“I wish he was coming by himself,” Sylvia said.
“Who, Bobby? Or Charles?” Jim swam slowly over to Sylvia’s side of the pool.
“Both of them.”
“I thought you liked Lawrence,” Jim said. He extended his arms and grabbed the lip next to Sylvia. She let go and floated onto her back.
“I do, I do, it’s just . . . I’d rather have him alone, you know? When Lawrence is around, Charles has to pay attention to him, like he’s a little dog. They’re not like you and Mom, who are, like, just people who happen to be married to each other, you know? They’re always fixing each other’s clothes and reading over each other’s shoulders. It’s gross.” Sylvia shuddered, her wet hair sending droplets of water flying into the pool. “It’s like, at a certain age, people should get over the idea of being in love. It’s gross,” she said again.
“That’s not true,” Jim said. He wanted to say more, to tell his daughter that she was wrong, but couldn’t find the words.
Franny opened the back door and poked her head out. “Dinner! No bathing suits at the table.”
Jim had found a stack of beach towels in the laundry room, and Sylvia grabbed one after she hoisted herself out of the pool. Her father stayed bobbing in the pool, his hands cupping the concrete rim.
“You’ll be happy to see Bobby, though, won’t you?” Jim asked, staring up at Sylvia. He wanted the children to remain uncomplicated with each other, though he knew it was futile. Parenting adults wasn’t at all like parenting kids, when the whole merry band was inclined to believe you, just because. Sylvia knew what had happened because she lived in the same house as the two of them, and it was impossible to keep it from her. It would have been hard to keep it from a child, but teenagers had ears like suction cups, soaking up everything around them. Bobby didn’t know anything. Jim almost wished that he was staying at home, staying far, far away from the implosion of his nuclear family.
Sylvia had wound one gigantic towel around her body and another around her hair. “Sure,” she said. “I guess.” She waited for Jim to pull himself out of the pool before going inside, but she didn’t say anything else, challenging him to complete his own thought.
The master bedroom was over the study, and had its own en suite bathroom. There was a closet on the left-hand side of the bed and a dresser on the right. Jim had unpacked his things in five minutes flat, and was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Franny transport armfuls of tunics and airy, light dresses from her suitcase into the closet. She went back and forth, back and forth.
“How much clothing did you bring?” Jim took off his glasses and placed them, folded, into his shirt pocket. “I’m exhausted.”
Franny spoke as if she hadn’t heard him. “Well, Bobby and Carmen and Charles and Lawrence all get in at the same time, roughly, so we could either drive down to meet them or they could all drive together, what do you think?”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to all drive together and save us the trip?” Jim knew it wasn’t the answer she wanted. He stood up and cracked his knuckles.
Franny pushed past him, carrying another load. “I suppose so, yes, but if I go pick them up, then maybe one car can go to the grocery store while the other one comes right back,” she said. “Sylvia’s tutor is coming at eleven, so why don’t the two of you stay home? I’ll go pick up Bobby and Carmen, since Charles is renting the car, and then maybe we’ll swap cars so that Bobby and Carmen and Lawrence come right home, and Charles and I will go food shopping. That makes the most sense, really. Why don’t we do that?”
It didn’t make any sense, not to Jim, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. This was the problem with including Charles and Lawrence: Franny would do anything to rearrange plans in order to be with Charles twenty-four hours a day for as many days as possible. It didn’t matter that Charles was married now, or that the rest of her family was here, and the vacation was ostensibly about spending time with Sylvia. The plan had been to use the trip as a celebration for their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, too, but that idea, that it was to be in some way a celebration of their marriage, now seemed like a joke with a terrible punch line. Once Charles arrived, Franny would start laughing the way she had when she was twenty-four, and the rest of them could start setting one another on fire for all she cared. That’s what best friends did: ruin people for everyone else. Of course, Franny would have said that Jim had already ruined everything.
Jim ambled into the bathroom and dug his toothbrush out of the dopp kit. The tap water tasted like old metal, but it still felt good to brush his teeth and wash his face. He purposefully took longer than usual, in part because he wasn’t sure how the night would go. How the night went, so went the vacation. If Franny had softened on the airplane, or in the beautiful house, or while unpacking, that would be a welcome sight. When he came back into the bedroom, Franny was sitting up in bed with Don Quixote on her lap. Jim pulled back the thin coverlet and started to slide in, but Franny put out a hand, flat.
“I would prefer if you slept in Bobby’s room. For the night,” she said. “Obviously not once they get here.”
“I see,” Jim said, but he didn’t move.
“Sylvia sleeps like a hibernating bear, she’s not going to hear you,” Franny said, opening her book.
“Fine,” Jim said. “But we’ll have to deal with this tomorrow, you know.” He picked up the novel he was reading from his nightstand and made his way to the door.
“Yes, we’ll have to deal with this, won’t we?” Franny said. “I love that you make this seem like it’s my choice.” She opened her book and turned her attention to somewhere far, far away.
Jim pulled the door closed behind him and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark.
Day Three
WHEN LAWRENCE DUCKED INTO THE MEN’S ROOM, Charles leaned against the terminal wall, pulled his wheeled suitcase so that it rested against his feet, and shut his eyes. They’d left their house in Provincetown at three o’clock the previous afternoon in order to get to Boston Logan for their evening flight, and flying coach was more exhausting than he remembered. Lawrence was the thrifty one—if Charles had come alone, he would have sprung for business class, at the very least. He was fifty-five years old. What was he saving the money for, if not for transatlantic flights? Lawrence would have scolded him, had he been able to hear Charles’s thoughts. This was a conversation they had on an extremely regular basis. Just because a baby hadn’t come along yet didn’t mean that one wouldn’t, and then wouldn’t he feel guilty about those thousands of wasted dollars floating somewhere over an ocean? Weren’t organic apples/private school/tennis lessons worth it? They were, Charles would always agree, even though he had lately come to believe that their shared dreams of having a family would soon go the way of the dodo, at which point they could resume their happily selfish lives. Almost all of the other couples they’d met at the adoption agency already had their babies—one, if not two—and Charles thought there might be something written in invisible ink in their letter to the birth mothers. I’m conflicted, maybe, or I don’t know, do we look like good parents to you?
The terminal smelled like disinfectant and heavy perfume, a mixture that gave Charles a headache on the spot. He shifted his body to the right, so that he was facing the stream of disembarking travelers. The Spanish ones had better faces than the tourists—better cheekbones, better lips, better hair. When he was younger, Charles would paint from life, but now he just snapped photos with his digital camera and painted from those. He loved that freedom, being able to have anyone’s face in his pocket.