"Okay, Jerry," she says without a note of congratulation.
"Maybe you can call Jack when we get home."
"Can't you call him? You could just tell Eunice, couldn't you?"
She waves me off with a flit of the hand as a mother might a too-old child begging for a nostalgic piggyback. I want to tell her that she's not quite understanding this one, that even though she thinks it's about my laziness and long-practiced avoidance of appearing tender and loving before my son, it's really about Jack himself, that he should be spared the ignominy of having to hear and acknowledge such an offer, which, as modestly as I might play it, and I will, naturally abounds with all sorts of subtle and excruciating indications of shame and failure. Or maybe I'm not giving Theresa enough credit, maybe she knows this to be the case and thinks Jack should face the paternal demonhead straight on, just accept whatever that minor if terrible god will extract of his vital mas-culine juices and afterward get on with the quotidian work of replenishing.
"You two have plenty to talk about anyway," Theresa says.
"The business notwithstanding."
"What now? Is he having trouble with Eunice?"
"There's tension, but only because of the money troubles.
They're actually pretty devoted to each other, beneath all the nickel plate and granite."
"That's good," I say, "because it's only Formica and chrome from here on in."
"It's just time to call him, okay? He's shaky."
"Yeah, okay, but he seems the same to me." This is mostly true, at least to my perception, everything about his manner and dress unchanged, save for the odd sight of his unwashed black truck, the alloy wheels grimy and the usually mirror-shined body splattered with dried work site mud and dull all over with a toffee-hued grunge. He's cutting back, which is necessary, as I know he always had the truck washed once a week on Saturday mornings for $22.95 (the #4 Executive, with double polycoat and tire dressing), for I'd meet him every other month (and spring for the #1 Commuter, at $8.95) and have a big breakfast at the Pit Stop Diner next door. And yet on this one I kind of wish he weren't economizing, because at certain times you really do want your loved ones to keep up appearances, and for all the worst truth-blunting reasons. If I had a personal voice recorder I'd note to myself that when I do call as Theresa recommends I'll offer to treat him to the #4 Executive, plus blueberry pancakes, this very weekend.
"He even mentioned Mom the other day."
"Daisy?"
Theresa nods, taking off her sunglasses, as the sun has now dipped behind a high bank of clouds, many miles in the distance. "Actually, he was talking about the day she drowned."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah," she says, squarely looking at me, and not in the least somberly. "It's amazing. It turns out he was around when it happened."
"What are you talking about?" I say. "You were both at your day camps. When I got home there wasn't anybody but Daisy."
"I guess that's true," she says, "but Jack was there before."
"He was at lacrosse camp. You were at music camp "
"Drama camp," she corrects. "I was at mine, but Jack told me he turned his ankle and got an early ride home. Do you remember that he was limping?"
"No."
"It's funny, but I don't either," she says. "I really don't remember anything, which I'm happy about. But Jack says he was there. He has no reason to lie."
"Why didn't he say something then?"
"I guess he was upset, and scared. Besides being a little boy."
"So what else did he say?"
"Just as he got dropped off, someone was coming out of the house. A delivery man or something. Except this guy was drinking from a bottle of beer, and Jack remembers feeling angry toward him, though it was nobody he knew."
I don't answer her, because I don't know how much Theresa recalls of that part of Daisy's life and I'm certainly not interested in educating her here and now, but she says, "I assume he was there to see Mom. That's right, isn't it?"
"Probably so," I say. I suddenly remember all the empties in the house that afternoon, almost a whole case in all. Of course it wasn't the first time I'd come home to find that she'd been drinking heavily, though she mostly drank her sweet plum wine when she drank and the party-Iike litter of beer bottles had seemed unusual. I'd figured she'd been entertaining, a fact that wasn't so terribly hurtful to me at that point, the literal mess of the house more pissing me off, which really says it all, and after finding her suspended near the bottom of the pool the likely fact of some random guy having been there simply dissolved away among the thousand other details and duties that follow any death, and it never seemed important to mention to the cops who came around later that day that Daisy hadn't been drinking alone. But still the flashes of that day quicken my breath, and all at once I feel as though I'm flying at 50,000 feet, or maybe 150,000; it's like the air is thinning so rapidly we're in danger of floating up into the exosphere, right out into the black.
"Anyway," Theresa goes on, "Jack went inside and saw a lot of beer bottles in the kitchen, but not Mom. She wasn't in your bedroom, either, but while he was there he saw the bed all messed up and her underclothes on the floor. And more empty bottles. That's when he saw her out in the back. Sack was going to step out the sliding door of your bedroom and say he was there but I guess he didn't. He just watched her for a while. She was standing naked on the edge of the diving board, drinking a beer. He told me she looked very beautiful. Like a Roman statue, before any ruin."
"Jack said that?"
"I'm quoting verbatim," she says, unwistfully. "But he said he was scared, too. And I guess still angry, though he didn't really understand why. You can imagine what a bizarre and sexual sight it was for him. So he's just standing there watching her, and he realizes all the pool floats have been taken out of the water. The tubes and the swan raft and then that big pink doughnut she always used."
This was true, and something I didn't really think about when I got home. I'd assumed the pool had been cleared out by the cops or ambulance people, though it was an odd sight to see all the floats neatly lined up on the concrete deck, like the audi-ence for a swim meet.
"So what did he do?" I ask.
"He said he ran," Theresa answers. "He just ran out of the house, as fast as he could. He went to the playground, he was so scared, and went on the swings, for like an hour."
"Oh, Jesus, Jack."
"So when he finally comes home it's all over. He knows exactly what's happened. The driveway's full of police cars and fire trucks and the ambulance, with its lights going. That's what I remember."
"Why didn't he say something?"
"I'm sure he thought he was responsible."
"I guess so," I say, remembering now how he kept asking if little kids were ever sent to jail.
"But of course nothing happened to him. And then you were so efficient afterward."
"What? Because I had her cremated? That's what Daisy wanted, you know."
"I didn't know, no," she says, finally a little bitterly. "And I'm not talking about cremation. I'm talking about how you managed everything so quickly after that. I mean, come on, Jerry.
It was a world speed record for goodbyes. I didn't think it then but it was like a freak snowstorm and you shoveled the driveway and front walk all night and the next day the sun comes out and it's all clear, all gone. And then the fact of our not even being allowed inside the funeral parlor."
"You were there, but Nonna kept you two in another room."
"Yeah, Jerry, I know. We sat in the back of an open-casket wake."
"Jesus. I didn't know that."
"I'm sure you ordered her to keep us away."
"I didn't say to go to somebody else's funeral! Anyway, don't you think that was the best way? You were little kids, for chrissake. I don't care what anyone says. Kids don't have to mourn.