Willa said, “They seem to be having fun, though.” She cocked her head to listen. “Isn’t it interesting how children all sound the same from a distance? I bet even in Africa, they use that nyah-nyah tone when they’re teasing and their voices get all thin and cracked when they say ‘No fair!’ ”
“What do you want to bet Patty is teaching the others to striptease,” Denise said. But she allowed herself a tucked-in smile when Willa laughed.
Later, crossing the upstairs hall with a basket of laundry, Willa glanced into Cheryl’s room to see what they were up to. Patty stood facing her, both arms extended from her sides, with Laurie and Cheryl directly behind her. All that showed of Laurie and Cheryl were their own arms, extended too so that Patty seemed to possess six arms, all six moving in stiff, stop-and-start arcs in time to the clicking sounds that Willa could hear now punctuating the music. “It’s a clock dance!” Cheryl shouted, briefly peeking out from the tail end. “Can you tell?”
Of course: those clicks were tick-tocks. Those arms were clock hands, jerking in time to the tick-tocks like the hands of those stuttery clocks on the walls of grade-school classrooms.
Willa smiled at the girls and said, “Yes, I can,” and when she went back downstairs she told Denise, “I wish you could see this darling dance they’re doing.”
“I’m beginning to think I’ll never get upstairs again,” Denise said glumly.
Willa said, “Oh, it will happen.”
Then she checked her watch. It was 3:45. Peter would be on the second leg of his flight by now, so she had no hope of his calling.
* * *
—
Using the map on Denise’s computer screen, she drew a detailed diagram of the route to Café Antoine. She wrote in not only the name of each street she should turn on but the street before it as well, so that she would have ample warning. Denise, who was watching, found this comical. “It’s just Towson!” she kept saying. “Plain little old Towson!”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Willa told her. “People who have a good sense of direction can’t imagine.”
“I still don’t get why you can’t ask Sean for a ride.”
“I was hoping he’d think to offer,” Willa said.
“But why just hope? Why pussyfoot around? Why do you go at things so slantwise?”
She was right. Willa knew it. She glanced down at her diagram in silence.
“Or maybe you’re worried I’ll feel bad if he comes by the house,” Denise said.
“No, no…”
“Because it wouldn’t bother me a bit if he came by, I swear it! That was just momentary, what happened when he came for his things. I’m totally over that now. So, yeah!”
“I wasn’t even thinking about that,” Willa said. (Not that she knew what had happened when he came for his things, but she could guess.)
“He’s the one who’s going to feel bad, by and by, stuck with that prissy Elissa. Just wait till you meet her. So ladylike. The type who keeps a fresh Kleenex tucked inside her sleeve. She’s probably driving him crazy already, what do you want to bet. He’s probably gnashing his hair.”
“Teeth,” Willa said. She laughed.
Denise said, “Whatever.”
“Gnashing his hair and tearing his teeth,” Willa said, and then they both got to laughing.
Willa didn’t point out that sometimes, when she wore something without pockets, she tucked a Kleenex inside her own sleeve.
* * *
—
Why did she go at things so slantwise? By late afternoon, when she knew Peter must be home now but still he wasn’t calling, why didn’t she just call him and ask, “Are you back yet?” And “How was your trip?”
But maybe he was napping, she told herself, because he’d had to get up so early in the morning. She would hate to wake him.
She knew this was just an excuse.
She had planned to wear her A-line dress to dinner, but she saw now that it was too hot for that. She would have to make do with the plain cotton shift she’d already worn several times over. She ironed out the wrinkles on Denise’s dining-room table, for lack of an actual ironing board. Oh, already she was feeling the limitations of living out of a suitcase. (And yet Peter always claimed she overpacked!) This afternoon she’d been forced to run a washerload of blouses and underwear, and her travel-size bottle of foundation wasn’t going to last her much longer. She applied it sparingly, frowning into the bathroom mirror. Then she smoothed her hair with both hands. Back home she went to a place that chemically tamed the frizz, and she was just about due for a treatment.
Cheryl hung around for a while watching her preparations, but when the doorbell rang she said “I’ll get it!” and scampered off. Barry and Richard would be babysitting, as they put it—a term that made Cheryl snort indignantly. Earlier in the day they had stopped by with a basket of fruit, and they had been horrified that Cheryl and Denise were going to be left on their own that evening. When Willa came downstairs she found them unpacking pizzas in the dining room—two comically mismatched men, Barry tubby and blond and bearded in wrinkled drawstring pants and Richard tall and dark and elegant, still dressed in his office clothes. (He was a real-estate agent. Barry was a carpenter.) They’d brought their Scrabble board for afterward, but Denise was telling them she was no good at Scrabble. “All’s I ever come up with is three- and four-letter words,” she said. Cheryl said, “Never mind, Mama; I’ll help you,” but Denise shook her head.
“I bet Willa’s great at Scrabble,” Richard said.
“Actually, I’m not,” Willa said, “but I do like playing it.”
Then she declined the slice of pizza Barry offered her (black olive and mushroom; it looked delicious) and picked up her purse to leave. “Have fun, everybody!” she told them. Half of her wished she could just stay here.
It was still daylight out, which would make the drive easier. She took her time settling into the car, sliding the seat forward and adjusting all the mirrors before she started the engine. The radio came on—NPR, Peter’s choice—and she searched for the button and turned it off so she wouldn’t be distracted. She opened her window a crack to lighten the musty smell, and then she inched away from the curb.
It turned out that the actual drive was less daunting than she had feared. On Dorcas Road she met only one car, and she was familiar with Reuben Road because of the stuffed rabbit that had been sitting at the corner for the past two days holding a cardboard sign that asked “Did You Lose Me?” Before she knew it, she was inching through the left turn onto Northern Parkway, and after that she had clear sailing for a while. True, there was some traffic, but just enough so she didn’t have to worry she was slowing down other drivers. She headed steadily west and then turned north onto York Road—this time a right turn, so it wasn’t a problem. After that she relaxed a bit. She drove past a clutter of shops and fast-food places, then rows of modest houses, and finally a commercial district that must be Towson. There she had to check street signs, but the traffic was so stop-and-start that she could take her time reading them. Yes, here was the last street before the next turn, here the turn itself…She took a left and almost immediately spotted the café, its name spelled out in neon script across a mullioned window. But there was no free space in front; oh, dear. She took an impulsive right at the next cross street and by some miracle spotted a metered parking lot. Thank God. She didn’t even have to do the back-and-forth thing; she could pull into a space head-on.
She shut the engine off and sat there breathing deeply for a moment. Then she gathered herself together, reached for her purse, and stepped out of the car. She even remembered to feed the meter.
Heading back toward the café, she had the oddest experience. She noticed a man walking toward her in the distance, a fair-haired man in a short-sleeved shirt and khakis, and at first she merely registered his approach, but
then some jaunty quality in his gait tugged at her and she stopped short. It was Sean. It was dear, familiar Sean, thirty-eight years old now and completely at home in a strange town, accompanied by a very thin blonde in a polka-dot sundress. When he saw Willa he just grinned and raised a hand; he wasn’t struck motionless the way she was. He arrived in front of her and said, “Hi, Mom,” and bent to kiss her cheek. “This is Elissa,” he said, nodding toward the woman at his side.
Elissa offered Willa her hand. “How do you do, Mrs. Brendan,” she said.
“Willa, for goodness’ sake,” Willa said. Elissa’s fingers were long and cool and slim. She seemed younger than Sean—perhaps in her late twenties—and although her sundress allowed her no place to tuck a Kleenex, she did wear a cardigan draped just so across her shoulders, which in Willa’s opinion gave almost the same effect.
“Shall we?” Sean asked, and he shepherded them both through the glass door and into a small room where already most of the tables were occupied. “MacIntyre, for six o’clock,” he told the hostess. Even this gave Willa an odd sensation—that reminder of the days when she too had been a MacIntyre.
They were seated at a corner table—Sean next to Elissa, and Willa across from the two of them. Willa set her purse on the empty chair beside her and clasped her hands in her lap. “So!” she said. “It wasn’t as bad a drive as I had expected.”
“Well, no,” Sean said. He told Elissa, “Mom is not a big fan of driving.”
Elissa gave a sympathetic cluck.
“In fact, some of her oldest friends are surprised when they hear she has a license,” Sean said.
“Oh, stop,” Willa said. “He’s making that up,” she told Elissa. Already she was back in that hapless, dithery-mom role she’d been assigned when her sons reached their teens. She asked Elissa, “Are you a Baltimorean?”
“Oh, no, I moved here just a few years ago,” Elissa said. “I’m from New York originally.”
Though she didn’t have what Willa would consider a New York accent. She spoke very crisply, enunciating each word. Her mouth was small and bright red and precisely outlined. (Cheryl would have asked if she wore lip liner.) And her cardigan sleeves were not so much knotted together as tidily flattened over each other, so that she had to be careful how she moved her shoulders.
Willa started missing Denise.
Their waitress brought them menus, slightly stained cream-colored menus with tassels. Sean told Willa, “I recommend the crab fluff.”
“Oh, yes, the crab fluff,” Willa said.
“Will you be having wine, Mom?”
“I guess I shouldn’t if I’m driving. Maybe a glass of iced tea,” she said.
“And we two would like a bottle of pinot grigio,” Sean told the waitress.
Elissa asked Willa, “Have you been enjoying your visit?”
Willa was experiencing one of those rapt moments that often overcame her in the presence of her sons. She was admiring Sean’s profile as he discussed wines with the waitress; he had the finest, straightest nose, and charmingly stubby blond eyelashes. But she turned her attention to Elissa and said, “Yes, I have, thank you.”
“I can’t believe Denise was shot,” Elissa said. “Have they found out who did it?”
“No, I think they’ve given up trying,” Willa said.
It surprised her that Elissa could talk about Denise so comfortably. She started wondering how the two of them could have been friends—tightly wound Elissa and affable Denise.
Sean had finished with the waitress now. He told Elissa, “I can believe it. Bear in mind that that is not the fanciest part of town.”
“It does feel perfectly safe, though,” Willa said. “I don’t worry in the least about taking a walk late at night.”
“Well, you might want to reconsider,” Sean told her. “Look at the neighbors. A motorcycle hoodlum, a seedy private eye, a has-been doctor with a pack of Medicaid patients…”
He was viewing them from the wrong slant, Willa thought. They weren’t like that. Or they were, but there was more to them besides. But she didn’t want to argue. She said, “How is your work, honey? Are things going well?”
“What? Yeah, sure,” Sean said.
Willa didn’t know what he did at work, exactly, but then she hadn’t known what his father did, either. She said, “Do you think you’ll be based here permanently?”
“I suppose so,” Sean said. He started studying the menu.
“And Elissa, do you work?” Willa asked.
“Yes, I’m a representative for a window-treatment firm,” Elissa said.
“Oh, how interesting!”
“It does take a bit of color sense and style sense,” Elissa said. “Not to mention tact. You wouldn’t believe what some people want on their windows.”
“Oh, I can imagine,” Willa said.
Their waitress arrived with their drinks then, and they had to place their orders. Sean and Willa ordered the crab fluff—Sean’s with french fries, Willa’s with slaw—and Elissa ordered the skinless chicken breast rémoulade without the rémoulade and a salad with the dressing on the side. Willa had been hoping they would have a first course too, just to stretch the occasion out longer, but the other two both said no.
When their waitress left there was a lengthy pause in the conversation, during which they all turned to watch a toddler fling himself on his back beneath a neighboring table and clamp both arms obstinately across his chest. “Georgie?” his mother kept asking. “Georgie, sweetheart? Now, Georgie…”
“I’m sorry Peter couldn’t join us,” Willa said finally.
“Oh, me too,” Elissa said. “It would have been nice to meet him.”
“He felt he should be getting back,” Willa said. “You know how it is,” she told Sean.
“I thought he’d retired,” Sean said.
“Well, he did, but…he still keeps in touch with the office, though.”
“I’ll bet he does,” Sean said. He told Elissa, “My brother and I call Peter the gift that keeps on giving.”
Elissa made a hissing sound of amusement, but Willa was puzzled. “What does that mean?” she asked him.
“Oh, you know: he’s always such a rich topic of conversation. His latest huffs and puffs and quibbles.”
Willa said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Like, say he had joined us tonight,” Sean said. He turned to Elissa. “Peter never, ever accepts the first table he’s shown to. He always has to request another, and sometimes one more instead of that one. Then there’s the wine. They pour him a taste and he sort of sieves it through his teeth and gargles it and then sits there frowning while everyone waits for his verdict.”
“Oh, Sean, he’s not that bad,” Willa said.
“And if you think that’s a production, watch him order his meal. The waitress stands there, stands there, stands there, pen and pad at the ready—”
“He’s exaggerating,” Willa told Elissa.
“Finally she says, ‘I’ll just come back in a few minutes, why don’t I,’ but Peter says ‘No, no…’ and he makes her stand there a while longer. Then he says, ‘Is your asparagus from your own garden? Was it picked while the dew was still on it?’ ”
“Sean is completely making that up,” Willa told Elissa. “Peter is a very nice man. And he’s funny, too; he’s got this very…sardonic style of humor.”
“How did the two of you meet?” Elissa asked.
“Oh!” Willa said gratefully. “Well, so I was in line at the post office, and I happened to have a bottle of water with me. And Peter leaned over from behind and asked, ‘Shouldn’t your Sherpa be carrying that for you?’ ”
She laughed, remembering. Elissa looked confused, and Sean told her, “You see what I mean.”
“What?” Willa demanded. “What was wrong with
that?”
Their food arrived and was set silently before them. The waitress seemed to sense that this was not the moment to ask if they had everything they needed.
“He’s the type who likes to grandstand,” Sean told Elissa. “He likes to hold forth. Remember, Mom, the time he got so exercised about the cracker box? He was studying the back of a cracker box,” he told Elissa, “where they pictured one of those ‘serving suggestions.’ Panini, they were suggesting. Except they said ‘paninis.’ Which was their term for cracker sandwiches made with about a three-inch stack of cheese and peppers and zucchini slices and whatnot. And Peter said, ‘Paninis! They call these paninis! What do you suppose they imagine the singular is? And how do they think people will get their mouths around them, for God’s sake? They don’t trouble themselves about that little detail, now, do they.’ ”
“Heavens,” Elissa said.
“He’s what’s known as ‘a difficult man,’ ” Sean told her. He chomped down on a forkful of crab fluff, looking fairly difficult himself.
Willa said, “Now you’re being unfair, Sean. Everybody’s entitled to an opinion from time to time.”
Sean just stabbed another forkful of crab fluff.
Elissa made a delicate throat-clearing sound. She hadn’t yet touched her own meal. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t have met Sean’s dad,” she told Willa.
“Oh, I am too,” Willa said. She welcomed the change of subject. “You would have liked him, I know. He was such a good father! He was with me in the delivery room when Sean was born, and he got so excited he said, ‘It’s a baby!’ He meant to say ‘It’s a boy,’ you see, but he got so—”
“He died in a road-rage incident,” Sean told Elissa.
“Yes, you’ve mentioned,” Elissa murmured.
Willa ducked her head over her plate and took a bite of her crab fluff. It tasted like deep-fried pancake batter.
“Is everything to your liking?” their waitress asked.