20
Danny arrived at the apartment for dinner an hour late, but Joy had expected as much. He worked hard, such long hours. But since Aaron had become so sick, Danny made sure to have dinner with her at least once a week, no matter how busy he was. He did it to be nice, she knew. Which both touched and saddened her. We all prefer to have someone visit for our company rather than be kept company, but she must not be greedy, she reminded herself. He was here, and as always when she saw him in the doorway, she was happy, deliriously happy. Sometimes she thought she would swoon with love for him. He put his arm beneath hers to walk her to the dining room, and she felt safe for the first time in days, since he had last been to see her, to be exact. He comforted her, just by being in the same room.
On the other hand, there he sat, expecting to be fed. Thank god for Wanda, because Joy had forgotten to arrange anything for dinner. She tried to remember what exactly she had done all day that kept her from taking care of dinner for Danny, sweet exhausted Danny coming from work in the cold.
Aaron was in bed. He’d had his dinner already, leftover turkey meat loaf from Joy’s ordered-in dinner the night before. He used to laugh when Joy fed him from the various dinners they had ordered in, saying she was a genius at assembling and rearranging garbage. Wanda had made stuffed cabbage and a cucumber salad for Danny, which she made him every time he was there, despite the fact that neither Aaron nor Joy could possibly digest that particular meal. Danny never seemed to notice he was the only one eating it. Joy was having the meat loaf left over from the leftover meat loaf she’d given Aaron. She watched Danny wolf down the stuffed cabbage in huge, animal mouthfuls. She really ought to have taught him better table manners. It had somehow not held him back in life: he did have a wonderful wife and wonderful children and a successful career. But his table manners … disgusting.
“Mom?” he said, and gently wiped the corner of her mouth with his napkin. “Catsup.”
“Dribbling?” she said. “Time to put me out to pasture.”
She was excited tonight, Daniel noticed. She folded and refolded her napkin. She absentmindedly picked up a lipstick from the cabinet behind her and applied it at the table using the back of her spoon to make sure it was not on her teeth.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
“What? No!” She put the lipstick back. “No. Where would I go?”
“Well, it’s great you were able to get out to the park yesterday, anyway. Was Dad’s friend there?”
“Oh yes. Mmm-hmm. He was there.”
“Nice, isn’t he?” he said.
“Oh yes.”
Joy wondered why she didn’t tell Danny who Karl was. She certainly had nothing to hide. “Daddy just lit up when he saw him.”
Karl had been so gentlemanly, waiting at the gate to the park to let her and her entourage out first. She thought wistfully of Aaron, what a gentleman he had always been. He still was sometimes, an instinct that had outlived his memory. Joy noticed it when she stood up from the table, the way he tried to stand up, his hand reaching out to help her pull her chair back.
“Good,” Danny was saying. “Maybe it will warm up for real sometime soon. This weather is ridiculous. And people don’t understand it’s a symptom of climate change, just like global warming. They think it counters global warming…”
She listened contentedly as he talked about energy, how we squandered it, how there would be no energy left.
“I have no energy. Can you people help me?”
“Mom.”
Danny had devoted his professional life to combatting climate change. If he occasionally lost his sense of humor when it came to the environment, you couldn’t blame him. She just forgot now and then, forgot not to tease him.
“Danny, I’m sorry. That was glib.”
“Sorry, Mom. It’s just that I deal with these idiots all day long…”
He patted her hand, and she had the urge to put her cheek against his, to press against his cheek, to kiss it, to grab both his cheeks with both of her hands and kiss him some more.
She could see he was getting restless.
“Wanda gave Daddy too much fruit today,” she said.
“Did she?”
Joy simply did not want to mention Karl, that was all. It would start up a whole conversation, wouldn’t it? All about the past. The past was too alive to her as it was without stirring up memories.
Danny kept looking at his phone, pulling it out of his pocket, staring down at it as he held it below the level of the table, as if that made it somehow more discreet, like holding a napkin in front of your mouth when you picked an annoying bit of food from between your teeth.
“It’s very rude, what you’re doing,” she said. “Is this the way it’s going?”
“Is this the way what is going?” Danny asked, still looking at his phone.
“Civilization. Everyone always looking at those electronic things.”