“I thought I heard someone here with you, and I wasn’t sure—I didn’t know we had company.”
“We don’t, I just—I ran into a friend, who’s in town for the day, and I’ve got an hour still before the boys need to be picked up, so we’re going to grab coffee in town. I just stopped by to—he needed something to eat.”
“Fantastic,” Bob said. “I’m heading out for a jog, myself.”
Jackson emerged from the pantry with a bottle of red wine. No one said anything; Lily did not mention Bob’s spectacles, and he did not look directly at the bottle in Jackson’s hand.
“You have quite a collection,” Jackson sputtered. Bob gave him a discreet nod, maybe simply an acknowledgment that he’d spoken. Lily saw it happen, saw Jackson’s resolve weakening. She saw the way he stood up straighter when this man graced him with that gesture of approval.
“He’s a big oenophile,” Lily said, inexplicably even to herself. What, exactly, would she do if Bob turned to Jackson and started grilling him on wine? “He just wanted to take a look.”
“Sure, sure,” Bob said. “Are you a friend from the city?”
“Yes,” Jackson said.
“An old family friend,” she lied. Bob looked out the window, down the hill toward the front gate, and smiled.
“I wonder,” he said, “if you might give Lily and myself just a moment alone? Just some business to talk over.”
She could feel Jackson’s eyes on her, his uncertainty, but she didn’t look over at him.
“Of course,” he said. He set the bottle down on the wooden table and walked back out to the foyer. Bob turned to her, crossing his arms over his thick chest in a way that made them look undersized, as if they strained to span the width of his body.
“I really am sorry,” she began, but he cut her off.
“How is everything with you?” he said. “I don’t want you to think I haven’t appreciated that we’ve been asking a great deal more. From you. But how is your family? Are you getting in to see them?”
She nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“And your father? I know it’s been an unpleasant season. In Manhattan.”
“He works for the MTA,” she said. “And they’re in Brooklyn, actually. Carroll Gardens.”
“That’s right. I did know that. Me too, you know. Different part of Brooklyn, I mean, but me too.”
“I know.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, just crossed to the sink. He flipped the garbage disposal for a moment, and the sudden keening of the gnashing blades startled her. Even though she had watched him walk to the sink, had watched his hand reach for the switch.
“Do you think that makes us tougher, in the end?” he said. “Do you think you’re as disciplined as you are, I mean, because he’s so unimpressed by the choices you’ve made? Your father, I mean. I’ve always gathered he wishes you were in law school, or something. Or at least still living close by.”
She was too surprised to speak. She had never, in eight years, discussed her father with Bob D’Amico.
“I mean, he probably thinks this isn’t a real job. I know something about that,” he continued. “You’ve met my mother, I think. A few times.”
Lily nodded.
“They sit there waiting. They find your choices frivolous, and so then if the slightest thing goes wrong—and things go wrong for everyone, lawyers and doctors, too, we know that. But as soon as we have any understandable misfortune, they clap their hands and back away and say, oh, of course. I told you it would. That’s what your father would say, if something went wrong for you, yes?”
Lily shook her head, not in response, just a bewildered reflex. She had gathered, over the years, that Concetta didn’t think he had a “real job,” but it sounded like garden-variety fussing from a woman whose primary form of communication had always been complaint. She’d never thought, really, that his mother was waiting for him to fail.
Bob rattled his keys with finality, and Lily knew he was preparing to leave.
“I don’t mean to pry, Lily,” he said. “Not in the slightest. But I don’t want you to think it escapes my attention. How tirelessly you—how much you give us. And you are, in many important ways, alone. That’s why we’ve brought you so close to us. As you know, my wife is not one to befriend many people. But you are family, to us. You are as essential to this household as I am. I hope you know that, but more importantly, I want you to know that I know it.”
Still she couldn’t speak. She stood, in the middle of his kitchen, and nodded, mute. But then, this seemed the response he’d expected.
“I see how well you look after my children,” he said, with finality. Then he cleared his throat and smiled more substantially. It was the glad-handing public smile she recognized, with none of the smoky distance he’d had on his face just moments earlier. She saw now that he had a manila folder in his other hand, held low and close to his body, against his thigh.
“It looks like it might rain,” Lily told him. “You might want to save the jog for the morning.”
“We’ll see,” Bob said. “I’ll take my chances. It was nice meeting your friend. I’ll leave you both to it. Help yourself to the wine, too.”
He moved toward the mud room, pausing beside her to lower his hand to her shoulder.
“Pretend I was never here,” he said. “We very nearly missed each other, didn’t we?” And then he was gone.
Jackson reappeared as soon as the side door slammed. They moved together to the big window and watched him as he strolled down the drive, breaking into a light jog only as he disappeared behind the crest of the hill. But the security guys are down there, she thought. If he’s meeting someone else, they’d have to pick him up farther away. Not in front of the house.
He’d just been trying to say something nice, something thoughtful. Maybe he was changing. He could, right? After something like this? He’d looked healthier, she thought, his skin once again had its nutty glow, no longer ashen and crusted, stale with stubble. But he must have a plan. He’d kept it from them, but he had a strategy. He hadn’t really been leaving Isabel all alone, here.
She could choose to see it this way. She might not be wrong.
“Where is he going?” Jackson said. Lily felt that if she spoke, her voice would be only a croak. “He usually let you raid the wine rack?”
She knew they’d been given permission, and in exchange for something, but for what?
She took Jackson’s hand, and they, too, left through the mud room. She knew now that she’d let her boyfriend stay. Later, they’d fuck.
TWENTY-SEVEN