“Artie went over to check on the house,” she said. “He went to see about the smoke.”
“Oh good,” Malcolm said. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn the day before, but what had she worn to bed? Her hair was twisted up, pinned in some complicated way, but a fringe still stood straight above her forehead like a tiara.
“You look exhausted, Malcolm.”
“Listen, Mom,” he said. “The bar isn’t doing so well. You might as well know that. I feel like a huge loser and I don’t know why I didn’t tell you sooner. I just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“What? Would you please come in? Come in here this minute and don’t say that.”
“I have to go see Jess. I’m sorry. We’ll talk later. I’ll come by. I promise.”
“Jess is back? Okay, but, Mal? Honey? You could never be a loser. I just said to Artie that something’s wrong with Malcolm. I know everything with Jess and all that, but I said to Artie it’s more than that, he’s not himself at all.”
* * *
“Hi, Maureen,” he said when he got to Jess’s mother’s house.
“Malcolm,” Maureen said, solemn as a funeral director. She kissed him on the cheek and then she hugged him tight, something she’d never done before. “Come in. You want something to eat? You have power? Ours just came back.”
When he walked into the kitchen, he found Jess sitting at the table spreading jam on a piece of toast. Her hair was wet, and she was wearing the same Gillam High School sweats she’d worn to breakfast the first time he stayed over.
“Malcolm,” she said, astonished, as if he’d traveled a thousand miles and not four blocks. She jumped up to take a stack of magazines off a chair, but he refused to sit.
“Are you staying here tonight, Jess? Or coming home? I thought I’d check since you don’t have your car.” He sounded gruff. Formal. He could hear it in his voice, but he couldn’t take it back.
Jess looked at her mother, but Maureen Ryan was slowly backing up toward the stairs. A moment later they heard a door click closed up there.
“What do you want me to do?” Jess asked.
“What do you want to do?”
Had she called Neil? Had she filled him in?
“I want to come home.”
He nodded. Good. That was good. He sat heavily. He leaned over his knees. He felt her hand on his back.
“Malcolm,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Then come home,” he said.
eleven
Malcolm got through the Thursday birthday party he’d booked—the power came back on at the bar in the nick of time—but André couldn’t make the appetizers the group had picked because their supplier was delayed by the double storms. “I can run up to Food King,” he offered. And when the whole staff looked at Malcolm, waiting to hear what he’d say, he realized they’d known for a very long time how precarious things were. It was one thing for him to live like that, but they had families and lives, too. “Good idea,” he said, plucking two twenties from his wallet. How much did a few boxes of frozen pigs in a blanket cost? Malcolm worried Billy would show up, but he didn’t, and it ended up being a decent night. There was a lot of laughing, in any case, and the group stayed late. Roddy didn’t show.
“Has anyone heard from him?” Malcolm asked, but no one had, not since the previous Friday, the night of the first storm. Malcolm hoped that meant he’d heeded his advice and taken off.
When they were closing, Malcolm told Emma he’d be out of town for a day or two, so she’d be in charge. He was sorry to leave her stranded on a weekend. “Not that you’ll be running,” he said. A joke, but it had no mirth behind it.
“You never know,” she said. A kindness.
It was a plan that had formed that very hour, as he was cleaning up after the party and trying to figure out what to do. He couldn’t wait around for Billy to show up at his house, not with Jess back home, not with things feeling like they might get better now. Surely, he had a card to play, if only he could come up with it. He had to see Hugh face-to-face.
“If something else comes along for you,” he added. “Any of you. I—”
“Hey,” Emma said. “You think I’d stay if I didn’t want to be here? That any of us would? No.”
The next morning, Friday, a full week after the first storm, Malcolm drove Jess to the city to pick up her stuff from Cobie’s. While Malcolm waited in his car, Cobie tapped on his window and said she just wanted to say hello. She’d been walking the dog when she spotted him.
“Hey,” he said, slightly embarrassed when he remembered the last time they’d spoken. “Glad to have your guest bedroom back?” he asked.
She smiled. “I’d forgotten how much space she takes up for someone so skinny. How many sweatshirts does one straight woman need?”
Malcolm relaxed. It was fine. Cobie didn’t think he was a jerk. She said she’d like to visit sometime soon. Malcolm said they’d like that, anytime, he knew how much Jess loved Cobie’s boys, and he hadn’t seen Astrid in ages.
“It’ll take a while, probably,” Cobie said. “Day by day right?”
“Right,” Malcolm said. It was something he’d noticed himself. He was so happy to have her home, so completely relieved, that he was confused about why it also made him feel like something he’d been wanting to say had been muffled. Like they’d gone through so much, the worst period of his life, and within twenty-four hours old patterns were already emerging. Malcolm put an empty box of cereal back in the cabinet. Jess left her sneakers on the stairs where one of them would trip on them and break their neck. They were both swallowing all those petty domestic grievances, but neither one had any doubt that they’d return. And then what? What did all the heartbreak get them if not a little wisdom? She wanted to ask him if he forgave her, he knew she did. But it wasn’t a question he could answer, most likely for a very long time. Had she forgiven him?
Patrick was almost as shocked at Jess’s return home as he’d been by her departure. “She’s back in the house? You’re back together?” he was incredulous. Before Malcolm could answer, he added: “Why?”
And then he said sorry, but it just didn’t make sense. They didn’t have kids. There was no reason to stay together. And then he apologized again.
Why? Malcolm thought. It was a good question. Another one he couldn’t answer.
“By the way,” Patrick added. “Me and Siobhán, all of us, no one is talking to Neil. I had no idea—”
“I know, I know,” Malcolm said. Day by day, like Cobie said. Eventually, the burden they were carrying would become lighter.
“I did things, too,” Malcolm said. “Things that hurt Jess.”
“But not that,” Patrick said. “No way would you have ever done that.”
* * *
Jess drove straight to Neil’s after they dug out her car. Malcolm didn’t offer to go with her, though she saw the thought cross his mind when she said she’d see him at home later. She squeezed his arm to remind him that there was no reason to worry.
Neil answered the door with a cold expression, and for a moment she thought he might not let her inside. He followed her around as she gathered her things, and told her it was stupid to go back to Malcolm, that she’d already done the hard part by leaving, it didn’t make any sense, that maybe she didn’t want to be happy, did she ever think of that, that she was making a huge mistake. He told her he guessed he was wrong about her. He thought she was a smart, levelheaded woman who’d married a man below her and out of loyalty and kindness had stayed with him far too long but in fact she was a drama-seeking woman just like his ex, just like all women, maybe, and he guessed she didn’t care whom she hurt in her pursuit of attention. She was just another woman panicking about middle age and trying to grasp one last high, and that high had come at his expense. At the expense of his children, who’d gotten to know her.