“Mom? What are you doing here?” she eventually asked.
“Oh,” Evelyn said tearfully, as if speaking through a mourning veil. “Another right I don’t have.”
“I only meant that you and I have things to discuss. Things we might not want to discuss”—Claudia spoke softly—“here.”
“I’m glad you think we have things to discuss,” Evelyn shot back. If her voice had, with those first words, threatened to slip into a pit from which no sound escaped, it suddenly found a toehold and, climbing to firmer ground, said more loudly, “Because apparently we didn’t have anything to discuss before.”
“I don’t know how to talk about this.”
“Well then. Nothing’s changed.”
Claudia scanned the room helplessly. A contestant in a hidden camera show, she’d been set up and now waited for the host to come and put a stop to it, tell her it was only a joke.
Benji placed his hands on the table, avoiding the sticky soda rings and a gory smear of ketchup. “The point of this isn’t to discuss this now. Here. The point is to get you home, Claudia. You need to do what’s right.”
She bucked at the words. “I don’t know what you expect from me. Yesterday this kid blows my door off its hinges and walks into my life. I don’t get time to adjust to that? I don’t get to figure out what that means? I’m not ready—”
“Ready?” Evelyn snapped. “Was Benji ready to be stopped in the driveway? Was I ready to have a grandson I never knew existed up and march in? How could you? Both of you? How could you keep such a thing from me? For twenty-two years?”
Benji did his best to duck Evelyn’s attack by marshaling his troops behind hers. “Mom’s right. Your door wasn’t the only one blown off its hinges yesterday. What about my door? What about Mom’s?”
“What about that boy’s?” Evelyn said. “We’re sitting here thinking about ourselves.” Evelyn pressed the wet, wadded paper mess to her tearing eyes. “I’ve never met two children so stupid. So thoughtless.”
“You won’t believe this, but I put a lot of thought into that decision. I agonized over it.”
“You have no gratitude.”
“Gratitude!” Claudia barked.
“We deserved that much. You don’t think your father and I deserved that? To know what was happening? After raising you the way we did? After loving you? You don’t think we could have helped you?”
“You would have made me keep it.”
“Him,” Benji fiercely corrected.
“And no,” Evelyn went on without pausing, “we wouldn’t have let you give him away.”
Benji took stock of the surrounding tables, a seismograph reading the disturbances that their rising volume might be making, but no one looked their way. Whatever was happening with the crying old woman proved universally less interesting than a quarter pounder with cheese and fat fistfuls of fries.
“We would have raised him. I would have.” Evelyn wept.
“He wasn’t yours to raise. He was mine. And I did what I thought was best for him. I did what I thought was best for you.”
“You did what you thought was best for you.”
“Yes. Mom. I did. I was twenty-two years old. Did I want to be stuck in Alluvia for the rest of my life? Did I want to marry Nick only to divorce him one or two or three years down the line? After we’d inflicted whatever damage we could on each other — and the baby — and Max — because all those years that passed were years we wanted to spend living other lives.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Alluvia. I’m tired of you carting out that song. You were raised there. You’re perfectly fine.”
“Am I? Because you’re making me sound like a monster. Both of you.”
“Can we please go home?” Benji asked.
“She’s telling me she’s too good to live where she grew up,” Evelyn said, unable to surrender a bone still shredded with meat.
“You and Daddy decided where to live,” Claudia answered. “You decided how many children you wanted. You decided how you wanted to raise them. Nobody made those decisions for you. Why should I have let you make them for me?”
“Nonsense,” muttered Evelyn.
“It’s not nonsense, Mother. It’s not.” Her resistance broken down, Claudia reached across the table and took a defiant swig of Benji’s coffee, wishing it were something made from sour mash. “Benji and I were gone, grown up. You and Daddy were free. You’d been saddled with children for eighteen years—”
“Saddled,” Evelyn broke in, “is your word.”
“You know what I mean. With us out of the house, you could finally go out and live your own lives. You’d done your time. You deserved to live your own life. Doing what you wanted to do. Whether you took advantage of that—”
“Claudia,” Benji warned.
“Let her finish.”
“Nothing.” Claudia retreated. “All I’m saying: I thought you’d be better off if you never knew.”
“Do I look better off? And tell me. What did I want to do? Tell me, She Who Knows All. How do you know what I wanted to do?”
“I don’t. But I thought there might be something other than raising children.”
“I’ve never been ashamed of being a mother.”
Claudia sighed. “I’m not saying you were. Or should be.”
“Then what would you have me do?”
“I don’t know.” Claudia threw her hands up. “Travel?”
“Can we stop?” Benji broke in. He looked from his mother to his sister to the milling gluttons around them. “We need to go home and finish this,” he said, eyes sharp and serious.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Claudia answered. “He shouldn’t have been able to find me. He would have been better off if he never did.”
Benji leaned in. “You are so fucking selfish,” he said. “And that’s coming from me! If I find it selfish, think how selfish it must be.”
She didn’t have to play at being furious. Her blood, rising fast and hot into her pale cheeks, balked at the injustice of Benji’s tone. Why did the whole of her family’s sympathy rest with a boy they’d known for less than a day? Where was their love, their compassion for her? “Since when did you find the Manual for Good and Upright Living?” Claudia asked. “Share a page, Benji. Please. In your infinite wisdom, tell me, what am I supposed to do? Or is the best way to find some support in this family to find a bridge to jump off of?” Her voice cracked at the end of a sentence she regretted uttering as much as she relished it. She tore a stiff napkin of her own from its plastic dispenser and pressed it to her eyes.
“Claudia!” Evelyn gasped.
The tables had turned. Usually fuckups of such magnitude, with such gnarled, historical roots, belonged to Benji. Claudia wasn’t prepared for the scrutiny of sitting in a chair especially reserved for him.
“What am I supposed to do?” Claudia asked.
“You’re supposed to go see him.”
“I was there.” Claudia snuffled wretchedly. “I was there at seven o’clock this morning. Just sitting there, outside the house. I saw him. He was right there on the porch. But I couldn’t.”
“It’s almost three.” Benji tapped his empty wrist, as if a vestigial watch confirmed his calculation, and asked, “You weren’t sitting there for eight hours. Where have you been?”
Like a deer that had wandered into an unexpected clearing, Claudia stood undeniably exposed.
“Claudia?”
“Nowhere.”