Jack was patient with the familiarity. He said, “I wish things could have been better between us all these years. I do. There’s a lot I regret.”
“I know,” Teddy said. “It’s okay. Now you can get some sleep.”
Jack went out to the porch with him. He stayed there after Teddy’s car had turned into the street. Then he said to her, “Do you think that’s what the ocean sounds like?” The wind was tossing the leaves of the oak tree, which were dense and heavy enough to roar and ebb and then roar again. “When I was a kid I liked to think so.”
“Luke says it is.”
He nodded. “Luke would know.”
JACK TOOK TEDDY’S ENVELOPE DOWN FROM THE REFRIGERATOR. He held it up to show her the thickness of it. “What do you think is in here? Want to guess?” He lifted the flap and showed her the edges of a stack of bills. He went to the piano bench, lifted the lid, and dropped the envelope into it. “Now we’re even. I mean, where money is concerned. He’s right, I have to get out of here. I will.” He paused on the stairs. “But now I am going to write a letter.” Then he said, “Glory, I know I haven’t even begun to — I had no right to do that to you. You’ve been kind to me, and I — But you have to get those bottles out of my dresser. Now, if you don’t mind. The bottom drawer. You should put that money somewhere, too. All of it.”
Glory said, “Wait, Jack. Did Teddy say you should leave?”
“He said the old fellow doesn’t have much more time. So he’ll be back here in a few weeks, you know he will. They’ll all be here. And he said he will never see me again. It adds up.” Jack looked at her. “If I send this letter to the mutual friend, she sends it on to Della and Della writes to me here, that could take — twelve days, maybe two weeks. So I’m going to stay here for another two weeks, and then you’ll be rid of me.”
“Will you give me your address, in case I need to forward something to you?”
He laughed. “When I have an address, little sister, you’ll be the first to know.”
AFTER A WHILE JACK CAME DOWNSTAIRS WITH HIS LETTER, took an envelope and stamp from the drawer, and pulled a chair away from the table.
“Mind?” he asked. His eyes were still reddened, and the flesh of his face looked a little like wax, or like clay, creasing deeply when he smiled. If she had not known him she’d have thought, wistful and unsavory. He looked at her, as if he knew he did not seem the same to her, as if he had made some terrible confession and been forgiven and felt both shame and relief.
“Of course I don’t mind.”
He said, “My hands aren’t very steady. That might make the wrong impression. I want her to open it, at least.” So she wrote the address as he told it to her. He licked the flap of the envelope and winced. “Snowflake,” he said, and she laughed, and he laughed. He placed the stamp carefully. Then he took a folded paper from his shirt pocket and put it on the table. He said, “That’s for you.”
She took the paper up and opened it. A map. There was the river, and a road, and between them, fences, a barn, woods, an abandoned house, all of them sketched in and carefully labeled, and in the woods a clearing, and at the upper edge of the clearing an X and the word “morels.” In the lower-left-hand corner there was a compass, and a scale in hundreds of paces, and in the upper-right-hand corner a dragon with a coiled tail and smoking nostrils.
She said, “This is very pretty.”
He nodded. “More to the point, it is accurate. I made it when I was stone sober. It was the work of several days, a number of drafts.”
She said, “Now we really are even.”
He laughed. “That’s right.” His face was mild and his voice was soft with weariness, but he was clearly moved and relieved to be joking with her.
“Except it doesn’t say where these woods are. There are lots of fences and barns around here.”
“My, my,” he said. “What an oversight.” And he smiled at her.
“Well, I’m going to ignore that. It’s pretty. I’m going to frame it.”
“You’re a good soul, Glory.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Chicken and dumplings.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you probably needed some rest. I can keep an eye on things if you want to get a little sleep.”
“No. I’m all right. If you don’t mind the company.”
“I’m grateful for the company, Glory.” He laughed. “You have no idea.”
She said, “Do you want the newspaper? I’ve done the puzzles. I’m grateful for the company, too.”
He nodded. “That’s kind of you to say.”
Then they heard a stirring of bedsprings, then the lisp lisp of slippered feet and the pock of the cane. After a moment their father appeared in the doorway in his nightshirt, pale, with his hair rumpled, but solemnly composed. He looked first at Glory, then at the window, then finally, as if he had nerved himself, at Jack. “Oh,” he said, a regretful, involuntary sound. Then he rallied. “I thought I
