“And you live in the city, you said?”
“We do.”
“Which part?”
“Queens.”
“Parts of Queens are so lovely, aren’t they? I actually have a brother in Douglaston.”
Douglaston was another world entirely. Eileen paused. “We’re in Jackson Heights,” she said.
“One of the garden co-ops?” Gloria asked, raising her brows again in what looked like a hopeful manner. “I hear they’re quite beautiful.”
“We own a house,” she said. “A three-family house.”
“Okay.” She was writing things down. “And you’re looking to move to Bronxville specifically? Or is it this general vicinity you’re interested in?”
“Bronxville.”
She looked up from the pad, beaming. “Isn’t Bronxville just beautiful? When my husband moved us here I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”
“I used to work at Lawrence Hospital,” she said. “Years ago. I remembered loving it.”
“So you liked the house you saw. What did you like most about it?”
“The size.”
“How many bedrooms do you want? Three? Four? Five?”
“At least four,” Eileen said, feeling like a drunk picking the figure in the middle.
“Okay! That’s a start. Now, what’s your price range?”
Eileen thought for a minute. “It depends,” she said, “on whether you’re asking me or my husband.”
Gloria laughed. “But that’s why we love them, isn’t it? Men will lay their heads anywhere. I’m always trying to get my husband to consider moving to a bigger house, to tell you the truth. There’s nothing wrong with living up to your means. Does your husband work on Wall Street? The train ride down is so easy.”
“He’s a college professor.”
Another silence ensued, another appraisal from Gloria.
“So, four bedroom. Close to the train, or no? Does he teach in the city? NYU? Columbia?”
“We’ll both be driving,” she said flatly. “He teaches at Bronx Community College.”
“Do you want to be in the school district?”
“It’s not necessary. My son Connell will be going to school in the city.” She paused for effect, then added, “To Regis,” expecting the revelation to inflate a protective balloon of prestige around her, and indeed the agent raised her brows.
“Well!” Gloria said. “He must be a bright young man!” Then she punctured the balloon. “My husband went there. It’s all he ever talks about. I get tired of hearing about it. I have all girls, but if I’d had a son, I would have sent him there myself.”
Eileen had to fight to suppress her urge to correct the woman. You didn’t “send” your son to Regis: your son took the scholarship exam in November and you prayed for a letter inviting him to the interview round; then, after the interview, you prayed again that he’d aced it—actually prayed, no figure of speech, even if you never prayed otherwise. Then you gathered around your son as he sat at the dining room table and opened the letter that informed him he’d been admitted, and when he said he didn’t want to go to an all-boys’ school that was full of nerds, you told him he was going and that he’d thank you later, and you saw a little grin flash across his face, though he was trying to pretend to be annoyed. And when you said, “Your grandparents would have been so proud,” you felt something in your spirit lift, because you had a responsibility to them that you’d carried for years, and now you could hand off part of it to him. And you saw that he understood somehow what it meant for this to have happened, that he wasn’t the only person involved. You imagined your father looking over your shoulder, nodding silently, and your mother, that enigma, was there too, and you could almost see her smile at the thought of what might become of the boy, of all of them, the living and the dead.
“So what’s a comfortable range? Over a million? Under a million?”
She had been thinking she could afford as much as four hundred thousand. Once they sold the Jackson Heights house and paid down the taxes and commissions, they’d have enough for a good down payment, but four hundred thousand was the upper limit. It was a long way off from “under a million,” but that was her reply.
“Anything else I can work with?”
“I want a house that makes an impression from the street,” Eileen said. “A house that almost pulls you up into it. A big, impressive house.”
? ? ?
Sunday after Mass, instead of taking to the couch, Ed packed a picnic lunch for the three of them and drove them to their spot near LaGuardia. She spread the blanket and they ate the strangely spartan sandwiches he’d prepared: turkey on bread, no mayo, no mustard, no lettuce or tomato; they weren’t even cut in half.
It was the first hint of repose they’d had in who knew how long. She wanted to enjoy it as a family, but Connell took out the gloves, bounding around like a buck, and Ed rose to gratify him.
The sun was out after a sojourn behind some clouds. Planes glinted in the sunlight and gradually diminished in the distance, leaving a trail of noise. A light breeze took the edge off the heat. The moment struck her as perfect, in the way that quotidian moments sometimes did. She tried to freeze it in her mind: the acid sweetness of her apple, the crunch of it against her teeth, the smell of the grass. It was cheating, in a sense, to circumvent the natural sifting process of memory, but she found that those moments when she stopped and thought I’m awake! as though in the midst of a dream, were ones she remembered with an uncommon clarity.
Ed stood sturdily, a bit stodgily, as he waited for throws to arrive, though a surprising spring entered his step when he had to move laterally. His button-down shirt and dress slacks weren’t conducive to the activity, but he adjusted gamely. Connell’s accuracy suffered in his enthusiasm to return the ball almost as quickly as it landed in his glove. They started out close together. Connell seemed to want to spread out and drifted steadily back. Ed arced his throws in broad parabolas, and Connell threw on a line, though in his zeal he would sometimes overshoot and send Ed scurrying to retrieve the ball before it reached the street. A row of parked cars flanked them on either side. The last thing she wanted was for the pastoral quality of the moment to be shattered along with a window. Ed began to call Connell closer. The boy resisted at first but crept forward when Ed held the ball in his mitt and waved him toward him. They were back to a distance not much farther apart than they’d been when they first started throwing. Ed signaled to him to slow it down.
“Not so fast,” he said. “We’re just having fun.”
“I’m not throwing that hard, Dad,” Connell said.
But she could tell he was. He seemed to be reaching back and giving the throws all his strength. Ed was catching them, but he looked almost frightened at their speed.
“Slow it down,” Ed said, his voice skirting anger.
“Why? Can’t catch it?”
Connell unleashed a throw that came at Ed like a fist. Ed stepped aside and let it sail past. He gave the boy a look and went to retrieve it.
“That’s enough,” she said when Ed was out of earshot. “Your father asked you to stop throwing so hard.”
“I’m not! I’m not throwing my hardest.”
“Just listen to him.”
“Okay,” he said. “Relax, Mom.”
Ed looked more defeated than angry. He was at the mercy of the Darwinian logic of an adolescent, and he stood for a minute, seeming to consider his options, then threw the ball to Connell, who snatched it out of the air midhop.