James looked at his wife. Her head was turned so he couldn’t read her expression. He had a strange thought: Now the dog James had bought was second rate, older and lesser. James had been elbowed aside.
“Now he’s going to think if he cries, he gets what he wants,” said James.
Facing the window, Ana said: “God forbid.”
James took the beer, because he was offered the beer, and because it was his father doing the offering. His parents had switched roles in old age: His father fussed and hovered while his mother sat with Ana and talked to her about budget cutbacks at the library. James’s father looked like a peer of Finn’s, in a canary yellow polo shirt so silly it must have been purchased by his wife. He passed drinks around the room with the gentility of a maid.
“Two hands,” said James offhandedly to Finn, who drank his juice from a real actual glass, slowly, wondering at the adult item in his hands.
“I should have looked for one of those—you know. What are they called, Diana? With the lids?” asked James’s father.
“Sippy cups,” said James’s mom, who then turned to continue her real talk with Ana.
“That’s right. Mike’s girls always leave a few behind, but I don’t know where they went.”
“He’s happy to use a cup, Dad,” said James. Finn looked at James.
“Where Dad?” he asked. James braced himself.
“He’s not here, Finny,” he said. This sufficed somehow. Finn put down the juice on the coffee table and began to move about the room, scrutinizing each piece of furniture, the wall, as if he were in a museum. James’s father passed his son a look of sheer sadness.
“He’s not used to such a big house,” said Diana, directing the conversation back into a foursome.
Finn ran his hands along the couch, which was glistening black leather and made James think of a bear’s gleaming fur, a hunter’s prize. The scale of the entire house left James woozy. Even the double garage had rounded arches above the electronic swing doors. The living room with the airplane hangar vaulted ceilings was punctuated, precariously, by a fan that appeared to be dangling down from a thin string. It was never turned on, because it was never hot between these walls; the air was entirely still and perfect. Warm in winter, cool in summer. From the living room, James looked up at the wraparound second-floor balconies. All the doors were shut. The house contained rooms that James had never set foot in. His parents had purchased the place when James and his brother were in university; bizarre timing, as both boys pointed out. James was at his poorest then, taking the train to the new house on the weekends with his laundry. At dinner, he complained of the price of utilities and the gouging landlords in the city. His mother was sanguine: You wanted to live in the city, you live in the city! His father, though he had worked downtown for thirty years, retained a deep fear of the unknown pockets that existed in between his train stop and the office tower, four blocks away. He had once seen a man casually walking along, carrying a package close to his chest. When he got closer, Wesley saw blood escaping through the cracks between the man’s fingers. Bleeding, the man had swooned, smiling a little, as if he’d seen a pretty girl. He fell to his knees not a foot from Wes Ridgemore. When the police officer arrived, he told Wesley: “Stabbing. Happens all the time.” And this was where his son wanted to live.
On his way out the front door at the end of those university weekends, James’s father would take his son aside, place a bundle of twenties in his hand, rolled up to look smaller than they were.
“Diana, don’t we have those puzzles? Didn’t Jenny leave a couple?”
“In the basement, I think,” she said. Wesley pushed himself up from the couch, struggling a little against the bursitis, the sciatica, all the rest. He froze for a beat halfway up and steadied himself, like a diver on a board. James averted his eyes. There were disk issues, James recalled. He had not asked after these issues in a while and now felt too ashamed to draw attention to what he didn’t know.
Diana’s eye makeup was blue and a little thick, like crayon filler in a few creases. But otherwise, she was perfectly contained, upright in her kitten-heeled shoes and flesh-colored stockings over her slightly rounded ankles. “Elegant” was the word she was going for. It was how she’d described Ana when she first met her: “A smart dresser. Elegant.” This was possibly the only judgment she had ever voiced around James’s biggest choice. Diana was fundamentally, agonizingly private. What had happened in Belgrade that brought her here was never discussed. James had tried, question upon question, and the answers were always the same: “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t concern you. It’s over.” But James could piece together something, a shape. He knew that she was five in 1941 and so must possess some memory of the Luftwaffe bombs raining down. But how, exactly, had her parents managed to get her out, through fascist Italy and Switzerland to the new world? Was there a priest? Were there false documents, illicit favors? Did money change hands?
He looked at her. She was talking. He remembered her saying to him, at thirteen: “I came because my family died.” Died. Not killed. As if old age had gently carried them away.
She met Wesley while working in the sock department of a clothing store. She had become a librarian late in life, through hard, private work, but why this pull toward books? James wondered. She was a woman entirely uninterested in stories. Sitting on the edge of his bed, upright in the darkening room, she would shut Narnia and say to her sons: “You must know this is only fantasy. Enjoy it as such.” She dragged James away from gulches crossed by children in the night and lions waiting and closets that led to forests, dragged him away and back to his bedroom with its glow-in-the-dark globe, his window overlooking the pebbled driveway.
“So,” said Diana. “You are playing at parenthood.”
Ana filled her mouth with water, thereby volleying the non-question to James. Her body was grateful not to be in the car anymore but had retreated to a hum of discomfort centered in the back of her head.
Ana could see James flushing, reverting to guttural teenage responses. “Not really. Maybe. I guess so,” said James. Diana stared at him, her eyelids vanishing.
“It’s very strange, isn’t it, a child with no relatives? In this day and age, it’s possible to trace anyone. I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she said, something faintly foreign in the phrasing if not the accent.
Wesley placed three wooden puzzles on the floor. James recognized them from the toy stores in his neighborhood: new but designed to look old-fashioned, with Depression-era line drawings of little children (Dick and Jane?) running and fishing and becoming obsolete, their socks drooping around their ankles. His parents must have kept them around for Mike’s children. Finn dumped them out, one by one, the pieces scattering on the carpet.
“Do you think about hiring a detective, to see if there’s anyone else?”
“We were stipulated in the will. They didn’t want him to go to anyone else,” said James. He tried to sound certain, but the questions brought more questions: What if, right now, the grandparents were packing their bags? What if there was a knock at the door, a phone call, a letter? Family wins in these situations. Blood wins.
James looked at Finn, and then at Ana, who was not looking at anyone. He suppressed a sudden swell of tears.
Wesley nodded, saying, “Yes, of course,” at the same moment that Diana cried out: “But it’s absurd. You must know this.” Ana nibbled from a glass bowl of mixed nuts, as if by keeping her mouth full, she was excused. They tasted stale. Ana felt James next to her giving off heat, like a planet imploding.