French Braid(48)

Did people give each other gifts for their anniversaries? Yes, he was sure they did, although he and Mercy never had. But what would he give her? “Golden,” this one was called; that probably meant the gift should be made of gold. Mercy didn’t wear jewelry, though. Even her wedding ring, thin as a wire, generally lived in the soap dish on the back of the kitchen sink. Besides, she would not, of course, be giving him a gift, so why embarrass her? That was what he told himself.

“What is your plan?” Lily asked him, the Friday before the party. He had stopped by the store to say hello, but only briefly; he didn’t have a lot of time these days. “How can you be sure Mom’s going to be available for this?”

“Oh,” he said, “I’m going to wait till the actual day and then call her and say David is here.”

“David,” Lily said.

“I’ll phone her at the studio and say they just happened to stop by while they were heading someplace else and so why doesn’t she come over and say hello.”

“Okay,” Lily said.

“It’s a Sunday,” he said. “No chance she’d be off seeing a customer or some such.”

“Okay,” she said again, and then she sighed; he wasn’t sure why.



* * *



—

On Sunday, the weather was perfect. Sunny and hot, but not too hot, not as hot as it had been all the past week; and anyhow, Mercy enjoyed the heat. Like most women Robin knew, she was forever complaining that she was feeling a draft.

He opened all the windows and doors and cranked down the awning out back. He had asked the cleaning lady to set the table while she was there, even though it meant the dining room would be more or less out of commission for the next few days, and now he put out all the food that didn’t need refrigerating—the rolls and butter and the cucumber slices dowsed in Mazola and vinegar. After that he filled the cooler with ice and soft drinks, plus a few cans of beer for the guys.

Although Kevin, of course, was bound to bring champagne. The man was obsessed with champagne. Any possible occasion—birthdays, holidays, graduations—he had to show up with his “bubbly,” as he called it. Always the expensive kind, highway robbery in Robin’s opinion. Robin was more inclined to beer or Dr Pepper. He suspected the others felt the same, although they were polite about it. “Thanks, Kevin,” they would murmur, and “Cheers, everybody!” and “Isn’t this delicious.” Then they’d take one small sip before setting their glasses down and forgetting to pick them up again, or wandering out to the kitchen with them and returning empty-handed.

Oh, the lengths this family would go to so as not to spoil the picture of how things were supposed to be!

So here came Kevin with his special insulated carrier, the very first to arrive, charging through the back door and heading straight for the fridge while the rest of his family trailed some distance behind—Alice, Eddie, and little Candle, carrying the sleepy-doll she never traveled without. And right on their heels, Lily and Morris with Serena. Candle and Serena were barely a year apart in age—kindergartners or thereabouts—and they eyed each other bashfully while the grown-ups milled in the kitchen and made forays into the dining room to check on the preparations. “Nice flowers, Dad,” Alice said, and Robin said, “Thanks, I got them at the Giant.”

“Mind if I rearrange them a bit?”

“No, go ahead,” he said, although he’d been thinking he had done a not-too-bad job. They were tulips, bright red, and they’d started out as tight cylinders but the cashier had assured him that by Sunday they’d have opened up just fine, and she was right.

Now he was starting to feel nervous. “It’s awful darn hard to gauge how long it will take to drive from Philly,” he said. “I hope David and them won’t be late.”

“Don’t worry. In my experience it’s invariably a two-hour trip,” Morris told him. “Could be a totally empty highway or it could be bumper-to-bumper; two hours flat, either way.”

Morris was good like that, always doing his best to put a person at ease.

The three grandchildren trooped outside again—first Eddie, scooping up the ancient basketball on the back porch as he went, and then the two little girls, who thought Eddie hung the moon. (He was kind of a favorite of Robin’s, too; he was the only one who liked building things.) Alice started cutting the bottoms off the tulip stems at the kitchen sink, and Kevin opened the fridge again to admire his champagne bottles. “Maybe we should go sit in the living room,” Robin said, but then above the sound of the bouncing ball out back he heard the crunch of car tires. He went to the screen door to check and sure enough, there was David’s little blue Beetle pulling up next to Kevin’s BMW. Eddie called, “David’s here!” and started dribbling his ball toward the Beetle.

David stepped out of the car and held one hand up for the ball, and meanwhile Greta emerged from the passenger seat and folded it forward so that Emily and little Nicholas could scramble out from the rear. Emily had grown a good foot, it looked like to Robin. She was in her early teens by now, tall and slim, with a very adult-looking bun low on the nape of her neck. She followed her mother toward the house, but young Nicholas—just seven or so—hung back to watch his father sink the basketball from an impressive distance.