“Not too much. She was a very shy woman. A recluse, really.”
“Arthur was apparently attracted to shy women,” I said.
“Perhaps he was-what of it?” she snapped. I didn’t answer, and she scowled at me. “Maybe there are two pairs of Prissy Pants in the family.”
Rachel didn’t even try to hide her amusement.
I was saved further humiliation only because the doorbell rang. Mary answered it, and soon we heard our husbands’ voices and the sound of their laughter. Rachel’s face reflected nothing but pleasure when she heard it, and I hurried after her into the living room, where Frank and Pete were chatting with Mary.
“Caw,” Rachel said, running a hand over Pete’s sunburned bald head. “You didn’t put the sunscreen on like I told you to!”
“See what happens when you don’t go with us?” Pete said.
I found myself wondering what on earth had ever made me think she was flirting with McCain.
Frank put an arm around my shoulders. “Thought you’d like a ride home.”
“That would be great,” I said, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. “I need to get a few things out of Rachel’s car.”
We divided up the rest of Briana’s belongings as planned, and Frank helped me to move the photos and desk papers from Rachel’s car to his.
Once, while Frank was out of earshot, Pete asked, “You want us to try to look up this cousin of yours in DMV records?”
I shook my head. “McCain has undoubtedly already tried that. And things have been bad enough for you two at work lately. You might get in trouble.”
He laughed at that and told me not to worry.
I thanked Rachel again, and we said good night to Mary and the Bairds. As we drove home, I made Frank tell me about his day first. He told me where they had sailed, about the dolphins they had seen, of a predictably futile but hilarious attempt by Pete to win an argument with Cassidy, of Jack’s surprising ability to actually get the better of Cassidy once or twice-which had made Pete look at Jack with new admiration. “I kept trying to figure out if Cassidy was orchestrating the whole thing-you know how Pete is sometimes a little jealous of Jack? Maybe not jealous-”
“Yeah, jealous.”
“Right, well, you know how Pete is-anyway, by the end of the day, Pete is treating Jack like he’s his best pal. Inviting him over for dinner, asking Jack to tell Cassidy about his days in the motorcycle gang-and through all this, Cassidy-” He glanced over at me, stopped his spirited narrative and said, “Missed you, though.”
“That was an afterthought if I’ve ever heard one.”
He laughed. “No, really. Jack’s talking about taking everyone to Catalina in a couple of weeks. You should come with us. I have the feeling your day wasn’t so relaxing.”
I shrugged.
“Tell me what happened.”
I did, but didn’t want to trouble him or bring down his mood, so I put the best face on it I could. He caught me at it. As we pulled into the driveway he said angrily, “You don’t have to treat me like I’m going to break into pieces, you know. It’s goddamned insulting. I’m tired of it. Bad enough to get it from the guys at work. Tiptoeing around me like I’m-like I’m a basket case or something.”
“Sorry,” I said. I tried to think of something else to say and only managed another lousy, “Sorry.”
He kept going on about it for another ten minutes or so, long enough for me to stop feeling apologetic. Maybe I would have kept my cool if I hadn’t spent the last two or three days looking at the ends of fingers pointed in my direction. I did manage to stay silent. At some point it must have dawned on him that I wasn’t participating in the conversation, though, because he broke off and asked, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You’re treated like a leper at work and coddled at home. You want it to stop. I can’t do anything about what happens to you at work, but it will be a damned pleasure to stop coddling you. Will a bell ring at the end of this lecture period, or will you dismiss class in some other way?”
He didn’t answer, just swore under his breath and got out of the car. I sat there staring at the glove compartment as he opened the trunk, got the boxes out, and took them into the house, greeting the dogs as they ran outside. He came back out, walked over to my side of the car and lifted his hand, as if he were going to tap on the window. He hesitated, put his hand in his pocket and stood there. I went back to staring straight ahead, even when the dogs jumped up against the passenger door. I heard Frank tell them to get down, and they ran off to wrestle with one another in the front yard.
After a minute, Frank tapped his knuckles against the glass. I rolled the window down. He leaned over, so that his face was level with mine.
“Come inside,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
“Please.”
“For most of the weekend,” I said, “I’ve been doing whatever someone else wanted me to do. The results have not been great. Childish though it undoubtedly is, right now I just want to have a really terrific pout.”
He moved a short distance away, but didn’t go inside the house. He played with the dogs until they lay panting in the grass. Then he came over to the car again, but stood a few feet away. He squatted down, resting his elbows on his thighs. He plucked a piece of grass from the lawn, fiddled with it.
“Cassidy said something strange to me today,” he said.
“No kidding.”
He ignored that and said, “Yeah. He asked me if you and I had been fighting lately.”
I looked over at him.
“I told him, no, we hadn’t. He said he was sorry to hear that.”
“What did he mean by… oh,” I said.
“Right. All this peace and harmony-not exactly natural for us, is it?”
“No.”
“Not one fight. Not once since… not since the morning I was taken hostage.”
I opened the car door, rolled up the window and stepped out. He stood up and I moved closer to him.
“Put up your dukes,” I said, and he pulled me into an embrace.
We stood there together for a while, then he glanced at his watch. “There are about four hours of Saturday left,” he said. “What would you like to do?”
I told him. In detail.
I got everything I wanted, my way, and still had no reason to feel selfish.
8
I didn’t have much time to sort through Briana’s belongings on Sunday; there were household chores that couldn’t be put off, and just after one o’clock I was called into work to help write a memorial piece on a civic leader. The man had had the discourtesy to die of a heart attack after deadline on Saturday night. Having no suspicion of his health problems, the paper didn’t have one of its instant obits ready to go.
If I had only needed to write a history of his generosity to the community, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but I had to get comments. As a result, several times I was placed in the unpleasant position of being the first person to tell one of his friends that he had died. I would wait for the stunned silence or shout of disbelief to pass, express condolences, tell the friend that I knew he or she had worked closely with him, and coax comments. I did get one break-another reporter was sent to talk to the widow.
By the time I got home, I was emotionally drained. Frank was making dinner. I was changing into more casual clothes when Aunt Mary called.
“Did you go to Mass today?” she asked.
“You’ve been hounding me about my sense of duty to my family,” I said, ready to tell her straight out that I was in no mood to talk about the dead. “Are you going to start pestering me on the subject of religion, too?”
“Hmm. I probably should. But here I’ve started out all wrong again. I called to apologize. Realized I needed to when I went to Mass this morning.”
“You don’t owe me any apologies,” I said.