Dale was stroking Tyrone’s head. Tyrone had become her dog. Brenda and Jerome’s child, she thought, would become Brenda’s child. All of Jerome’s women had wanted babies, and he had bitterly resented every one: the son born to the married woman in France, whose husband believed the child to be his; the daughter born as his marriage to his second wife was disintegrating. Nelson had been the only one he wanted. Well—if you had what you already considered the perfect child, maybe that made sense. Nelson was intellectually curious, smart, obedient, favoring his stepfather over his mother, a loyal child.
Nelson and Jerome would be at the table, finishing dinner, Nelson having found a way to excuse Jerome, Jerome’s passive aggression subsiding into agreeableness—as if, by the two women’s disappearing, any problem automatically disappeared, too. Without them, Nelson and Jerome could move on to the salad course. Drink the entire bottle of Opus One. Nelson would probably have brought down the photograph of Didi, her face deeply lined by years of having kept up with Jerome in his drinking, as well as other bad decisions she had made, and of course from the years at Saint-Tropez, enjoying too much sun.
Too much sun. Too much son. Jerome would like to play with that.
Though what Jerome was talking about, having already told Nelson he was seriously considering separating from Brenda, was the story of Baron Philippe de Rothschild: the Baron, being a clever businessman, and, more important, a visionary, realized that much might be gained by joining forces with the California winegrower, Robert Mondavi. Mondavi was invited to the Baron’s, where both men dined on fabulous food and drank great wine. It was a social evening: business was not discussed. It was not until the next morning that the Baron—by this point, Mondavi genuinely admired him, for his taste, elegance, and good manners—summoned Mondavi to his bedside, like a character in a fairy tale. The possibility of combining their efforts was discussed, and of sharing the profits fifty-fifty. Mondavi suggested producing only one wine, which would be similar to a great Bordeaux. Did he say this tentatively? The Baron agreed. Would he have said the same? The wine would be made in California, where the Baron’s winemaker would visit. Mondavi, flattered, was thrilled as well. His name linked to that of Baron Philippe de Rothschild! The Baron also triumphed, realizing that embracing his would-be adversary would lead both men to profit. Nothing remained except the ceremonial drinking of a hundred-year-old Mouton, followed by a very cold Chateau d’Yquem: a perfect deal; a perfect meal—it even rhymed, as Jerome pointed out. A brilliant label was designed, providing the perfect finishing touch.
The talk back at the house was about perfection. In a perfect world, all wines would be perfect. Ditto marriages. All books brilliant (a toast was drunk). Superior music (again, glasses were raised) would be listened to, keenly. In that fairy tale, which was not Dale’s, and which was not Brenda’s, either, no woman would lie badly wounded on her kitchen floor.
Brenda crossed the room and stood at Dale’s side. “Doughnut hole,” she said quietly, looking down, then picked it up, at the end of its trail of powdered sugar, as if plucking a shooting star from the darkness.
This time, Tyrone showed interest. Dale picked up the other two. The dog was definitely interested. There was no dirt on the doughnut holes that Dale and Brenda could see, as they examined them closely.
“Why not?” Dale said, giving voice to what Brenda was thinking. They could pretend to be people at a cocktail party, eating pleasant tidbits.
But sirens pierced the night.
They signified a problem for someone, Nelson knew. Another problem, Jerome also thought.
The sound overwhelmed Bartok on the stereo. The sirens were shrill and constant: a sound you might say was annoyingly like a woman’s voice—if one could still say such things, but of course one could not.
Then the crescendo of noise, demanding their attention.
One man preceded the other out of the house. That door, too, was left open to the wind.
A police car, a second police car, an ambulance, a fire engine—the full militia leading the way.
To what? The two words were like a heartbeat:
Down a dirt road in a country far from France.
Down a narrow road across from a rented house.
The meal left behind, one or the other having remembered to extinguish the candles.
That Last Odd Day in L.A.
Keller went back and forth about going into Cambridge to see Lynn, his daughter, for Thanksgiving. If he went in November, he’d miss his niece and nephew, who made the trip back East only in December, for Christmas. They probably could have got away from their jobs and returned for both holidays, but they never did. The family had gathered for Thanksgiving at his daughter’s ever since she moved into her own apartment, which was going on six years now; Christmas dinner was at Keller’s sister’s house, in Arlington. His daughter’s apartment was near Porter Square. She had once lived there with Ray Ceruto, before she decided she was too good for a car mechanic. A nice man, a hard worker, a gentleman—so naturally she chose instead to live in serial monogamy with men Keller found it almost impossible to get along with. Oh, but they had white-collar jobs and white-collar aspirations: with her current boyfriend, she had recently flown to England for all of three days in order to see the white cliffs of Dover. If there had been bluebirds, they had gone unmentioned.
Years ago, Keller’s wife, Sue Anne, had moved back to Roanoke, Virginia, where she now rented a “mother- in-law apartment” from a woman she had gone to school with back in the days when she and Keller were courting. Sue Anne joked that she herself had become a sort of ideal mother-in-law, gardening and taking care of the pets when her friends went away. She was happy to have returned to gardening. During the almost twenty years that she and Keller had been together, their little house in the Boston suburbs, shaded by trees, had allowed for the growth of almost nothing but springtime bulbs, and even those had to be planted in raised beds because the soil was of such poor quality. Eventually, the squirrels discovered the beds. Sue Anne’s breakdown had had to do with the squirrels.
So: call his daughter, or do the more important thing and call his neighbor and travel agent, Sigrid, at Pleasure Travel, to apologize for their recent, rather uneventful dinner at the local Chinese restaurant, which had been interrupted by a thunderstorm grand enough to announce the presence of Charlton Heston, which had reminded Keller that he’d left his windows open. He probably should not have refused to have the food packed to go. But when he’d thought of having her to his house to eat the dinner—his house was a complete mess—or of going to her house and having to deal with her son’s sour disdain, it had seemed easier just to bolt down his food.
A few days after the ill-fated dinner, he had bought six raffle tickets and sent them to her, in the hope that a winning number would provide a bicycle for her son, though he obviously hadn’t given her a winning ticket, or she
