Malcolm waited until he heard his sister’s voice on the line, and then he shouted hello from the background. He told his mother that he was taking the empty gas can out of her garage because he needed a second. A few minutes later, taking turns slowly, he made his way to the gas station and filled both canisters. Then he rolled along Seneca to the Half Moon. The fa?ade looked damp and forlorn, badly in need of new shingles. There were thick icicles hanging from the roofline. He pictured one breaking off and impaling a passerby. The place needed so many things—new gutters, a whole new roof, the list was too long, and if he stopped paying attention for even one day, it grew longer. He looked up at the second floor windows and imagined someone looking down at him.
None of the other businesses had bothered clearing their sidewalks, not with the power still out and another storm coming on the heels of the last. Power was on at the bank. He asked the teller to write his balance on the receipt. Outside, he looked once and then tore it into a dozen pieces. He’d have to ask his mother for a loan. He had no choice. He’d get it back to her on a payment plan somehow. No one could ever know. Not Mary, not his friends, not Jess, not anyone. She had to have more than social security and her little salary from the school district. She should see a doctor, he knew. A specialist. He’d called her regular doctor a few weeks ago to ask what he recommended, but that doctor hadn’t thought much of what Malcolm described. She was forgetful at times, sure, but she was seventy-two. Malcolm searched on the internet, but it led him nowhere except to wonder what exactly a doctor could do for her anyway. There was no medicine that would help long-term. Everything he read online about signs of memory loss—or not loss, exactly, more like confusion—all had to do with prevention. A diet and exercise program she should have been on since she was thirty.
* * *
Aside from the bank, nowhere seemed to be open except Food King, a smattering of cars in the lot. Casually, without realizing he was doing it, he looked for shoes sticking out of the snow, looked for any lumps that might be shaped like a human man. He slowed as he passed the bus shelter, the long bench that might appeal to a person staggering home late at night in bad weather. He looked carefully at the clutter of cans and bins and stored landscaping equipment behind the mechanic’s shop. The door of the Salvation Army bin was warped. Had anyone checked in there? He left the car running in the middle of the street and walked over, peered inside. He pictured Tripp sleeping peacefully, tucked into a pile of old winter coats and sweaters, but the bin was empty. The traffic lights had all been switched to flashing yellows. The trains weren’t running, the signals still out.
He drove slowly past the library, and then, seeing a half-buried realtor sign advertising an open house, he remembered something from a few years before. He kept driving toward the edge of town, where the houses were set farther apart, and then turned toward the busy road that separated one small part of Gillam from the rest. It was a vague memory, but it was growing sharper in his mind. A few years before, Patrick had looked at a house over in the new development, and made Malcolm come with him. “Fifteen minutes,” Patrick said. “Tops. Just a little detour.” They were on their way to a golf course in Westchester to celebrate their buddy’s fortieth, but first Patrick wanted to walk through an open house, get a quick look at the place for his college friend, to see if it was worth his friend driving from the city to check out.
“Nasty divorce,” Patrick explained that day. He told Malcolm to stay in the car if he wanted, no need to come in, but Malcolm followed anyway and stood patiently aside as Patrick peppered the realtor with questions. He followed Patrick up the stairs and down the hall as he glanced into bedrooms, opened closet doors.
“Your friend has this kind of money?” Malcolm asked as they were walking back to Patrick’s car. The house was huge and expensive, the area it was in far nicer than any other section of town. Divorces were expensive, too, but apparently this friend could afford both.
“Yeah,” Patrick said. “But he’s a good guy. I guess I’ve always talked this place up. Gillam, I mean. He’s curious. And he has to decide pretty quick because of school and everything. They’re in the city now. The kids are in private school. So it’ll be a big change.”
It was a habit they’d inherited from their parents, the second half of the sentence laid out in opposition to the first. He had money but he was a good guy. To both admire money, want it, and be suspicious of it, too. To consider anyone with money a species slightly different from their own. Anyone in their crew could make a billion, but they’d still understand what it meant to worry. It was present in them no matter where they ended up, just the same as their eye color, their height; the patina of a childhood made up of hand-me-down sneakers and overhearing their parents discuss layoffs, strikes; buying the expiration day meat and their mothers saying it was fine as long as it was cooked to well-done. When people were raised without that worry, you could feel it just by standing near them; something about the way they spoke and moved. It couldn’t be learned.
“He won’t want to be in the suburbs, though, will he?” Malcolm had asked at the time. “Newly single?”
“He got the kids,” Patrick said.
“Ah,” Malcolm said, and immediately imagined Jess calling him out for something, his old-fashioned assumption that the wife always got the kids.
“But why Gillam? If I had this kind of money, I’d get one of those sick houses on the water in Mamaroneck.”
They were still within the bounds of Azalea Estates, Patrick driving slowly so they could look at every house, every yard. There were no weeds, not a single sprig of boxwood that rose up above the rest. “You? No you wouldn’t. You’d stay right here. And anyway, what do you mean? Gillam’s a great town. You don’t like it here?”
“I really don’t know whether I like it or not. It’s just home.”
“You’d get it if you had kids,” Patrick said. Sometimes Malcolm knew what Jess meant about people being smug when it came to their families.
Malcolm shrugged. “I get it. Even without kids.”
“I know you do.” Patrick glanced at him as he put his blinker on and turned. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Is that stuff, you know, the doctors, you and Jess—”
“Nah, we’re done.”
“Yeah?” Patrick nodded. “And you’re good with that?”
“I’m fine.” Malcolm shifted in his seat. “I mean. The last time—”
“I know. That was really tough. You guys were stoked. Everyone was.”
“Yeah. Jess is struggling.”
Patrick frowned, kept his eyes on the road. “Siobhán said something about adoption maybe? Are you guys thinking about that?”
“Jess has brought it up a few times, but I don’t think she’s all that serious. She sort of raised the idea and then dropped it. It would take years and we’ve already put in so many years. At one point maybe I’d have considered it, but now? I’m just tired. I need a break. We need to move on.”
“I get it. You feel how you feel. When Siobhán was pregnant with Jack, it was as if she completely loved him as soon as she got pregnant and kinda got mad at me that I didn’t. I said I did but she knew. It took until meeting each one of them if I’m being honest, and sometimes a little longer. So assuming Jess is more like Siobhán, I guess what I’m saying is that she’s going through something slightly different, losing this baby.”
They turned onto the main road.
“But what do I know?” Patrick asked after a mile or so. “I was never in your position. I can’t imagine going through what you guys have been through.”
Malcolm nodded. He’d been through it, too, not just Jess. He felt a heaviness pressing in on them and didn’t want to ruin the day they’d been looking forward to.
“I’d probably get a weird one anyway,” he said, trying to lighten things a bit.
Patrick smiled. “You’d get one who can’t keep his finger out of his nose. Or who can’t stop fiddling with himself in school.”