“Before you open your eyes you think, ‘Why does it feel like the light is coming from my left? I thought the window was on my right. Which house is this, anyway?’ Or you get out of bed at night to go pee and you walk into a wall. ‘Whoa!’ you say. ‘Where’s the bathroom gone?’ ”
Merrick said, “Well …” and Abby took on a worried look. Evidently Denny was having one of his unexpectedly confiding moments.
“I love that feeling,” he said. “You don’t know your place in the world; you’re not pegged; you’re not nailed into this one single same old never-ending spot.”
“I suppose,” Merrick said.
“You think that might be the reason people travel?” he asked. “I’ll bet it could be. Is that why you travel?”
“Oh, well, it’s more like I’m just trying to get as far as possible from Trey’s mother,” Merrick said. She swirled the ice in her glass. “The old bat just celebrated her ninety-ninth birthday,” she told Red. “Can you believe it? Queen Eula the Immortal. I swear, I think she’s staying alive just to spite me. It’s not only that she’s a pill herself; I blame her for making Trey such a pill. She spoiled that man rotten, I tell you. Gave him every little thing he ever wanted: the Prince of Roland Park.”
Red put a hand to his forehead and said, “This is so eerie! Is it déjà vu? Why do I feel like I’ve heard this someplace before?”
“And the older he gets, the worse he gets,” she went on obliviously. “Even when he was young he was a hopeless hypochondriac, but now! Believe me, it was a dark day in the universe when the Internet started letting people research their medical symptoms.”
She might have gone on (she usually did), but at that moment Petey came into the room. “Grandma,” he said, “can we have the last of that fudge ripple?”
“What: before supper?” Abby asked.
“We’re already eating our supper.”
“Yes, you can have it. And take Heidi when you go, will you? She’s sneezing again.”
It was true that Heidi had started sneezing—a whole fit of sneezes, light but spattery. “Gesundheit,” Merrick told her. “What’s the trouble, honeybunch? Coming down with something?”
“She does this all day long,” Abby said. “You wouldn’t suppose sneezing would be such an irritation, but it is.”
Petey said, “Mom thinks it’s on account of she’s allergic to Grandma’s rugs.”
“Well, I wouldn’t bring her to visit, then, poor baby,” Merrick said.
“She’s got to visit. She lives here.”
“Heidi lives here?”
“She lives here with us.”
“You live here?”
“Yes, and Sammy’s allergic, too. All night he breathes dramatically.” Merrick looked at Abby.
“Take Heidi to the kitchen, Petey,” Abby said. “Yes,” she told Merrick, “they’ve moved in to help out; isn’t that nice?”
“Help out with what?”
“Well, just … you know. We’re getting older!”
“I’m getting older too, but I haven’t turned my house into a commune.”
“To each his own, I guess!” Abby sang out merrily.
“Wait,” Merrick said. “Is there something someone’s not telling me? Has one of you been diagnosed with some terminal disease?”
“No, but after Red’s heart attack—”
“Red had a heart attack?”
“You knew that. You sent him a fruit basket in the hospital.”
“Oh,” Merrick said. “Yes, maybe I did.”
“And I’m not so spry either, lately.”
“This is ridiculous,” Merrick said. “Two people get a bit wobbly and their entire family moves in with them? I never heard of such a thing.”
Denny cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “Stem is not here on a permanent basis.”
“Well, thank heaven.”
“I am.”
Merrick looked at him, waiting for him to go on. The others stared down at their laps.
“I’m the one who’s staying,” Denny said.
Stem said, “Well, not—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, why is anyone staying?” Merrick asked. “If your parents are really so decrepit—and I must say I find that hard to believe; they’re barely in their seventies—they should move to a retirement community. That’s what other people do.”
“We’re too independent for a retirement community,” Red told her.
“Independent? Bosh. That’s just another word for selfish. It’s stiff-backed people like you who end up being the biggest burdens.”
Stem rose to his feet. “Well,” he said, “I guess Nora must be fretting about her supper getting cold,” and he stood waiting in the center of the room.
Everyone looked at him in surprise. Finally Merrick said, “Oh, I see. Clear that tiresome woman out of here; she tells too many home truths.” But she was standing up as she spoke, draining the last of her drink as she moved toward the front hall. “I know, I know,” she said. “I see how it is.”
The others rose to follow her. “Here,” Merrick said at the door, and she thrust her empty glass at Abby. “And by the way,” she told Denny. “You’re supposed to have a life by now. You’re only putting things off, scurrying back home on the slightest excuse.”