The Most Dangerous Thing

“She’s not alone. Uncle Tim and his family live twenty minutes away.”

“Still, we should go.”

Duncan focuses on the branch in front of him. “Some kids from school are going to New Orleans to work with one of the house-building programs there.”

“That’s still going on?”

“Of course it is. You don’t rebuild a city overnight.”

Sean knows New Orleans wasn’t rebuilt overnight. His surprise is that school and church groups are still going, that the attention-deficit-disordered world hasn’t moved on to a new tragedy. Events move into the rearview mirror quickly these days. Earthquakes, tsunamis-it seems like every month, celebrities are back on television, running some phone bank.

“I thought I would go,” Duncan says. “It will look good on my college applications. I’m light on volunteering and community service.”

“Can’t you do something similar in the summer?”

“I’m going back to Stage Door, then doing an intensive cross-country camp, one that attracts scouts.”

Scouts mean scholarships, and Sean is no enemy of financial assistance for Sean’s college education, although he knows that’s the sort of bill that Vivian’s family will pick up if he really finds himself on the ropes. And if the school is impressive enough. Sean isn’t sure which schools will make the cut, but he knows his alma mater, Washington University, isn’t among them, although it’s no safety school. But no one in Vivian’s family is familiar with it, and what they don’t know can’t possibly be worth knowing. Vivian went to Duke, and Sean’s room has been filled with blue-and-white devils almost since the day he was born.

“You haven’t seen your grandmother in a while. You didn’t even make it to the funeral.”

“Dad, I had that competition in Orlando. If I hadn’t gone, the chamber quartet would have been penalized.”

“You’re the only grandson-and the only one who doesn’t live there.”

“That’s not my fault,” Duncan says in his factual, even-keeled way, so much like Vivian. “And being the only grandson shouldn’t matter. Are you saying boys are more important than girls to Grandma Dee?”

“It would make her really happy if you came with us. That’s all.”

“But we’ve already bought our plane tickets.”

“We?”

“Mom and me. She’s planning on being one of the chaperones on the New Orleans trip.”

Duncan’s face is turned away from Sean’s. Sean has never been sure how much Duncan picks up on his parents’ dynamic. Sean’s father, if he were still alive, would probably say Vivian wears the pants in the family, but that’s not exactly right. She’s not a ballbuster. Her manner is unfailingly polite, reasonable. She simply cannot see Sean’s side of things. When they clash, her attitude is almost pitying. Poor silly Sean, thinking that’s a viable idea. She humors him, hearing him out.

He thinks of another thing his father liked to say: Don’t marry above yourself or you’ll never get out from under. He chose Vivian because she was a prize, something bright and shiny on a shelf barely within reach. The problem is, she sees herself the same way.

He waits to talk to her until he has showered and dressed, picking a collared shirt, one he knows she likes on him. She is in the family room, sewing something. Vivian is seldom at rest and she expects Sean and Duncan to follow suit. To be productive, almost every waking hour, is her goal. But Sean has earned his beer, the right to have the television on mute, baseball scores scrolling by. He still thinks of the Orioles as his team. They still break his heart on a regular basis.

“Duncan says he’s planning to go to New Orleans over school break.”

“Yes,” she says, biting a piece of thread. “With a group from church. I think it’s a great idea.”

“The thing is, my mom is pretty fragile right now and I think it’s important for all of us to go see her.”

“Certainly you should go. I understand.”

This is how she does it, he thinks. She doesn’t even acknowledge there’s another side to the issue. She’s seizing the high ground, being magnanimous for allowing him to go see his mother.

“She loves Duncan, dotes on him. It would be great if he were there, too.”

“I’m sure she’ll understand when you explain how important this is to his college applications.”

“But how do I explain you not being there?”

“Oh, honey-it’s New Orleans. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I wasn’t one of the chaperones. It’s a very dangerous city. I’ll make you miserable, worrying about Duncan, so I might as well go.”

He wants to argue on principle, then thinks Fuck it . He’ll go back to Baltimore, stay with his mom, something Vivian abhors, although she never admits it. But when forced to spend even a night in his boyhood home, she goes through the day murmuring, murmuring, murmuring, keeping up a running litany of disapproval that pretends to be disinterested commentary, as she ticks off everything that bothers her about the house, about Dickeyville, about Baltimore. It’s been years since they’ve stayed under his mother’s roof as a family.

Sean will go home, spend the long Easter weekend, look up some old friends. Maybe even check in with McKey, if only to assure himself that what didn’t happen between them definitely didn’t happen between them. And if it did-if he’s already cheated-then doesn’t he deserve to remember it?

Chapter Twenty-eight

D oris sits in the chair where her husband died, reading a mystery novel. She goes through two or three a week. As she tried to tell Tim Junior when he bought her that ridiculous plasma thing, she has little use for television these days. It makes her jumpy, and the more channels and control she allegedly has over it, the more she feels in its control. She was happy with the five local channels and rabbit ears.

But she can read when and wherever she wants. Her favorites are the modern American versions of the old- fashioned English mysteries, with a dash of humor. She likes series because she likes the details that repeat-the beloved restaurants, the irascible but adorable landlords, the kooky families, the on-again, gone-again boyfriends.

She reads in Tim’s old chair because it has the best light and is also the most comfortable. It has been reupholstered, but only because Arlene insisted. It’s not as if it were stained or marred in any way. Thoughtful girl that she is, Arlene wrapped the chair project inside the larger job of redoing the living room, but Doris knew that she thought the chair bothered her. It’s funny about Arlene-as much time as they spend analyzing other people, it never seems to occur to her that Doris parses her motives as well. Luckily, Arlene is unfailingly well intentioned. The fact is, if the chair harbored bad memories, no mere slipcover could redeem it.

But Doris no longer imbues objects with any kind of significance or meaning. She did that for a long time, too long. In a house of rowdy boys, it was hard to have nice things, so she cherished the ones she managed to protect from their roughhousing. Then one day Go-Go broke a pitcher that Father Andrew had given her. Waterford crystal, brought back from his summer vacation in Ireland. She caught Go-Go holding it one afternoon and yelled at him to put it away. Startled, he dropped it.

He was thirteen, too large to paddle, yet she paddled him anyway. And he slapped her. It was the most shocking thing that ever happened to Doris. Even Go-Go was appalled, bursting into tears. Doris sobbed, too, hugging him fiercely, something else for which he was too large, too old. He begged her not to tell his father, or even his brothers, about the slap. She had no desire to tell anyone. In Doris’s opinion, Go- Go was right to slap her. Yes, he had dropped the pitcher, but only because she yelled at him. No, he shouldn’t have picked it up in the first place, but it was a beautiful thing in a house with very few beautiful things. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to touch it, even if he had been explicitly forbidden to do so.

And Go-Go, unlike the other men in the house, noticed beautiful things, beautiful people. As he got older, he