‘No it isn’t.’
Grace smiled and stretched, her fingertips brushing a branch of the magnolia.
The bird went nuts.
18
While Magozzi and Grace were sipping wine under the magnolia, Marty Pullman was downing scotch with more serious intent. He was sitting on the bed in a room that had once belonged to Hannah, long before she’d been his wife. The room had changed over the years in a slow conversion from daughter’s bedroom to one of those sad places that has no real purpose anymore. There was a desk no one used, a bed no one slept in, a closet with empty hangers that clattered together when you opened the door. And yet Hannah lingered here as she did everywhere, and there wasn’t enough scotch in the world to erase her.
He took a deep drink from his glass and stared out the window at the dark. It was only his second night in this house, and yet it seemed a hundred years since he’d sat in his own bathtub with a gun in his mouth.
He hadn’t been fooled when Lily had asked him to stay. From any other woman whose husband of fifty-some years had just been murdered, the request would have been perfectly understandable. Grief expands to fill a newly empty house, and Marty knew better than anyone that the only thing worse than being dead was being a solitary survivor. But that’s not why Lily wanted him here. Now that Morey’s death had finally brought him out of isolation, she was going to keep an eye on him, and they both knew it. Somehow the old bag knew what he was up to. She always had – except for that one time.
He cringed when the shrill whine of the vacuum started up again. For the past four hours, Lily had been cooking and cleaning in preparation for a houseful of mourners tomorrow. He’d tried to help so she could finish and go to bed; at one point they’d almost come to blows over the vacuum cleaner. ‘Have a heart, Martin,’ she’d said to him then, and that was when he realized that the object wasn’t to finish the job at all. Marty had his bottle, Lily had her vacuum, and God help anyone who tried to take their tools of sanity away.
He grabbed the scotch, went to the kitchen for two fresh glasses, and brought them out into the living room, kicking the vacuum cleaner cord out of the socket on his way. ‘For God’s sake, Lily, sit down and rest. It’s almost eleven o’clock.’
He expected at least some resistance, or perhaps a pointed comment about the booze, but apparently, even Lily Gilbert had her limits. She sagged down onto the couch next to him and stared mindlessly at the muted TV. She was still in her child-sized overalls, but she was wearing a blue cotton babushka over her cropped silver hair, as she always did when she cleaned. The scarf baffled Marty. He wondered if she’d worn her hair long as a girl, donning the scarf to hold it back, and if the scarf had lingered as a habit long after the hair was gone. He tried to imagine Lily with long hair, but with her little old face, her eyes magnified by her glasses, and four shots of scotch in his belly, all he could see was E.T. after the kids had put the wig on him.
‘I think the house is clean enough,’ she pronounced, to dispel any notion that she was sitting down because Marty told her to.
‘The carpet is almost bald now. Yeah, I’d say it’s clean enough.’ Marty poured her out a finger of scotch. ‘Here.’
She gave him a disapproving look. ‘You don’t want to drink alone, is that it?’
‘I have no problem with drinking alone. You need to relax.’
‘I don’t like scotch.’
‘You want something else?’
She stared at the glass for a long time, then finally took a sip and grimaced. ‘This is horrible. How can you drink this?’
Marty shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’
Lily took another tentative sip. ‘Morey’s scotch is better. Still bad, but better than this. This is cheap, isn’t it?’
He smiled a little. ‘Yeah.’
Lily nodded, got up, and disappeared into the kitchen. A few moments later, she came out carrying a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Balvenie.
Marty gaped at the bottle. ‘My God, Lily, do you know how much that stuff costs?’
‘So we shouldn’t drink it? You think you can sell a half-empty bottle of scotch on eBay?’
Marty couldn’t decide which was more surprising – the fact that Lily had lugged out a two-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch, or that she knew about eBay.
They sat quietly together, drinking scotch and staring at the silent TV, and because the moment was so strangely comfortable, Marty was almost tempted to tell her everything. Just blurt it out, forget the consequences, let her do her worst.
Suddenly, he saw an image of Jack Gilbert smiling back at him from the TV. He blinked a few times, certain that he was hallucinating, but the smiling face didn’t go away. ‘Hey, that’s Jack. Turn it up.’
Lily snatched the remote from the table and turned the TV off.
‘Come on, Lily!’ He grabbed the remote, flipped the TV back on, and watched in amusement as the commercial cycled through a montage of touching scenes: Jack at a car accident, helping the victim, Jack at a construction site, talking to workers, Jack at a hospital bed, looking earnest and caring. A narrator’s voice spoke over the final shot of a dynamic, charismatic Jack in court: ‘You need a lawyer who cares about you. Call Jack Gilbert at 1-800-555-5225. That’s 1-800-555-J-A-C-K, Jack. Don’t let them jack you around.’
‘What a schlock,’ Lily muttered.
‘I don’t know. I thought it was pretty good.’
She grunted.
‘You never used to think he was a schlock. You used to be proud of him.’
‘He used to be my son,’ she said sharply.
Marty sighed. He had made the decision to put his own non-life on hold out of respect for Morey, and to do what he could to help Lily. Hannah would have wanted that. But he wasn’t going to do it forever, which meant this family feud nonsense had to end. Jack should be taking care of his own mother, goddamnit. ‘Jesus, Lily, you’re the most stubborn woman on the planet.’
‘Why do you do that? Why do you swear? You know I hate that.’
‘Oh, come on, we’re Jewish. Saying “Jesus” doesn’t mean anything.’
‘It means something to someone. You could show a little respect.’
Marty took a breath. ‘Fine. I’ll stop swearing, you stop changing the subject. We’re running out of Gilberts here, Lily. It’s just you and Jack now, and it’s about time you buried the hatchet. So he married out of the faith – why is that such a big deal? You and Morey never even went to temple. Why should you care if he married a Lutheran?’
Lily gave him an incredulous look. ‘You think that’s what this is about?’
‘Well, isn’t it?’
‘Pffft. Your head is filled with things you don’t know. Things you didn’t bother to find out because you’re such a busy retired person.’
Marty gritted his teeth until he could trust himself to speak. ‘Don’t even try the guilt thing with this one, Lily. We hadn’t seen Jack in a while, he kept blowing Hannah off when she called, so I asked Morey what was going on. He said Jack had married a Lutheran, and we weren’t going to talk about it. Period. A week or so after that Hannah was killed, and you can just goddamn excuse me for not following through.’
He took a breath and eyed the bottle of Balvenie. Ten bucks a shot, the way he figured it. Seemed a shame to waste that kind of money on the rapid journey into oblivion he was hoping for.
‘Go ahead, drink it,’ Lily said. ‘Better you should die from a diseased liver than holes in your stomach from that drain cleaner you drink.’
If she thought she was going to have to tell him twice, she was crazy. He snatched the bottle and filled his glass and dreamed of blackness.
Lily watched him take a long drink. ‘So you want to know about this thing with Jack or not?’