She was just about to get up and go in to see what he was up to—he was going to do this for her, be presentable, be cool, if she had any power over him at all, and she did, because he liked what she was giving him and he needed it too, just to get whole, to be whole and not some spooky recluse staring off into space and saying the first thing that came into his head. His grandmother used to cook for him and before that his mother. Now she was cooking for him—and no, she wasn’t old enough to be his mother, but then his mother never went to bed with him either. And here she had to laugh: At least I hope not.
“What’s so funny?” Christabel was leaning into the table, setting her glass down over its wet imprint in the wood, then lifting it and setting it down again as if it were the most delicate operation in the world. She was looking up at her, a collusive smile on her face. She’d already heard about the sex—Sara had told her everything, in detail, because she couldn’t help herself—and now she was expecting more.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “just thinking of something, that’s all.” Then she was pushing herself up. “Let me go get him. I mean, dinner’s ready and I don’t want the meat drying out—plus, I think it’s time we poured some of that wine, don’t you?”
Christabel gave her a sloppy wide-lipped grin. “Hear, hear!”
She was feeling it herself, two and a half margaritas on an empty stomach, as she pushed through the screen door and into the living room, with its pine paneling gone dark from half a century of smoke, the old ladies’ lamps and wood-framed pictures and the couch that was older than she was. “Adam?” she called. Another thump, a shuffling of feet, and there he was, framed in the kitchen doorway, a beer in one hand, a half-gnawed portion of cordon bleu in the other. There was a crescent-shaped smear of dirt or grease or something on his forehead just over his left eye, and the boots he was always so careful with were crusted in mud, which had in turn left the kitchen floor a mess. “Jesus,” she said, “what happened to you—you fall in a swamp or what?”
She didn’t expect him to answer and he didn’t. He just stood there chewing, alternately lifting the chicken and the beer to his mouth.
“Christabel’s here, I was telling you about? We’ve been drinking margaritas and I think we’re a little wrecked.” She let out a giggle, the whole room composing itself around the silhouette of him there in the doorway, pixel by pixel, as if she were watching TV, which is how she knew just how wrecked she was and knew too that she’d have to put something on her stomach tout suite. “But dinner’s ready and we’re going to eat out on the porch, so why don’t you . . .” She trailed off. “I mean, just clean up and come join us, okay?”
He didn’t move, but that was typical and he didn’t say anything either, which was also typical. “My father,” he said after a moment.
“Sara?” Christabel’s voice. “You in there? Need any help?”
“In a minute,” she called over her shoulder and turned back to Adam. “What about him?”
“He was here.”
“They both were, your mother too, and I’ll tell you, she treated me like dirt. And Christabel too.”
“If he touched anything, I’ll kill him,” he said, and now he was coming toward her and the light caught him so that she could see he was mud all over, pants and shirt and his hands too where they dangled from the soiled sleeves.
She put her hands on her hips. “He just hung the door, is all,” she said. “Your mother took a couple boxes of things from your grandma’s room—”
His face changed suddenly, hardened up as if it had been set in concrete. “Shit,” he spat. “Shit on her. And shit on you too.”
“Me? What have I got to do with it?”
“You let her.”
“I didn’t let anybody do anything. This is their house, not mine, remember?” She felt a little woozy suddenly and she wanted to go over and give him a kiss, mud or no, but instead she just cocked her head back and said, “If you want to get any tonight you better behave yourself. So go in and get washed up—and take your boots off first, you’re tracking the place all up—and then you come out and meet Christabel and make nice.” She lifted her wrist to squint at her watch, the hands of which she could just barely make out because her reading glasses were on the kitchen table next to the recipe book. “Dinner is served—or will be—in five minutes flat. Hear me?”
When he did show up at the table—with another beer, which must have been his second or third, and the canteen too—the mud was gone and his fingernails were clean, but he wasn’t wearing any clothes at all, only the towel cinched round his waist. Which he made a show of dropping when he pulled out the chair and sat down. Christabel, nonchalant, or at least pretending to be, said hello, but Adam ignored her. It wasn’t much past six but they were in the shadows here, the sun having sunk away into the canopy of the trees, and while it wasn’t cold yet it was getting there. You could see that Adam’s chest and arms were stippled with gooseflesh and his nipples were hard, though he wasn’t shivering. Let him play his games, Sara was thinking, but after she’d filled his wine glass and topped off Christabel’s and her own, she couldn’t take it any longer and finally had to ask, “Aren’t you cold?”
“Toughens you,” he said, though he wouldn’t look into her eyes.