Amanda said it was sort of like when you’re playing tug of war and the other side drops the rope with no warning. “I mean, it’s almost a letdown,” she said.
And Jeannie said, “Of course we want to take him off our worry list, but has he thought this through? Moving to some teeny modern place without crown moldings?”
“He’s acting too meek,” Amanda said. “This is too easy. We need to find out what’s behind it.”
“Yes, you have to wonder why he’s in such a hurry.”
They were talking to each other on their cell phones—Jeannie against a background of electric drills and nail guns, Amanda in the quiet of her office. Shockingly, no one had let them know right away about Red’s announcement. They’d had to hear it the next morning. Stem happened to mention it at work, while he and Jeannie were dealing with a cabinetry issue.
“You did tell him we should talk this over,” Jeannie had said immediately.
“Why would I tell him that?”
“Well, Stem?”
“He’s a grown-up,” Stem said, “and he’s doing what you’ve hoped for all along. Anyhow: whatever he does, Nora and I are leaving.”
“You are?”
“We’re just waiting till her church can find a new home for our tenants.”
“But you never said! You never discussed this with us!”
“Why should I discuss it?” Stem asked. “I’m a grown-up, too.”
Then he rolled up his blueprints and walked out.
“It’s like Stem’s a different person lately,” Jeannie told Amanda on the phone. “He’s almost surly. He was never like this before.”
“It must have to do with Denny,” Amanda said.
“Denny?”
“Denny must have said something to hurt his feelings. You know Denny’s never gotten over Stem moving back home.”
“What could he have said to him, though?”
“What could he have said that he hasn’t already said, is the question. Whatever it was, it must have been a doozie.”
“I don’t believe that,” Jeannie said. “Denny’s been on fairly good behavior lately.”
But as soon as she hung up, she phoned him. (Wasn’t it typical that even now, when he was living on Bouton Road again, she had to call his cell phone if she wanted to talk to him?) It was past ten in the morning, but he must not have been fully awake yet. He answered in a muffled-sounding voice: “What.”
“Stem says Dad is going to move to an apartment,” Jeannie told him.
“Yeah, seems like he is.”
“Where did that come from?”
“Beats me.”
“And Stem and Nora are just waiting till their tenants find a new place and then they’re leaving too.”
Denny yawned aloud and said, “Well, that makes sense.”
“Did you say anything to him?”
“To Stem?”
“Did you say anything that made him want to leave?”
“Dad’s moving, Jeannie. Why wouldn’t Stem leave?”
“But he was leaving in any case, he said. And he’s been acting so different these days, so grumpy and short-tempered.”
“He has?” Denny said.
“Something’s eating him, I tell you. It sounds like he didn’t even try to talk Dad out of this.”
“Nope. None of us did.”
“You mean you think it’s okay? Dad giving up on the house his own father built?”
“Sure.”
“You’ll be out of a home, you know,” Jeannie said. “We’ll have to sell. I don’t see you affording the taxes on an eight-room house on Bouton Road; you don’t even have a job.”
“Right,” Denny said, not appearing to take offense.
“So will you go back to New Jersey?”
“Most likely.”
Jeannie was quiet a moment.
“I don’t understand you,” she said finally.
“Okay …”
“You live here; you live there; you move around like it doesn’t matter where you live. You don’t seem to have any friends; you don’t have a real profession … Is there anyone you really care about? I’m not counting Susan; our children are just … extensions of our own selves. But do you care how you worried Mom and Dad? Do you care about us? About me? Did you say something hurtful to Stem that’s made him mad at everyone?”
“I never said a word to Stem,” Denny said.
And he hung up.
“I feel awful,” Jeannie told Amanda. They were on the phone again, although this time Amanda had answered in a hurried, impatient tone. “What now?” she had asked, sounding more like Denny than she knew.
“I really let Denny have it,” Jeannie told her. “I accused him of being mean to Stem and giving grief to Mom and Dad and not working and not having any friends.”
“So? What part of that isn’t true?”
“I asked if he even cared about us. Well, specifically me.”
“A reasonable question, I’d say,” Amanda told her.
“I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“Get over it, Jeannie. He deserved every word.”
“But asking if he cared about me, when here he quit his job that time and fell behind on his rent so he could come and help out because I was afraid I was going to smash my baby’s head in!”
There was a silence.
“I didn’t know that,” Amanda said finally.