Gabriel was a mix of honey and vinegar, a son Ari Kercheval ought to have been demonstratively proud of but wasn’t. His qualities weren’t consistent with those lauded during the course of Aristide Kercheval’s lectures on “being his own man,” so he viewed his natural inclinations with increasing antipathy. Gabriel Kercheval’s goodness to Harriet put her in the unusual position of loving him and very much preferring non-reciprocity. Tamar would jokingly complain of feeling unloved by her son, and rather than laugh or reassure her, Harriet would just say: Well . . . Whatever Gabriel cared for, he cared for at the cost of his father’s approval, or so he thought. Harriet could hardly say, Blessed are those unloved by the Angel Gabriel, but intuition told her that being loved by him would be terrible.
Ambrose Kercheval was seventh on the list. Ambrose and his white silk shirts with the splash of red dyed all around the back of his collar so that seeing him from behind always conjured up morbid thoughts. These shirts were the early works of a well-known designer, a good friend of Ari’s from university. The bloodstained look was one that none of the stylish men of the day really wanted to get behind—this was years before his breakout piece, the unisex octopus jacket that took everybody by surprise with its eight-sleeved allure. Failing to show support for a friend was unthinkable, so Ari contemplated that fledgling collection and ordered two of the red-collared shirts, these being the least garish option. Having ordered two shirts, he received two hundred, all of which he had to pay for . . . some error in the order log. But Ambrose was fine with it. Ambrose Kercheval was mostly fine with whatever.
He heard that Rémy had submitted a paternity test, and he was fine with that; he empathized as Rémy made peace with the result. The kid must have been hoping and praying that he was somebody else’s son. Sorry, Rémy, you’re mine. Sorry. There were certain gestures he made as he said those words—tiny movements—but they must have really bothered Rémy because he later replicated them when describing the scene to Harriet. Ambrose had lightly patted the crown of his own head and gathered air in his fingers just above the region of the fontanelle, as if attempting to restore unity to the pieces of some sort of helmet—a flimsy one, only paper, perhaps—but it had lasted until that moment. Like his skull was leaking and he was just trying to sort it out without saying anything . . . Rémy stopped talking, his words fixed in some gummy web in disgust, and when Harriet asked him why he didn’t continue, Rémy said: That’s all.
Ambrose could be in the same room as his nephew Gabriel for a long time before offered a gently avuncular greeting. The younger Kercheval blinked a few times before saying: All right, Uncs? and the blinking was a tactful admission that up until then he hadn’t really registered that he had company. Ambrose was fine with that too. And he gave every impression of being fine with Kenzilea’s leaving him. According to Kenzilea, she’d moved out without hearing a murmur from her husband’s direction. But in his wing of the house there was a room only Ambrose and Ms. Danilenko the housekeeper had known the contents of until the tabs Margot kept on Ms. Danilenko’s dusting schedule paid off and Harriet’s mother was able to lead her by the hand into a cavern of shrouded forms. The room was wall-to-wall presents, wrapped and unwrapped, large and small, everything still in its packaging or accompanied by purchase receipts so the recipient could return them if she wanted to. Birthday presents, Christmas presents, anniversary presents, joke presents, “just because” presents, curios spotted while traveling, all selected with Kenzilea Kercheval in mind, all brought to that room and kept there because at the last moment Ambrose had reconsidered. He’s mental, Ms. Danilenko blurted out. Just mental! She had been keeping count, and month by month the number of unsuitable gifts increased. He’s going to need a house of his own to hide it all in.
Rémy was number eight. Last on Harriet’s list, and less and less readable as she turned fifteen, then sixteen. He was the only Kercheval Harriet ever heard saying, Fuck this family, though she was sure he wasn’t the only one who ever felt that way. If Rémy’s saying so had ever ruined the mood, it didn’t anymore. The words held more animosity than the tone in which they were said, and according to Ari, it wasn’t a real family gathering until they’d heard this from Rémy at least once. Perhaps the others thought he said it too often to actually mean it.
Harriet liked and didn’t like the way Rémy watched her mouth very closely, with a focus her words didn’t merit. He’d look into her eyes, and then his glance trailed back down, comparing statements. She kept her reaction under control by reminding herself that Rémy didn’t do this to make her or anybody uncomfortable; he was doing it because his hearing was impaired and he relied quite heavily on lip-reading. Rémy was making sure he didn’t miss anything; she knew that. That look of contemplation wasn’t intrinsically lustful—except when it was. For instance: a couple of years after Rémy had left the school he, Harriet, and Gabriel attended, there was still a corner of the common room that was referred to as Rémy K’s corner. That was where Rémy used to sit reading with a shawl thrown over his legs, the very picture of an Andalusian old maid. Other boys occasionally commented on the gheyness of this pastime (you’d have to disrupt his reading to do this; you’d have to go over to him and make him look up at you), and Rémy would either say Yup yup and go back to his book, or he’d cast his blanket aside and begin a heterosexuality-threatening game of kiss chase, which he so rarely lost that by the time his schooldays came to an end, the only boys who continued to use ghey as a derogatory term in his earshot were the ones who wanted to see if he was up for a snog and had never learned how to ask nicely.
Gabriel tutored Harriet on weekends to make sure she kept up with the rest of her class. And Harriet liked it, and she didn’t like it when just minutes after she’d got her room spick-and-span in preparation for a lesson, Rémy wandered in, asked to borrow a book (Rémy liked Zola too!), and turned everything upside down again in the course of his search for said book. It was strange . . . Rémy couldn’t have known that just an hour earlier this skirt had been scrunched up behind the door and that mug could have been set on the windowsill, but his untidying was so exact it was like he’d cranked a dial on a time machine. Gabriel never said anything about her shambolic living conditions. He’d just clear a space and take a seat, and everything he saw when he looked around added to the marks against her. They weren’t marks he’d ever reveal if he could help it, but they were there.
* * *
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RéMY STARTED WORKING FOR ARI’S company soon after he left school. This wasn’t what he wanted, but Ari was quite clear on not wanting Rémy working for anybody else, so all the boy’s other prospects fell through. Sorry, but your uncle’s a big man . . .