All Adults Here(95)

“I didn’t even want to hit him!” Elliot said. “I don’t want to hit anybody! I feel like I was just trying to overcorrect in the protectiveness department.”

Nicky reached out to Cecelia. “Honey, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. We totally fucked it up. I know you didn’t do anything. Before you hit the girl in the face, I mean. You should never hit anyone in the face.” Here he glared at his brother, with only a slight twinkle of amusement. “I know you didn’t do what Katherine said. I just wanted to get you out of harm’s way. But I know how it seemed, like we weren’t behind you. We are always behind you, my love. Okay? Always.”

Cecelia’s eyes stung. She looked up from her father and stared at the wall behind him. She examined a corner of the wallpaper she hadn’t noticed before, a line where two sheets met and didn’t quite line up, a hiccup in the repeating image. A stuttering bouquet of flowers. When her father had been her age, what had he imagined his life would be? Did boys dream about marriage and children? Did girls? Cecelia didn’t. She dreamed about city buses passing beneath her window, and garbage trucks. She dreamed about her friends. She didn’t want to be happy or sad, she wanted to be normal, and to have normal parents, whatever that meant. Robin had given her a copy of a book about Elizabeth Taylor and one of her husbands, about their tempestuous love affair, and throughout the book, which was full of airplanes and hotel rooms and fancy cars, there were always her children and pets in the background, wildly ignored while she was busy throwing flowerpots at her lover’s head. Cecelia had to stop reading. She preferred Richard Scarry books, where parents of all species were always helping their children brush their teeth or escape a runaway truck full of ketchup.

“Robin invited me over for dinner tonight,” she said. “Can I go?”

“Of course,” Nicky said. He held up his hand until Cecelia took it in hers, and then he gave a squeeze. “Who’s Robin?”

The bell tinkled, and everyone turned to look. Birdie pushed open the door with her hip, holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. Astrid and Birdie hadn’t been hiding all these years, but it felt good to do better than not hide. Everything seemed more unseemly the longer it was kept out of the light, and there was nothing unseemly about Birdie—she was hardworking and kind and funny and beautiful.

“Bird,” Astrid said.

Elliot was tapping his foot next to Wendy on the bench, bobbing his head like he was listening to music that no one else could hear. They were all in such close quarters, like rush-hour commuters, only with nowhere to go. He clenched his teeth, a habit he’d developed as an angry teenager. Why had he been so angry? Why hadn’t his mother helped? It was so easy to look backward and see the way through the maze, and so much harder when the way out was still in front of you.

“About what you said,” Elliot said to Astrid, still bobbing in place. “I’ve been thinking. About what you said when you came over. I do remember. Jack. And what you said. I’m just not, you know. It wasn’t anything. I mean it wasn’t anything serious, it was just . . .” Elliot got a funny look on his face. “It’s embarrassing to talk about it with your mother, you know, but whatever. I think it meant more to Jack than it did to me, if you know what I mean. But that’s not what you have to apologize for.”

Now Astrid was paying attention. “Okay?”

Elliot nodded, clearly chewing on something inside. “You told Dad that I wasn’t smart enough to be a lawyer. Or good enough. You guys were outside laughing, talking about me being an idiot.”

Astrid put her fingers to her lips. “I said what? When was this? I don’t think I said that.”

“You definitely said it. I don’t know, it was the summer I started working at Valley. And you and Dad were outside, and I was in the kitchen, and I heard you. Dad laughed. But he felt bad about it, I could tell. But you weren’t laughing. That’s what I want an apology for, not for when some kid tried to kiss me when I was fourteen or whatever.”

“Shit,” Porter said.

“Damn,” Nicky said.

“Yeah, and so I’m sorry if I’m a little bit paralyzed, you know, when it comes to making decisions, or to having the career that I want, but it’s kind of hard when you know even your parents think you’re a total idiot.”

Astrid shook her head, her mouth hanging open. “No, oh no, honey!” she said. “I said that?” She reached over Cecelia and Nicky and put her hand on Elliot’s wrist. “Oh, god. And poor Barbara. I was so ashamed—not of you, but of how I reacted—that I avoided her for so long that I forgot why! Until she got hit by the bus, I hadn’t actually thought about why I didn’t like her in years! I love you,” she said. She wished she could have a printout of all the mistakes she’d made as a parent, the big ones and the small ones, just to see how many of them she could guess (her temper was always shortest at bathtime) and how many she couldn’t. She wondered how much her secrets had led to Porter’s secrets, what pain she could have saved along the way.

“Also,” Elliot said, raising a finger between them like a pause button, “the reason that I’m telling you is that I just want to do the right thing. For you, for Dad, for Clapham. I don’t want to be the asshole that turns the town into something else, you know? I want you to be wrong.” Wendy clutched his arm. She loved him—Astrid hated that she’d ever thought of her as anything other than perfect, if Wendy looked at her son that way. That was all anyone could ever need, really.