Rooms(16)

Dennis transforms his nervous cough into a laugh. “Better not,” he says. He’s uncomfortable, as he should be, without knowing why. “I’m still on the clock. I made the appointment with Caroline . . . ”

Minna waves a hand. “Appointments have never stopped my mother from drinking. What do you say? Whiskey? Wine? Vodka? We’re absolutely drowning in vodka . . . ”

“I shouldn’t,” Dennis says, but I can feel him beginning to relent.

“You might as well relax.” Minna takes another step toward him. “Who knows how long we’ll be waiting for the others . . . ” She steps forward again, so they are standing less than a foot apart.

All the threads are pulled tight in that instant. Even I am swept along. The air vibrates like a plucked violin string.

Then Amy bursts out of the study.

“Nana’s back, Mommy!” She barrels down the hall, half sliding on bunched-up socks.

Just like that, the threads are cut. Dennis and Minna instinctively step away from each other.

“Honey, be careful!” Minna reaches out and catches Amy by the shoulders, forcing her to slow down.

“Who are you?” Amy says, looking up at Dennis.

“Don’t be rude, Amy,” Minna says.

Dennis laughs. “I’m Dennis,” he says, leaning down and offering his hand, solemnly, for Amy to shake. Instead she ducks around Minna’s leg, peeking at him from between Minna’s thighs.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Minna says. “Say hi to Mr. Carey, Amy.”

“Hi,” Amy whispers.

Dennis straightens up again. “Is she yours?”

Minna nods. She won’t meet his eyes. I wonder whether she’s embarrassed about the fact that their moment was interrupted, or about the fact that it happened at all.

“She’s very pretty,” Dennis says.

“Say thank you, Amy,” Minna says sharply.

Amy says nothing.

The kitchen door opens.

“In here, Mom,” Minna says, before Caroline can ask.

Caroline comes into the hall a moment later. In her large gray cashmere jumpsuit, she looks like an overgrown dust mite. And yet there—underneath it, underneath her—I can’t help but see another Caroline: thin and beautiful, with the same wide, lost eyes, drifting from room to room. Even then, she was like dust—blown from place to place.

“The service here—” she starts to say, and then, seeing Dennis, stops. “Oh God. You must be Mr. Carey. I’d completely forgotten—”

“It’s no problem,” Dennis says, starting forward. He goes to shake her hand; she extends her hand limply and allows it to be engulfed. “I wasn’t waiting long.”

“You don’t look like a lawyer,” Caroline says, and she laughs as though she has made a joke. “Surely you’re too young.”

“A lawyer?” Trenton has skulked into the hall, too, and stands with his shoulders hunched practically to his ears.

Minna says offhandedly, “I never could stand lawyers.”

Dennis clearly doesn’t know who to address. He again adjusts the collar of his shirt. His neck is thin, and his Adam’s apple prominent, as though he has swallowed a peach pit at some point in his life and it has been lodged there ever since. “I was lucky enough to work with Mr. Walker in the later years of his life,” he says.

Caroline claps her hands. Her eyes are very bright. “I suppose we might as well get started,” she says. “No point in delaying the inevitable.”

“Get started on what?” Trenton asks.

Caroline looks from Trenton to Minna in her old, bewildered way, as though both of them have just materialized from nowhere. “Mr. Carey is here to read your father’s will,” she says. She turns a smile back to Dennis. “Let’s go into the study, shall we? It’s so much cozier in there. I’ll just nip into the kitchen for a glass of wine. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”





SANDRA

In my day, the study was the den. It wasn’t as big then as Richard Walker made it during the Great Renovation of 1994, when we got cracked open like an egg, scrambled and remade, puffed up into a soufflé of useless rooms and spiral staircases and “breakfast nooks” and window seats.

My favorite place: in the armchair, feet up, cigarette burning in the ashtray and a drink in my hand, the deep purple walls pulsing in the light from the TV, like being at the center of a heart. Bay windows belly out over the back lawn, and in the distance stands a shaggy dark line of trees, thick as a group of sheepdogs.

Minna looks as if she needs a cigarette. Caroline, too. They’re gaping at each other like two trout on ice at the grocery store. Even Trenton has straightened up.

Minna is the one to speak first. “Trenton? Why the hell would he leave the house to Trenton?”

“Probably because I’m the only one of us who didn’t hate him,” Trenton says. He shakes a bit of hair from his eyes. When he’s not slouching and sulking and playing with his zits, he’s not so bad looking. He’s got a little of his father in him—straight nose, nice chin.

“Don’t be Victorian, Trenton,” Minna says. “I didn’t hate him.”

I’m feeling especially nice about Minna today. I can’t help it if I’m a little aglow, a little warm and fuzzy, as though all the lights are on at once. She knows about me! She remembers. I’d bet my last dollar that means other people remember me, too. Everyone likes to be recognized and appreciated. Those were my brains on the study wall, thankyouverymuch.