I nodded. “Are they coming down for dinner?”
She reached for her wine. “Oh, they’re coming. They want to talk about the home.”
“The home.” I drank some of my wine. “I have to admit, I’m a little surprised by their reaction. I didn’t think they would respond like this. They don’t see him that much anymore.”
“He’s their baby brother. Always will be. So be ready—they have a lot of questions. We all do.”
“Be ready?”
“We’ll have a little talk at dinner. The whole family.”
“A little talk?” The prospect of being gang-tackled by the Nichols women gave me pause. I took a longer sip of my wine and cracked another peanut shell. “Well, let’s start now. What do you need to know?”
“The timing, for one thing. We’re supposed to leave him for a while. I remember something about that. They mentioned that on the phone too.”
I sat up on my stool. “Yes, right, there’s no contact for the first month. No calls, no visits, nothing. He has to get used to his new routine. No contact with him.”
She turned away, toward the lobby. “So we just up and leave him and go home?”
“Yes, I know that will be hard, but yes.”
She turned back to me. “Do you really think you’ll be able to leave him? You get frantic when you don’t see him for a day. Remember when he went to that camp? You called twice a day.”
She was referring to a respite camp Ethan had gone to two years before. It was up in Wisconsin, and she was right; I had been frantic with worry and called constantly to check on him.
“I didn’t call twice a day.”
“More like three times.” She sipped her wine. “So, we leave him for a month?”
“Those are the rules. I’ll come back after the month is up. I’ll drive back and stay a few days before school starts.”
“Well, so would I. Why would you drive though? Why wouldn’t you just fly back? A lot faster.”
I stalled, glancing up at the Red Sox game on the TV behind the bar, then proceeded to fill her in on a small and admittedly sketchy part of my Overall Plan. “I was thinking of taking a trip around the country for the month. By car. Just, you know, driving, killing time. Probably head West.”
“West.”
“Yes. I’ve never been past the Mississippi. Just, you know, take some time off, explore.” In addition to sketchy, this part of my plan suddenly sounded selfish, though I wasn’t exactly sure why; I had to do something for a month.
Mary nodded. “Just drive around out West?”
“You know, thinking about it.”
A little more nodding.
“Maybe do a some writing, or try to, I don’t know. Just take a break.”
Mary stopped with the nodding, firmly affixing her now no-trace-of-bemusement eyes on me. “This trip, you going alone?”
I responded too quickly. “Yes, of course, of course. Who would come with me?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m going alone,” I said.
She digested this, took another sip of wine. “How long before you retire again, quit teaching?”
“Five years. I have five years, and then I’ll get my full pension. I need to finish because I need the money. I need the full pension, the benefits, so I can help pay for the home.”
“It’s expensive,” Mary said.
“It is. But I have that money from my parents, the inheritance. Wasn’t all that much, but I never touched it, so that will help.”
“You’ll have to fill me in again on my share. If we do this,” she quickly added.
I repeated my mantra—“It’s a good place”—and ate some more peanuts while Mary searched through her large red leather bag, an item that was never far from her side and contained, I was sure, an extra phone charger, an extra pair of glasses, an extra bottle of Ethan’s medication, an extra pair of sunglasses, and, I suspected, at least one trashy lonely-woman-meets-handsome-man-in-exotic-location novel, which she kept hidden at all costs. While she was rummaging, I noticed she was wearing her lucky half-moon earrings. It had been quite some time since their last appearance. She had bought them in Ireland on our only overseas trip, three years after we were married. I remembered those earrings. They had a story, and I took their sudden appearance as an encouraging sign.
“I wonder how old Father McDonnell is doing,” I asked.
She kept fiddling with her purse, but I saw a smile. Father McDonnell was the priest who had provided a rambling, unsolicited blessing on the earrings in a smoky pub just south of Dingle. “That was the longest blessing,” she said.
“Longer than the Old Testament.”
“And you didn’t want to tip him.”
“You don’t tip for blessings. Besides, we didn’t ask him—he just started doing it.”
“He was drunk.”
“I’m not sure he was even a priest.”
She almost laughed, but caught herself; while smiling was now officially allowed, laughing was still forbidden in my presence. She continued with her rummaging.