French Braid(35)

“A friend?” she asked. (Antenna going up.)

“My friend Greta.”

“Ah.”

She glanced around the store, looking everywhere for Robin. Where was he? This was momentous.

“So will everyone be available, do you think?”

“Of course they will!” she said.

Or they would drop their plans so they could be available; she could guarantee it.

“I was thinking we’d arrive about noon or so,” he said. “We can’t stay over, because we don’t get Easter Monday off.”

“Oh? Greta works at your school?” she asked.

“Right,” he said. “Will you tell the others?”

“Yes, certainly! You know they’ll be—”

“Okay,” he said. “Bye.”

“I look forward to meeting Greta!”

But he had already hung up.



* * *



—

He was thirty years old at the time, an English and drama teacher in a high school just outside Philadelphia. He had taught there for several years. He lived in a house that he rented with an option to buy. In other words, he was settled. Established. And yet he had never, ever, on a single occasion, brought a girl home to meet the family. All they knew of his private life was what he happened to let slip in passing, and when they pressed him for further details—“Spring vacation with your friend Lois? Is this Lois somebody special?”—he grew cagey and changed the subject.

It was no wonder, therefore, that his Easter plans caused a stir. Lily first told her father, whom she found in the stockroom. “Is that so!” was all he said. (But fixing her with a stare, meanwhile, giving the news his full attention.) Then she called her mother at the studio. Still no answer there. So she called Alice, who was home by now and reacted quite satisfyingly. “What on earth!” she said. “Did he say why? Did he say something like ‘meet the family’? Like ‘want you all to get to know this person’?”

“He just said he was bringing a friend.”

“Maybe she is just a friend.”

“Well, but…and then he asked if everyone would be available. Also, he said ‘we.’ There was something about the way he said ‘we.’?”

Alice was silent a moment. Then, “Greta,” she said musingly. “Hmm.”

“I wonder if she’s foreign,” Lily said.

“It’s fine with me if she’s foreign.”

“Yes, of course; I’m just trying to get a—”

“We’ll have the lunch here, obviously,” Alice said.

“What! At your house?”

“Where else?”

“But if he’s bringing this Greta home, so to speak,” Lily said, “shouldn’t it be at his actual family home? Isn’t that the point?”

“Get serious, Lily. How long has it been since Mom’s cooked a meal?”

“Well, but,” Lily said, “I mean…Okay, then you should all come to my house. I’m right here in town, after all.”

Alice herself was not in town; she and Kevin had moved out to Baltimore County. The rest of the family found that incomprehensible: how she could choose to live so far away, how isolated she was, how her children were bound to grow up with no sense of real life. But Alice said, “If it’s warm enough we could eat on the terrace, even.”

They had a flagstone terrace as big as their house. An entire outdoor kitchen-dining area was attached, complete with cabinets. Lily thought that was show-offy. She didn’t say so, of course. She said, “It’s bad enough they’ll have to deal with the holiday traffic; why make them drive to your place?”

“Because we have room for them?” Alice answered. “Because we’ll be two, four…because we’ll be eleven around the table, counting the kids? And you have just that teeny little dining room.”

Alice and Lily didn’t talk very often—only when there was an issue involving their parents or some such. And they almost never got together. Now Lily was remembering why. (Mostly they just saw each other when David came to town. In fact it seemed ironic that he, of all people, should serve as the family’s connector. David, who was the very opposite of connected!)

“I could do it buffet-style,” she said.

Alice made a laughing sound that wasn’t actually a laugh. “No-ho-ho,” she said. “Lily. Never serve buffet-style when children are involved.”

“But I would—”

“And we have the rec room, besides,” Alice said. “So if it happens to be cold, the kids can hang out down there. You know how they all get when they’re cooped up.”

“Well, anyhow, this is probably beside the point,” Lily said, “because I’m pretty sure Mom will say that for something this important—”

“She’ll say that for something this important, she just can’t think what to serve,” Alice said. Alice loved to finish Lily’s sentences for her.

“Well, I’m going to ask her,” Lily said. “Just as soon as I get hold of her.”

“Lots of luck with that,” Alice said.



* * *



—

Mercy said that for something this important, she just couldn’t think what to serve.