“Lonely guy.”
“Here’s what I believe,” she said. “I believe he was looking for us—for me. I believe he found out about the youth group because of our photo album online. And then he figured out about the Bible study, and Mom, and then he came there. He doesn’t even live in Royston, for fuck’s sake. He lives in Haverhill, and he works in Haverhill.”
“That doesn’t seem too likely, does it?”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t there be easier ways to find you than pretending in some long-term way to be a practicing Christian?”
“There might be easier ways, but it’s a pretty certain way to my mom’s heart. She’s totally gone on him. It’s surreal.”
I thought a minute. “Why do you think he was looking for you? Is he, like, creepy or scary around you? Does he say stuff? Or—”
“No.” She leaned in and whispered, and I was gratefully aware of his even voice from the other room: he was still holding forth about the differences in the medical profession between Maine and Massachusetts. “It’s the opposite. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t speak to me. He doesn’t stay in a room with me if she walks out of it. He’ll make up some reason to leave.”
“That sounds like a good thing, no? You wouldn’t want to have to talk to him on your own.”
“God, no. But it’s weird. Admit it, it’s really weird.”
“But he is weird. It’s the most obvious thing about him. Maybe he’s embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed?”
“When he realized you were Bev’s daughter—maybe that somehow makes it strange, that he’d already met you, but not her.”
Cassie snorted.
“Or maybe he’s embarrassed”—I knew that here I was on thin ice—“that being so slight himself, he likes a larger lady?”
Cassie snapped a dish towel at me, but I could see the thought was a relief—that his hidden perversion might just be an attraction to plumpness. She even smiled. “That is not kind to my mom,” she said. And then, “She hasn’t deserved my kindness much lately.”
“Tell me about the Peter thing, then.”
“Let me take this coffee in, and then we’ll go upstairs.”
LATER, IN THE CAR on the way home, my mother was furious with me. “You girls were so rude,” she hissed. My father sighed. “I was ashamed of you both. Cassie—well, it’s none of my business, but really, Julia, you’re old enough to know better.”
“Come on, Carole,” my father said, emasculated in the passenger seat. “You’re being a bit harsh, don’t you think? They’re kids.”
“They laughed at him, Rich! Obviously too. So rude.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“When you came in with the coffee and stood in the doorway and rolled your eyes while he was speaking—”
“He didn’t see,” I said, “and Bev had her back to us.”
“That’s not the point, Julia, and you know it.”
“He did go on a bit,” my father said. “Nothing against the guy, but he seems a little . . . almost—”
“He’s, like, autistic or something, right?”
Normally, my mother would have laughed. She would have been on my side. “So you’re a neurologist or a psychiatrist now? You’re diagnosing people at age twelve? Where do you get off?”
“But Mom—”
“And if he were on the spectrum, would that be something to titter about? If he had one leg, or if he was deaf, would you make fun of him?”
“Of course not—but Mom—”
“It seems to me profoundly lacking in charity, as well as good manners. I don’t like to think that’s how we’ve raised you. Shame on you.”
“Carole, that’s a bit much.” My father put his hand on her arm, but she had her hand on the steering wheel and jerked it as she knocked him away. The car swerved on the median. Luckily there was no other traffic. “Hey babe, it’s not worth an accident!” My father’s voice was quiet, but I could tell he was shocked. “What are you so worked up about?”
“I don’t know.” My mother’s voice was suddenly quiet too, as if she’d scared herself. “I don’t know.”
We were silent for a minute. Then I apologized. “We didn’t mean to behave badly,” I said. “We just wanted to go upstairs, you know?”
My mother took a deep breath. “I know, sweetie. I overreacted.” And a minute later: “There was something so not-right about it all.”
“Doesn’t mean it was Julia’s fault. Or even Cassie’s.” My dad fiddled with the vents. “He’s an odd duck, Shute.”
“Bev’s not exactly run-of-the-mill herself,” my mother conceded. “I’m glad for her. She’s been alone a long time.”
“No, she hasn’t,” I said. “She has Cassie.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“You mean, better a date with Anders Shute from Maine than another secret tryst with her friends Ben & Jerry from Vermont?”
“Rich!” She shook her head, but she wasn’t really angry anymore. “Shame on you. Now I see where our daughter gets it from.”
We pulled into our driveway and could see everyone through the living-room window, dimly but arrestingly lit. Grandpa was slumped, asleep on the sofa, with Una rapt beside him, knees to her chest, in her candy-colored onesie pajamas, her glasses reflecting the TV’s light. Grandma knitted busily while Jake sprawled on the floor with his phone, eyes on the little screen rather than the big one. Mike and Eileen and the twins weren’t in the picture—presumably the twins were in bed—but even without them the scene looked so cozy and normal. So safe, was what I thought.
IT’S HARD TO grasp all the different things that are going on at one time, or that went on at one time. That fall in art class, I learned about the Spanish painter Goya—our art teacher was obsessed with him—and I ended up writing a paper about his life. Only much later, when we learned about the French Revolution in world history, did I realize Goya was getting going as a court painter in Madrid at the same time as Marie Antoinette was having her head chopped off. You’d never think it. Spain and France are right next to each other, but it was as if he were on a different planet—in the same way that he was in seventh-grade art class for me, and the French Revolution was in ninth-grade history, and who was going to make the connection?
That’s sort of what happened with Cassie and me. I guess I was Goya, just doing my thing, and she was the French Revolution.