Amanda could be so sharp-edged, sometimes.
Of the two girls, Jeannie was easier. (Abby knew she should stop calling them “the girls,” but it would feel so silly to say “the women” and “the men.”) Jeannie was biddable and unassuming; she lacked Amanda’s acidity. She didn’t confide in Abby, though. It had been such a blow when Jeannie had asked Denny to help out during that bad spell after Alexander was born. She could have asked Abby. Abby was right there in town! And then Denny: why had he never mentioned that he had finished college? He must have been taking courses for years, working them in around his various jobs, but he hadn’t said a thing, and why not? Because he wanted her to go on worrying about him, was why. He didn’t want to let her off the hook. So when he sprang it like that—just announced it after lunch that day: yes, he had his degree—it had felt like a slap in the face. She knew she should have been pleased for him, but instead she had felt resentful.
One thing that parents of problem children never said aloud: it was a relief when the children turned out okay, but then what were the parents supposed to do with the anger they’d felt all those years?
Although Denny might not be okay, even now. Abby wasn’t entirely at ease about him. Shouldn’t he be looking for work? Maybe substitute teaching? Or even really teaching! He surely couldn’t be thinking that helping out around the house was enough of an occupation, could he? Or that the odd bits of money she slipped him—a couple of twenties any time he ran an errand for her, never requesting change—could be called a living wage.
Yesterday, she had asked him, “How about your other belongings? You must have more than what you brought down. Did you put them into storage?”
“Oh, that’s no problem,” he’d said. “They’re stashed in my old apartment.”
“So you still have to pay rent?”
“Nah. It’s just one room above a garage; my landlady doesn’t care.”
This was puzzling. What kind of landlady didn’t charge rent unless her tenant was physically present? Oh, so much of his life seemed … irregular, somehow.
Or maybe it was perfectly regular, and Abby had just been sensitized by too many past experiences with Denny—too many evasions and semi-truths and suspect alibis.
Last week she’d knocked on his bedroom door to ask if he could take her to buy some greeting cards, and she’d thought she heard him tell her to come in, but she was mistaken; he was talking on his cell phone. “You know I do,” he was saying. “How’m I going to make you believe me?” and then he’d looked over at Abby and his expression had altered. “What do you want?” he had asked her.
“I’ll just wait till you’re off the phone,” she had said, and he’d told his caller, “I’ve got to go,” and snapped his phone shut too quickly.
If it was a girl he’d been speaking to—a woman—Abby was truly glad. Everyone should have someone. Still, a part of her couldn’t help feeling hurt that he hadn’t mentioned this person. Why did he have to turn everything into such a mystery? Oh, he just took an active pleasure in going against the grain! No, the current, she meant. Going against the current. It was like a hobby for him.
Sometimes it seemed to her that with all her fretting over Denny, she had let her other children slip through her fingers unnoticed. Not that she had neglected them, but she certainly hadn’t screwed up her eyes and focused on them the way she had focused on Denny. And yet it was Denny who complained of feeling slighted!
While she was flipping through her mail the other day, she’d grown gradually aware that he was speaking to her. “Hmm?” she’d said absently, slitting an envelope. Then, “ ‘Wealth management,’ ” she had said, biting off the words. “Don’t you hate that phrase?” and Denny had said, “You’re not listening, dammit.”
“I’m listening.”
“When I was a kid,” he told her, “I used to daydream about kidnapping you just so I could have your full attention.”
“Oh, Denny. I paid you a lot of attention! Too much, your dad always says.”
He just cocked his head at her.