“Those for lunch tomorrow?”
“Dinner. Tonight,” Fran said, glancing at the clock.
“I’ve got dinner. I’m about to whip it up right now.”
“That’s okay, we can just have these,” Caleb said, bouncing, all sugared up just from looking at that crap.
“We’re going to have a roast.”
“But—”
“It will be ready at seven-thirty.”
Fran sunk her knife deep into the peanut butter and left the room. Caleb tried to do the same with the fluff but both jar and knife tumbled to the floor.
“Sorry,” he said, squatting to pick it up and then, thinking better of such a reconciliatory gesture, scrambling off with a small whimper, as if she might chase him.
Vida piled up the heavy slices of bread and dumped them in the trash. Walt was making as much noise with his arthritic limbs as he could, demanding to be fed.
“You’re home.” It was Tom. She’d nearly forgotten about him.
“I am. In all my glory.”
How had it all led to this, his leaning in the doorway looking as if she had broken in through a kitchen window? She brushed the crumbs off her skirt but didn’t know what to do with her hands after that.
“I’m glad.” He came toward her with a face she recognized from the beginning of their dates, when she’d answer the door and there he’d be, grinning as if every moment since he’d last seen her had been spent in anticipation of seeing her again. But now that he’d gotten her, brought her to his house to live, how long could that grin — a grin that expected so much — really last? He kissed her, his tongue reaching for hers. He seemed to have no plans to stop kissing her. Hadn’t he seen Fran storm off or heard Caleb squeal? And the roast had to get in the oven or supper wouldn’t be ready till midnight.
“Later, cowboy.” Where did she come up with these phrases?
“Promise?”
He seemed not to remember last night or the night before. He swung a chair around to face her as she unwrapped the roast and set it in a pan. He wanted to talk about her day. He had a thousand questions. She fought them off with short answers as she cut up potatoes, trimmed beans, and boiled water for the gravy mix she’d found in a cupboard. She glared at the clock; at this time in her old life she’d have eaten in the dining hall already. She’d be home in her slippers under a blanket, reading.
By the time she managed to get dinner on the table, no one seemed particularly hungry. Even Tom, who always polished off his meals at restaurants, picked at his plate. Vida couldn’t understand it. The roast had turned out well; the slices looked just like Olivia’s at school.
“So, Stu, what went on today?” Tom tried to be light, but he was worried, deeply worried, about his oldest son.
“Not much. Got up, went to work, came home. Same as you.”
“Where’s that?” Peter asked.
“At E. J.’s.”
“Are those people free yet?” Caleb asked his father.
“It’s a used record store downtown.”
“In Iran? No, sweetheart, I’m afraid they’re not.”
“You have to be really cool to know about it. There’s no sign or anything outside,” Fran said, trying to provoke her brother and insult Peter all at the same time.
“They’ll be out of there soon, I promise,” Tom said. He was too soft with Caleb, as if he were a girl.
“You don’t know that.” Stuart glared down at his plate.
“Only druggies go into E. J.’s. Everyone knows that,” Fran said.
“Who said that?” It was exhausting to watch Stuart fighting on two fronts.
“Mom did. One time we were walking past it and I asked her what was in there and that’s what she said. Drugs.”
“She did not.”
“Yes she did.”
“You’re full of it.”
“Stuart,” Tom said.
Vida got up to make herself another drink. Usually she only had one on weeknights, but there was the problem of that promise. She mixed the soda with the bourbon slowly.
“Why can’t we just give them a bunch of money?” Caleb asked.
“They don’t want our money. They want the Shah and their money,” Stuart told him.
“The what?”
“The American pawn who used to rule their country until the revolution.”
“Where is he?”
“In New York.”
“Why?”
“He’s at some hospital.”
“Cornell. In the city,” Tom said. “He’s got cancer.”
“What kind?” all three of his children asked at once.
He didn’t know.
“Is he having an operation there?” Caleb asked.
“I think so.”
Caleb looked at his father until he explained. “Hers was inoperable. They couldn’t operate.”
“According to one American doctor.”
“Stuart, please.”
You could see around Tom’s mouth the effects of the pain of the last three years. She had found that pain reassuring at first; it had filled her with a sense of security to know that he had been through loss and survived, that he was the type of person who would survive. And wasn’t there a sort of lucky protective coating around people after such a calamity? She had believed that by attaching herself to him she would be protected as well. But now, in his house, perched on a hard chair in his kitchen, she felt like she was back in her parents’ house with all its claustrophobia, all the old inexplicable resentments pressing down on them. She took a long sip of her drink. It kept her from screaming at the top of her lungs.
Stuart scraped back his chair and stood.
“Dinner isn’t over,” Tom said.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” Stuart said, halfway there.
Peter doodled with his fork in the gravy. He’d said nothing since they’d sat down. She had done this to his life, bound him to this seat at this table with these strangers. She glanced at Tom again for a memory of why, of how, but he was intent on cutting through a piece of meat.
Stuart returned, not from the bathroom, Vida guessed, but from a little toke beside an open window. His eyes weren’t red but his lashes glistened, from Visine no doubt, and he slipped into his chair with the catlike movements she recognized from the students she busted at school dances.
Finally it was over. Fran helped her clear without having to be asked.
“What’s for dessert?” Caleb asked.
Thank God she hadn’t gotten any. Another course at this table would do her in. “It’s probably not a great idea to have sugar so close to bedtime,” she said. The clock on the stove confirmed that it was nearly nine.
“We’ve always had dessert,” Caleb said to his father, tears already slipping beneath the round glasses he wore.
Fran, scraping dishes into the trash, said, “I can’t believe you just chucked all those sandwiches. What a waste.”
“I have a candy bar in my bag,” Peter said to Caleb. “You want that?”
Vida opened her mouth to protest, but Tom covered her hand with a squeeze.
Caleb nodded, and wiped his face. Peter got up and came back with a mangled package of Reese’s Cups.
“May I please be excused?” Stuart asked Vida, perfectly politely, the contempt well hidden. It was the first time he’d looked directly at her. His eyes were a pale brown set below soft swollen lids. They were the only part of his body he was unable to make hard and angry. She’d had several students like him over the years, seething, humorless, unattractive boys who made few friends and suffered, again and again, the humiliating passion of unrequited love.
“You may.”
The rest fled behind him. The TV went on and she imagined Stuart hulking over it even before she heard Fran tell him to get out of the way.
Tom still had his hand on hers. He lifted his face, and for a moment, before he could master it, she saw the question, her own pounding question. She wished she could offer him the answer but she couldn’t, and in her fear she turned away, and when she looked back it was gone. Still holding her hand, he asked her to follow him.