“I used to see those trucks around. Galvin Brothers Plumbing, right? The green shamrock?”
“See, I knew I liked this guy,” Galvin said.
10
The two Galvin sons appeared from wherever they’d been hiding to join the family at dinner. Both of them were tall and rangy and good-looking: dark-haired and light-eyed, heavy brows and strong jaws. Brendan, the younger one, wore a Boston College sweatshirt, Old Navy sweatpants, and flip-flops. Ryan wore scruffy jeans and a Ron Jon Surf Shop T-shirt and was barefoot. He looked almost like Brendan’s fraternal twin, only he was somehow more finished, more refined, his jawline sharper and his face more angular. Apart from the eyes, they both looked a lot more like their mother than their father.
“Brendan comes home once in a while to get a decent meal,” Galvin said. He’d removed his jacket and wore gold suspenders over his white shirt. He’d loosened his tie. “Ryan, what’s your excuse? Laundry piling up?”
“Very funny,” Ryan said.
“I told him he can bring home all the dirty clothes he wants,” said Celina, “but Manuela’s not going to do it for him. He can do his own laundry. We’re not a hotel.” She clapped her hands together briskly in front of her a few times to emphasize her point.
Brendan was a sophomore at BC, and Ryan had graduated the year before and was doing some sort of scut work at a TV station. It sounded to Danny like he was supporting himself. His father, the gazillionaire, wasn’t paying the rent. That was interesting.
Abby seemed to fit right in, as if she were the Galvins’ second daughter. She and Jenna whispered about something, and Abby giggled. Their plates were piled high with chicken and rice and beans, the most delicious arroz con pollo Danny had ever tasted.
“So you’re a writer, huh?” Galvin said.
“Yup.”
“Very cool.” Galvin sat at one end of the long oak farm table in the kitchen, his wife at the other. The sons sat across from the two girls. They shifted in their chairs and feigned interest. The dogs slept under the table.
“Well, I don’t know about cool, but… it’s a job.”
“You write under your own name, or do you have a pen name?”
“Under my name. Daniel Goodman.” Danny got asked that a lot. It was a polite way of saying I’ve never heard of you.
“I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I can never find the time. I got stories to tell. Maybe when I retire.”
Danny was always amused when people told him they’d love to write if only they had the time. As if the only thing that held them back from a successful writing career was a lack of leisure.
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m just lucky enough to have all this free time on my hands,” he said.
Galvin chuckled. “Ya got me there. So, you write novels or what?”
“Nonfiction.” He clarified: “Biography.”
Galvin held up the bottle of wine Danny had brought and waggled it. “No, thanks,” Danny said. Galvin topped off his own glass.
“Anything I’ve read?” Galvin said.
“The Kennedys of Boston.”
“Huh. That sounds familiar. About Jack Kennedy and his family?”
“More about Jack Kennedy’s grandfather, ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, who used to be mayor of Boston a hundred years ago. The founder of the Kennedy dynasty. A colorful character.”
“Colorful usually means corrupt,” Galvin pointed out.
Danny smiled. “Exactly. Corrupt yet beloved.”
“Working on one now?”
“Always.”
“What’s it about?”
Danny hesitated. The phrase robber baron might not sound so good to Galvin’s ears. Especially if Danny were about to ask him for a loan. “A biography of a nineteenth-century businessman.”
“Yeah? When can I get my copy?”
“Mom, will you tell Brendan to give me back my shoe?” Jenna said.
“Give your sister her shoe,” Celina said.
“I don’t have it,” Brendan said, poker-faced.
“He, like, took it off with his feet,” Jenna said. “He’s like a monkey.”
“All of you, ya basta!” Celina said. “Are you six year old?”
Danny was grateful for the interruption, but Galvin didn’t give up: “When’s your new book go on sale? Maybe I’ll pick up a copy.”
“You’ll have to wait a while,” Danny said. “I’m still writing it.”
“Going well?”
“A little slow, frankly. Life gets in the way sometimes.”
“You ever get writer’s block?” asked Ryan, the older son.
“Nope. It’s a job like any other. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, right?”
“I like that,” Galvin said. “You hear that, kids? That’s called a work ethic. No one tells him to work. He just sits down every day and makes himself write, whether he likes it or not.”
Danny nodded uneasily.
A sudden blast of music came from somewhere. Danny recognized the opening guitar riff from “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, rendered tinnily as a ringtone. Galvin got up and took a BlackBerry out of the breast pocket of his suit coat hanging on a peg. He glanced at the number, answered it. “I’m at dinner,” he said abruptly. A long pause. “It’s dinnertime. I’m having dinner with my family.” Another pause, then he snapped: “I said… I can’t.”
Danny had the feeling he’d just seen a side of Galvin he didn’t like to show.
Galvin jabbed at the BlackBerry to end the call. “Man oh man, ever have one of those days when it feels like everyone wants something from you?”
Danny swallowed hard. “All the time.”
Maybe asking him for a loan wasn’t such a good idea after all.
“How’s the job search going, Bren?”
Brendan shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Let me know if I can make some calls for you.”
“It’s okay.”
“You don’t want to spend the summer on the beach in Nantucket again, do you?” his father said, a glint in his eye. “Be one of those losers in wet suits who spend all their time surfing?”
“I’m trying,” Brendan said sullenly.
“Aw, he’s in college, Tommy,” Celina said. “He can play. It’s okay for him to get a job after college.”
“What’s wrong with spending the summer on the beach in Nantucket?” asked Jenna, indignant. “Why does he have to get a job?”
“That’s right,” said Celina, “why?”
Galvin grinned. “Now the girls are ganging up on me. Help me out here, Danny. Give me some cover.”
Danny shook his head, unwilling to be lured into a family tiff. “Sorry, man, you’re on your own.”
“Danny, you guys go to the Cape for the summer, right?” said Galvin. “How long have you had a house in Wellfleet?”
“Wellfleet?” Danny didn’t remember telling Galvin that his parents lived in Wellfleet, that he’d grown up there. And he definitely hadn’t said anything about summers.
“Your summer place. Abby told us all about it.”
“Summer place in Wellfleet?” he said sardonically. “Yeah, I wish-”
Then he caught a glimpse of Abby twisting uncomfortably and blushing.
He realized she’d been trying to impress the Galvins by turning her grandparents’ modest tract house in Wellfleet into something it wasn’t, the place where she “summered” every year.
And then he quickly finished the sentence: “-wish it didn’t take so long to get there.”
“Cape traffic’s brutal on the weekends,” Galvin agreed.
But Danny could see the amused detachment in his eyes and knew that Galvin had picked up on his slip.
Galvin didn’t miss a thing.
After dinner, Galvin excused himself to take another call in his study. There was no kitchen help in sight. Danny wondered whether this was the maid’s night off or something. Then Abby and Jenna tried to teach Brendan some kind of complicated dance as a song came blasting over speakers concealed throughout the kitchen, something about “party rock” being “in the house tonight.”