“What was that?” Wylie asked.
Michaelson Sr. sat down on the arm of the couch, next to me, with his legs crossed and his arm stretched along the back. The last time I’d seen him, over enchiladas, he was counseling an intervention for Wylie, but he didn’t seem about to confront him now.
“My plan involved a frog,” Darren said. “Actually, several frogs.”
“Where we live — you guys remember — we had a lot of frogs in our backyard,” Donny explained. “We captured them, and put ’em in a shoebox and then stuck ’em in his shoes, so when he took off his skates, right. .” He had to stop, since he was choking on his own laughter.
“He squishes these little frogs with his feet!”
“Oh, man! You should’ve seen the expression on his face!”
All three Michaelsons were paralyzed now, clutching their stomachs and listing from side to side, their laughter coming in breathless hoots.
“And the smell!” Darren said.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s really gross.”
The brothers bobbed their heads up and down in asthmatic hilarity.
“Yeah,” Donny finally got out. “Gross!”
“So, you’re saying you killed them in advance?” I said.
“Well, yeah, obviously. Otherwise they would’ve jumped out of the shoes.”
“How’d you kill the frogs?” Wylie said. I glanced at him, but his tone and face were set and calm.
“We, um, squished them.”
“But carefully, you know, so that they’d still be squishy in the shoes.” Darren wiped a tear from his eye and shook with a few final tremors.
David Michaelson looked at Wylie. “Now, I realize it might not be too politically or animalistically correct,” he said, “but you’ve got to admit it’s pretty funny.”
“You had to see the guy,” Darren said, “running around the locker room with frog parts stuck to his feet, yelling ‘What the fuck! What the fuck!’”
“I thought I was gonna die it was so funny,” Donny added.
“They were probably toads,” Wylie said.
“Is that a fact?” David said.
“Where you live it was more likely to have been toads,” Wylie said. “Wide and fat, with warty skin? Their habitat’s around the Northeast Heights. Some of them are desert toads. Down by the Rio Grande there are a lot of bullfrogs, but up where you are there’s less water, so, yeah, I think you actually killed a lot of toads.”
“Toads, huh?” Darren said. He thrust his hands in his pockets.
“Ah, well,” David said, “boys will be boys.”
“And toads will be toads,” Darren said. Donny elbowed him in the ribs and said, “‘What the fuck! What the fuck!’” and they both cracked up again.
Our mother came out into the room, smiling another brisk and terrible smile. “Who’d like another drink?” she said.
“I would,” Wylie and I said at the same time.
I followed her back to the kitchen, where things were simmering in multiple pots. The oven was on and onions were turning golden in a sauté pan. Everything smelled excellent, and it occurred to me that she was capable of much better cooking than anything she’d served me so far this summer. In the other room I could hear the Michaelsons launching into yet another story guaranteed to please Wylie, probably involving the torture of puppies or the wanton discarding of recyclable materials.
“I think it’s going well, don’t you?” my mother said.
I poured myself another hefty glass of wine. “Are you out of your mind?”
“No, I don’t believe I am. And I’ll thank you not to speak to me in that fashion.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But seriously, Mom, what were you thinking? Can’t we just have one night, the three of us? I finally get Wylie to come home, and this is what you do?”
“David is part of my life now, and you children have to accept that.”
“So’s David’s wife, and you didn’t invite her.”
She kept her back to me, tasting something with her finger.
I considered repeating myself, in case she hadn’t heard me, then thought better of it and headed back to the living room, where a troublesome silence had taken over.
Wylie was sitting with his head practically between his knees, clutching himself for dear life.
David looked up at me with an expression of concern, placed a hand on Wylie’s back, and said, “He’s not feeling very well, I don’t think.”
I saw a shudder run down my brother’s spine.
“I’m fine,” Wylie muttered from between his knees.
“Maybe you should lie down or something,” Donny said.
“I think dinner’s almost ready,” I offered helpfully.
“I’m fine,” Wylie said again, and uncurled his head. “Just a little nauseous.”
“It’s probably all those snacks,” I said.
“No,” he said, “it isn’t.”
We sat there sipping disconsolately from our drinks until my mother announced that dinner was served. There were linen napkins on the table and the good china we once used only at Christmas. For a second the world slipped, loosened around its edges, and I was standing in the past: the smell and heat of candles, the white tablecloth with green trim, my father’s face flushed as he lifted his chin and laughed at something Wylie or I said. All of this — this present day — seemed imaginary and flimsy compared to that memory; it shocked me to think that he was dead and the rest of us, here in my mother’s house, were still alive. Then I sat down.
“Let us pray,” David said. His sons bowed their heads, as did my mother. Wylie and I looked at each other across the table.
“Dear God,” David went on. His voice was relaxed and familiar, as if God were a neighbor with whom he was accustomed to discussing baseball or the weather. “When we sit down in a lovely home with a lovely meal prepared by a lovely woman, in the company of family and friends, we remember to be grateful to you, Lord, and take it as a sign of your continuing and blessed grace which you bestow upon us every day, and we thank you for it. Amen.”
“Amen,” said everybody except me and Wylie.
Across the table, Darren winked at me and said, “Good grub, good meat — thanks, God, let’s eat.”
We were served a fine and complicated meal involving pork tenderloin and braised vegetables and sauces and sides, and I would have eaten a lot had I not spent the entire day emptying the kitchen cupboards. Instead I drank several more glasses of red wine and picked at my food. Fortunately, the Michaelsons were there to pick up the slack, and their appetites were substantial. Wylie, to my amazement, continued to eat without stopping, methodically clearing one helping and serving himself another, as if he were a camel or some other animal capable of storing enough food to last through the lean weeks to come. Seated at the head of the table, our mother poured wine and proposed toasts: to summer, to children reunited with their parents, to old neighbors, et cetera. From the other end of the table David toasted her back, the wet hem of his mustache glinting in the candlelight. Outside, the red sun glowered low in the sky, the horizon soupy and green, the world colored like an infection. We ate.
The first half hour passed without incident. Our mother told stories about the travel industry, describing the outrageously false claims made by fleabag hotels charging luxury prices and the insufferable demands of cheapskate clients who wanted to tour the world for the price of a bus ticket to El Paso. Even Wylie laughed. David asked me how my studies were going, and his boys leaned forward to hear my answer.
“I’m working on my dissertation, I guess.”
“You must be smart,” said Donny.
“Of course she’s smart,” David said. “You know, Lynn, I love art. Whenever I’m in a foreign city, the first place I go is the museum.”