“ Bren, Bren, it’s not me. I’m not the issue. Have you possibly got that picture? Mother’s really bad. Really bad. She’s asking for you and I’m sorry, right nowI won’t do. She wants you here, andI can’t deliver.”
Toby didn’t say, You’re her favorite son, but that accusation was in there, right along with, I’ve given her all I can give, and I haven’t got any more.
“What she says, Toby, is all well and good, but when I was there, youwere the perfect son and Iwas the vagrant.”
“ That’s not the point, Bren! She needs you, she needssomebody and she won’t be content with me!”
“If you were the one out of reach, she’d be asking for you. That is the issue. It’s always been the issue, and when you’ve had any sleep at all you’ll know that fact of the universe. I know what you’re going through—”
“ I don’t care what the issue is, Bren. I don’t care about those games and I don’t care about mainland politics. It doesn’t change. It’s always something, and I’m not playing. The plain fact is, she’s really sick, and she’s not faking it. She’s not faking, this time. You think I’d call you with a lie?”
Toby was losing his self-control. And in that realization the negotiator who dealt between Tabini and the ship-humans sucked in a breath and made himself hard and cold as ice. “That may be. It may be true. But you listen to me, Toby. You say you’re not playing. I’m convinced. I believe she’s not. But you listen to me. She has a way of getting all you can give. When she’s well, she wants her way. When she’s sick she shuts down to just one priority, and that’s getting everyone she wants as close as she can get us. No, I’m nother favorite son when I’m there. Then you’re the best and I’mthe son that ought to quit my job, get a haircut, and settle down in reach—and you know that’s the truth. Toby, brother, you know it’s never going to be perfect and you can’t ever make her happy. If you need that to satisfy you, you’re in for a big hurt. She’s just the way she is, and we do what we can, but there’s a limit.”
“ Bren, I’ve given her my wife and my family. What more is there?”
Bad news. Repeated bad news. “Where’s Jill?”
“ I don’t know.” Toby’s voice conveyed utter misery. “ At a certain point I don’t give a damn. Some hotel somewhere. With friends. I don’t know.”
“Damn. Go find her.” He didn’t belong in Toby’s private life, but he’d had a front row seat for this disaster for the last ten years. And this time he said it. “Mother doesn’t have a right. She doesn’t have a damned right to your life. Let Barb take care of Mother. You get out of there. Go find Jill.”
“ If Jill wants to go off in a fit, that’s her choice.”
“Jill’s had plenty of provocation, brother.”
“ You’re talking about things you don’t know about, Bren.”
“And I’m telling you—you and Jill haven’t put in all this time to lose it now. Fix it!”
A small, wounded silence. “ Whose the hell side are you on?”
“Yours. Your life. Your life, damn it, which you had going right, and Mother gets sick and there you are.” God, it was autobiographical. “I want you to get out of there and go find Jill.”
“ And I’m telling you I don’t give a damn!”
“You listen to me. The kids probably know where Jill is. You know Mother—just make her mad: she’ll go miles just on the adrenaline. It’s good for her, just like medicine.”
“ It’s not funny, Bren. This time it’s not funny.”
“I’m not in the least joking. Go find Jill. I don’t care where she’s gone or how well she’s hidden or how hurt your feelings are. Just walk out of there, go find her—”
“ There’s just too much gone on.”
“There are too damn many broken promises, Toby. There’s too much someday and not enough right now. I don’t care if you get mad at me. You need to get mad at somebody besides Jill. Get mad at Mother. Get the hell out of there and live your own life. You want the truth, Toby? The absolute truth? I didn’t call when I was on the mainland because I’veresigned from the emergency squad. I’m not willing to have my emotions yanked left and right by my family, not by Mother… and not by you. I wouldn’t believe in a cosmic connection, but it seems to me that this particular crisis happened right after I’d made a public appearance and just when Mother had to have found out I’d been there…”
“ Bren, this isn’t something she manufactured. It’s not a trick. The doctors—”
“It may not be fake, but it’s still something she does to herself. Now she’s got you waiting at her doorstep and she’s got me upset and pretty soon she’ll get well, if she hasn’t done it to herself for good and all this time.”
“ Damn it, Bren, this is critical.”
“Oh, I believe you. And you said it: if you divorced Jill and moved in with Mother, you know she’d only have half of what she wants—and so help me, Toby, she’s not going to get what she wants from me, and I don’t want you there, either. She’s got Barb, hasn’t she? They’ve got each other. Tell Barb. Tell Barb I’mcalling in a favor. Then go call Jill, call her? I don’t care what you have to go through to get to her or how much you have to take. Jill understands this situation better than you think she does… believe me, she understands. She’s had this all figured out for the last ten years, long before we did. Now you’relearning Mother’s tricks, aren’t you? Youwant me there. And I can’t give you what you want. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Another silence, one of those absolutely unarguable, unreachable countermoves.
He let it sit there, well knowing Toby wouldn’t breach the silence first, but waiting, letting Toby get past the family temper.
Then Toby pulled the only trump card, and simply hung up on him.
Damn, he thought. He was sure he was right, so far as facts went—but not sure he’d handled it at all well, least of all sure that he’d been right to take that last shot.
Damn.
Well, there was nothing he could do and the agenda stayed, his, their mother’s, and Toby’s, and only the last was still mutable. In the best of situations Toby would let the advice percolate through his hindbrain and get up and make a few phone calls.
Maybe heought to call Barb. She’d written him a note. Opened the door. Maybe he ought to patch up an old friendship land ask his own favors.