Earlier that day her uncle had met with her teacher because (1) the bitch — which she turned out to be — was insisting that she rewrite the essay she hadn’t given a passing grade to or she wouldn’t graduate, and (2) he couldn’t understand why her grades alternated between Cs and Ds, since it seemed clear to him that her essays had improved. He had no sympathy for her dragging her feet about the final essay, though Jocelyn knew that he thought Ms. Nementhal hadn’t done a good enough job, if — according to her — Jocelyn’s essays never improved, but wasn’t it the teacher’s fault if she didn’t learn how to make them better? Aunt Bettina had made the appointment to talk to Ms. Nementhal; then, feigning dizziness, she’d sent Raleigh in her place. If she’d really been dizzy, it was because of what she’d just found out about her sister-in-law, who was having sex way too soon after a hysterectomy. Her mother had insisted on a time-out, no texting or calls while she was recovering and Jocelyn was in summer school, and now it was clear why that served her purposes so well. Who wanted to be interrupted having sex?
Bettina had gotten her own message and called Raleigh in the middle of his golf game, in tears. Her uncle had turned into an instant liar — though he hadn’t cut his golf game short. “I’m sure she’s got a good reason for having a relationship with him,” he’d said to Bettina as he came through the front door. “People have reasons we can’t always understand, but if we have faith—”
“Stop rationalizing!” Bettina shrieked. “She told me he’d completed a drug rehab program.”
“Well, for a time I was in AA,” he said. “You don’t hold that against me.”
“That has nothing to do with this,” Bettina said. “He was a landlord in New York City, and he lost his entire building, including his own apartment, and when he met her he was staying on a friend’s foldout couch in Queens, engaged to another one of the addicts.”
Raleigh winced. “We shouldn’t be discussing this in front of Jocelyn,” he said. “Another time, maybe you can tell me how you know that.”
“Another time, I’ll try to jump-start your brain, Raleigh.”
“I’m going to Angie’s to write my essay,” she said. “Is everybody okay with that, or would you like me to send flowers and a note of congratulations to Mom?”
“What if you grow up and you’re as ignorant as you are right this minute?” Bettina said. She answered herself: “Then it’s heredity, I suppose, and we can pity you. You’re not going to her house to write any essay. You’ll go down to the beach and smoke pot, or whatever you do. Probably hatch a plan to murder your teacher, or something that will ruin your life, as if your mother hasn’t done enough! What good did that shrink do her, I want to know. Maybe she met the drug addict in his waiting room.”
“We really aren’t the kind of people who talk this way, are we, Bettina? As if we’re better than people who address their problems?” Raleigh ran his hands through his hair. He said, “I think this news just has to settle in.”
“And when it’s settled in and bored a hole in your heart, what then?”
“It’s so pointless! You’re not going to be able to do anything about it!” Jocelyn said. “Do you think what you say matters? Do you?”
“This is very distressing,” Raleigh said. “We can only hope we’ve got the story wrong.”
Jocelyn noticed that his limp was more pronounced as it got later in the day. He went to the best chair and sat down.
“This is what people’s children put them through, not their sisters,” Bettina said. “This is bad for my health. You’re right. Let her mess up her life, but we’ve got to look out for Jocelyn.” There it was again! The noble, passive-aggressive bullshit.
“Like how?” Jocelyn said. “Adopt me? Go deeper into debt to send me to college so I can make Cs and Ds?”
“Your teacher has a strange perspective on what an essay should be,” Raleigh said. “I shouldn’t say this, but she referred me to an essay by Flannery O’Connor about peacocks. Let her admire whatever she wants, but this essay is no masterpiece, let me tell you. It’s slightly witty, but she goes on and on about some peacock walking around in her front yard.”
Jocelyn burst into tears. “Summer school was just about farming me out so she could have a good time,” she said.
“Let’s not give up hope,” Raleigh said. “Let’s drive to Myrtis’s and see her and try to talk this through. I think that’s what we should do tonight.”
“Why?” Jocelyn said. “She doesn’t want to see us, she wants to be with the drug addict.”
“Please don’t cause us more heartache,” Bettina said. “Jocelyn, if you go over to Angie’s, I want you to promise we won’t get a call from the police telling us you’re smoking pot at the beach.”
“I don’t do that! I don’t use drugs! How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Would we all like to go out and get some ice cream?” Raleigh said.
“Go out, in this state? I wasn’t this upset when they carried me away on a stretcher.”
“Why don’t you go upstairs and lie down then, Bettina?” He turned to Jocelyn. He was looking at her, but she could tell he didn’t see her. “Do you—” His voice broke. “Maybe we could all go to that auction,” he said. “It’s like some reality show is going on in the living room. I feel like I’ve become a raving idiot in my own house. Worse things than this happen all the time. And don’t ask me what they are.”
Bettina whirled around and walked out of the room. The kitchen door did not slam shut because it was a swinging door. Water ran in the sink. Jocelyn looked at her uncle and his eyes met hers. Somehow, the worst of the spell had been broken. Jocelyn felt like vomiting. She went to the sofa and stretched out, kicking off her flip-flops. “Why did this have to happen?” she said. “I don’t want to see her. I don’t. And can you even imagine being in that man’s presence?” Raleigh said nothing. She could hear him breathing deeply. She said, “I don’t even care if you were CIA and she was the Torturer and you’re hiding yourselves like Nazis in Maine and don’t know anybody, because, okay, you know a couple of people, but basically you don’t know anybody. It’s really obvious.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand one thing you just said, Jocelyn.”
“No?”
“Did you mean that we had no friends?”
Now it sounded stupid. Before the golf game, one of his golf buddies had come in for an iced tea. That same morning, someone named Hedda Rae, or something like that, had called to invite them to dinner, and Bettina had lied her way out of it. She admitted she had. “I can’t spend an evening with somebody that boring,” she’d said. Still, Jocelyn thought there was essential truth to what she’d said about their isolation. Truthiness, as Colbert would say. Colbert, who was selling out. How could he? But you weren’t supposed to think about individuals, you were supposed to worry about the planet. The Earth was so fucked. She went into the bathroom and tried to choke up something that wasn’t quite in her stomach, but not in her throat, either. She splashed cold water on her face. She felt horrible.
Music? When she went back to the living room, Raleigh was standing with his hands in his pockets, jingling change and listening to music: more classical sludge, like whale shit, seen blurrily underwater. Hey — that was pretty good! She gave herself a thumbs-up with her yet-again-gnawed cuticle and sank back into the sofa. Her uncle stood with his back to her, looking out the window.
“Will anyone come with me to the auction?” Bettina said. She must have gotten different clothes from the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen. Her baggy slacks were wrinkled, but earlier she’d been wearing a skirt. The T-shirt was also different: dark blue, which accentuated her blue eyes. Raleigh looked blankly at his wife. “Sure,” he said quietly, shrugging. “What about you, Jocelyn?”