Forty-Seven
Dune had lied to Bridie about not remembering when he last saw Clara.
He knew she hadn’t been at Fern’s graduation party.
He knew down to the minute, the position of the sun in the sky, where he’d been standing when he’d last seen Clara Larkin.
He was home for a week, staying with Honey because Fern had gone on a well-deserved trip to the Jersey Shore with some of her nursing school friends.
“You have to come babysit,” Fern said to Dune.
“She’s acting like I’m moving to New Jersey instead of going for five days. ”
“Huh, look at that,” Honey said, standing at the living room window the morning after he arrived. “The prodigal daughter returns.”
Dune tried to sound casual. “Which one?”
“Which one do you think?” Honey said. “Not Bridie. That girl is a peach.”
Heart racing, Dune walked toward the window just in time to see Clara’s back recede through the front door. “I don’t think prodigal is the word you’re looking for.”
“Of course it is. I know my Bible. The prodigal son.”
“Prodigal because he was profligate. Wasteful. Not because he left and didn’t come home for a few years.”
“How do you know Clara isn’t wasteful and profligate?”
“I don’t,” Dune said, raising his hands in surrender. “I don’t know anything about Clara.”
He went upstairs and tried to focus on his closet, which Honey wanted him to clear out as she was also planning on moving in a few months.
How odd, he thought, that the last two left in this neighborhood would be Finn and Nina, still living in the modest Craftsman they’d rented after the elopement and finally purchased.
After filling a few Hefty bags with old school papers, notebooks, cassette tapes, and outdated issues of Sports Illustrated, he found himself standing at the upstairs bathroom window, his old lookout spot, when Clara appeared in the upstairs window across the street.
At first he thought he was seeing things, but no, she was right there, looking back at him, steadily, coolly.
He raised a hand and waved. She reached up and calmly pulled the shade down.
He felt like a fool, with his arm in the air, waving at no one.
She hadn’t even looked angry. She hadn’t frowned or given him the finger, which at least would have allowed Dune a second of superiority.
But no. She’d simply closed the shade. As if he didn’t exist. That was the last time he’d seen her.
There were other things he didn’t want to discuss with Bridie.
Like how he had been in love with Clara and although he had very different thoughts about love now, he couldn’t deny that Clara—and all they’d gone through—had left a mark.
He had been so angry when his father left home.
Letting in the hard truth of his father’s betrayal was too difficult, so he’d shifted all the blame to Nina.
She became the receptacle for his hurt and disappointment and, by extension, so did Clara.
With distance, he could see how unfair he’d been to both of them and how easily he’d let his father off the hook.
But what eighteen-year-old would have the maturity to handle such a complicated situation with grace?
Not him. Not anyone he knew. Certainly not Clara, who had gone full scorched earth.
The sustenance of her anger was a frightful thing.
He wasn’t lying about worrying that Clara would get into Bridie’s head.
Her remove made her more powerful, as she surely knew.
One caustic comment about Dune from Clara to Bridie would sink a seed into her bones and take root.
Although Dune would be relieved, thrilled, if Clara didn’t show up for the wedding, Bridie would be heartbroken.
So he scheduled a trip to Manhattan on flimsy work pretenses and went to find her.
Dune had never felt so awkward as he did picking up fistfuls of cherry tomatoes from the floor of Clara’s apartment that day, listening to her confused boyfriend confront her about the mother-who-was-not-dead.
The argument was revving up in the kitchen.
It was almost funny how after all these years, Dune recognized the threatening tone in Clara’s voice.
He wondered if Philip had ever crossed that line.
Did he know he was wading into dangerous territory?
He stepped into the room that was divided by a breakfast bar and gave a little wave.
“I think I should get going,” he said to Clara, who was flushed and, he was surprised to see, tearful. “I’m sorry about all this—”
“It’s fine,” Clara said. “It’s my fault. You don’t have to go.”
“I do,” Dune said, reaching into the radiating left inner pocket of his suit jacket. “I wanted you to have this, though. Bridie wanted you to have this.”
Clara took the envelope and ripped it open. Read the elegant, engraved script. “You’re joking, right?”
“Not exactly a high-quality joke,” Dune said.
“No, I guess not.” Clara put the invite down on the counter and ran her fingers through her hair. “You people,” she said, turning to Dune, “are going to be the death of me.”
AFTER DUNE HANDED CLARA THE wedding invitation and exited her building, he walked around the neighborhood for a bit, trying to settle his nerves.
He hoped Clara would call Bridie soon, make an overture about the wedding, but he wasn’t counting on it, as it looked like she had a thorny problem of her own.
It was nuts, Dune recognized, for Clara to have killed off Nina but in the annals of their family history almost understandable.
He thought how much easier it would be to tell strangers that his parents were dead instead of explaining the whole convoluted truth.
He could never do it, but he believed Clara could.
He found himself standing the sidewalk beneath a bright neon sign reading DUBLIN HOUSE.
He shouldn’t go into the pub by himself.
But why not? He could be forgiven for needing a little liquid comfort.
He’d done a good thing for his fiancée and had reconnected with Clara and that was weird and uncomfortable and why shouldn’t he enjoy a pint or two of ale in a pub in New York City?
He was spending the night at the Radisson across from Lincoln Center. Nobody but him would ever know.