“That means they’re done.” He jumped from the branch. “Quickly, now.”
They uncaged themselves from the bougainvillea, ran up the front steps, and sat side by side on the porch. Tino’s clothes, she noticed, were still spotless even though hers were peppered with mulch. She tried to brush herself clean but stopped when the door opened behind them. The elders were already halfway through their formal, prim farewells.
“Speaking of money,” Tino whispered, leaning closer. “You could sell those. Right here in town.”
“Sell what?” she whispered in reply.
“Your drawings.”
She retrieved the sketchbook and moved it onto her lap. “I’ve already got a buyer.”
“Who?”
“Ed Ricketts.”
Tino huffed in amusement. “Oh, Ricketts won’t pay you. At least not in cash.”
“Until Sunday,” Anders announced loudly. “I look forward to Mass.”
He guided Mrs. Agnelli past the children, down the steps, and onto the street. Here, there was another round of leave-taking: hands shaken, blessings offered, plans made.
“For your information, I plan on charging him,” she replied, voice still low. “Three dollars apiece.”
“Careful.” Tino stood and rebuttoned his coat. “Don’t price yourself out of the market.”
She looked past their parents and down the hill.
“I’ll price it however I want.”
That night, Anders and Margot had steaks for dinner. Steaks so bad that even Ricketts might have thought twice before touching them.
When they were done eating, they sat on the floor across from each other in front of the sooty stone mantel and played a self-invented, two-man version of belote: an odd, complex French card game her mother was known to have favored. It was the first time since the episode at the lab that they had attempted something this companionable, and they both seemed a bit agitated by it. Anders was taking off his eyeglasses too often and buffing their lenses with too much intensity. Margot was tugging at the waistband of her trousers, as if it had become too tight.
“Now,” her father said after the eighth and final trick. “Where does that leave us?”
He gathered up his cards. Margot hesitated. The game’s scoring process was convoluted and specific, and she wasn’t allowed to do any of the calculations on paper.
“I’m at seventy-three,” she said. “And you’re at eighty.”
“That doesn’t include my carré of tens.”
“No. I suppose it doesn’t.”
“We have a winner, then. Shall we call it a night?”
For a moment, she felt like agreeing. The day had already been long and she was unusually tired. What’s more, she was eager to be alone on the horsehair sofa, where she could shuffle through her thoughts and play them with far greater skill than she had just played her cards.
“One last game,” she said instead.
He glanced at the clock on the mantel, waited out a few loud ticks, and then passed over his cards. She reassembled the deck, cut it, and gave it back to him.
“So,” she said. “The Agnellis.”
The words had come from her sharply and loudly, which she regretted but couldn’t help.
“Yes,” her father replied. His voice was calm and his eyes were fixed on the cards as he dealt them, flipping them onto the floor in near perfect piles, turning the proposed trump faceup. “Quite the situation. I don’t think I’ve ever wasted so much time on snacks and pleasantries, but I suppose that’s the price one pays when things are run by women.”
“Pass,” she said, leaving the trump untouched.
“Me too.” He collected the cards and redealt them. “But I must say we were both amused when her son’s face appeared in the window. It was like watching a Buster Keaton film.”
She gritted her teeth. “Accept.”
“Coinchée, then.”
“And I, in turn, was amused to learn you signed a contract that, on the face of it, offers you no upside at all.”
He looked up from his cards. She held her breath. His back was very straight now, the chipped, glass-shaded lamps etching black amber half circles beneath his eyes, and for some reason, she was thinking of her mother. It wasn’t a thought that came to her often, that of the woman who had barely survived long enough to warrant a parental designation. Mourning, in particular—the process of purposefully summoning a memory in order to subsequently demolish it—had always struck her as far too much of a winnerless game. Tonight, though, it was as if she could finally see her mother’s features clearly enough to miss them: a huge, white, disembodied head floating up to the ceiling, looking down on her with pity and affection, waiting for the signal to swell and explode and release fifteen years’ worth of accumulated pressure.
“I was right the first time.” He retrieved the card tin from the side table. “We’re done playing.”