Small Blessings (38 page)

Tom knew nothing about alcoholism or day treatment thingees, but he did know about mental hospitals. Marjory had always been at her most paranoid just after coming home from one. It had taken a catapult to get her out of the house. She'd been so sure everyone had nothing better to do than say mean things about her. And here was Iris, in what must be a similarly terrible muddle.

Tom's mother had been a master of irrational kindness. When Louise Putnam had been concerned about someone, she'd always offered companionable food. “Why don't you come home to dinner, Iris? We've got company already, so you won't have to talk much. And Rose will be there. And Henry. It would give you a safe place to be around people for a while. Sort of get used to it again, you know, without—without anything,” he finished lamely.

Iris reached out and grabbed Tom's hand in both of hers. For a horrible moment, he thought she was going to kiss it, but she settled for squeezing it unpleasantly hard. Her great Bambi eyes filled with tears.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, so
much
.”

*   *   *

During her Charlottesville period, most people had taken Agnes Tattle for an extrovert, because she'd led such a busy social life. Agnes, however, had known better. Years ago, she'd read somewhere that the difference between an introvert and an extrovert was not what one does with one's energy, but how one recharges. Extroverts get energy from being around people; introverts, from being alone. Agnes knew she was definitely a social being (look at all the nonprofit boards she'd been on—nonstop yakking there), but she most definitely recharged alone. This made her, as she liked to put it, a human oxymoron: a social introvert.

Her son-in-law, alone of all the people who'd passed through her life, had gotten this immediately, even before he'd married Marjory. And so today, as soon as he'd come back from the office, Tom (whom Agnes classified as another oddball, a shy extrovert) had obligingly herded Iris (what was
she
doing here?) et al into the living room so as to give his mother-in-law her space.

The price of an hour of solitude was cooking dinner—pork chops, sweet potatoes, green beans, bakery rolls, a final flush of tomatoes from a neighbor's garden. Dessert would be apple dumplings from the same bakery and vanilla ice cream. Agnes had planned on serving wine with dinner, but Tom had quietly put the kibosh on that, so she would offer iced tea instead.

It took some doing to squeeze six places around the kitchen table. Agnes had briefly considered moving the meal into the dining room, but dinners there tended to be weird, and there was enough weirdness floating around already. Iris Benson, for example, looked and moved like a wooden marionette mistakenly costumed in some other marionette's clothes. (What
were
those meek little flats about?)

Shortly after 7:00
P.M.
, Agnes removed her apron and went into the living room to announce that dinner was served. Everyone greeted this news enthusiastically except for Iris and Henry. Iris said nothing; Henry immediately bolted out of the room and thundered up the stairs. No matter—the boy was
not
one to miss a meal. And sure enough, just as Agnes finished seating everyone, Henry reappeared carrying the blue lunch box with the dinosaurs that, as far as Agnes knew, still contained the demi-million. “Here,” he said, handing the lunch box to Mr. Brownlow. “This is all that money my mother gave to me, and I don't want it. I really, really, really want to stay
here
.”

Mr. Brownlow hesitated before taking the lunch box, looking first at Tom, then at her.

Agnes had nothing to say about the matter. In her experience, money had always come with strings attached, and Henry—at least in her opinion—dragged enough strings around already.

“Thank you.” Mr. Brownlow took the lunch box, leaned down, and tucked it under his chair.
Oh well,
thought Agnes, remembering her very rich in-laws,
sic transit pecunia.
The entire Tattle family (except for Joe, of course) had been shanghaied by their pots of money into leading very dull lives. They never did anything that wasn't expensive.

“You're welcome,” Henry said. “My mawmaw and pawpaw would rather help lots of people with that money than just me. They liked helping other people better than anything.”

*   *   *

“Tell me about the college Book Store,” Mr. Brownlow said to Tom, apropos of nothing.

He might as well have fired a starter pistol. Tom was off and running, happy to be talking about something that couldn't possibly lead Mr. Brownlow to think him an unsuitable parent. “The Book Store is the soul of the college and the community, in a lot of ways,” he said, waving his fork for emphasis, slinging mashed potatoes dangerously close to Henry's arm. “It's where everyone comes together comfortably. And Rose was hired just this year, as a kind of community organizer. Higher education is increasingly viewed as a business—its worth to students more and more tied to the dollars they can earn postgraduation—which may be important, but it's not
all
that's important…”

*   *   *

As she listened to Tom go on and on about the Book Store, it occurred to Agnes that the college's people—students, faculty, and staff—did indeed have a group soul that was threatened with extinction by the college's bottom line. Agnes dismissed the idea that Mr. Brownlow's questions were motivated by idle curiosity. If Mason Brownlow indulged in idle
anything,
Agnes thought, then she was a monkey's aunt. But for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why he was so curious about something that had nothing to do with why he was here.

Patience, patience,
Agnes told herself.
She who waits longest learns most.

Iris Benson sprang to life when dessert was served, inhaling her apple turnover as though it were so much clear mountain air. Seeing this, Rose, who Agnes suspected might be almost as compulsively kindhearted as her son-in-law, stealthily switched her own full dessert plate for Iris's empty one.

As Iris kept right on eating without so much as a nod of thanks, Agnes was pretty certain she wasn't aware the switch had taken place.

*   *   *

Iris Benson, looking as insubstantial as a shadow, sat perched atop the ever-present stack of junk mail on the foyer bench. Rose, who had been on her way to the living room, stopped, moved a stack of
The New York Review of Books
onto the floor and sat down beside her. After a moment, without saying a word, she took Iris's hand.

They sat there, once again, face-to-face with the grandfather clock while the minute hand moved three clicks through time. Finally Iris said, “I am so scared,” and took back her hand.

Rose kept her eyes on the clock. “Of what?”

“Of everything.”

“Everything?”

Iris shrugged without spirit. “Of being alone, of being with other people, of working, of not working, of going home, of having nowhere else to go other than home where I'm
wanted.
”

Rose was her mother's daughter, cognizant since childhood that sometimes people needed temporary shelter. “You can stay with me at the cottage,” she said. “My couch is quite comfortable. And you'd be most welcome.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Rose stealthily crossed her fingers to ward off the bad karma of a well-meant fib.

Iris was no fool. “You don't mean that. You're just saying that.”

The needier they are, the more they resist,
Mavis had always maintained. “Iris, I'm happy to have you if you'd like to come.” Which was more or less true, although probably mostly less.

Iris began fussing with an unopened envelope, plucked from the pile beneath her. “I guess I don't have any place else to go,” she said almost crossly.

This woman has no idea how to take help,
Rose thought.
Fishing around for help is the best she can manage.
“Would you like to tell me what's going on?”

“No.” Iris gave a truculent toss of her red hair. Then she sagged again. “Yes.”

She fell silent. Rose watched her chew on a nub of a fingernail and waited.

“I'm a drunk,” Iris muttered. “I've been in a drunk place all weekend.”

For years, Rose had watched and listened as stricken, terrified people had poured out their alcoholic confessions to Mavis. Her mother's reaction had been uniformly practical.
The last thing a drunk trying to stay sober needs is sympathy,
she'd always said.
What they need is practical help.

Rose reached for Iris's hand. “Am I right in assuming that you have liquor bottles stashed all over your house?”

“God, yes, as well as about a ton of Valium and oxycodone. Which I'm not allowed to take anymore either.”

“What were you taking all that medication for?”

Iris shrugged again. “Life.”

Ah yes! Life. There was that to be gotten through. “So how long have you been clean and sober?”

“I don't know. What day is it?”

“Monday.”

Iris counted it out on her fingers. “Two and a half days,” she said.

“Are you having withdrawal symptoms?”

Iris snorted. “You mean other than feeling cracked as the Liberty Bell? No. I'm not seeing purple elephants or anything. The doctors said I'm not in any medical danger. You know, of seizures or anything.”

“That's good,” Rose said. “So how's this for a plan? You come home with me tonight. Tomorrow morning, we'll get up early, run out to your house, round up all the bottles of alcohol and pills, and take them to the dump.” Rose took a deep breath. “And while we're out there, you can pack enough stuff to stay at my house until you feel up to going home. How does that sound?”

Iris stared at her. “You'd do that, for
me
?”

“Of course.”

A light snapped on in Iris's eyes. “You'd do that for
anybody,
wouldn't you, Rose?”

Would she? Surely not. “No, not for just anybody. At least, I don't think so.”

Another thought struck Iris. “I have animals.”

“You do?”

“Yes, six dogs.”

Rose had visions of dehydrated animals lying prone beside empty water bowls. “Oh, goodness! Perhaps we better go out to your house tonight.”

“They're all right. I called my down-the-hill neighbor's boy on Saturday, and he's been taking care of them.” Iris looked particularly bleak. “They like him a lot better than they like me.”

“Oh, I don't believe that,” Rose said automatically. She, who'd never had so much as a housecat.

“Oh, yes, you do,” Iris said darkly. “Animals are not stupid.”

*   *   *

Tom and Henry were upstairs getting Henry ready for bed. It seemed to Agnes this was the natural time for Mr. Brownlow to leave as well. But no, he asked for an apron and insisted on helping her wash up. So here they were, hip to hip; she washing, he rinsing.

She was, Agnes decided,
not
going to make small talk with Mason Brownlow. There was, after all, nothing small between them to talk about; there was only Henry. As they progressed through the pile of dishes, she was both pleased and not pleased to note that Mr. Brownlow wasn't saying anything either. But then all the dishes had been washed and here they still were with nothing to say. What on earth was the man
thinking
?

“What I'd like is to table all discussion of Henry's living situation for the moment and talk about Henry's money,” Mr. Brownlow said, as though answering her unasked question.

Game on!
“Okay,” Agnes said cautiously. She had shepherded too many women through too many ugly, big-money divorces to have much faith in the financial generosity of human beings. Conversations about money, in her experience, had always been, and so would always be, rancorous.

Mason Brownlow was making quite a lot of work out of drying his hands. “The Després' will is a bit ambiguous.”

Of course it was. Every will was ambiguous if you wanted it to be.

“There's a
lot
of money involved,” Mr. Brownlow said.

Agnes crossed her arms. “How much?”

Mr. Brownlow carefully folded his damp hand towel and put it down in a puddle on the counter. “Henry's chunk is around twenty-five million, all but that five hundred thousand in cash held in trust.”

“Held in trust, how?”

Mr. Brownlow chose his words carefully. “Well, there are strings, you see.”

Agnes hadn't engaged in a good legal joust in years.
What the hell?
“Would you like a Scotch?” she asked.

Mr. Brownlow twinkled. “I'd rather have bourbon, if you've got it.”

*   *   *

It was well past midnight. A low murmur from below announced to Tom that Agnes and Mr. Brownlow were still talking in the kitchen while he lay in his bed, wide awake and full of yearning.

For Rose, of course. And not for sex with Rose as much as for Rose herself, the solid feel of her both in his arms and in his life. It felt unnatural to lie in his bed without her, even though he'd only lain
with
her for a little over an hour.

So here it was, the witching hour, when the human heart is at its most defenseless. And there it was, the truth: No matter how illogical and inconvenient his timing might be, he was full-blown in love with Rose Callahan. And he would never sleep again until he knew whether or not she was in love with him.

Tom threw back the covers and got up.

Marjory's frilly dresses still hung in the closet; her shoes crowded his on the floor. “Listen,” he said softly, “I know you did the best you could. And so did I. And I'm sorry that I couldn't figure out how to make our life together better, but…”