‘Sure. Why not.’
She nodded, then leaned against the back of the couch. Her feet didn’t touch the floor when she did that, and she looked like an old little girl with her legs sticking straight out.
‘Every day Jack would come for lunch, remember? This was before the schlocky ad, when I could still tell people my son was a lawyer and not worry about them seeing the clown on TV. And then one day, poof. He drops off the face of the earth. No lunching, no calling, no nothing. I call his office, I talk to a machine; I call his house, I talk to another machine. Morey said they argued.’
‘About what?’
‘Who knows? Fathers and sons argue. This happens. So they stay away from each other long enough to forget the stupid things they said when they were mad, and then it’s over. Except this time it wasn’t. This time Jack sent us a picture in the mail, and there in the picture are little girls in white dresses and little boys in suits and right in the middle is the big schlock himself, and they’re all kneeling in front of a cross with that poor, dead Jew hanging on it.’
Marty blinked at her, wondering if the last drink had finally fried his brain, because he was definitely missing something. ‘What are you talking about? What picture?’
Lily ignored his question. ‘And on the bottom of the picture it says: Jack Gilbert, First Communion, some Lutheran church.’
‘What? Jack converted?’
She sipped from her glass and said nothing.
‘That doesn’t make any sense at all. Jack never even believed in God.’
Lily looked at him like he was an idiot. ‘What are you thinking? This had nothing to do with God. This was Jack slapping our faces and turning his back on his family and who he was because he’d had some stupid fight with his father. And then a couple of weeks later we get a wedding picture. Same place, same cross, a bigger girl in a bigger white dress. Another slap, and the coward did it with pictures.’
Marty raked his fingers through his hair, as if that might stimulate some dormant brain cell that could help him make sense of what he’d just been told. Jack had his fair share of shortcomings, but he’d never struck him as the kind of guy who’d hurt anybody intentionally, least of all his parents. Besides, it made no sense at all for Jack to punish Lily for a fight he’d had with Morey. ‘I can’t figure this out.’
‘Big surprise. I’ve been trying for over a year, and I can’t figure it out either.’
‘You should have asked Jack.’
‘I told you, Jack wouldn’t talk to me. Morey wouldn’t talk to me. You men, you do these stupid things, and the women suffer and never know why.’
Marty watched her drink from her glass, foolish enough, even after all these years, to look for a flicker of emotion on the old woman’s face. He knew without a doubt that it was in there, but he also knew he would never see it. Probably if Lily Gilbert ever started crying, she’d never be able to stop.
‘Well, I’ll talk to the little bastard,’ he said.
‘Good.’
‘And I’m sorry he hurt you.’
Lily gave him a smug look. ‘And all this time, I’m the bad person. By the way, Sol called tonight while you were closing up the greenhouse. You’re a pallbearer, you know.’
‘I know.’
She smiled a little. ‘Morey picked out his casket years ago. He used to go to the funeral home and play poker with Sol, and one day, he comes home and says, “Lily, I picked out my casket today. It’s bronze and it’s heavy, and the pallbearers are going to pull out their backs carrying me. This will help out Harvey, the chiropractor, whose business has been bad.” ’
Marty smiled, thinking that sounded just like Morey. ‘I didn’t know he played poker.’
‘He only played with Sol because he could beat him. And sometimes that Ben person.’
‘Who’s Ben?’
‘A nobody.’
‘You don’t like him?’
‘He’s a putz. A stinker.’
‘And Morey liked him?’
Lily shrugged. ‘You know Morey. He was hopeless. He liked everybody, whether they deserved it or not. Besides, they went way back.’
‘Funny I never met him.’
‘They weren’t that close. Mostly they went fishing. Couple, three times a year, maybe some poker sometimes.’
Marty turned his head very slowly to look at her. ‘Morey went fishing?’
‘Of course he did… oh, turn on the sound. Quick.’ She squiggled forward to put her feet on the floor and propped her elbows on her knees, eyes fixed on the TV. ‘Look, it’s extra innings.’
Marty looked at her in amazement. ‘You like baseball?’
She snatched the remote and turned on the sound herself. ‘Of course I like baseball. These are gentlemen. They hardly ever knock each other down, and they smile a lot when they do something good.’
He watched, bemused, as she got caught up in the game, thinking how little he had learned about Lily in all the years he’d loved her daughter. He’d spent most of his time with Morey, practicing that age-old gender division that happens when families get together. Lily was the mystery in the kitchen; but Morey was the man, the friend, the substitute father he had come to love and know so well.
Except he’d never known about the fishing, and that troubled him. Maybe he hadn’t known Morey as well as he thought.
He let his mind travel back to a day well over a year ago, not long before his life had fallen apart. He and Morey had driven Hannah and Lily fifty miles north of the city to an antique shop that charged twice as much as any closer to home. On the way back, they’d stopped at a rural gas station/convenience store for ice cream and drinks.
‘Marty, get over here. Look at this.’ Morey was standing at an upright cooler that held milk, cheese, and other perishables, looking into an adjacent water tank with a noisy bubbler, shaking his head.
Marty peered into the tank and grimaced at a writhing black mass of leeches. On top of the tank all manner of worms squirmed in cups of sawdust and dirt. ‘This is disgusting. What’s wrong with these worms? How come the white ones are in sawdust?’
‘I should know this?’ Morey gestured a young clerk over to the tank. ‘This isn’t against the health code?’
‘Uh… are you an inspector or something?’
‘No, no, I’m not an inspector, but it’s common sense. There are leeches next to the milk.’
‘And worms,’ Marty added.
‘That’s just the live bait,’ the clerk replied. ‘That tank there’s the live well, and that’s the dry bait on top.’
Morey snorted. ‘Of course it’s live. It’s moving. This is disgusting.’
‘Uh… we get a lot of fishermen in here.’
‘Fishing. Bah. And they call themselves sportsmen. What kind of a sport is it that you impale helpless creatures on a wire hook so you can throw it in the water and impale bigger helpless creatures?
‘Well, they’re just worms and leeches and stuff.’
‘To you, maybe. Tell me. Did you see that Spielberg movie?’
‘Oh, hey, yeah, man, I’ve seen them all.’
‘Really. I’m impressed. You saw Schindler’s List?’
‘Uh… you sure Spielberg did it?’
‘Never mind. The one I’m talking about had dinosaurs.’
‘Oh, yeah, Jurassic Park, sure. I saw that one four times. The sequels kind of sucked, but the first one really rocked.’
‘Then you’ll remember where they tied up the goat so the big dinosaur would come?’
‘Oh yeah, that was gross.’
‘And did you feel sorry for the little goat?’