The telephone rang and she jumped nervously staring at it as if she were afraid to take the call.
‘Do you want me to?’ he offered.
‘No, it’s all right.’ She darted a look towards Blair the moment she answered, as if she were embarrassed, her replies abruptly curt, just ‘Yes… yes.. he’s here… no… fine… thanks.’ She replaced the receiver and looking away from Blair this time said, ‘That was Charlie. He’s been very good. Calls most days. Wants to do anything he can to help. I can’t think of anything.’
‘That’s good of him,’ said Blair, saddened by Ruth’s difficulty. Did he have one? No, Blair thought honestly; he didn’t feel any jealousy at Ruth seeing another guy. How could he? That part of it – whatever that part of it had ever been – was over now.
She was alert to the sound of the car, more accustomed to it than he was, saying ‘Here they are,’ before he properly heard it. She half-rose towards the window, then changed her mind and sat down again.
Blair remembered a lot of noise about their entry into the house, of slamming doors and dumped satchels and shouts of hello but it wasn’t like that this time. He heard the door – just – and then they were at the entrance to the room, held in the doorway by his presence. No one spoke or moved for what was only seconds but appeared much longer and then John’s face opened in an eye-awash smile and he shouted, ‘Dad! You’ve come home!’
Blair was standing, waiting, as the younger boy began running across the room. Behind him Paul said, ‘Of course he hasn’t, stupid!’ and John halted before he reached his father, the smile a look of suspicion now. ‘You have, haven’t you Dad? You have come home?’ he implored.
Blair felt the emotion lumped in his stomach and intentionally he didn’t look at Ruth because he wasn’t sure it would remain at just that if he did. He said, ‘I’m home, for a while.’
John backed away, as if he had been physically rejected. ‘What’s a while mean?’
‘It means I’m going to stay here for some time but that then I’ve got to go back, to where my job is.’
‘To where she is,’ said John, utterly hostile now.
‘To where my wife is,’ said Blair. One of the agreements with Ruth, during the uncomfortable lunch, was that whatever happened and whatever was said, he wouldn’t lose his temper.
‘Mom’s your wife,’ said John.
‘This wasn’t what I came here to talk about,’ said Blair.
‘It’s what I want to talk about,’ said the boy.
‘Don’t talk like that to your father,’ intruded Ruth, her face red.
‘Is he your husband?’ demanded John.
‘You know the answer to that,’ said Ruth. ‘Don’t be silly. And don’t cheek your elders.’
Undeterred the smaller boy said, ‘If he’s not your husband then he’s not my father.’
‘Shut up!’ said Blair, his voice loud. ‘Shut up and get in here and sit down. Both of you.’ Damn what they’d decided at lunchtime: everything was degenerating into a hopeless mess and he had to stop it. When neither moved from their position just inside the door he said again, still loud, ‘I told you to get in here.’
Blair tensed, knowing that both were considering whether to disobey him and not knowing what to do if they did. John was the first to move, still attempting defiance in a strutting walk and then Paul. He didn’t strut. He slouched forward, shoulders hunched, both hands in his pockets, an attitude of complete lack of interest. Paul’s hair was longer than Blair remembered or liked, practically lank and almost to his shoulders. Blair knew the boy’s shoes would have been cleaned before he left the house that morning – because Ruth always cleaned their shoes – but now they were scuffed and dirty, as if he’d consciously tried to make them so and his shirt was crumpled, half in and half out the waistband of his trousers. He looked scruffy and self-neglected. John looked better – his shoes had been kept cleaner and there wasn’t as much disregard about his clothes – but it wasn’t a very wide margin. As Blair watched he saw John become aware of how his older brother was walking and try to change the strut in mid-stride, to conform. They sat down side by side and Blair supposed that a child psychologist would recommend that he thank them, for their cooperation. He didn’t.
Trying to reduce the barriers that had come up, Ruth said, ‘Can I get anybody anything, root beer, a…’ She stopped, too quickly, just as she tried to recover too quickly by finishing with ‘… a soda…?’
Paul laughed, a mocking sound. ‘Pretty close, Mom. Almost said coke, didn’t you?’
‘Is that funny?’ demanded Blair.
Paul came back to him, in open insolence. ‘Sometimes she’s funnier.’
Blair’s hand tingled with the urge to slap the stupid expression off his son’s face. Instead he said, ‘When? When she’s in a police station, hearing how you planned big, important robberies? When she’s in court, hearing how you show what a great big guy you are, ripping off nickel and dime stores? When she’s in a doctor’s surgery with a bottle of your piss on the table in front of her, hearing how it shows that you’re part of the crowd, not brave enough to be different, passing around butts with everyone else’s spit on them, in some shit-smelling bathroom? Is that when she’s funny? Is that when she’s a laugh-a-minute, full of wise-cracks and unable to believe her luck at having a son like you, someone she can trust and know she can be proud of?’
This wasn’t how he’d intended to handle it – not that he’d had any clear idea how he was going to handle it – but the bravado had gone now and they were paying attention to him, so it would do. ‘Well?’ he said.
Paul looked away, unable to meet his father’s demand. ‘Just a crack,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean anything.’
‘So tell me what means something,’ insisted Blair not letting him get away. ‘Tell me why my son – a son I love, despite your not believing it – wants to become a thief and a drug dealer. I want to know, Paul. Tell me.’
Paul’s head moved with the aimlessness of a cornered animal and his body twitched, too. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Look at me,’ ordered Blair. ‘Look at me. Stop shuffling like some idiot. And don’t say nothing when I want to know why you stole and why you wanted to sell drugs and why you want to take drugs.’
‘What’s it to you?’ said Paul, trying to recover the insolence.
Blair rubbed one hand against the other, to wipe away the urge. ‘OK,’ he said, extending the gesture to put both hands between them, their own physical barrier. ‘OK, so because of what happened between your mother and me, you can’t believe that I have any more feelings for you. Any more feelings for her, even. So answer me this. If I’d been coming in along the Parkway this morning and I’d seen some perfect stranger, someone I’d never seen in my life before, lay themselves down in front of my car, what would you have expected me to do?’
John looked sideways at his brother and sniggered and Paul sniggered too. ‘Stopped, I guess.’
‘Stopped,’ echoed Blair, glad the boy hadn’t suggested swerving, which would which have taken a lot of the point away. ‘I would have stopped, to have prevented their getting killed. Don’t you think I’m going to try to do something – everything – to stop someone who’s not a stranger – someone I love, despite what you think – killing himself. And not just for yourself. For your mother. And for a younger brother who admires and respects you so much that he actually tries to walk like you, halfway across the room.’
John blushed, at being caught out and sniggered again and Blair wondered desperately if he were penetrating any of the barriers.
‘Not trying to kill myself,’ muttered the older boy.
‘You’ve laid down in the road and invited everyone to run over you,’ insisted Blair, pleased at the way his impromptu analogy was working. ‘You’re not stupid, Paul. Not really. What you’ve done is stupid but you’ve known that it was. Haven’t you known that it is?’
‘Suppose so,’ conceded the boy, reluctantly.
‘Suppose so,’ Blair said relentlessly. ‘You don’t suppose so. You know so.’ There’d been training courses on interrogation at Langley, long lectures on when to be soft and when to be hard. But never in circumstances like these. Was he doing it right? he wondered.