Ahn would also get up to make and serve their breakfast.
Minas had rye toast and marmalade with a poached egg and air-dried German beef. Eric had oatmeal with toasted almonds, golden raisins, brown sugar, and cream. Most of their time together was spent eating and reading. Now and then Minas would mention something he found fascinating in the paper or an anecdote from the previous day at work.
Eric, for his part, listened or, at most, asked for clarification on a detail or a word. He never tried to have a full-blown 1 3 8
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conversation because when the clock on the wall said 6:50, Minas Nolan stood up, bussed his dishes, took his brief-case from the floor next to the door, and left no matter what was happening at breakfast or in the world according to the
But that day was different.
Eric couldn’t go back to sleep after his talk with Christie.
He restrung his fiberglass tennis racket in the garage and then looked over his school papers. Eric was an excellent student.
His comprehension of math was pure and intuitional; his memory for facts was a point of pride for his teachers. He didn’t need to check his work, but he had to do something.
“Did you love my mother?” Eric asked Minas at six forty-two.
“Of course I did,” Minas replied. The once-handsome man was now graying and haggard. “I loved her very much.”
“What about Mama Branwyn?”
Minas’s throat constricted, and his mind traveled back to the night she asked him for a kiss. He folded his newspaper, reached to place it on the table, but he wasn’t looking and so dropped the
“Branwyn,” he said.
They had not discussed the mother of Eric’s heart since before the day Eric found that green fish on the beach at Malibu.
Eric placed his hands palms down on the table. All of the manliness and beauty that was once his father’s had now been absorbed into the boy’s features.
Ahn walked in with their final cup of tea. She could see the confrontation in their eyes, so she silently placed the solid silver platter between them and then left to eavesdrop from the pantry.
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“Branwyn,” Dr. Nolan said again. “Yes . . . yes, I loved her very, very much. She saved me when your mother died.”
“Did she love you, Dad?”
“I . . . I don’t think she loved me the way I loved her,” he said. “But that didn’t ever seem to matter. The way Branwyn felt about people, she could give everything inside her to you even if you weren’t her first choice or even somebody she could love.”
“Were we people she loved?” Eric asked. He’d forgotten about Christie by then.
“I think so,” his father said. “It wasn’t hard with Branwyn like it was with other women.”
“What do you mean?” Eric asked softly.
“Other women I’d known wanted something you couldn’t see or touch or even say. They called it love, but it was more like a game the way I saw it. One night I asked Branwyn if she loved me, and she said that she fell in love with me every night that I carried her up the stairs to our room. When she said that, I felt like a kid. I kissed her and she laughed at me . . .”
Minas got lost in the memory.
“What is it, Dad?”
“I asked her to marry me, but she said no. I asked her all the time, but the answer was always the same.”
“You think that was because she didn’t love you?”
“No. It had to do with Tommy,” Minas said. “Tommy’s father was alive, and she didn’t want her boy to feel his loss with our marriage.”
It was time for Minas to leave.
“Have I neglected you, Eric?”
In his mind Eric saw his father rising up and walking toward the door. He was supposed to be leaving, but he was not.
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Behind the pantry door Ahn was thinking the same thing.
She feared that something terrible was about to happen.
“No,” Eric said.
“It’s just that,” Minas continued as if his son had not spoken at all, “you’ve never seemed to need help. All we ever had to do was contain you, hold you back from eating all the Christmas fruitcake or from jumping off the roof to fly with the sparrows.
