5. Dallas
DALLAS
The yolks were still runny , but the egg whites had dried like glue onto the door and seemed almost resistant to water.
Lucy scrubbed with a hard-bristled brush until her arm ached, hoping to get the mess cleaned up before Jack saw it.
She stepped back and let her mom spray the door down with the hose, soaking the stones under her bare feet and the hem of Lucy’s pajama pants.
“Who can we murder for this?” Irene said. She had taken off her shoes and cuffed her khakis.
“I just can’t understand what Jack was thinking,” Lucy said, scratching at a piece of eggshell with her fingernail. “He was this close to launching the next big stage of his life. This close.” Lucy held up her thumb and index finger to show just how close her son had been.
“If you ask me, the dumbest thing he did was tell the truth,” her mom said. “Why he felt the need to throw his whole self under the bus is beyond me. He should have lied.”
“Mom!” said Lucy, flicking the piece of shell to the ground. “You don’t mean that.”
“I most certainly do,” Irene said. “What good did confessing do?”
“I’m proud of him for telling the truth,” Lucy said, but she too wondered whether Jack could have told some version of the story that might have allowed him to graduate with the rest of his class.
“He was the one who did the math, and he didn’t want his friends to get in trouble.
But what I don’t understand is why no one is letting him explain what he really meant by it. ”
There was a knock on the door from the inside, and her father-in-law cracked it open, poking his mostly bald head outside. Irene pointed the hose away in the direction of the petunias so he could come out without getting his loafers wet.
“Henry called AAA,” Graham said. He was wearing corduroy pants on this brutally hot day. “They’ll be here in the next thirty minutes.”
“Thank you,” said Lucy, “and thanks for scraping the shoe polish off the car windshield.”
“About that,” he said, interlocking his fingers together, “what is an incel anyway?”
“An incel,” said Irene, “is a boy who spends all his time playing video games in his parents’ basement.”
“Not exactly,” said Lucy, “although that’s incel-adjacent.”
“This house doesn’t have a basement,” Graham said, as though he’d outsmarted them.
Graham was a Harvard professor who had published three books of poetry, and as tuned in as he was to the human condition, he did not have much of a grasp on the practicalities of life, which had driven Ellen completely up the wall when they were married.
He did not own a cell phone; he carried a Moleskine notebook in his pocket instead, which he insisted served the same purpose.
“Incel,” said Lucy, taking a break from scrubbing the door, “stands for involuntary celibate.”
“Ah,” said Graham, “I love a portmanteau.”
“Not this one,” said Lucy. “May I be blunt? Mom, cover your ears.”
Irene did not.
“They’re actually self-imposed, unfuckable—excuse me—males. They despise women and can’t grasp why women hate them back. Jack is not in any way, shape, or form an incel. He respects women; he loves his sisters. His very best friend is a girl.”
“Ahhh,” said Graham, taking a pencil stub from his pocket and jotting notes. “Then I wonder why that term was scribbled on his car.”
“He was misunderstood,” Lucy said.
“Unfortunately,” Irene said, “that’s exactly what an incel would say.”
Lucy shot her a look.
“But no,” Irene added, “the term does not apply to Jack.”
As Lucy swapped out the brush for a sponge, she noticed a Mercedes sedan coasting by slowly, a middle-aged man in the driver’s seat eyeing the house.
Lucy recognized him as the dad of a fourth-grade Rockwell girl.
“I really don’t know what to do about all this hate,” she said to Irene and Graham, “other than fortify the castle walls.”
Uncle Henry cracked the door open and then came outside as well. “I have good news,” he said.
“We’re too depressed to process it,” said Graham, and he began to recite: “ When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state— ”
“Dad,” said Henry, “must you?”
“It’s very fitting,” said Graham. “ And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries —”
“I just wanted to tell you that Jack’s up,” Henry said. “My mom got him to sit outside with her. That’s a good thing, don’t you think?”
Lucy dropped her sponge in the bucket, wanting to see Jack, while dreading the state he might be in.
“You go on,” said Irene. “We’ll finish up here and wait for the tow truck.”
Lucy looked at the three of them, so grateful for the support of her family.
Jack was sitting with Mason’s mother at one of the bare rental tables set up in the backyard.
His face was pale and his blond hair was wild and lit up in the sunshine, making him look like a cross between a zombie and an angel.
Ellen had put a plate in front of him with a piece of buttered toast, the crusts removed.
He hadn’t touched it. He was antsy and fidgeting, digging his toes in the grass.
“Did you get any sleep?” Lucy said, putting a hand on his back.
“We’re feeling a little fitful,” Ellen said, using “we” to mean Jack.
Ellen was wearing the outfit she’d packed for graduation, a linen dress and matching jacket, and Lucy wondered whether she was still holding out hope or that was her only option.
“But I’m sure there’s a way to fix this problem.
We just have to put our heads together.”
Lucy wasn’t sure of that at all.
Jack looked terrible. He had dark circles under his eyes, and he was twitchy with adrenaline. “Should I call MIT?” he said. And then he turned to look up at Lucy. “Or email the admissions people? I really think I can make them understand what happened.”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. She’d been wondering whether she should call MIT, to defend Jack from whatever Kevin Neal was going to tell them, or whether that would only make things worse.
“Or I could go there in person,” he said, “and show them the math, and they’ll see I’m just a kid and not some kind of… predator.” He was frantic. “I mean, I satisfied all the requirements for graduation. Even if they won’t give me a diploma, I still technically graduated, didn’t I?”
“That’s a good question,” Ellen said, turning to Lucy. “Did he?”
Lucy would have to ask the principal when she could face him without either yelling at him or bursting into tears.
“And what about my summer job?” Jack said.
“I don’t see why you can’t tutor,” she said. Jack had gotten a job at a community center in Oak Cliff working with middle school kids.
“Maybe Principal Neal is going to call my boss there,” he said.
“I’ll have to ask him first thing Monday morning.”
The kitchen door opened, and Lucy saw her dad standing in the doorway, motioning for her to come back inside. He was home at least an hour too early, and that couldn’t mean anything good.
“Hang on,” she said, and walked quickly back to the house, bumping into one of the fifty folding chairs crowding the yard.
Her dad was getting himself a glass of water.
“Where are the girls?” she asked him.
“Upstairs, and I don’t want you to worry,” he said, “I handled it.”
“What—what did you handle?”
“Some kids told Alice and Zoe that Jack’s going to jail for the rest of his life, and they got pretty upset. I got some nasty looks and comments from the parents, but it’s okay, I told them off and got the girls out of there as quick as I could.”
Lucy wasn’t sure that telling people off was the right approach. “Are the girls okay?”
“They are now,” he said. “But I don’t think they can go to swim practice anytime soon.”
“Until when?” she said. “I mean, this will blow over eventually, right?”
Rex screwed up his face, as if to say no, he did not think there was a chance in hell of things blowing over. Lucy looked back outside at Jack. He was pacing around the yard now, making figure eights around the tables.
“What are we going to do?” she said. “Seriously, Dad, I don’t know what to do.”
And then her phone pinged with a message from the senior class mom group chat. Apparently, no one had bothered to remove Lucy’s number. She looked down to see that Cynthia’s mom, Janice, had written:
Woooo hoooo, Mamas! Happy graduation day to our awesome kiddos!! - and congrats to us too! (Reminder: group pic on the school steps right after the ceremony.) I know we’re all relieved that sicko Jack won’t be there. That pervert better stay away from our girls. Here’s to a great day, ladies!
Sicko? Pervert? Her Jack?
Lucy dropped her phone as if it had sent an electric shock through her hand.
The day passed in a blur, as Lucy kept the girls busy, the relatives fed, and Jack from falling into a pit of despair. Through it all, she waited for a miracle.
Instead it was the caterer who arrived. Despite all the tables and chairs in the backyard calling attention to a party, Lucy had forgotten to cancel.
A staff of uniformed helpers marched through the house, carting the makings of a surf-and-turf banquet into the kitchen and unloading tray after tray onto the countertops.
Lucy watched in stunned silence as they fired up the grill, preheated the oven, and boiled a cauldron of water large enough to cook forty pounds of jumbo shrimp.
They tossed salads, warmed appetizers, and chilled wine.
It was the wine that spurred Lucy to get herself dressed and gather the family.
No matter how dark the mood and how dire the circumstances, she would not let the opportunity to spend time together pass them by.
It felt absurd, but when the food was ready, Lucy got the girls downstairs, Henry away from the television, Jack out of bed, and the grandparents from their various corners, and sat them all together at one of the tables.