They walked silently to the car.
As she unlocked it, her brother gazed at her over the roof. “Look. I’m sorry. I just—” He sighed loudly. “It’s just a difficult time.”
“Don’t be scared about fatherhood,” said Tommy. “And don’t jump down my throat about how I know nothing. Not firsthand. But you’ll do it well. And one of us needs to pass on those Woody Guthrie genes, right?”
Dani smirked. “You’d have to be assuming they skip generations.”
She went to bed that night with a sense of relief; maybe they had worked something out, like a stubborn splinter.
On Sunday morning, she awoke to find that, once again, Dani had been up and already helped himself to coffee and toast. Morty would be sleeping in, so she assumed Dani was out for a walk. He had always needed exercise to keep himself calm. (In all likelihood, had he been a schoolboy now, he would have been diagnosed with ADHD. Morty was constantly fielding questions about “learning challenges” and childhood reading.)
Feeling restless—and because Dani was family—she decided to strip his bed and get a head start on laundry.
His open backpack lay on the blanket chest at the foot of the bed, and when Tommy pulled the covers off the bed, it flipped onto the floor—a corner of the quilt had been trapped beneath it—and spilled. Among the contents, she saw an antique book. She didn’t need to pick it up to recognize it. It was Morty’s rarest edition of David Copperfield, inscribed, with an elaborate sketch, by Dickens’s illustrator, Phiz.
For a moment, she stood without moving in the middle of the guest room, the quilt bundled loosely in her arms. The interior of the house was silent. Tree limbs, now bare, nudged the shingles above her head, a subtle creaking and scraping.
Abandoning the tangle of sheets, she carried the book downstairs. She set it, on a clean linen towel, in the center of the kitchen table. She waited, her back against the counter. At first to her dismay, and then to her perverse relief, Morty showed up before Dani. He spotted the book before he’d even had a chance to say good morning.
As usual, he was fully dressed; he wasn’t the type of artist who relished the luxury of nightwear worn well into the day, not even on weekends.
He looked from the book to Tommy. “Davy’s joining us for a spot of tea?”
“Don’t ask.”
Morty sat at the table and pulled the book toward him. Gently, he opened its front cover and turned its first few pages. He smiled at the whimsical drawing and fond note for which he had probably paid a small fortune.
“I found it in my brother’s bag. Upstairs.”
Morty sighed. “You were snooping?” He didn’t look up from the book, though he closed it.
“No.”
“Where is he?”
“Out somewhere.”
“Still a restless boy.”
“Morty.”
“What do you want me to say? It’s easy to see he’s in trouble of some kind.”
“Trouble?”
“You don’t see it?”
“Men act strange when they’re about to be fathers.”
“Disappointing.” Morty sighed again. “But you know, I could just put it away—say nothing. We don’t invite him back too soon, but…Tommy, I have no energy for this sort of thing. I’m planning on another good day. I’m nailing swans. Those diabolically long necks.”
“Nailing swans?” She tried to laugh.
“Tommy, he’s your family, not mine.”
She didn’t know how to react. Was Morty being generous—or washing his hands of Dani? But Tommy was appalled. All over again, Dani was the misbehaving little brother handed off to her. She thought resentfully of the way he had praised their parents’ insular life at the restaurant the night before.
“I’ll be in the studio,” said Morty. Abruptly, without waiting for her to say anything more, he went out the back door. He left the book on the towel.
Tommy felt herself breaking down. She reached for her phone and called her brother’s cell. “Where are you?” Her voice shook.
“Walking. In the village. I picked up some doughnuts at that—”
“Please come back now.”
“You okay?”
“Just come back now.”
When he came into the kitchen, through the back door by which Morty had left, she took the bag from him, roughly, and pointed at the table. “This is the end of my trusting you, Dani.”
At first he said nothing. He sat at the table and crossed his arms. “Did you ever? Apparently you went through my stuff.”
“I did not.”
Whether or not he believed her, she didn’t care. She would make him get his things and she would drive him to the station.
“How do you know he didn’t loan it to me?”
“Oh, Dani. Come on.”
“He used me,” Dani said quietly. “And he’s used you. For years. He’s fucking used you up. I wish you could see what your life looks like from the outside.”
Tommy couldn’t stop herself from crying. “A whole lot better than your life.”
“My cue to leave, I guess.” He got up and started toward the dining room, the stairs beyond.
She blocked the door. “No. I’ll get your stuff. I’ll drive you to the station.”
“Tommy, listen to me. Someday—”
“No.” She hurried out of the room and up the two flights of stairs, nearly stumbling on the steeper flight to the attic. Angrily, she emptied the rest of the backpack onto the floor. Had he stolen anything else? He hadn’t.
She heard herself sobbing as she stuffed her brother’s scattered clothing into the pack. Forget whatever he’d left in the bathroom.
In the kitchen, she found him standing where she had left him.
He took the backpack. “You know what? I’ll walk to the station.” He looked sad now, not the least bit belligerent, but Tommy, her emotions shifting between rage and shame, was too confused to speak. Without waiting to see if she would, he left.
Morty didn’t come in for lunch that day. At dinner, he suggested they eat in front of a movie. They spoke a total of perhaps five sentences between their tense conversation over the stolen book and their parting for the night. She had no idea whether he was angry at Dani or disappointed in her—or maybe he was caught up in some private creative turmoil. The thing about living with an artist, she knew, was that an artist cannot leave work aside on a desk or in a briefcase. The mind is the desk, the soul or heart the briefcase.
Tommy stayed up later than usual. She answered the past two days’ requests for Morty’s presence at libraries, schools, and pro-literacy luncheons. All the while, she kept an eye on the tiny symbol in the dock that represented her personal inbox. Nothing. No note from Dani—or from anyone else.
Three weeks later, she drove Morty into the city, to speak at a school assembly. After dropping him off, she decided to drive past Dani’s shop. She hadn’t been there since the opening party, but she knew its location.
Or did she? Wasn’t this the corner? She couldn’t find a parking space, but she drove around the block three times. Had it vanished? Back at home, she looked up the number in her address book; when she called it, that robot woman scolded her for trying to reach an unreachable party.