“Peter!” she said. “This is wonderful!”
Peter tilted his head and studied the contraption critically, his hands deep in his pockets, his back angled forward beneath the weight of his knapsack.
“This is… I don’t know how you did it! It’s amazing! What do your teachers say?” she asked him.
“I think they kind of liked it.”
“Is there a motor, or what?”
“That’s a secret.”
“Oh, don’t tell me, then. I’ll just view it as a miracle.”
“But I will give you a hint,” he said. “Think about those toy birds that bob into a drinking glass.”
“Ah,” she said, none the wiser.
He said, “Would you like to see the other projects?”
“No,” she said, “I believe I’ll just stay here and admire this one.”
He grimaced and looked at the ceiling, implying, Grandmothers! What can you do? But she could tell he was pleased.
* * *
She phoned Will as soon as she got home; she felt stretched like a band of elastic until she heard his voice at the other end of the line. “I’m back,” she told him. “Did you go to D.C. without me?”
“Oh, no, I would never do that.”
“You should have,” she said. Although she was happy he hadn’t.
“How was your grandson’s exhibit?”
“It was marvelous! I wish you could have seen it.”
“I wish I could have too,” he said.
She let herself picture that, for a moment: Will at her side on Grandparents’ Day. Finally, finally, she would not have to show up everywhere alone. But he was asking her something. Asking her to dinner.
She said, “Dinner? At your place?”
“I thought maybe you might like to meet my daughter.”
“I would love to meet your daughter,” she said.
Already her mind was racing through possible outfits, possible topics of conversation — choosing who to be, really, for this very important encounter.
He said, “How about tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow? Saturday? Oh.”
She didn’t have to explain. He sighed and said, “I know. A party.”
“But I could do it Sunday,” she told him.
“All right: Sunday. I’m assuming she’ll be free then. Let’s make it early. Six o’clock, since it’s a school night.”
“Can I bring a dish?”
“No, just yourself,” Will said in a memorized way.
She refrained from asking him which self.
Later, talking on the phone to NoNo, she happened to let slip that she would be meeting Will’s daughter. “You’d think it would be no big deal,” she said, “after meeting you three girls. But I can’t help feeling nervous, a little.”
“Oh, well, I’m sure you’ll do fine,” NoNo said absently. “Whose daughter is this, again?”
“Will Allenby. He was with me a couple of weeks ago when you and Peter stopped by after dinner.”
“Oh, yes,” NoNo said.
“But I was forgetting! Peter! Peter’s the reason I called! NoNo, that boy is a genius.”
“Yes, everyone tells me he’s bright,” NoNo said. “I only wish he could drive.”
“Did you see his project?”
“Are you kidding? I watched him construct it, every wheel and gear of it.”
“I’m not sure whether it’s art, or science, or music,” Rebecca said. “Maybe all three. It’s astounding!”
“I was the one who had to ferry him to the back of beyond for his supplies,” NoNo told her. “Barry was away attending a conference, wouldn’t you know.”
“Oh, honey,” Rebecca said, “I realize it must be hard, but I wish you could enjoy this boy. He’s going to be grown and gone in a flash! And then you’ll discover you miss him.”
“Easy for you to say,” NoNo told her bitterly. “You don’t have the least idea what it’s like, being saddled with somebody else’s kid when you’re basically still on your honeymoon.”
Rebecca said, “Is that so.”
It was one of those moments when she really did, literally, have to bite her tongue in order not to say more.
* * *
Sunday morning, she called Will twice to ask what she should wear. The first time, he said, “Anything. Or maybe — but no, just anything.” Which was why she called the second time: that little hitch in his voice. She called back a minute later and said, “Will. You can tell me. Was there something special that you thought I ought to be wearing?”
“Oh, no.”
“Something I ought not to be wearing?”
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe just… something not too hippie,” he said.
“Hippie,” she said.
For a second, she felt hurt. She thought he was referring to the size of her hips. But he went on to say, “It’s only that a few of your clothes tend to be sort of… striking, and I would like Beatrice to focus on you more as a person.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, sure. In that case.”
So she wore her flight-attendant outfit — tailored white blouse and navy skirt. Actual stockings. Actual leather pumps. And she battened down the wings of her hair with two plain silver barrettes that one or another granddaughter had left in the third-floor bathroom.
This time the drive to Macadam was more familiar, and therefore it seemed shorter. The swimming pools’ vivid turquoise color reminded her of a type of hard candy she used to favor. Trust Jesus, she read. I Still Like Larry. The stop sign on the corner of Will’s street had a sticker that said EATING ANIMALS plastered underneath.
The house he lived in — the late Professor Flick’s house — was a white clapboard Colonial gone yellow around the edges. Hurricane Floyd had swept the state the week before, and evidently no one had bothered cleaning the front yard since. Rebecca had to thread her way through small branches and broken twigs and clumps of wet leaves on the walk. One branch was such a booby trap, lying in wait at ankle height, that she felt compelled to pick it up and heave it into the grass. So she arrived with damp, dirty hands, which she tried to scrub with a screw of tissue from her purse before she pressed the doorbell.
Once she had been buzzed in, she crossed a foyer crammed with antiques and climbed a carpeted staircase, rising into a steadily intensifying smell of lamb stew. It must have drifted up from Mrs. Flick’s kitchen, though, because when Will opened his door, just off the second-floor landing, nothing but the cold gray scent of newspapers floated out to her. Gazing past him, she saw newspapers everywhere — stacks of them on the chairs, the tables, the windowsills, the floor. “Come in! Come in! Have a seat,” Will said, but there was nowhere to sit. He said, “Oh,” as if he’d just realized. “Here, I’ll…” He tore around the room, scooping up armloads of papers and piling them in a corner. “I keep thinking I should hire a cleaning service,” he said. Rebecca didn’t tell him that a cleaning service wouldn’t have helped. She sat down and looked around her.