

Miles tried to consider this seriously. “Charlene,” he said, “I can honestly say this is the first time anybody’s ever urged me to be more like Max.”

“I don’t think David wants you to be a
lot
more like your father, just enough so—”

“I wouldn’t be such a shit-eater,” Miles finished the thought for her.

“Oh, Miles, don’t be that way. Don’t take everything so much to heart. All David means is that your dad always knows what he wants. And a split second after he figures that out, he’s got a plan to get it. Probably a dumb plan, but he’s like a little bulldog on a pork chop until you give him what he wants or he finds a way to take it when you aren’t looking. David just thinks if you had a little more of that in you, you could figure out what you want and come up with a plan and …”

When her voice trailed off, Miles heard the two martinis speak in a voice distantly resembling his own. “Actually,” he said carefully, “it’s worse than he imagines.”

When Charlene didn’t say anything right away, he took her silence to mean that it was all right for him to continue.

“When I went to Mrs. Whiting’s last week? When I was supposed to come back with a liquor license? David was right. I did leave with my tail between my legs. What he doesn’t know is that I didn’t exactly leave empty-handed.”

Another silence, and Miles could not bear to look up from his martini. “What I came away with—” He sighed, his voice barely audible even to himself. “Was a date with Cindy Whiting. For tomorrow, in fact. We’re going to the football game.”

Confessing this was so painful that he’d forgotten he was holding Charlene’s hand until she gave his a squeeze. “That’s really sweet, Miles. That poor woman could use a little joy in her life. I think it’s a real nice thing you did.”

“To my brother it will be further evidence of my natural propensity for shit-eating.”

“He went too far tonight, Miles. I’m sure he’ll apologize tomorrow.”

“He’s wrong about one thing,” he said, meeting her eye this time, “if he thinks I don’t know what I want.”

Though he hadn’t intended it, the statement had the effect of making them both aware of the fact that they were holding hands in a dark booth, Miles, a man not yet divorced, and Charlene, a woman divorced many times over. To save her both embarrassment and the need to respond, he let go of her hand, though it would have pleased him to sit there holding it all night. To his surprise, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, a kiss so full of affection that it dispelled the awkwardness, even as it caused Miles’s heart to plummet, because all kisses are calibrated and this one revealed the great chasm between affection and love.

“Oh, Miles, goddamn it,” she said. “It’s not like I don’t know you’ve had a crush on me forever. And you know how fond I am of you. You’re about the sweetest man I know, really.”

He couldn’t help but smile at this. “That’s another of those qualities that’s not very attractive in a man, isn’t it.”

“No”—she took his hand again—“it’s very attractive, actually. And you know what? I’d take you home so we could make love, except I couldn’t stand how disappointed you’d be. And you wouldn’t be able to conceal it, either, not with that face of yours.”

When she reached for her coat, Miles slid out of the booth, then helped her on with it. “If I thought
you
wouldn’t be disappointed,” he told her as they headed for the door and the waiting night, “I’d insist.”

“It
would
be nice if we could get that damn liquor license, Miles,” Charlene said when they were outside and she was unlocking the door to her Hyundai. “If I was making decent money, I could put this wreck out of its misery.”

“I haven’t given up,” Miles said, surprised to discover that he hadn’t. And it came to him that a smart man might take Cindy Whiting out to dinner at the restaurant tomorrow after the game and make her an ally in this cause. If he was going to go around falling on grenades all the time, there was no law saying some good couldn’t come of it.