“And you met Adam through that, uh, interest group?”
“Affinity group,” Amanda said. “Yes.”
“People say it’s, you know—”
“I’m not insulted by what people say.”
“A cult,” Mama Laura finished in an apologetic whisper.
“It’s not a cult. There’s no doctrine, no creed, no leader. Nothing we have to believe in or swear allegiance to.”
“It costs money, though, doesn’t it?” my father asked.
“For evaluation, plus an annual membership fee.”
“Like a cult because it breaks up families, too.”
“I don’t believe that’s the case, Mr. Fisk.”
Amanda put a hand on my knee to let me know she wasn’t rattled.
“Well,” he said, “all I know is, I hear things. People develop a loyalty to these Affinity groups.”
“They do,” Amanda said. “But not for any sinister reason. The whole point is that it’s a group of people you can trust, who trust you.”
“That’s all?”
“Think about it this way. Everything human beings do—everything worthwhile—depends on cooperation. We cooperate better than any other species. But cooperation can get derailed pretty easily. People lie, people cheat, people misunderstand each other. So we learn to be wary and mistrustful. Once burned, twice shy, no?”
“Happens in business often enough.”
“Sure. It happens to everyone, and it slows you down, it costs you time and money, it leaves you cynical.”
“That’s just human nature, Miss Mehta.”
“But an Affinity group is a place where that logic doesn’t apply. It’s a place where you don’t have to watch your back. Where people like you, for sensible reasons. A place where—”
“Where everybody knows your name?” Geddy asked. Followed by his own goofy rendition of the old Cheers theme song.
Amanda returned his grin. “Yeah, like that,” she said, laughing. “But in real life.”
“Can’t replace family,” my father said, looking pointedly in my direction.
“Some of the people in our tranche come from pretty unpleasant families, Mr. Fisk. Some of them need a replacement.”
“Do we seem that bad to you?”
“I don’t mean this family. Is that a blueberry pie, Mrs. Fisk?”
“Boysenberry,” Mama Laura said, beaming.
“It looks great.”
“Bless you for saying so. I think we’re about ready for dessert and coffee, now that you mention it.”
“Dessert,” Geddy agreed, nodding.
After the meal we adjourned to the living room. And the conversation turned to the subject of Grammy Fisk. We told our favorite stories and shared the poignant business of missing her. Amanda had nothing to contribute, but she listened attentively and put an arm around Mama Laura when she started to cry.
Displays of emotion made Geddy uneasy, and he excused himself early and went up to his room. A little while later a sound echoed down the stairs, a brassy hoot that made me think of geese heading south in autumn. “Oh, Lord, Geddy’s saxophone,” Mama Laura said. “It’s way too late for him to be practicing.”
“Geddy took up an instrument?”
“For band, at school. Yes. And not just the instrument! He brought Grammy Fisk’s old record player down out of the attic and set it up in his room. Plus maybe a hundred or so of her dusty old records.”
It was getting on time to leave, so I headed up to Geddy’s room to say good night and investigate his newfound interest. Geddy’s enthusiasms tended to monopolize his conversation and most of his waking thoughts, and when he opened his door I saw this was no exception. Grammy Fisk’s fifty-year-old turntable and receiver covered most of the free space on his desk. The cloth-grille speakers were set up at the foot of his bed, and Grammy Fisk’s record collection (mostly old jazz, folk, rock) snaked along the floorboards under the window.
Geddy put down his sax and waved me in. He told me about the instrument—a Yamaha alto sax, secondhand from Schuyler’s only pawn shop—and about the music he’d been listening to. Forget My Chemical Romance, he was all about horns and reeds now. His favorite saxophone player was Paul Desmond. (“Because of his tone. He plays a real pure note. Only a little vibrato. He doesn’t fancy up the sound. I want to learn to play a pure note like that.”) Geddy was daunted by the difficulty of the instrument, but he honked out a scale for me, and I thought I could hear what he was aiming at. Years later I would admire his skill, but what I heard that night was more ambition than talent.
He grimaced when a high C went sour. “I’m just learning.”
“Yeah, but I can tell you’re getting better at it.”
He gave me a tight smile that was both a thank-you for the compliment and an acknowledgment that I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about.
“I guess it’s a way of remembering Grammy Fisk, too—all this,” I said.
He thought about it. “Maybe.”
“There might be some crying at the memorial service tomorrow. Are you okay with that?”
He shrugged.
“I’ll be there if you need me.”
“Amanda is nice,” Geddy said.
“Thanks.”
“Is it true, what she said about the Affinity groups?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Maybe I’ll join one. When I’m older.”
I didn’t know whether there was an Affinity he would qualify for, but I hoped so.
In the morning Aaron drove me to a family meeting prior to the memorial service. I was a pallbearer, and a deacon at the Methodist church explained what was expected of us: how to support the weight of the coffin, where the hearse would be waiting. After the briefing Aaron drove me back to the motel so I could take Amanda to the service. And while we were alone in the car he raised the subject of Jenny Symanski: ten earnest minutes of how-could-you-do-this and she-deserves-better.
“I mean,” Aaron said, “what’s she supposed to do now? Pretty girl like that, smart but no college, parents both drinking, the family business drying up in this shitty economy, and no marriage prospects because for most of her adult life she’s been waiting for you to grow a pair and ask her. What the fuck is she supposed to do?”
I didn’t have an answer.
Jenny was at the funeral, of course.
I was up front with the immediate family, in a church crowded with my father’s business associates and his buddies from the local Republican committee. Snow melted snow from shoes and boots puddled on the oaken floorboards and made the air humid. Psalm 23, a hymn, the eulogy, a benediction, and I couldn’t help wondering what Grammy Fisk would have made of all this. (“I don’t know where you go when you die,” she had once confided in me. “I don’t think you go anywhere at all except the grave.”) After the memorial service we got in our cars and trailed the hearse to Schuyler’s big nondenominational cemetery, where a machine had gouged a perfectly rectangular hole into the frozen earth. It was a gray end-of-winter day, a few flakes of snow riding on a wet wind. We stood in silence as the coffin was lowered. Blessed are the dead. They will rest from their labors. Mama Laura leaned into my father’s shoulder, weeping quietly. My father stood immobile, his features locked into a sculpture expressing, somehow, both anger and loss. Geddy stood with his head down, probably pretending he was somewhere else.