I got up to clear the dishes. When I was a girl there had been parts of town we never went near. They were dark spots, blank areas on the map. I said, “Yes, and that’s why Jonathan is so taken with him. If he were lame on top of it, we’d have him here every night instead of every other.”
“Whoa there,” Ned said. “This doesn’t sound like you.”
I stacked Bobby’s empty plate on top of Jonathan’s. Jonathan had artfully distributed his food around the edges of his plate, so it would appear to have been consumed. He was so thin you could just about see through him in a strong light. Bobby’s plate was spotless, as if he had scoured it with his tongue. Nary a crumb was left on the cloth where he’d sat.
“I know it doesn’t,” I said. “I’m sorry about all that’s happened to him, I really am. But something about that boy frightens me.”
“He’s wild, is what he is. He’s a boy with no one but a father, growing up half wild. We have resources enough to give some shelter to a wild boy, don’t you think?”
“Of course we do.”
I carried the plates into the kitchen. I was sullen, bone-hard Alice, married to Ned the Good.
He followed, bringing dishes. “Don’t worry,” he said from behind me. “Every kid brings home a few wild friends. Jonathan will grow up fine, regardless.”
“But I do worry about him,” I said, running water. “He’s thirteen. This is like—oh, I don’t know. It’s almost like seeing some hidden quality of Jonathan’s come suddenly to light. Something he’s been harboring all along that we never knew about.”
“You’re overplaying the scene.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. If I had the time I’d tell you all about Robby Cole. He was my best friend in grade school. I was devoted to him because he could set off caps with his teeth. Among other things.”
“And look how you turned out.”
“Well, I married you,” he said.
“A laudable accomplishment. Perhaps less than a life’s purpose, though.”
“I married you and I run the best movie theater in Greater Cleveland. And I’ve got to go.”
“Goodbye.”
He put his hands around my waist, kissed me loudly on the neck. I was visited briefly by his smell, the particular odor of his skin mingled with citrus after-shave. It was like entering his sphere of inhabited air, and as long as I stood within that sphere I could share his belief that bad things passed away of their own accord, that the world conspired toward good outcomes. I turned and lightly kissed his rough cheek.
“Worry less,” he said.
I promised to try. While he was in the house, it seemed possible. But as soon as he left, the possibility receded like light from a lantern he carried. I watched him through the kitchen window. Perhaps Ned’s most remarkable feature was his ability to walk serenely in this city of gray stone and yellow brick, where the wind off the lake could shrink people’s hearts to pins.
I took down the new cookbook I had just bought, full of recipes from the French countryside, and began planning tomorrow’s meal.
Bobby stayed until well after ten, until I’d called out, “Boys, it’s a school night.” Even then, after thirteen years of it, I was surprised at how much like somebody’s mother I could sound.
I was reading the paper when Bobby came downstairs. “Good night,” he said.
His way of speaking, his whole manner, was like that of a foreigner learning the customs of the country. He resembled more than anything a refugee from some distant place, underfed and desperate to please. His delivery of the words “good night” had precisely matched my own.
“Bobby?” I said. I had no next statement, really. It was just that he stood so expectantly.
“Uh-huh?”
“I truly am sorry about your mother,” I said. “I hope I didn’t sound just polite at the dinner table.”
“It’s okay.”
“Do you and your father manage all right? Does dinner get cooked, and the house cleaned up every now and then?”
“Uh-huh. A woman comes once a week.”
I said, “Why don’t you bring your father for dinner one night? Maybe early next week?”
He looked at me darkly and questioningly, as if I had violated some taboo from his country; as if he could not immediately know whether I had meant to insult him or whether the rules were just that different over here.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, maybe I’ll give him a call. You’d better get along now, it’s late.”
“Okay.”
I believe he’d have just continued standing in front of me until I told him to go.
“Good night,” I said again, and had the sentiment returned to me in a young male version of my own voice.
After he’d gone I went upstairs and knocked on Jonathan’s door.
“Uh-huh?” he said.
“Only me. May I come in?”
“Uh-huh.”
He lay on his bed. A nasal male voice, accompanied by acoustic guitar, rasped through the speakers. The window stood open though it was early November, and frosty. I believed I detected a smell, something sweet and smoky which the chill air had not quite dissipated.
I said, “Did you have a good evening?”
“Sure.”
“Bobby’s had a hard time of it, hasn’t he?” I said.
“You shouldn’t pity him.”
“Did you know before that his mother was dead?”
“Uh-huh,” Jonathan said.
“Do you know how she died?”
“Sort of. I mean, she took too many sleeping pills. But she had a prescription, she’d been taking them for years. I guess she’d started complaining they weren’t working anymore. So it could have been an accident.”
“Bobby had a brother who died, too?”
Jonathan nodded. “That was definitely an accident. It wasn’t a murder after all. That’s when the mother started in on sleeping pills.”
He delivered these facts with a certain pride, as if they represented Bobby’s worldly accomplishments.
“Lord. The things that happen to people.”
I went and shut the window. It was almost cold enough to steam your breath in that room.
“And nothing’s ever happened to us,” Jonathan said. “Nothing bad.”
“We’re very lucky.”
As I turned from the window I saw Bobby’s leather jacket, draped over the chair. The embroidered eye, cyclopean, iris big as a hockey puck, stared from the worn cowhide.
“Bobby forgot his jacket,” I said.
“He’s loaning it to me,” Jonathan said. “It used to be his brother’s. I loaned him mine at school today.”
“Your good windbreaker? You traded it for that?”
“Uh-huh. Bobby talks about his brother a lot. I mean, it sounds like he was pretty cool. When he died, it just about blew their whole family apart.”
“Do you know what that windbreaker cost?” I asked.
He looked at me in the new way, his jaw set challengingly and his eyes gone hard.
I decided to let it go. I thought I’d give him the leeway to work it through his system.
“What would you think about veal stew for dinner tomorrow night?” I said. “There’s a recipe I’d like to try, veal with mushrooms and pearl onions. How does that sound?”
“I don’t care.” He shrugged.
I held my arms close over my chest. It was freezing in that room.
