After dinner, Audra said the baby was making her sleepy and if they didn’t mind, she would just go to bed.
Graham and Julio went up to the roof terrace with a bottle of port—it was warm for April. They pulled two chairs together, and Julio lit a cigarette while Graham poured the port into tumblers from the kitchen.
“How do you feel about the baby?” Julio asked once they were settled.
Exhausted, Graham could have said. Disheartened. Nearly hopeless at times.
“Nervous,” he said. “But it’s not for sure.”
“Kids are nice,” Julio said. He might have been talking about place mats, or tomatoes, or those sprinkles you put on ice cream.
Children were many things—heartbreaking and wonderful and worrisome—but Graham had never thought they were nice, exactly.
“Yes,” he said. “They are.”
He wished suddenly that he had more vices. Perhaps he should begin gambling or start abusing drugs. Even smoking, like Julio. Right now, Graham wanted desperately to be someone like Julio, who smoked cigarettes in the dark, the tips of them red as lipstick, hot as tears.
—
It was odd, how empty the apartment seemed without Matthew. And even odder that they had only the roughest idea of where he was (camp) and what he was doing (camp things).
Years and years before Apple had launched the iCloud—perhaps before they’d even thought of it—Graham had suspected that Audra had some version of it in her head. You could ask her any question about anyone’s schedule and her eyes would unfocus for a second (while she accessed the Audra-cloud) and then she would say, “Well, Carrie can’t pick Matthew up then because her boys have soccer on the North Meadow and it takes her over forty-five minutes to get home in rush hour,” or “Matthew has Science from 9:10 to 9:55 on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, but on Wednesday he has Computer Art, and on Fridays, they have assembly,” or “The dentist is open on alternate Saturdays but closed on Wednesday afternoons and the orthodontist is open on Wednesdays and also stays late on Thursdays.” She just knew it! And she could access it! Sometimes Graham felt selfish, being married to Audra. She was like a national resource, or a piece of farm machinery too valuable to be owned by just one family. At the very least, she should be co-oped.
But even Audra didn’t know Matthew’s schedule at camp, and neither of them knew how he was doing. Campers were not allowed to call home. The camp website said, rather euphemistically, that they found calling home “reduced morale.” Was Matthew homesick? Was he scared? Was he being bullied? Did he like the food? Could he sleep at night? Had he suffered from bug bites or poison ivy, had he burned his fingers roasting marshmallows? If so, had he cried in front of all the other kids? Could he keep up on the hikes? Did they go on hikes? Was he wearing a life jacket when they went canoeing? So many things could go wrong. It wrung Graham’s heart just to think about.
“No news is good news,” Audra insisted, and Graham supposed she was right. No school or camp ever called to tell you that your child was having a marvelous time and fitting in beautifully with his peers. No, Graham thought (not without a trace of bitterness), they only called with bad news. They only called to tell you that your child had cried in science lab when it was time to dissect worms, or that your child fell on the playground and screamed at the sight of his own blood, or that your child wasn’t making any friends. Then they couldn’t wait to get ahold of you.
But now Matthew might as well be on another planet. The only news they’d had came from Brenda Rottweiler. The camp had called her yesterday to say that Derek had flushed sweet potatoes down the staff toilets so that now the staff had to use the same smelly outhouses as the campers.
Graham and Audra had debated this news intensely, like Kremlinologists studying the parade lineup in Red Square. Evidently Matthew wasn’t involved because they hadn’t gotten a call. Did that mean Derek Rottweiler had abandoned Matthew, or did it mean only that Derek had acted alone? Did this mean the camp was so lacking in fun that the campers had to play pranks to amuse themselves? Was the camp so absent of discipline that the children were running wild like a pack of hyenas? So primitive in its amenities that the campers were striking back at the staff, in the manner of serfs raiding the castle?
Graham and Audra talked about it for nearly an hour, nearly a whole bag of peanut M&M’s (Audra said it might be a pregnancy craving), and in the end, they had nothing, except that Audra said she thought she might be in love with Derek Rottweiler.
—
Graham went to a diner near his office for a quick, solitary lunch, and there—right in front of him!—were Clayton and Manny, sitting in a booth together. When they saw Graham, they looked at each other with unmistakably guilty expressions. What were they guilty of? Dear God—were they lovers? Graham’s mind stepped around that thought the same way his body stepped around a puddle of vomit on the sidewalk.
They were both sitting on the same side of the booth nearest to the door.
“Hello,” Graham said.
“Hello,” they said nearly in chorus. Again, they exchanged that look. They were definitely hiding something.
“Would you like to join us?” Manny said, seeming to indicate that he was several rungs higher on the evolutionary ladder than Graham had suspected.
So Graham sat down across from them and struggled to think of something innocuous to say. “What are you guys up to?” he said, and then immediately regretted it.
Manny shot Clayton a long look and then Clayton blew out a breath and said, “We shouldn’t be meeting like this, but we’re discussing a new club member.”
“It’s supposed to be a club decision,” Manny added.
“We’re supposed to vote,” Clayton said.
“Those are the rules,” Manny said.
They were both looking at Graham challengingly, so he said gently, “But…?”
“But we’re very unsure about this new guy,” Clayton said. “So unsure about him that we decided to meet outside the club and discuss him.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Graham asked. “Does he belong to a gym or something?”
Clayton and Manny both burst into laughter.
“Good one,” said Manny, shaking his head slightly.
It occurred to Graham that this was the first time he had ever made either of them laugh, and he had no idea what he’d said that was funny.
“The main thing wrong with him,” Clayton said, apparently having decided to toss caution, or at least discretion, to the wind, “is that he speed-folds.”
“That makes sense,” Graham said, although it actually made no sense. Speed-folding? What was that?
Manny leaned forward. “And at the first meeting, Clayton here happened to mention an eight-petal flower fold and the guy’s look was totally blank! No idea! You can bet he’s never made anything other than a five-petal.”
“I see,” Graham said.