French Braid(77)

Benny went on standing where he was, though, and John gave a soft moan and lay down on the sidewalk.

“I did not know that!” Greta told David, clearly just making small talk.

“Oh, yes,” David said, “there’s a lot about insects that might surprise you.” And then, gathering inspiration, “For instance, you know how sometimes you see a beetle in the middle of the sidewalk and you step around it so as not to smush it. Well, I bet you didn’t realize that the beetle rushes home then to tell its friends that it’s finally met up with a kindhearted human being.”

Greta gave a hiss of a laugh and said, “Oh, you!” but Benny turned to ask, “It does?”

“He’s joking,” Greta told him.

At which Benny laughed too. “Grappa, you are crazy,” he said.

And then he resumed walking, the bumblebee forgotten, and the dog picked himself up and shambled after him.

When they were far enough behind so that Benny was out of earshot, Greta told David, “And here you were feeling so anxious before he got here! Remember? But you see how things turned out.”

“It’s been fun,” David admitted.

“Did I not tell you? I said this. It was exactly this way after Nicholas was born.”

“Still, though,” David said, “you can never take it for granted that family members will like each other.”

“Oh, David. Families love each other!”

“?‘Love,’ well, sure. I’m talking about ‘like,’?” he said.

He hesitated a moment. He saw that old snapshot again in his mind: his seven-year-old self in his beach robe on the shore of Deep Creek Lake.

He said, “My father didn’t like me, for instance.”

“Excuse me?”

“Children know these things,” he said. “It’s a matter of survival. They have to be able to gauge their parents’ minutest reactions, decode the least change in their voices.”

“So,” Greta told him, “then surely you know that your father thought very highly of you.”

“Yes, fine. I know that,” he said, giving up.

“And you thought highly of him,” she said, and she took hold of his hand and drew closer to him. “You were a good son to him.”

“If you say so.”

“Of course I say so! It was nice of you, for example, never to show that you knew your mother lived separately from him.”

“Well, naturally. He would have felt humiliated,” David said. (He didn’t remind her that he hadn’t known, in fact, until she herself pointed it out.)

“So, this is how it works,” she said. “This is what families do for each other—hide a few uncomfortable truths, allow a few self-deceptions. Little kindnesses.”

“And little cruelties,” he said.

“And little cruelties,” she agreed, and she swung his hand between them.

He was relieved that she seemed so unimpressed by what he’d told her. Suppose she had looked at him differently, all at once! Suppose she’d said, “Oh, yes, now that you mention it I see that you are unlikable.”

But he should have trusted that she wouldn’t. Not his Greta.



* * *



—

Nicholas waited till mid-morning before they set off, because he wanted to avoid the rush-hour traffic. As always in these situations, David teetered between dreading their leave-taking and wishing they’d just get it over with. (“I’d rather sit around the airport than sit around the living room,” he used to tell Greta at the end of their visits to Emily.) So when Nicholas finally stood up and said, “Well…” David was almost glad. They all walked out front, the dog on his leash in case he balked at getting into the car, and David and Greta gave Benny a goodbye hug before Nicholas fastened him into his booster seat. John settled beside him, groaning to himself, and Nicholas shut the rear door and turned to his parents. “Thanks, you guys,” he said. “I guess you’ll be happy to have a little peace and quiet again.”

“Oh, right,” David said, and then they both hugged him and stepped back and watched until he had driven away.

“So,” David said finally. “Here we are again, Mrs. G. Aging in place the same as always.” And Greta linked her arm through his and they went back into the house.

They spent the rest of the day restoring some order, straightening the two guest rooms and moving David’s things back into his study. At one point, while he was hooking up his computer, Greta turned from the bookcase and asked, “Have you seen this?” She was holding one of the family albums, the one that Nicholas had leafed through earlier. It lay open to a sheet of typing paper that had been slipped between two pages: a printed-out photo of David and Benny together in the garden. David was stooping a bit to examine the double handful of cherry tomatoes that Benny was holding up to him. “Benny with his beloved Grappa” was the caption, in Nicholas’s blue-ink cursive.

“Aw,” David said, because the sight of Benny’s slightly grimy little fingers gave him a pang that was almost physical.

“I’m going to ask Nicholas to email me this so I can order a print,” Greta told him. “It’s my new favorite picture of you.”

“Shoot: old guy with a scrawny neck,” David said. But he was pleased.