Chapter 6
NEIL
Icould have lied. The door was wide open and I stood in front of it for about two seconds.
I could have said nobody said that, Kath, it's a game of telephone, families do this. She'd have wanted to believe it. She'd have helped me — I know, I know — and gotten up to put the cups in the sink, and I'd have had another year out of it. Maybe five.
Instead I heard myself say, "Me."
Kathy didn't move.
"Monica asked me in July," I said. "Middle of July. I was at her house because her gutter was coming off the garage, up on the ladder half the afternoon."
I could see the whole thing while I said it, in detail I hadn't asked for. Ninety-four degrees. Wasps in the soffit. My sister at the bottom of the ladder holding it with one hand, telling me about somebody's divorce.
"She made lemonade. The powder kind, in the yellow pitcher that's been in that family since our mother. We came in because of the heat, and she said, is Lauren going to want a shower, because if she is, I want it. I want to do it properly."
"And you said?"
"I said yes, obviously, she'll want one. And Mon said—" I put my hand over my eyes, because it was right there, my sister's face, happy. "She said, Neil, I have been thinking about that girl's shower since she was in the second grade."
Kathy didn't say anything.
"She had the whole thing already. She had a room in her head. She said she'd been saving for it — she'd been putting a little aside since—" I stopped. "It doesn't matter."
"It matters," Kathy said. "It's not the crime. But it matters." Then: "July. They weren't engaged in July."
"She knew it was coming. Sam asked me in June if I thought—" There was no version of that sentence that didn't make it worse, so I let it go. "Then she said, do you think Kathy will mind if I run it. And I said?—"
I had to take a breath for it. It's a short sentence. I'd said it in about two seconds with a glass of powdered lemonade in my hand.
"I said, honestly, she'll be relieved. She's exhausted."
My wife's face did the thing I've only seen on it once before, in a corridor outside her mother's room, and it is not crying. Everything goes still and very slightly interested, like she's reading a strip.
"Say the whole thing," she said.
"Kath—"
"You said honestly."
"Yes."
"Honestly, she'll be relieved. She's exhausted."
"Yes."
"In July," she said. "Before there was a ring on my daughter's hand, you sat in your sister's kitchen and you answered a question about me."
"Yes."
"You didn't say, ask Kathy."
"No."
"You didn't say, that one's Kathy's."
"No," I said.
"Why not?"
And I didn't have it. Not at that table, not that afternoon. What I had was a hot feeling up the back of my neck and the instinct I've run on my whole adult life, which is that if a thing can be smoothed, you smooth it.
"Because she's family," I said. "Because Mon's been Lauren's aunt since she was six, she's never once made a line around that girl, and I?—"
"Don't."
"I'm not making an excuse."
"You are, a little." She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the table. "Neil, look at me. I need to know whether you understand what you did, because it isn't what you think it is."
"I didn't loop you in."
"No," she said. "You spoke for me."
The dog was still working up and down the fence. I will remember that dog when I'm eighty.
"You didn't lose my seat," my wife said. "You gave it away. And then you signed my name to the gift card."
She got up. She didn't storm anywhere, which was somehow worse — she went to the sink and rinsed the cup that had been empty for an hour, dried it, put it in the cabinet.
"My daughter thinks I didn't want to come," she said, with her back to me. "That's the part I'm going to have for the rest of my life. Whatever else happens, that already happened."
"I'll fix it."
"There it is," she said.
"Kathy—"
"I'm going to my mother's. I'll be back at nine."
And she went, and I stood in the kitchen holding a dish towel, listening to her car back out, fifty-one years old, having just found out I was a man who had done something.
Bree called me at seven while I was standing at the counter not eating.
"Dad, quick question, does Grandma Joyce need a ride to the shower or is Mom getting her?"
"I don't know yet, honey."
"Okay, also — random. Aunt Mon said something weird." Wind in the phone; she was walking somewhere. "She said she took the whole thing on because Mom couldn't. And I was like, couldn't? And she was like, well, your dad said she was running on empty. Is Mom okay? Because Mom's been acting kind of?—"
"Bree. Stop walking a second."
"I'm walking to my car."
"Stop walking."
The wind stopped. I stood in my kitchen with my hand on the cold edge of the counter.
"Monica asked me in July if your mother would mind her running the shower," I said. "I told her your mother would be relieved. I said she was exhausted. Your mother never said that to me. She never said it to anybody. I said it."
Quiet on the line.
"...Why?" Bree said.
"Because I thought I knew what she wanted. I didn't ask her. That's the whole answer. There isn't a better one."
"So Mom didn't know about the shower?"
"She found out from the registry email."
"Dad." Her voice went up. "Dad, that's?—"
"I know what it is."
"Adam said she was being weird at dinner last week, we thought it was Grandma?—"
"It wasn't Grandma. It was me."
I could hear her breathing, twenty-two years old in a parking lot somewhere, recalibrating her father.
"Are you going to fix it?"
"I'm going to stop making it worse first."
"That's not the same thing."
"No," I said. "It isn't."
"Do you want me to tell Adam, or are you?"
"I'll tell Adam."
"Because he's going to hear Aunt Mon's version."
"Then he'll hear mine first. Bree. One thing. If anybody in this family asks you what your mother wants, don't guess."
"Obviously."
"I'm serious. Not what you think, not what I think. Ask her."
"Dad, I've been asking her stuff my whole life. She says she's all right. She says it when she's standing up with her eyes closed."
"Then ask her twice. Ask her in the morning, when she's had four hours and she's still got a cup in her hand. That's when she answers things."
"How do you know that?"
"Twenty years," I said.
"That's literally what you did," Bree said. "The not-asking."
"Yeah," I said. "It is."
Adam called forty minutes later, because of course he did; those two have been a switchboard since they were small. Adam gets quiet, asks two questions, then goes away and thinks about it for a week.
"You told Aunt Mon that Kathy didn't want it?"
"I told her Kathy would be relieved."
"That's the same."
"Yeah. It's the same. I've had about three hours to get used to saying it."
"Huh." Then: "Does Lauren know?"
"Not yet."
"You should probably do that before Aunt Mon does."
"I know."
"Because Bree's going to tell her."
"Bree's not going to tell her."
"Bree tells everybody everything, Dad. That's her whole personality." Something scraped on his end, a chair or a boot. "Just do it before Sunday."
"I'll do it before Sunday," I said, which was the first promise I made about any of it, and which I then broke.
"Okay." A pause. "Can I say something."
"Go ahead."
"Kathy did my lunches for like eleven years. Every day. She wrote the thing on the napkin, the little face. I was in high school still getting the face."
"I know she did."
"So." He breathed out. "I don't know. That's all. Somebody should say it to her."
"Somebody's going to."
"Is it you?"
"It's me."
"Okay. Good." A pause I could hear him thinking in. "Because she won't ask for it."
"I know she won't."
"She never has. Not once, in my whole life. You ever think about that?"
"I'm thinking about it now."
"Okay." Another pause. "You want me to come by?"
"No, bud. Thanks."
"'Cause I can come by."
"I know you can," I said, and had to stop a second. "Not tonight."
Monica's voicemail came in at nine-twenty, eight minutes before Kathy's headlights came up the driveway.
I listened to it twice standing in the dark living room with the TV off.
My sister is fifty-four years old and has one of those voices that carries down a whole block at a cookout.
On this message it was low and careful, and it cracked in three places.
"Neil, it's me. I just got off the phone with Bree, and I need you to call me, because I'm — honey, I'm sitting here shaking, I'm actually shaking.
She's asking me if I pushed Kathy out. If I pushed her.
Neil, I asked you. I stood in my kitchen with the gutter half off my garage and I asked you, and you said she'd be relieved.
I believed my own brother, because why on God's earth would I not.
" A wet breath. "I have loved that girl since she was six years old.
I have never once — not one time — called her anything but mine.
And now I'm supposed to be the — what? I'm the villain, for throwing her a party?
For wanting one nice thing for that child?
Call me. Call me tonight, Neil, because I cannot — just call me. "
The garage door started up under the floor.
I stood there with the phone in my hand and had a good, clean, familiar idea, the kind that's run my whole life.
Play it for her. Let Kathy hear how bad Mon feels.
Kathy loves Mon, Kathy will pick up the phone, Kathy is the best person I know in a room with somebody who's coming apart.
Let the two women sort out the two women.
She came in with her keys in her teeth, carrying a grocery bag of my mother-in-law's returnables, which she does every Thursday, because Joyce won't let the deposit go.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
"You eat?"
"Not really."
"There's the chops." She put the bag down by the door, looked at the phone in my hand, then at my face, and waited. God, I felt it — the pull to hand it over, twenty years of handing things over.
"Who was that?" she said.
"My sister," I said. "It's mine. I'll call her tomorrow."
Kathy stood very still.
"Okay," she said.
Then she went up to bed. I sat down in the dark with my phone face-up on my knee, and didn't dial my sister, and didn't call my wife back down the stairs. I have never in my life been so aware of doing nothing on purpose.