“When you have a nice charred coat, you put the tomatoes in. The acid eats the burnt part off the pan. It gets in the gravy. I’ll show you sometime.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Donny said. “Our mother’s is better.”
“For once this idiot is right,” she said. “No one’s is better than my mother’s. I’m okay with that. I have time to perfect it.”
“She’s gotta perfect it,” Donny said. “She needs something to bait the hook.”
“That’s enough out of you.” Brenda smacked him on the head. It was impossible not to get caught up in the high spirits around the table. It was no wonder Connell didn’t come right down when she came home from work, why she had to go up and fetch him.
“I’ve been hearing your car make some noises I don’t like,” Donny said as he pulled on his chin. “You know what I’m talking about?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Let me take a look at it. Maybe I can catch something before it turns into a problem.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I can take it to the shop.”
“They’re gonna charge you an arm and a leg. I’ll do it for nothing, and I’ll do a better job. I can keep that thing running forever.”
“Thank you,” she said guiltily. In her nervousness she had put her finger through one of the lace stitchings on the old tablecloth and broken it. This was going to be even harder than she’d thought. How could she tell him that the first chance she got she was going to buy a much nicer car? She placed her napkin in her lap and pushed herself back from the table.
“You okay?”
“I ate a bit quickly,” she said.
“Brenda’s cooking will do that,” Donny said. “You want to get through it as fast as possible.”
Sharon chuckled.
Eileen wanted to abandon the plan, go downstairs, and come back when she’d be more collected, but there were signs to put up, and she was going to need access to all the apartments.
“Who wants dessert and coffee?” Brenda said after the clinking of forks on plates had died down.
“I don’t want to put you out any more.”
“Nonsense. Have a seat inside. I’ll make a pot.”
Donny led her to the living room. She sat on the yellow floral couch, which had a pattern she’d always found garish and worn areas by the skirt and armrests. She’d considered it a telling detail that they’d bought a big new television and kept this sofa. Now, as she sank into it, she was taken by its softness. The room, which she’d always thought of as a model of how not to decorate, radiated the warmth of shared usage. In the corner sat a small, beaten piano that looked like it might have survived the ransacking of an old saloon. At times she could hear someone practicing up here, and she’d never realized until that moment that it gave her pleasure.
Donny sat on the opposite couch. Sharon came and sat next to Eileen. The television was on, muted; Donny glanced at it out of the corner of his eye.
“Are those yours?” she asked, pointing to the framed artworks on the wall. Sharon nodded.
“I don’t know where she got it,” Donny said. “Nobody in this family has any kind of talent like that. You should see how she does in school. Tell Mrs. Leary how you did on your last report card.”
The girl demurred.
“Go ahead. Tell her.”
“Straight As,” she said in a quick burst.
“I didn’t even graduate high school,” Donny said. “Gotta be proud of this kid.” He had a faraway look in his eye. “I try to help her at the table, but she don’t need it. My little daughter is the same way. She’s like a whip. Not even two years old and she can count to ten. She don’t get it from me, that’s for sure. I tell Sharon to watch you and Mr. Leary. You folks are on another plane. I tell her to be like you. I never knew what an education really meant. I tell her to look at me and just do the opposite.”
“Don’t say that,” Eileen said. “I bet she’s proud to have you as an uncle.” As she spoke, she realized to her surprise that she believed what she was saying. “And you’re going to be a great father to that girl.”
He smiled wearily, accepting the verdict without objection. Brenda came in with a plate of Duplex cookies, followed by mugs of coffee. Eileen searched about for a coaster.
“Don’t worry about it,” Brenda said. “This table’s older than me. It does the job.”
Circular embossments emblazoned the table’s surface like trophies from all-night conversations. They were suddenly so appealing that Eileen wondered for a moment why she’d always been concerned to preserve a pristine surface on her own table, which looked almost as new as the day she bought it, no history engraved on its face.
“I have to tell you something,” she began, as Brenda settled into the couch next to Donny. “It’s not easy to say.”
Brenda, who seemed to have a radar for danger, shifted in her seat.
“Ed and I have decided to move. We’re going to have to sell the house.”
Donny’s eyebrows rose. Brenda took a sip of coffee with two hands.
“That’s great, Eileen,” Donny said. “Where are you moving?”
“To Westchester,” she said. “Bronxville.”
“That’s up by Yonkers, right? It’s beautiful up there.”
It unnerved her a little to hear Donny place it so quickly, though she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he knew every major road within a hundred-mile radius.
Brenda took out a cigarette and flapped the arm of her robe out to sit more comfortably, a gesture that made Eileen unaccountably uneasy. It was then that the smell of smoke, which ineluctably pervaded the apartment, came to her all at once. It was in everything; Connell came downstairs smelling of it. She hated to think of him sitting in it, or of Sharon sleeping in a cloud of the settling vapors. It also angered her that it might be a detracting factor in the minds of potential buyers.
“When is this happening?” Brenda leaked a small stream of smoke as she spoke. Her cigarette dangled at the end of her lip, just as Eileen’s mother’s had so often. She felt her heart hardening toward Brenda, and by extension Donny and Sharon. Brenda was making it easier on her without meaning to.
“Soon. I’m not sure.”
“How soon?”
“I found a house. We’re ready to make an offer.”
“What happens to us?”
“I don’t really know. The buyer can choose to let you stay. He can ask you to go. It’s up to him.”
“There’s a buyer?”
“I’m just thinking out loud.”