Eleven
Pru decided not to tell Patsy right away about her conversation with Jacob. She really meant to keep to her resolution not to get involved. But when Patsy called her later in the week to help arrange a moving van, she changed her mind. She laid it all out for Patsy, as best she could remember.
In the car, with Jacob right in front of her, she’d been absolutely sure they’d never see him again. But now, talking to Patsy, who clearly thought no such thing, it was disconcerting to hear how shaky her conclusion sounded. Patsy was entirely unimpressed, when she was finished. Tears, shouting, accusations of lying . . . that Pru had expected. This blasé shrugging of the shoulders, she hadn’t.
“I’ve heard him say that before,” Patsy said, brushing it off. “Then, in the next second, he can’t live without us. It just scares him sometimes, that’s all. Don’t worry. We’re fine.”
“You are? Really?”
“Really,” Patsy said. “This living so far apart is just hard, that’s all. It’ll be so much better when we’re in Rehoboth.”
“He knows you’re moving all the way across the country just to be near him, right?”
“It’s not just to be near him,” Patsy said. Pru could tell she was offended. “I can’t live at home forever, you know. Don’t worry, we’re not going to cramp your style. I know you ‘own’ the mid-Atlantic.”
“I didn’t say I owned the mid-Atlantic,” Pru said. It was so typical that this was where they’d arrived.
So, fine, Pru thought, hanging up the phone. She’d done her part. Maybe she had totally misunderstood what Jacob had said. Or maybe Patsy was right, this was just par for the course with them. They were passionate about each other, probably they were passionate in their fights, too. They’d never really been attracted to the same things, Pru and Patsy. She realized that when Rudy had told her it was over, it really was over. She wouldn’t have been able to go back to him, after that. She couldn’t understand how you could hang on to someone who didn’t want you anymore. So her sister wanted a lover who changed on her from minute to minute—well, she seemed to have found him.
Anyway, it was Annali she should be concentrating on, Pru reminded herself. Patsy was determined to sink her own ship. Fine. She didn’t need Pru. But one day, maybe when she was a teenager, Annali would. She’d reach her limit with her flaky mother, and show up on Pru’s doorstep, gangly and gorgeous, carrying only what she’d stuffed into a backpack on her way out. Pru couldn’t do anything about Jacob. But she could make sure that Annali knew her circle of love extended beyond her mother and whoever happened to be on her mother’s arm at the moment. She’d see to it that Annali would never regard her aunt as a stranger, some distant relative who may or may not take her in in her time of need. She’d make sure Annali knew she could always show up on that doorstep, and she’d be as good as home.
THE NEXT DAY, WHEN SHE WALKED INTO THE KORNER for breakfast, John waved her over to one of the little tables near the large plate-glass window, where he sat with a couple she’d never seen before.
“This is Ralph and Rona Mortensen,” he said, adding, with unmistakable emphasis, “and this is Pru.”
Ralph and Rona shook her hand warmly. They were in their fifties, perhaps, and wore matching windbreakers. John explained that Ralph had been his dissertation adviser in graduate school.
“You have a Ph.D.?” she said, surprised.
“So they tell me,” John said.
“In what?”
“Philosophy.”
“Wow,” she said. “Where was that going?”
“Well, exactly,” he said.
“He’s a genius,” Ralph said. “I’ve never read a more cogent dissertation on the phenomenological aspects of Kant in all my years of teaching.”
“It’s just crap, really,” John said, in a low voice.
“I Kant believe that,” she replied.
When she went up to the counter for a coffee and scone, there was a pregnant silence behind her at the table. At least, it sounded to her like a pregnant silence. She felt that she could practically hear the exchange of meaningful glances, and felt a little light-headed, imagining they were about her.
Ralph and Rona Mortensen were what her mother would call academics. They lived in New York City and had come down for a conference at the Smithsonian that had to do with Rona’s work on Fanny Brice and vaudeville. Pru was fascinated. Who did work on vaudeville? What was work on vaudeville? And did it pay anything? She was dying to ask.
In the company of his friends, John was downright giddy. This must be how others felt with her and McKay, she decided. The three of them finished each other’s sentences and made quick references to things she didn’t understand. Ralph and Rona called him “Johnny.”
“Have you been to the Holocaust Museum, Pru?” Rona asked, turning to her.
“You know, I’m ashamed to say I haven’t,” she admitted. “I am just never in the mood for it. All those shoes.”
Rona said, “I hear it’s very depressing, but Ralph wants to go.”
“Sure it’s depressing,” said Ralph. “You want happy, go to Christmas at Macy’s.”
“Oh, let’s do something else, Ralph,” Rona says. “Pru’s right. I don’t want to see that today.”
“Do you want to visit the NPR studios?” Pru said. It was her ace in the hole, with visitors of a certain stripe. And Ralph and Rona were definitely of that stripe. Fiona’s husband, Noah, directed one of the news shows, and he was always happy to get Pru and her guests in to see one of the programs being taped.
“I love NPR!” Rona said, and beamed at her. “But you have to come with us.”
“Sure,” said Pru. “I just have to call my friend and see if he can get us in.”
At four o’clock on the nose, John and Ralph and Rona buzzed from
