In 1997, he invited the family to his wedding at a New York restaurant where his wife-to-be worked as a waitress and he was the chef. The what? How had that come about? At home he’d never cooked anything more ambitious than a can of Hormel chili. Everybody went, of course—Red and Abby and Stem and the girls and both the girls’ husbands. In hindsight, there may have been too many of them. They outnumbered everyone else. But they were invited, after all! He said he’d like all of them there! He had used that intense tone of voice that suggested he needed them there. So they rented a minivan and drove north to throng the tiny restaurant, which was really more of a bar—a divey little place with six stools at a wooden counter and four round, dinky tables. Another waitress and the owner attended, along with the bride’s mother. The bride, whose name was Carla, wore a spaghetti-strapped maternity dress that barely covered her underwear. She was clearly older than Denny (who was twenty-two at the time, way too young to think of marrying). Her rough mat of hair was dyed a uniform dense brown, like a dead thing lying on her head, and her blue-glass-bead eyes had a hard look. She seemed almost older than her own mother, a plump, bubbly blonde in a sundress. Still, the Whitshanks did their best. They circulated before the ceremony, asking Carla where she and Denny had met, asking the other waitress whether she was the maid of honor. Carla and Denny had met at work. There wasn’t going to be a maid of honor.
Denny behaved quite sociably, for Denny. He wore a decent-looking dark suit and a red tie, and he spoke cordially to everyone, moving from person to person but returning betweentimes to stand at Carla’s side with one hand resting on the small of her back in a proprietary way. Carla was pleasant but distracted, as if she were wondering whether she’d left a burner on at home. She had a New York accent.
Abby made it her special project to get to know the bride’s mother. She chose the chair next to her when it was time to sit down, and the two of them began talking together in lowered tones, their heads nearly touching and their eyes veering repeatedly toward the bridal couple. This gave the rest of the Whitshanks some hope that once they were on their own again, they would learn the inside story. Because what was happening here, exactly? Was it a love match? Really? And when was that baby due?
The preacher, if that was the term for him, was a bike messenger with a license from the Universal Life Church. Carla commented several times on how he had “cleaned up real good,” but if so, the Whitshanks could only imagine what he must have looked like before. He wore a black leather jacket—in August!—and a stubbly black goatee, and his boots were strung with chains so heavy that they clanked rather than jingled. But he took his duties seriously, asking the groom and the bride in turn if they promised to be loving and caring, and after they both said “I do,” he laid his hands on their shoulders and intoned, “Go in peace, my children.” The other waitress called out, “Yay,” in a weak, uncertain voice, and then Denny and Carla kissed—a long and heartfelt kiss, the Whitshanks were relieved to see—after which the owner brought out several bottles of sparkling wine. The Whitshanks hung around a while, but Denny was so busy with other people that eventually they took their leave.
Walking toward the minivan, everybody wanted to know what Abby had found out from Carla’s mother. Not much, Abby said. Carla’s mother worked in a cosmetics store. Carla’s father was “out of the picture.” Carla had been married before but it hadn’t lasted a minute. Abby said she had waited and waited for some mention of the pregnancy, but it never did come up and she hadn’t liked to ask. Instead Lena—that was the mother’s name—had complained at some length about the suddenness of the wedding. She could have done something nice if only she’d had some warning, she said, but she hadn’t been informed until a week ago. This made Abby feel better, because the Whitshanks hadn’t been informed till then, either. She had worried they’d been deliberately excluded. But then Lena went on to talk about Denny this, Denny that: Denny had bought his suit at a thrift shop, Denny had borrowed his tie from his boss, Denny had found them a cute one-bedroom above a Korean record store. So Lena knew him, evidently. She certainly knew him better than the Whitshanks knew Carla. Why was he always so eager to exchange his family for someone else’s?
On the drive home, Abby was unusually subdued.
For nearly three months after the wedding, they didn’t hear a word. Then Denny phoned in the middle of the night to say Carla had had her baby. He sounded jubilant. It was a girl, he said, and she weighed seven pounds, and they were calling her Susan. “When can we see her?” Abby asked, and he said, “Oh, in a while.” Which was perfectly understandable, but when it was Denny saying it, you had to wonder how long he had in mind. This was the Whitshanks’ first grandchild, and Abby told Red that she couldn’t bear it if they weren’t allowed to be in her life.
But the surprise was, on Thanksgiving morning—and Denny most often avoided Thanksgiving, with its larger-than-ever component of orphans—he phoned to say he and Susan were boarding a train to Baltimore and could somebody come meet him. He arrived with Susan strapped to his front in a canvas sling arrangement. A three-week-old baby! Or not even that, actually. Too young to look like anything more than a little squinched-up peanut with her face pressed to Denny’s chest. But that didn’t stop the family from making a fuss about her. They agreed that her wisps of black hair were pure Whitshank, and they tried to uncurl one tiny fist to see if she had their long fingers. They were dying for her to open her eyes so they could make out the color. Abby pried her from the sling to check, but Susan went on sleeping. “So, how does it happen,” Abby said to Denny, as she nestled Susan against her shoulder, “that you are here on your own?”
“I’m not on my own. I’m with Susan,” Denny said.
Abby rolled her eyes, and he relented. “Carla’s mother broke her wrist,” he said. “Carla had to take her to the emergency room.”
“Oh, what a pity,” Abby said, and the others murmured sympathetically. (At least Carla wasn’t “out of the picture.”) “How will that work, though? Did she pump?”
“Pump?”
“Did she pump enough milk?”
“No, Mom, I brought formula.” He patted the pink vinyl bag hanging from his shoulder.
“Formula,” Abby said. “But then her supply will go down.”
“Supply of what?”
“Supply of breast milk! If you feed a baby formula, the mother’s milk will dry up.”
“Oh, Susan’s a bottle baby,” Denny said.
Abby had been reading books on how to be a good grandmother. The main thing was, don’t interfere. Don’t criticize, don’t offer advice. So all she said was, “Oh.”
“What do you expect? Carla has a full-time job,” Denny said. “Not everyone can afford to stay home and loll around breast-feeding.”
“I didn’t say a word,” Abby said.
There had been times in the past when Denny’s visits had lasted just about this long. One little question too many and he was out the door. Perhaps remembering that, Abby tightened her hold on the baby. “Anyhow,” she said, “it’s good to have you here.”
“Good to be here,” Denny said, and everyone relaxed.
It was possible he had made some sort of resolution on the train trip down, because he was so easygoing on that visit, so uncritical even with the orphans. When B. J. Autry gave one of her magpie laughs and startled the baby awake, all he said was, “Okay, folks, you can check out Susan’s eyes now.” And he was very considerate about Mr. Dale’s hearing problem, repeating one phrase several times over without a trace of impatience.
Amanda, who was seven months pregnant, pestered him with child-care questions, and he answered every one of them. (A crib was completely unnecessary; just use a bureau drawer. No need for a stroller, either. High chair? Probably not.) He made polite conversation about Whitshank Construction, including not only his father but Jeannie, who was a carpenter there now, and even Stem. He listened quietly, nodding, to Stem’s inch-by-inch description of a minor logistical proble
m. (“So, the customer wants floor-to-ceiling cabinets, see, so we tear out all the bulkheads, but then he says, ‘Oh, wait!’ ”)
Abby fed the baby and burped her and changed her miniature diaper, which was the disposable kind, but Abby refrained from so much as mentioning the word “landfill.” It turned out that Susan had a chubby chin and beautifully sculptured lips and a frowning, slate-blue gaze. Abby passed her to Red, who made a big show of dismay and ineptness but later was caught pressing his nose to her downy head, drawing in a long deep breath of baby smell.
When Denny said he couldn’t spend the night, they understood, of course. Abby packed up some leftover turkey for Carla and her mother, and Red drove Denny and the baby to the station. “Don’t be a stranger, now,” Red said when Denny got out, and Denny said, “Nope, see you soon.”
Which he had said before, any number of times, and it hadn’t meant a thing. This time, though, was different. Maybe it was fatherhood. Maybe he was beginning to recognize the importance of family. In any case, he came back for Christmas—just for the day, but still!—and he brought not only Susan but Carla. Susan was seven weeks old, and she’d made that forward leap into awareness of her surroundings, looking at people when they talked to her and responding with lopsided smiles that revealed a dimple in her right cheek. Carla was casually friendly, although she didn’t seem to be trying all that hard. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt, so Abby, who was trying hard, stayed in her denim skirt instead of changing for dinner. She said, “Carla, may I offer you a glass of wine? So nice that you’re not breast-feeding. You can drink whatever you want.” Her daughters rounded their eyes at each other: Mom going overboard, as usual! But they were trying pretty hard themselves. They complimented every single thing about Carla they could think of, including the tattoo of her dog’s name in the bend of her left arm.
The whole family agreed later that the visit had gone well. And since Denny started bringing Susan down every month or so after that, it appeared that he thought so too. (He didn’t bring Carla, because he came on Carla’s workdays. She worked now at a hamburger joint, he said; both of them had left the restaurant, but his own schedule was more flexible.) Susan learned to sit up; she began solid foods; she learned to crawl. Sometimes now Denny spent the night. He slept in his old room, with Susan next to his bed in the Portacrib that Abby had saved from her own children’s era. By this time, Amanda’s Elise had been born, and the family liked to imagine how the two little girls would grow up together as lifelong best friends.
Then Denny took offense at something his father said. It was summer and they were talking about the upcoming family beach trip. Denny said he and Susan could make it, but Carla had to work then. Red said, “How come you don’t have to work?”
Denny said, “I just don’t.”
“But Carla does?”
“Right.”
“Well, I don’t get that. Carla’s the mom, right?”
“So?”
Two other people were present—Abby and Jeannie—and both of them grew suddenly alert. They sent Red identical cautioning glances. Red didn’t seem to notice. He said, “Do you have a job?”
“Is that any of your business?” Denny asked.
Then Red shut up, although clearly it cost him some effort, and it seemed that was the end of it. But when Abby asked for help hauling out the Portacrib, Denny said not to bother. He wasn’t planning to spend the night, he said. He was perfectly civil, though, and he took his leave without any suggestion of a scene.
Three years passed before they heard from him again.
For the first several months, they did nothing. That was how deferential they were, how cowed by Denny’s silences. But on Susan’s birthday, Abby phoned him, using the number she’d made a note of the first time it had popped up on their caller ID. (Parents of people like Denny develop the wiles of secret agents.) Red lurked nearby, looking nonchalant. All Abby got, though, was a recorded voice saying the number had been disconnected. “It seems they’ve moved,” she told Red. “But that’s a good thing, don’t you think? I bet they found a bigger place, with a separate bedroom for Susan.” Then she called information and asked for a new listing for Dennis Whitshank, but there wasn’t one. “How about Carla Whitshank?” she asked, sending a nervous glance toward Red. (After all, it was not unthinkable that they might be separated by now.) But after that she hung up and said, “I guess we’re going to have to wait for him to get in touch.”
Red merely nodded and wandered off to another room.
More months passed. Years passed. Susan must be walking, then talking. That mesmerizing stage when language develops exponentially from one day to the next, when children are little sponges for language: the Whitshanks missed every bit of it. At this point they had two other grandchildren—Jeannie’s Deb was born shortly after Denny’s last visit—but that just made it harder, watching those two grow up and knowing Susan was doing the same without any of them there to witness it.
Then 9/11 came along, and Abby just about lost her mind with worry. Well, the whole family felt some concern, of course. But as far as they knew, Denny didn’t have any business inside the World Trade Center, so they told themselves he was fine. Yes, fine, Abby agreed. But you could see she wasn’t convinced. She watched TV obsessively for two days, long after the rest of them had grown sick of the very sight of those towers falling and falling. She began thinking up reasons that Denny could have been there. You couldn’t predict, with Denny; he’d held so many different kinds of jobs. Or maybe he’d just been walking by. She began to believe that she could sense he was in trouble. Something just felt wrong, she said. Maybe they should phone Lena.
“Who?” Red asked.
“Carla’s mother. What was her last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have to know,” Abby said. “Think.”
“I don’t believe we ever heard her last name, hon.”
Abby started pacing. They were in their bedroom, and she was treading her usual path up and down the Persian runner, her nightgown flapping around her knees. “Lena Abbott … Adams … Armstrong,” she said. “Lena Babcock … Bennett … Brown.” (Sometimes the alphabet worked for her.) “We were introduced,” she said. “Denny introduced us. He must have told us her last name.”
“Not if I know Denny,” Red said. “I’m surprised he introduced us at all, but if he did, he probably said, ‘Lena, meet my folks.’ ”
Abby couldn’t argue with that. She went on pacing.
Then she said, “The waitress. The other one.”
“Well, I have no idea what her name was.”
“No, me either, but she called Lena Mrs. Something, I remember that. I remember thinking she must be the shy type, if she wouldn’t use Lena’s first name even in this day and age.”
She gave up pacing and went around to her side of the bed. “Oh, well, it will come to me by and by,” she said. She prided herself on her phenomenal memory, but it sometimes operated on a delay. “It will float up in its own good time, if I just don’t force it.”
Then she lay down and smoothed her covers and ostentatiously closed her eyes, so Red got into bed himself and switched the lamp off.
In the middle of the night, though, she prodded his shoulder. “Carlucci,” she said.
“Huh?”
“I can hear the waitress saying it. ‘Mrs. Carlucci, can I get you a refill?’ How could I have forgotten? Carla Carlucci: alliteration. Or something more than alliteration, but I don’t know the term for it. It just now came to me when I got up to go pee.”
“Oh. Good,” Red said, turning onto his back.
“I’m going to try Information.”
“Now?” He squinted at the clock radio. “It’s two thirty a.m.! You can’t phone her now.”
“No, but I can get her number,” Abby said.
Red went back to sleep.
In the morning she announced that there were three L. Carluccis in Manhattan, and she was going to call each one of them
in turn. She had decided to start at seven. It was just after six at the moment; the Whitshanks were early risers. “Some folks might still be asleep at seven,” Red said.
“Maybe so,” Abby said, “but technically, seven is morning.”
Red said, “Well, okay.” Then he went downstairs and made a pot of coffee, although as a rule he’d be leaving for work now with a stop-off at Dunkin’ Donuts.
At five till seven, Abby placed her first call. “Good morning, may I speak to Lena, please?” Then, “Oh, I’m sorry! I must have the wrong number.”
She placed the second call. “Hello, is this Lena?” The briefest pause. “Well, excuse me. Yes, I know it’s early, but—”
She winced. She dialed again. “Hello, Lena?”
She straightened. “Well, hi there! It’s Abby Whitshank, down in Baltimore. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
She listened a moment. “Oh, I know what you mean,” she said. “I keep telling Red, ‘Sometimes I wonder why I go to bed at all, the little bit of sleep I manage.’ Is it age, do you think? Is it the stress of modern times? Speaking of which, Lena, I was wondering. Are Carla and Susan and Denny okay? I mean, after last Tuesday?”
(“Last Tuesday” was how people were still referring to it. Not till the following week would they start saying “September eleventh.”)
“Oh, really,” Abby said. “I see. Well, that’s something, at least! That’s comforting. And so you don’t … Well, of course I can see that you wouldn’t … Well, thank you so much, Lena! And please give my love to Carla and Susan … Hmm?… Yes, everyone here is fine, thanks. Thank you, now! Bye!”
She hung up.
“Carla and Susan are all right,” she said. “Denny she assumes is all right, but she doesn’t know for sure because he’s moved to New Jersey.”
“New Jersey? Where in New Jersey?”
“She didn’t say. She said she doesn’t have his number.”