French Braid(42)

“But the thing I was trying to teach David,” Robin said, “is sometimes a man has to set his teeth and do what he has to do. Never mind if it’s not ‘compatible,’ so-called. Never mind what ‘type’ he is. He just has to go against his type, and make up his mind to get on with it.”

“I see,” Morris said.

“Did I do wrong? Are you thinking I did wrong?”

It was the whole room, now, that he seemed to be asking, but Morris was the one who answered. “No, no. I understand,” he said gently. And none of the others said anything at all.



* * *



—

“I don’t blame David’s plumbing job,” Alice told Lily that evening on the phone. “I mean, look at how he worded it: ‘summer of the plumber.’ Kind of joking. Kind of flip. I know he hated the job—who wouldn’t?—but he survived it. You can stand anything for three months. No, I blame Mom. I blame her moving out.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, David was already gone by then,” Lily said. “What did he care where she lived?”

“You know what they say, though, about parents getting divorced the minute a kid leaves home. They say it’s every bit as traumatic as if they’d done it earlier, or maybe even worse, because the kid has the added guilt of thinking it was his fault; he shouldn’t have left them alone.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Lily told her. “First of all, Mom and Dad aren’t divorced. And second, I’m not sure David even knows she moved out, even after all this time. He hardly ever comes home, after all. And is so self-centered besides; let’s face it.”

“Self-centered!”

Of course Alice would take offense at that. She’d always shown a special fondness for David; she’d been one of those officious big sisters who act like a second mother, almost a competition mother. Whereas Lily, who’d been eight when he was born, had viewed him as kind of a nuisance.

“Self-centered now and self-centered before,” she told Alice. “Close-mouthed, secretive…Did he ever give us the slightest inkling who his friends were, or his girlfriends?”

“That’s just because he’s a guy,” Alice said. “Guys don’t like to chitchat.”

“Even when they’re little? Robby likes to chitchat.”

“Well, so did David, back when he was little,” Alice said. “Remember?” There was a smile in her voice now. “Remember that mouse joke he loved?”

“No.”

“This mouse and this elephant happen to meet in the jungle, and the mouse looks up at the elephant and says, ‘My, you’re big!’?” (Alice made her voice go tiny.) “And the elephant says”—in booming tones—“?‘My, you’re little!’ Then the mouse says”—tiny voice again—“?‘Well, I been sick.’?”

There was a silence.

“Get it?” Alice asked.

“Yes, sure, I get it,” Lily said, “but—”

“He would totally crack himself up every time he told that joke. And he told it a lot, to everybody. But think about it: the point was what a lame, self-serving excuse that little mouse made. Don’t you find it kind of surprising that a five-year-old would understand that?”

“He was five?” Lily asked.

“He was five. Still in kindergarten.”

“So what are you saying: he understands now that his family’s not worth talking to?”

“No-ho-ho. Lily.”

“He understands that a divorcée who-knows-how-much older than him is the woman he wants to marry?”

“He didn’t say a word about marriage!”

“Tell me you really believe that Greta’s only a friend,” Lily said.

“Well, who can say? Maybe she is,” Alice said.

Then she changed the subject to what Mercy had brought for dessert.



* * *



—

Neither Lily nor Morris thought to ask Robby his opinion of Greta, but at supper the next evening he said, “Mama, is Emily’s mother going to marry Uncle David?”

“We don’t know, hon,” Lily said. “What makes you ask?”

“Because Daddy said she was Uncle David’s girlfriend but Emily said she wasn’t.”

“Oh, really?” Lily said. She and Morris looked at each other. “Well, then!” she said.

“Emily’s already got a dad in Minnesota, is why.”

“Oh,” Lily said.

“She went to visit him at Christmastime, all by herself.”

“I see.”

Robby dragged an upside-down spoonful of mashed potatoes over his tongue, thoughtfully. Then he said, “When you and Daddy got married, did your family approve the intended?”

Lily laughed, mostly out of surprise. She never knew what Robby would retain in that head of his. “They certainly did,” she said. “First your aunt Alice met him and then Pop-Pop and Grandmom, and everybody loved him.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Morris said. He reached for a biscuit. “I had to have an extremely difficult conversation with your pop-pop,” he told Robby. “I was nervous as all get-out.”