This was perhaps the first time that Izzy truly felt the cultlike elements of the project, which she had always worried about but never encountered. Susan was thinking about leaving the fold and it was up to her and Carmen to pull her back, to keep her connected to them. Because if they lost Susan, they lost David. And they also lost Irene. And if they lost the three of them, who else could leave? And, Izzy realized, she did not want to leave, so she had to keep Susan here with them.
“It is good,” Izzy said. “It’s really good.”
“And you will love Irene when the time comes,” Carmen said, not missing a beat, “you love her right now, actually, but you’ll love her even more later.”
“I will,” Susan said.
“Okay,” Carmen said, looking over to Izzy. “Are we good?” There was a temporary slackening of Carmen’s expression, as if she was admitting to Izzy that she, too, had no idea what she was doing and she needed Izzy to reassure her.
Izzy nodded. Perhaps this was just the way it would always work. Everyone would have their doubts, feel that they had made a mistake, but they would hold on to each other tightly and hope that it wasn’t true.
“I’m drunk,” Susan said. “I’m sorry.”
“It was good to talk about it,” Izzy said, not meaning it at all, and the three of them stood, still holding hands, and then they hugged; and, because there was nothing else to do, they separated and headed to their own homes.
It wasn’t awkward to Izzy, after such an emotional moment, to walk into an empty house, because she knew that the next day would bring them back together. And still, perhaps it was all the talk, all the awkward honesty, but as she lowered herself onto her bed, not even bothering to shower or brush her teeth or even change out of her clothes, she did think that it would be a little bit nicer, just the slightest bit easier, if there were someone in the bed waiting for her when she slipped between the covers. Not Asean. Not another parent. Someone far removed from the complex. But then she tried to imagine this person, the circumstances that would bring him here, the attributes that would make him plausible, and she decided, though perhaps it was just the exhaustion of the day, that it wasn’t worth the trouble. And, she surmised, beyond the empty bed were so many people just feet away from her. In an adjacent building, her son was soundly sleeping, watched over by an army of people who loved him. This was good enough, she decided once again. Better than good. She slept so soundly that night that she awoke the next morning convinced of her sound reasoning.
A new rumor moved quickly through the family, a weird game of telephone that traveled around and around the complex until everyone thought they understood the weird thing going on.
The first time Izzy had experienced it, in her third month at the complex, it had been disorienting, the way several different people, all believing they were the first to tell Izzy, sidled up to her after dinner or while she was walking through the courtyard, to inform her that David and Susan had made friends with a couple outside the complex and had met with them in Nashville several times.
“Who has time for other people?” Nina had wondered after David and Susan had driven to the city to see a movie with this couple, the husband a friend of David’s from college. “Should we tell Dr. Grind about this?” Kenny asked, and Carmen replied, “Why?”
“Shouldn’t he know that, I don’t know, members of the family are hanging out with other people?”
“That sounds really weird, Kenny,” Carmen informed him. “Like something a stalker would say.”
Nina jumped in. “Maybe, but it’s still weird. I know we’re not all gonna be best friends or anything, or even like each other, but it feels like a slight to choose them over us.”
“Maybe it’s different because we’re family, but they’re friends,” Izzy offered and Carmen frowned.
“C’mon, Izzy,” she said. “Dr. Grind’s not around.”
Nina continued, “I mean, there isn’t someone in the complex that they’d like to spend time with?”
“Your feelings are hurt?” Carmen asked.
“Yes,” Kenny and Nina said at the same time, and then Kenny again said, “Should we tell Dr. Grind?”
The next day, Kenny did tell Dr. Grind, who only said that it was a process, getting used to the complex and the kind of life within it, and he said it would work itself out. And it did, Izzy discovered. After a few months, David and Susan stopped seeing their friends and when Nina casually brought it up at dinner one night, Susan said, “It was nice at first; it felt like nothing had changed in our lives, but then we kept talking about things going on here, the kids and the complex, and they seemed to get weirded out by it. They started trying to get us to admit, every single time we met, that we were in some kind of cult, and so we just stopped responding to their e-mails and then they stopped asking.”
“We were getting worried,” Kenny then said.
“What? That we would leave this place?” David asked, smiling.
“Maybe,” Kenny allowed.
“We’re here,” Susan said. “Don’t worry about that.”
A few seconds later, after everyone went back to their meals, Kenny said, “Good,” so softly Izzy thought only she had heard it.