All Adults Here(9)

“Who else would it have been?” Olympia’s grandfather had come from Greece, but she was born in Clapham. She was older than Elliot by ten years and had children of her own, one of whom had just graduated from high school, which Elliot only knew because her cap-and-gown photo was thumbtacked just behind Olympia’s head. At least he thought it was Olympia’s daughter. They were a huge family, and Olympia had a couple of sisters, Elliot knew—the graduate could belong to any of them. He should know, but he didn’t.

“I thought it was someone who just wanted to take a joyride, you know, a kid. A drug addict, I don’t know! I didn’t think it would be the actual bus driver.” Elliot shoveled half a piece of toast into his mouth. “That’s fucking scary, excuse my French. My niece is going to be on that bus in a few weeks, my kids are going to take that bus someday. I took that bus.”

Olympia crossed herself airily and then kissed her fingers. “They’ll have a different driver by then,” she said. Someone shouted from the kitchen, and Olympia looked at Elliot’s plate. “Want more toast?” He nodded, and she pushed through the swinging door back into the kitchen.

Spiro’s was fifty years old, maybe more. Some years ago, after her grandfather died, Olympia had replaced some of the booths in the back, and a few years after that, she’d replaced the stools at the counter and the counter itself. The jukebox was the same one that had been there since Elliot’s childhood, as was the ancient silver milkshake machine, which looked like a giant metal toilet plunger but made the town’s best shakes and floats, hands down. Wendy, Elliot’s wife, had never particularly taken to Spiro’s, because she thought it was grungy, but most people acknowledged it as one of the main centers of town life, and it was where Elliot often met clients, to prove that he was Clapham through and through.

Some people wanted to get out of their hometowns, in order to prove themselves. That was the old-fashioned way, to set out for the big city on foot and drive home in a Rolls-Royce. Elliot felt exactly the opposite. What would success matter, if it happened somewhere else? He wanted witnesses. That was why, when the building on the corner came up for sale again, he’d bought it. Him, Elliot Strick. He’d bought it with every penny of his money and he’d routed it through a corporation and an address that belonged to Wendy’s parents in California. It was his to figure out, his to build. And when he did, everyone would know it. It made his stomach hurt to think about it.

Elliot swiveled around on his stool, the same way he had as a kid. Unlike some of the other babysitters, who had been inattentive and careless, more interested in the snacks in the pantry and the cable TV, Olympia had been tough. In some ways, it was a relief, knowing that she had boundaries, and rules, just like their mother. Some of Elliot’s friends had had mothers who went barefoot, mothers whose silky bras were slung over the shower rod, mothers who left candles burning after they went up to bed, and they made Elliot so nervous that he couldn’t go to their houses anymore.

His phone buzzed on the counter, and Elliot flipped it over. His sister, Porter. Just checking in, are you coming to see Cece today? Also hi you smell like poop. Elliot rolled his eyes and chuckled, despite himself. He typed back: Are we required to go to the Big House to welcome her? I have a meeting, boys have jujitsu. Wendy is bugging me.

Elliot watched the three little dots appear and disappear, as if his sister was starting and restarting whatever she had to say. They weren’t particularly nice to each other; were any adult siblings? They saw each other when their mother told them to. Elliot didn’t care, it was fine. Finally Porter wrote back: She’s a teenage girl and I promise does not give a shit if you show up. This weekend is fine. If you wait longer than that, Astrid will murder you in your sleep.

Elliot didn’t respond. Olympia pushed back through the swinging door and slid another neat pile of buttered toast beside his mostly empty plate. Once, when he was probably seven or eight, Olympia had caught Elliot cheating at Monopoly, and she had banished him to the backyard like a dog with fleas. He’d had a bit of a crush, then.

“I heard that the building on the corner got sold again, did you hear that?” Olympia craned her neck to look over her patrons’ heads, out the window, and across the roundabout. “I wish whoever it was would just get it over with. What’s the point, you know? Buy it, turn it into a bank, whatever, just do it, you know?” She shook her head.

“You don’t want it to be a bank. What do you think it should be?” Elliot asked.

“I’d like a really good Mexican restaurant, I guess. Or Japanese. But I’d settle for anything, as long as it wasn’t another diner.”

“We don’t need another diner,” Elliot said.

“We sure don’t,” Olympia said, and winked.

Elliot finished his coffee and sat. His meeting didn’t start for another half hour, and Wendy was in charge of getting the boys where they needed to go that afternoon. Traffic was moving normally outside. It was only hours ago, Barbara and the bus. Elliot watched the cars go around and around, himself with no particular place to go.





Chapter 6





The Big House



The Big House sounded impressive if you hadn’t seen it, but once you had, you understood that the name was a cutesy diminutive, like calling a house a pile of bricks, or a love shack. It was a three-story stone mansion built in 1890, one of dozens like it dotting the Hudson Valley from their perches high above the river. Because there were others like it, and they’d had the money, the house didn’t even seem so extraordinary when Astrid and Russell bought it in 1975. It was big enough for them, baby Elliot, and the siblings they imagined he would have. The acres-wide yard sloped all the way to the water, although the slope was only walkable for about a hundred feet, before the drop became precipitous. They had lost a lot of woebegone toys that way, seeing how far one could chuck a G.I. Joe, whether they could hear a splash. (They could never hear a splash.)