“The thing about caller ID is,” Red said, more or less to himself, “it seems a little like cheating. A person should be willing to take his chances, answering the phone. That’s kind of the general idea with phones, is my opinion.”
He heaved himself to his feet and started toward the bathroom. Behind him, Abby said, “This would explain so much! Wouldn’t it? If he should turn out to be gay.”
Red was closing the bathroom door by then, but he poked his head back out to glare at her. His fine black eyebrows, normally straight as rulers, were knotted almost together. “Sometimes,” he said, “I rue and deplore the day I married a social worker.”
Then he shut the door very firmly.
When he returned, Abby was sitting upright in bed with her arms clamped across the lace bosom of her nightgown. “You are surely not going to try and blame Denny’s problems on my profession,” she told him.
“I’m just saying a person can be too understanding,” he said. “Too sympathizing and pitying, like. Getting into a kid’s private brain.”
“There is no such thing as ‘too understanding.’ ”
“Well, count on a social worker to think that.”
She gave an exasperated puff of a breath, and then she sent another glance toward the phone. It was on Red’s side of the bed, not hers. Red raised the covers and got in, blocking her view. He reached over and snapped off the lamp on the nightstand. The room fell into darkness, with just a faint glow from the two tall, gauzy windows overlooking the front lawn.
Red was lying flat now, but Abby went on sitting up. She said, “Do you think he’ll call us back?”
“Oh, yes. Sooner or later.”
“It took all his courage to call the first time,” she said. “Maybe he used up every bit he had.”
“Courage! What courage? We’re his parents! Why would he need courage to call his own parents?”
“It’s you he needs it for,” Abby said.
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve never raised a hand to him.”
“No, but you disapprove of him. You’re always finding fault with him. With the girls you’re such a softie, and then Stem is more your kind of person. While Denny! Things come harder to Denny. Sometimes I think you don’t like him.”
“Abby, for God’s sake. You know that’s not true.”
“Oh, you love him, all right. But I’ve seen the way you look at him—‘Who is this person?’—and don’t you think for a moment that he hasn’t seen it too.”
“If that’s the case,” Red said, “how come it’s you he’s always trying to get away from?”
“He’s not trying to get away from me!”
“From the time he was five or six years old, he wouldn’t let you into his room. Kid preferred to change his own sheets rather than let you in to do it for him! Hardly ever brought his friends home, wouldn’t say what their names were, wouldn’t even tell you what he did in school all day. ‘Get out of my life, Mom,’ he was saying. ‘Stop meddling, stop prying, stop breathing down my neck.’ His least favorite picture book—the one he hated so much he tore out all the pages, remember?—had that baby rabbit that wants to change into a fish and a cloud and such so he can get away, and the mama rabbit keeps saying how she will change too and come after him. Denny ripped out every single everlasting page!”
“That had nothing to do with—”
“You wonder why he’s turned gay? Not that he has turned gay, but if he had, if it’s crossed his mind just to bug us with that, you want to know why? I’ll tell you why: it’s the mother. It is always the smothering mother.”
“Oh!” Abby said. “That is just so outdated and benighted and so … wrong, I’m not even going to dignify it with an answer.”
“You’re certainly using a lot of words to tell me so.”
“And how about the father, if you want to go back to the Dark Ages for your theories? How about the macho, construction-guy father who tells his son to buck up, show some spunk, quit whining about the small stuff, climb the darn roof and hammer the slates in?”
“You don’t hammer slates in, Abby.”
“How about him?” she asked.
“Okay, fine! I did that. I was the world’s worst parent. It’s done.”
There was a moment of quiet. The only sound came from outside—the whisper of a car slipping past.
“I didn’t say you were the worst,” Abby said.
“Well,” Red said.
Another moment of quiet.
Abby asked, “Isn’t there a number you can punch that will dial the last person who called?”
“Star sixty-nine,” Red said instantly. He cleared his throat. “But you are surely not going to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Denny was the one who chose to end the conversation, might I point out.”
“His feelings were hurt, was why,” Abby said.
“If his feelings were hurt, he’d have taken his time hanging up. He wouldn’t have been so quick to cut me off. But he hung up like he was just waiting to hang up. Oh, he was practically rubbing his hands together, giving me that news! He starts right in. ‘I’d like to tell you something,’ he says.”
“Before, you said it was ‘I need to tell you something.’ ”
“Well, one or the other,” Red said.
“Which was it?”