Lost and Wanted(67)

    “You brought those with you, from L.A.?”

“Just the portable kit.”

“I have tools, Dad.”

My father ignored this statement. “I wouldn’t have known the gasket needed replacing if there hadn’t been a clog.”

“Why was there a clog?”

My father glanced at my mother, who was now sitting in lotus position, her palms uplifted on her knees, her thumbs and first fingers forming little holes in space.

“Artichoke leaves,” my father whispered.

My mother opened her eyes. “Now I eat an artichoke every day for lunch.”

“Just an artichoke?”

“With Greek yogurt, cumin, and salt. I’ve been doing it for three weeks, and I can’t tell you how different I feel. I’ve been trying to convince your father to try it.”

My mother went back to college when Amy and I were in high school; when we were in college, she was getting her master’s, and she eventually became a reading specialist for elementary school children. If there’s one quality everyone in my family shares, it’s a dogged persistence and a need to keep busy. Amy and I have discussed our mother’s embrace of various wellness trends, and the possibility that she may have retired too soon.

    “Artichokes,” my father said. “So much mess, so little reward.”

“Well, thanks,” I told them both. “I would’ve missed the conference without you. Can you stay for dinner?”

“The flight’s in four hours,” my father said. “We want to leave in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll go down then and get Jack.”

“He offered to have Jack stay with them yesterday,” my mother said, standing up. “Your father didn’t want to do it.”

“We hardly knew Terrence before,” my father said.

I was surprised. “Did you spend a lot of time with him?”

“Well, not exactly,” my mother said. “But since the children were constantly together—”

“They were?”

My father made an irritated sound. He likes to arrive at the airport at least three hours in advance, even for a domestic flight.

“Oh yes,” my mother said, ignoring him. “Poor little thing. And she’s so pretty.”

I thought this was something I might not have noticed, if I hadn’t been friends with Charlie—the way that white people would compliment her in a manner that was designed to demonstrate their own aesthetic broad-mindedness. That color looks great on you. I could never pull that off. I love your hair! Charlie would dismiss people like that—“absurd”—I would agree, and in this way neither of us would have to think about whether or not I might have made similar comments if she hadn’t been always subtly correcting me in advance.

“We weren’t quite sure what to make of him.”

“Terrence?”

“He’s a little sullen, no?”

“Well, his wife just died.”

“I meant his attitude,” my mother said. “In general.”

“I loved Charlie,” my father said, with genuine feeling. Charlie, on the one spring break when she’d come out to visit me in L.A., had developed a teasing rapport with my father that had seemed to draw him out of the interior world where he lived most of his life.

“What does Terrence do for a living?” my mother asked.

    “He and his brother have a business making wooden surfboards.”

My father was interested. “They actually make them? You mean, by hand?”

I told him that they did, although I was pretty sure it was Ray who was the craftsman.

“Well, he’s certainly handsome,” my mother said. “I’ll give him that.”



* * *



—

When I went downstairs, I found Terrence and the children sitting at a glass coffee table playing Yahtzee. The table had an open, aluminum-alloy base, and Simmi had filled it with a miniature assemblage: key chains, a collection of molded plastic animals, tiny rubber erasers shaped like pieces of food, coloring books, markers, a puzzle featuring Noah’s ark, a Slinky. Of Terrence’s possessions, the only evidence was a pair of kettlebells, sitting in the empty brick fireplace, and a framed poster (“San Diego Surf Film Festival 2003”) propped against one wall.

Jack ran to me. I took him in my arms, trying not to breathe on him too much—when both of us got sick, that was the worst. But he didn’t let me hold him for long. He wiggled away after a moment, accusing me with his eyes.

“Why weren’t you home yesterday?”

“My flight was canceled. Grandma must’ve told you.”

“It didn’t snow,” Jack said, as if this was also my fault. “I told them it would.”

“Last winter was brutal,” I said. “This one’s wimpy.”

Terrence blew out his lips and gave a dramatic pretend shiver. It was rare to see him do anything silly, and Simmi laughed delightedly.

“We played fifty-eight games of Yahtzee,” she told me.

“Not today?”

Terrence smiled. “Since we got here, she means.”

“I didn’t mean for you to have to…”