“I’m so close to him that I can’t notice any changes. Tell me what’s different from a year ago. Maybe I shouldn’t ask you until tomorrow. He wasn’t exactly the best version of himself tonight.”
“Well,” Mack said. He wasn’t thinking of James, but of the lobby, which he had left open, and of the phone, which he left unattended. “Let me use your phone.” Mack forwarded the hotel’s calls to Andrea’s room. Then he sat back down in the chair. “He’s taller,” Mack said. “He’s getting a beard in, have you noticed that?”
“I’ve been ignoring it,” Andrea said. She hugged her knees to her chest. “Really, as if it weren’t difficult enough for me to raise a special-needs child on my own, now I have to raise a man? I have parents asking me questions all the time, about toilet training and school and what kinds of vitamins their kids should take, and I give them answers but I feel like such an impostor. Because meanwhile I’m watching James grow up and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what to tell him about shaving, or about girls and sex. He loves to masturbate, and every time I find him doing it, I hide in my walk-in closet and cry. In a couple of years, I’m going to have to help him find a job and another place to live. There are hurdles in front of me and I can’t even see how high they are.”
“Do you hear from Raymond?” Mack asked.
“I heard his wife just had her third baby. He sends me large sums of money, really enormous sums that I’m simply socking away. But he won’t see James, nothing’s changed there. It’s like the kid doesn’t exist for Raymond, except as some kind of charity case to throw money at. Being rejected by your father is enough to break a normal kid. I don’t know how it’s affecting James.”
“I can teach James to shave,” Mack said. “Later in the week, once he’s gotten used to me again.”
Andrea flashed her green-grays at him and then she started to cry. “Thank you,” she said. “I was hoping you’d offer. It’s so horrible of me to depend on you, but you know what? I like having three weeks out of fifty-two when I know there’s someone I can count on. It’s nice to know I’m not completely alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Mack said. He sat next to Andrea on the bed. He put his arms around her and she pressed her wet face into his chest. Mack closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair. He loved Andrea’s sadness. Her sadness was about the inscrutable mixed-up messages in her son’s brain, and about being left to bring him up by herself, but Andrea’s sadness was generous enough to encompass everything, including an eighteen-year-old Iowa farm boy losing both his parents in a single moment. And somehow she managed to make sadness, her own and everyone else’s, seem necessary, right.
“I love you,” Mack said.
She sniffled. “I know.”
They had never made love. This was Andrea’s rule from the beginning-it would make things too complicated, she said, and there was also the issue of logistics, because of James. There was always James-and long ago Mack suspected that after the ferocity with which Andrea loved James, there was little left over for anyone else. Andrea never told Mack she loved him-always she responded by saying “I know.” She let him hug and kiss her and once or twice a summer when James was asleep in the other room they fell back on the bed groping for one another and Mack ground against her, sweating, crazy, aching. But she never gave in, she never let go.
The phone rang and Mack stood to answer it.
“Who could be calling me?” Andrea asked.
“It’s Maribel,” he said. He checked his watch. “It’s almost midnight.” He picked up the phone. “Nantucket Beach Club.”
“Mack,” Maribel said, “it’s late.”
“I know,” he said. “I had a late check-in. I’ll be home in a little while.”
“I might be asleep.”
“Okay,” Mack said. He paused before he hung up, thinking about Maribel the night before as she lay asleep with the phone on her chest; he thought about the little kicks and twists she made in the night. He knew her so well. She was like another part of him. As Mack replaced the receiver he thought, I love them both. It happened, he supposed; he was just glad he didn’t have to choose between them, not tonight, anyway.
“I should go,” he said to Andrea.
“When are you going to marry her, Mack?”
“I don’t know,” Mack said. “I kind of wish people would quit asking me that.”
Andrea smiled. “Would you like to come to the airport with James and me tomorrow? Normally we leave at six but since I’m on my much-needed vacation, we won’t leave until seven. Want to join us for an hour?”
“Sure,” Mack said. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot, how’s that?” He kissed Andrea, and stepped out onto the deck. “Good night.”
Andrea closed the door behind him, and Mack walked over the boardwalk into the sand. He looked at the stars and listened to the waves rushing onto the beach. He wondered if his parents could see him, and if they could see him, he wondered what they were thinking.
Not only was Maribel asleep when Mack got home, she was asleep when he rose at six-thirty the next morning. He considered waking her to let her know he was leaving early, but she looked peaceful, a strand of blond hair caught in the corner of her mouth, flutters underneath her eyelids.
“What are you dreaming about?” he whispered. But she didn’t waken, and Mack got up to shower. Before he left the apartment, he picked a yellow zinnia from the flowerbed and put it on his pillow, where she would see it when she opened her eyes.
When Mack got to the hotel, Andrea was already behind the wheel of the Explorer with James in the passenger seat, reading his book. Mack hopped in the backseat.
“I hope I’m not late,” he said.
Andrea smiled wearily. “Old habits die hard,” she said. “We’ve been waiting since six.”
“Since six,” James said.
On the way to the airport, Andrea said, “James, the planes at this airport are going to be smaller than the ones we’re used to seeing in Baltimore.” She looked over the seat at Mack. “I don’t want him to be disappointed.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and see a jet,” Mack said.
“I see jets every day,” James said. He paged through his book. “Boeing 747, 767, DC-10. Is there a tower at this airport?”
“I don’t know,” Mack said. “I can’t remember.”
James laughed. “All airports have a tower. It’s where the air traffic controller sits so there are no crashes.” James made an exploding noise and smacked his hands together.
Once they reached the airport, Andrea parked at the far edge of the field so they could watch the planes land. She turned off the ignition, leaned her head against the headrest, and closed her eyes. James, however, became extremely alert and animated; he was a different kid from the one Mack had seen the night before sitting in front of the TV.
“Here comes one!” James shouted. He riffled madly through the pages of his book.
Mack leaned over the front seat. He massaged Andrea’s shoulder with one hand and looked through the windshield. “What kind is it?”
“I can’t tell yet,” James said. The sun was bright and James squinted. Mack offered James his sunglasses and James happily put them on.
“Mom, look!” James said.
Andrea opened her eyes for a second and smiled. “Very handsome,” she said.
The plane landed, its wheels skidding and smoking on the runway. James clapped.
“Turboprop,” he said. “Gets most of its thrust through the propellers.”
“Have we seen those in Baltimore?” Andrea asked.
“Yes, Mom,” James said. Something in James’s tone of voice-(“Yes, Mom, of course, Mom, don’t be silly”)-sounded like a typical teenager. This was what made James so frustrating. He could be so normal-and at other times so impenetrable. Andrea once told Mack that the messages in James’s brain were a code she could only crack randomly, with luck. A code without a key.