Chapter 9 #4
Wren's mouth tips. Something in her settles. Margot has, I realize, done the kindest possible thing—she took the hard parts at face value, gave them their weight, and then handed Wren a way back into the easy conversation instead of stranding her in the heavy one.
"You and Max met at the bookstore, right?"
"Yeah. He was on his way out. I was on my way in. We overlapped for a week."
"And then?" Margot asks.
My heartrate picks up. Bane’s hand finds mine under the table.
Wren picks it up like she’s rehearsed her answer a thousand times. "And then we ran into each other a few months later, at a coffee shop. He didn't recognize me at first. I'd cut my hair."
"You'd cut your hair," Margot repeats. Soft.
"It was longer before."
"Mm."
"We started getting coffee. He recommended a book that turned out to be terrible. I made him buy me dinner to apologize."
Zero, across the table, exhales a small delighted breath.
"What was the book," Richard asks.
"...The Goldfinch."
"The Goldfinch is a masterpiece," Richard says, scandalized.
"It's—" Wren starts, and then visibly remembers she is at a dinner table being a guest, and recalibrates. "It's very—it has a lot of—I think it's a little—" She is dying. I watch her die. "...long?"
"It is a modern classic."
"It's long, though," she tries again, weakly. "I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying it's—structurally—there's a lot of—"
"She hated it, Dad," Zero says, around a mouthful of roast. "Look at her. She's doing six kinds of diplomacy. She thought it was a brick. Let the woman breathe."
Wren makes a small betrayed sound. "I didn’t say—"
"You didn't have to. Your whole face said it." Zero points his fork at her, pleased. "Booksellers always hate the big famous ones. It's a rule."
Richard puts his fork down. He looks at Wren with the slow brightening face of a man who has just discovered an unexpected adversary on a topic he’s been losing sleep over.
"You can't possibly think it's too long. The length is the point—"
"Oh, here we go," Margot says, to no one.
"—the length is immersive, the length is the architecture—"
"Richard," Margot says.
He stops. Resets. The brightening goes out of his face and is replaced by something stiffer. Topic: dropped.
"It's no matter," he says. "It's a generational thing.
Nobody under thirty has the patience for a real book anymore—you're all raised on the small and the immediate.
" He says it pleasantly, which is somehow worse.
"And honestly, Wren, that's no tragedy. Literature is a retirement.
It's what a man gets to have once the serious work is done—the firm built, the money made, the house paid for.
You read for pleasure once you've earned the leisure to.
Until then it's—" a small dismissive turn of his fork "—a hobby.
A pleasant one. Not a foundation. I tell Max the same thing. "
I nod. I remember the face he made when I mentioned my creative writing class. I wonder how he’d react if he saw all my journals upstairs.
"It's sound advice, Max."
Next to me, Wren has gone very slightly still.
Not hurt, I don’t think. She works at a bookstore most evenings; she has just been told, courteously, that the thing she has built her small hard-won life around is a thing real people do after their lives are finished.
I watch her decide not to say any of the things I can see her holding.
Zero is not so disciplined.
"Dad thinks reading is golf," he says, to Wren, confidingly. "You're allowed to enjoy it once you're sixty and useless. Before that it's suspicious."
"It is not suspicious, Zero, it is a question of priorities—"
"Mm. Priorities." Zero takes a slow sip of his beer, then turns, far too innocently, to the other head of the table. "Margot. Settle it. You think a person should put off the things that feed them until they've made their money and bought their house? You agree with him?"
Margot, who has been monitoring this dinner the way air traffic control monitors a storm, does not walk into it.
"I think," she says, evenly, reaching for the green beans, "that this roast is getting cold while everyone at this table would rather be right than fed."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the answer you're getting, sweetheart."
"See." Zero spreads his hands, delighted, taking in the whole table.
"She didn't agree with him. Bane hasn't said a word, which means Bane doesn't agree with him.
Wren's a bookseller, so that's a no. Maxie writes, so that's a no.
" He points the neck of his beer bottle at Richard with enormous satisfaction.
"You're outnumbered, Dad. Five to one. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but your opinion on this has officially stopped counting. "
The table goes quiet.
Richard sets down his fork. He does it slowly, folding his napkin beside his plate like he’s trying hard not to lose his temper.
"Zero," he says. "Could I see you in my office? Briefly."
Zero is already grinning.
“Course, Dad."
He stands, drains the last of his beer, sets the empty bottle down with a small decisive click—and, on his way past my chair, he catches my eye and winks, the unrepentant little wink of a man being marched to the principal's office and enjoying every step of it.
He follows Richard out.
The dining room is, abruptly, a great deal quieter than it was.
"Well," Margot says, into the silence, brightly, a half-second too late to be casual.
"He'll—they'll just be a minute. Richard likes to—it's a father thing.
It's nothing. Wren, sweetheart, have you tried the corn pudding?
You must try the corn pudding, it's a brand-new recipe, it's—Bane, tell her about the corn pudding—"
Bane, beside me, is looking very fixedly at his plate. He lifts his wineglass, takes a slow and deeply unnecessary sip, and uses it, I’m almost certain, to swallow a laugh.
Wren, across from me, takes a sip of her prosecco. Her eyes meet mine over the rim of the glass, bright and dry and pleased with herself, like a card player who has just watched a bluff land.
Margot watches and I can feel her eyes on the three of us.
I know she’s trying to make it all make sense, taking notes about the way Bane served Wren three times the green beans.
About the way Zero performs like this to take all the heat.
About the way Wren's eyes meet mine. About the way my eyes meet Bane's.
She is taking notes about all of it and I just pray to God she doesn’t see what’s truly going on.
But she doesn't say a word. She just refills Wren's water glass, and asks Bane to pass the roast, and lets the dinner carry itself.
We eat. We are most of the way through when Richard and Zero come back from the office—Richard a little pink, Zero entirely unbothered, sliding back into his chair and reclaiming his fork like a man returning from nothing more interesting than the bathroom.
Whatever was said in there has left absolutely no mark on him.
And then it’s time for dessert.
Margot brings the tart over to the big table and starts cutting slices.
"Bane drove out to Sixth Street this morning," she says, sliding the first plate to Wren. "Max said lemon was your favorite. He asked them for the one with the most lemon."
Bane coughs and reaches for his drink. I try not to laugh at his secret getting blown up in his face.
Wren glances up at Bane, surprised.
"...you didn't have to do that."
"I wanted to." He says it simply, like it's no big deal. But he has no idea what things like this mean to people like Wren and me.
Wren takes a bite. Closes her eyes for a second. "...okay. That's a really good tart."
"Bane has excellent taste in pastry," Margot says, deadpan, "for a man who doesn't bake."
Bane huffs into his wineglass.
We eat the tart. It’s really good and even Richard can’t complain. He finishes his slice, sets his fork down with a neat little click against the rim of his plate, and turns to my mother. "Margot. Take a walk with me? We can sit out under the stars and let the kids talk."
Margot blinks."...now?"
"Now. The night air is lovely and I'd like my wife to myself for ten minutes before the children take the kitchen apart." He stands, holds out his hand for hers. "Bane. Zero. Max. Wren—it was an unexpected pleasure, truly. Drive home safely."
Margot takes his hand but she gives me a sideways glance on the way past—don’t leave these dishes out too long. I nod and let her go off with Richard without a second thought about the clean-up.
I look at Zero.
The patio doors slide shut behind them. Zero chuckles.
"...Zero," Bane says quietly, eyebrows up. "What did you say to him?"
"Nothing he didn't have coming."
"Zero."
"He'll live, Bane. He's having a romantic walk on the patio. He's being rewarded for his good behaviour."
Wren is looking back and forth between the two absolutely fascinated at this strange dynamic she sees being weaved in real time. She takes a small sip of her prosecco. "...I have so many questions," she says.
"You're not allowed to have any answers, pretty thing," Zero says, charmingly. "Family secrets. Vow of silence."
"Family secrets that include whatever this is?" She gestures, helpless and small, at the room—at the half-eaten tart, at the two of them, at the entire warm chaotic evening. "All of this. Everything."
"Especially those."
Wren considers him over the rim of her glass.
"Okay. Fine. You don't have to tell me anything about your family. But you're going to tell me something about Max."
Zero's eyes brighten. "Am I?"
"You are. If you're going to be one of the people he's"—a small careful pause as she picks a word for the table—"close to, then I'd like to know what kind of person you actually are. The not-charming version."
"This is the not-charming version, pretty thing."
"I doubt that very much."
"...fair."