“How much are we talking, honey?” Franny leaned forward and reached for Bobby’s hands. The room was completely silent while everyone waited to hear the number.
“A hundred and fifty. Or so.” Bobby let his mother stroke his hands but wouldn’t look at her.
“A hundred and fifty?” Franny wasn’t thinking. She’d begun to brighten, and looked over her shoulder at Jim, confused. He frowned.
“A hundred and fifty thousand?” Jim asked.
Carmen was the only one who didn’t make an audible reaction, because she already knew the figure in question. It was $155,699, actually, but Bobby was rounding down. He hadn’t told her until it was nearly half as much, and that was a year ago, shortly after he began to work at the gym. It had been sweet watching him, Carmen wanted to tell his family that—seeing him holding a heavy bag steady for a middle-aged woman who wanted to get rid of her upper-arm wattle was nice, and Carmen liked that she could teach him things. Give him pointers. Some of the trainers had been to kinesiology school, but most of them were just gym rats who’d stuck around long enough to make a good impression. Bobby was neither, a pale New York City half-Jew who’d never done more than jog on a treadmill. The ladies found him unintimidating, and he reminded them of their sons up north. He was popular. If he’d only stuck to that, it would have been fine. They probably would have been married by now, maybe even living closer to the beach. But Bobby had liked the idea of easy money, and what was easier than making a milkshake?
Bobby nodded. The purple in his cheeks had shifted into a slightly greenish tint.
“Hmm,” Jim said. “We’ll talk about this later, son, okay? I’m sure it’ll all be fine.” He spoke with his most solid voice, then Franny withdrew her hands, and stood up, searching for a tissue. Sylvia laughed—she’d never heard so large a number said out loud so casually. Her bank account had approximately three hundred dollars in it. She used her parents’ credit card whenever she needed to, which wasn’t often. Charles and Lawrence held hands under the table. Charles wanted to remember to tell Lawrence that this was one of the possible perils of having children—having to bail them out. The chicken smelled heavenly, like butter and garlic and some tiny green things that Franny had snipped out of the planters by the pool, and he was starving.
“Well,” Charles said. “Would someone pass the wine?” Bobby lunged for the bottle on the table, delighted to have something else to do. “Lawrence, how are your werewolves coming along?”
Lawrence began to talk at length about the reshoots in Canada, about the waylaid bags of fur, and though everyone peeked at Bobby in their own time, even Franny made a show of listening to Lawrence talk about the movie, listening as if their lives depended on that rickety sleigh.
Franny and Jim lay next to each other, side by side on their backs, staring at the ceiling. Even before Jim had left Gallant, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars would have been a large sum, but now that there was only Franny’s inconsistent income and even more inconsistent royalties coming in, it was enormous.
“We could cash out some stocks,” Franny said.
“We could.”
“But is it our responsibility?” Franny flipped onto her side, making the bed buck like a small ship on a choppy sea. She rested her face on her hands, and looked as young as she ever had, despite the worried lines between her eyebrows.
“No, it’s not,” Jim said, and rolled over to face her. “Not directly. Not legally. He’s almost thirty. Most young people have debt. Anyone who goes to law school has three times as much debt as that.”
“But they’re lawyers! And can make it back! I just don’t know if this is one of those times when we’re supposed to let him figure it out for himself. Clearly he meant to—he didn’t bring it up, she did. God, that woman. And to think, all night, I was really starting to like her. But she did that to him on purpose!” Franny was getting agitated. “I know, I know,” she said, lowering her voice. “They’re right next door.”
Seeing his wife in such a state should not have thrilled Jim, but it did. It was rarer and rarer for Fran to get so riled up about something that she could discuss only with him—now that the children were so old, they no longer needed to have the endless conversations of their late youth and early middle age, wherein they would talk about their offspring’s friends and teachers and punishments and all the ensuing guilt and pride for days on end.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, and reached out to stroke her face, but she was already rolling back toward the windows, settling in for sleep, and so he reached only her back, but when she didn’t shrug him off, it felt like a small gain.
All the lights were out—even Bobby and Carmen’s, Sylvia could tell from the dark crack of air underneath the door. Something was off, in addition to Bobby’s bank statements. She didn’t know what it really meant to be in debt, but Sylvia imagined men with fedoras and briefcases knocking on the door and threatening to cut off meaningful body parts.
At home, she knew all the noisy stairs, which wooden planks creaked and which ones didn’t. Here, she had to guess and so just stayed close to the banister, placing each foot carefully and slowly before moving down to the next step. She wanted to check the living room sofa. There was no evidence that her father hadn’t been sleeping in bed with her mother, but their room had just felt strange, that’s how Sylvia would have described it, had anyone asked, which they wouldn’t. It felt strange in the same way some places felt haunted, when she just knew that there were ghosts present who were friendly or not but definitely dead.
The downstairs was all dark, too, except for a single light in the dining room that someone had left on by mistake. The house was cool, and Sylvia shivered. She nudged her way over to the wall between the foyer and the living room and squinted into the darkness. She could make out the couch, but not well enough to see if there was anyone sleeping on it. She took a step closer but felt like she’d stepped into the middle of an ocean, completely unmoored and lost, and so she retreated to the wall, touching it with both her hands. “Dad?” she said, quietly. There was no response. Even if he’d been asleep, her father would have answered her. Sylvia waited for what felt like forever and then repeated herself.
Of course he wasn’t there. Everything was fine, except the things that weren’t. Her parents were screwed up, but maybe not as screwed up as she thought. Sylvia was relieved, and embarrassed that she’d even wanted to check. When she was a little girl, and had a nightmare, her father had always been the first one on the scene, opening closet doors and poking his head under the bed. That’s all she was doing—making sure that the monsters were pretend. Sylvia felt immediately tired, though she’d been wide awake until just that moment. She could hardly make it back up the stairs and into her own bed before falling asleep, so secure was she in her fact-finding mission.
Day Ten
FRANNY BUSIED HERSELF IN THE KITCHEN, MAKING Tupperware containers of snacks that wouldn’t melt in the sun. Gemma had the glass ones, of course, nothing plastic. Franny would have to be careful loading up the beach bags. No one wanted shards of broken glass with their grapes. The plan—her plan, which she hadn’t yet shared with anyone but Jim—was to take a field trip en masse, the whole group. They would drive to the nearest beach, which wouldn’t be so crowded on a Monday morning. They’d sit and bake there all day, splashing around and eating jamón and queso sandwiches from the local vendors. Gemma had two large beach umbrellas, and mesh folding chairs with low seats built for sunbathing. Franny would wear her large straw hat, and Bobby would be as happy as he’d ever been. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.