“Then you should wait. I have to go upstairs.”
She looks at him.
Outside it’s January in Canada.
Jimmy nods to the nearby door. “The parlor. You won’t find much of her there.”
Heather steps before him, squares him at the shoulders, pulls him to her. They kiss.
“Soon,” he says.
And soon he descends the stairs with two large leather Pullmans. By the time he reaches the bottom, Heather appears in the parlor doorway. She has not turned on the light.
She steps from the room as Jimmy approaches. He puts the suitcases on the floor.
“What?” she says.
“I just want to kiss you once more. The last thing I do in this house tonight.”
Before they can move, the phone rings.
They both look toward the parlor door, then back to each other.
“Do you think it’s her?” Heather says.
“No.”
“I want that kiss,” she says.
The phone rings again.
Jimmy starts to explain that it has an answering machine. That to do the kiss they will have to listen to whoever it is. But he does not have time even to shape the words. Apparently there is another message already on the machine because it kicks in now, after the second ring.
And a woman’s voice begins to speak in the parlor. “Hello, darling.”
Even before Heather can flinch, the voice says. “It’s your mother.”
Peggy pauses.
“Come on,” Jimmy says.
And Peggy says, “Your father died this morning.”
She pauses again.
Jimmy picks up his suitcases.
Heather touches him on the arm. “Wait, baby.” He explained his family to Heather last night, in the long rush of shared backstories between them.
Peggy says, “I know your feelings about him.”
She hesitates once more.
“At least listen,” Heather says.
“I don’t blame you,” Peggy says. “I’m free to say that now. I don’t blame you at all. For anything. You had to deal with his feelings about you.”
Jimmy sets the bags down.
“They weren’t my feelings. You have always been my son, who I love. You always will be. But I was married to your father, who I loved. I was his wife.”
Peggy begins to weep.
Her tears are for the man she loved, for his vanishing from this earth and from her life, for that loss. They are also in release — they are even in relief — at his vanishing from her life, for that loss. They are in guilt for that relief. The tears are also for the love of him, for the thrill that faded but never vanished at his unexpected smile and at the trailing of his fingertips along her neck whenever he passed unexpectedly behind her, though she always feigned a leap of ticklish discomfort, knowing that was necessary to induce him to continue the gesture through the years. The tears are for that necessity too. And the tears are from the belief that there is a next life as the Holy Catholic Church describes it and that he won’t do so well in that regard. They are also for herself, for having to lie and manipulate to maintain the coherence and happiness of the family; for having to do these venial sins on so many occasions that she has consequently neglected to sufficiently acknowledge them, much less reconcile them, in the sacrament of confession; that she will not do so well herself, therefore, in the next life. The tears are for the possibility that in the place where those sins must be dealt with, she will find herself once again wed to William Quinlan, and the struggle will resume in much the same way. And the tears are for Jimmy as well. So he can understand that things have changed. That he can come home. That he has always been her son, whom she loves. Because she does truly love him. Which is to say, in part, that her happiness is not fully possible without his being happy, though she cannot rest assured he is happy unless it is in a way she herself can recognize. And manage. So as she weeps, she does not hang up. She does not take the phone away from her mouth. And she takes care to weep loudly enough that the phone message will not cut off.
Heather is moved by her tears. “Can’t you speak to her?” she says.
“No,” Jimmy says. Though he recognizes how drastically things have changed in the past thirty-six hours. How in this chosen country of his, a vast and leveling snow has fallen over his convictions about family, about connectedness. He awoke to that yesterday. He dreamt of it and he woke to it. Convictions constructed and refined again over five decades have been overwhelmed as if overnight. And a new conviction, seemingly as strong, has bloomed over the same night: his love for this woman before him who was not even born when he exiled himself from the United States. He has either been something of a self-delusional fool through most of his life or he has suddenly become a fool of an old man; or both; or neither.
Heather says, “So many of her generation were loyal wives before everything else.”
Jimmy thinks: So many of mine accept instant love. With no exclusions, age included.
He wants to hold Heather close.
Peggy’s tears are snubbing to a stop.
Jimmy opens his arms and Heather falls into them.
Peggy says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This is a difficult time. But if some good can come of this. If I could see you. Wouldn’t it be a closure for you as well? For us all.”
She pauses.
“Whatever you decide, my darling,” Heather says.
Jimmy does not move.
“Just in case,” Peggy says. “Tillotson’s Funeral Home in Tallahassee. The wake begins at six Monday evening. The funeral’s at ten on Tuesday morning. Please think about it.”
She pauses one last time.
Jimmy waits for more drama from his mother. More tears. Effusive avowals of love, in spite of her sticking by the man who rejected Jimmy to his dying day. But instead she says, “Let’s put him in the ground, my son. Together. We both need that.”
And she hangs up.
Peggy has made her phone call to Jimmy from the kitchen, with Darla sitting at the dining table beneath the pass-through. She’d emerged from the bedroom a few minutes before, after sleeping for several hours.
“I’m glad you could rest,” Darla said.
“I feel clearer about things,” Peggy said.
“I ordered Chinese while you were sleeping. Plenty of it. Can I warm some for you?”
“No, honey. I’m fine.”
“Tea?”
“I have a call to make before anything,” Peggy said. The second phone was in the bedroom from which she’d just emerged, but she moved past Darla and into the kitchen.
Darla handled the papers in front of her but did not see a thing. Naturally she listened. Till Peggy suggested to her long-lost son that they put William in the ground together and hung up.
Darla sets the papers down. No faking. She waits.
A cabinet door opens. Pots clatter. The door closes. Water runs. A pot lands on a metal stove burner. “I’ve changed my mind about tea,” Peggy says. “You want some?”
“Thanks,” Darla says. “Yes.”
A few minutes later Peggy emerges with a tea service on a tray and she leads Darla to the couch, putting the tray before them on the coffee table.
In this quotidian matter they are equally imprinted by the old school of female propriety, so they hold both saucer and cup to eliminate the unseemly stretch to the coffee table. They sip and sip again in silence.
Darla has never felt particularly close to Peggy. She has witnessed the woman’s poses and dramas — experienced them, indeed, as lies and manipulations — for as long as they’ve known each other. But Peggy’s words to Jimmy and her clear intention for Darla to overhear them and now simply her silence over tea somehow don’t feel like manipulations. This feels like a different Peggy.