Commonwealth(96)

“I thought I’d come by and say hello if it isn’t too late.” She worked to keep her voice casual because she felt frantic.

Bert was always up late. She had to discourage him from calling the house after ten o’clock at night. “Wonderful!” he said, as if he’d been waiting for exactly this call. “Just be careful in the snow.”

Bert still lived in the last house he and Beverly had lived in together, the same house she and Caroline had lived in during high school, the house that Albie had come to for a year after Caroline was gone. It wasn’t that far from where Beverly lived with Jack Dine, maybe five miles, but in Arlington it was possible to live five miles from someone and never see them again.

He was waiting for her on the front porch when she pulled up, the front door of the house open behind him. He had put on his coat to come outside. Bert was as old as the rest of them but age arrived at different rates of speed, in different ways. Coming up the walk in the dark, the porch light bright above his head, Franny thought that Bert Cousins still looked like himself.

“The ghost of Christmas past,” he said when she stepped into his arms.

“I should have called you sooner,” Franny said. “It’s all been sort of last-minute.”

Bert did not invite her in, nor did he let her go. He only stood there holding Franny to his chest. Always she was the baby he had carried around Fix Keating’s party, the most beautiful baby he had ever seen. “Last-minute works for me,” he said.

“Come on,” she said. “I’m freezing.”

Inside the door she took off her shoes.

“I made a fire in the den when you called. It hasn’t really caught yet but it’s starting.”

Franny remembered the first time she’d ever been inside this house. She must have been thirteen. The den was why they’d bought the place, the big stone hearth, the fireplace big enough for a witch’s pot, the way the room looked out over the pool. She thought it was a palace then. Bert had no business keeping this house, it was entirely too big for one person. But on this night Franny was grateful he’d held on to it, if only so she could come home.

“Let me get you a drink,” he said.

“Maybe just some tea,” she said. “I’m driving.” She stood up on the hearth and flexed her stocking feet on the warm stones. She and Albie would come downstairs in the winter late at night when they were in high school and open up the flue when it was too cold to go outside and smoke. They would lean back into the fireplace with their cigarettes and blow the smoke up the chimney. They would drink Bert’s gin and throw away the empty bottles in the kitchen trash with impunity. If either parent noticed the dwindling stock in the liquor cabinet or the way the empties were piling up, neither one of them ever mentioned it.

“Have a drink, Franny. It’s Christmas.”

“It’s December twenty-second. Why does everyone keep telling me it’s Christmas?”

“Barmaid’s gin and tonic.”

Franny looked at him. “Barmaid’s,” she said sternly. Bert had shown her that trick when she was a girl and would play bartender for their parties. If a guest was already drunk she should pour a glass of tonic and ice and then float a little gin on the top without mixing it up. The first sip would be too strong, Bert told her, and that’s all that mattered. After the first sip drunks didn’t pay attention.

“If you get sloppy you can sleep in your old room.”

“My mother would love that.” It was always a trick getting out to see Bert. For all the times that Beverly had forgiven him, she couldn’t understand that Franny and Caroline might forgive him as well.

“How is your mother?” Bert asked. He handed Franny her drink, and the first sip—straight gin—was right on the money.

“My mother is exactly herself,” Franny said.

Bert pressed his lips together and nodded. “I would expect nothing less. I hear old Jack Dine is slipping though, that she’s having a hard time taking care of him. I hate to think of her having to deal with that.”

“It’s what we’ll all have to deal with sooner or later.”

“Maybe I’ll give her a call, just to see how she’s doing.”

Oh, Bert, Franny thought. Let it go. “What about you?” she said. “How are you doing?”

Bert had made his own drink, a gin with a splash of tonic floating on the top to balance her out, and came to sit on the sofa. “I’m not so bad for an old man,” he said. “I still get around. If you’d called me tomorrow you would have missed me.”

Franny stabbed at the logs with the fireplace poker to encourage the flame. “Where are you going tomorrow?”

“Brooklyn,” he said. Franny turned around to look at him, poker in hand, and he smiled enormously. “Jeanette invited me for Christmas. There’s a hotel two blocks from where they live. It’s nice enough. I’ve been up there a couple of times to see them now.”

“That’s really something,” Franny said, and she came to sit next to Bert on the couch. “I’m happy for you.”

“We’ve been doing better these last couple of years. I e-mail with Holly too. She says that I can come to Switzerland and see her in that place she lives, the commune. I keep telling her I’ll meet her in Paris. I think that Paris is a good compromise. Everybody likes Paris. I took Teresa there for our honeymoon. That would have been what? Fifty-five years ago? I think it’s time to go back.” He stopped himself then, remembering something. “You were out there, weren’t you, when Teresa died? I think Jeanette told me that.”