French Braid(75)
Greta started laughing. “You are finding this out just now?” she asked.
He said, “I’m a slow learner, I guess.”
* * *
—
His sister Alice phoned from Florida one evening during supper. Greta was the one who picked up, but after checking the caller ID she passed the receiver to David without speaking. He was surprised to see Alice’s name. (The family wasn’t much for casual phone conversations.) “Alice?” he said. “Everything okay?”
“More or less,” she told him. “How about you?”
“We’re all fine. Got Nicholas and Benny staying with us at the moment.”
“Oh?” she said. “Where’s, um…?”
“Juana’s working on the front lines.”
“Ah,” she said. “But none of you have been sick, right?”
“Not so far, knock on wood.”
“Same down here,” she said. “Which I consider a miracle, since Kevin still insists on playing golf every day with his buddies.”
David clucked, and then waited.
“But why I called,” she said, “I thought you’d like to hear what your other sister’s been up to.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, so there she was, living on her own for the moment because Serena and Jeff have taken Petey to their mountain place for the duration and not even Lily is dumb enough to think she and Serena could stay in a tiny log cabin together without one of them strangling the other…” Alice took a fresh breath. “And,” she said, “this morning Serena gives Lily a call because she’s been feeling so guilty about leaving her to fend for herself, and she asks how things are going in Asheville and Lily says, ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘I guess I might as well tell you: I don’t know how things are going in Asheville, because I happen to have gotten married a while back and moved to Winston-Salem.’?”
“What?” David said. Across the table, Greta raised her eyebrows inquiringly, and Nicholas looked up from slicing Benny’s meat for him.
“I know: right?” Alice said.
“Who’d she marry?” David asked.
“Someone named Henry something who’s a retired history professor. Nobody’d heard a word about him, up till then. Serena says he was certainly not in the picture when they left, and that was only two months ago.”
“Huh,” David said.
“I really thought Lily had settled down some,” Alice said. “I honestly thought she was past such behavior.”
“Well, look at it this way,” David told her. “Now Serena can quit feeling guilty about leaving her to fend for herself.”
“Yes, I guess there is that,” Alice said with a sigh. “And I have to admit Lily’s coming up in the world. From motorcycle mechanic to real-estate agent to history professor; what next?”
“I forgot about the motorcycle mechanic,” David said. “Husband number one, right?”
“Well, he was only around for about a nanosecond,” Alice said.
“I did like Morris, though.”
“Yes, Morris was a sweetheart,” she said, and she sighed again. “Anyhow, I just thought you’d like to know,” she said.
“Everyone else okay? Your kids?”
“They’re fine. Robby’s having to work from home, but who doesn’t, nowadays. Candle’s been laid off for months but Mac’s got his job, so they’re not starving, and Eddie and Claude are still hunkered down in Hampden.”
“Well, tell them all hello,” David said. “Give Lily my congratulations when you speak to her.”
“I’m not sure I want to speak to her,” Alice said. “Really: what does this family actually have to do with each other anymore?”
But David was getting that too-long-on-the-phone feeling now, and he said, “Okay, well, thanks for calling.”
He passed the receiver back to Greta and she hung it up. “Lily seems to have gotten married,” he told her.
“So I gathered,” Greta said.
Nicholas asked, “Who’d she marry?”
“Some history professor nobody’s met, and she lives in Winston-Salem now.”
“Just like that!” Nicholas said in a wondering tone.
“Serena didn’t even know the man existed,” David said.
“But…Serena is Lily’s daughter, right?”
“Right.”
Nicholas looked at Greta. He said, “So Lily didn’t inform her own daughter she was getting married?”
“Oh, well,” Greta said. “This is America, remember.”
“What’s that have to do with it?”
“Consider the gene pool,” she told him. “This country was settled by dissidents and malcontents and misfits and adventurers. Thorny people. They don’t always follow the etiquette.”
“Seems to me we’re dealing here with more than a question of etiquette,” Nicholas said. “To me this seems downright peculiar.”
Then Benny asked, “Can I still have dessert if I don’t eat my peas?” and Greta said, “Did you try a spoonful, at least?” and the subject of Lily was dropped.