Before the Fall(86)

As she says it she grabs the scissors from the drawer by the stove and pads in toward the boy, trying to stay out of his field of vision. But he sees her and waves her off, making a kind of primal growl.

“Just—” she says, trying to reason with an unreasonable animal. “It’s longer on the—”

The boy makes the sound again, eyes on the TV. Eleanor nods, comes back into the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” says Scott. “There’s something perfect about a cute kid with a bad haircut.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” she says, dumping the scissors back into the drawer.

She pours them both a cup of tea. Since they sat, the sun has dropped into view at the top edge of the window frame, and when Eleanor leans in to pour his tea, her head slips into the creamy light, creating an eclipse. He squints up at her.

“You look good,” he tells her.

“Really?” she says.

“You’re still standing. You made tea.”

She thinks about that.

“He needs me,” she says.

Scott watches the boy flip around, absently chewing on the fingers of his left hand.

Eleanor stares into the setting sun for a moment, stirs her tea.

“When my grandfather was born,” he says, “he weighed three pounds. This was in West Texas in the ’twenties. Before ICUs. So for three months he slept in a sock drawer.”

“That’s not true.”

“As far as I know,” he says. “People can survive much more than you think is my point. Even kids.”

“I mean, we talk about it—his parents. He knows they’re—passed—as much as he understands what that means. But I can tell from the way he looks to the door whenever Doug comes home that he’s still waiting.”

Scott thinks about that. To know a thing and not know it at the same time. In some ways, the boy is the lucky one. By the time he is old enough to truly understand what happened, the wound will be old, the pain of it faded with time.

“So you said Doug—” says Scott, “—some problems?”

Eleanor sighs, dips her tea bag absently in the cup.

“Look,” she says, “he’s weak. Doug. He’s just—and I didn’t—I thought it was something else at first—how insecurity, you know, defensiveness, can seem like confidence? But now I think his opinions are louder because he’s not really sure what he believes. Does that make sense?”

“He’s a young man. It’s not a new story. I had some of that myself. Dogma.”

She nods, a ray of hope returning to her eyes.

“But you grew out of it.”

“Grew? No. I burned it all down, drank myself into a stupor, pissed off everyone I knew.”

They think about that for a moment, how sometimes the only way to learn not to play with fire is to go up in flames.

“I’m not saying that’s what he’ll do,” says Scott, “but it’s not realistic to think he’ll just wake up one morning and say, You know what? I’m an *.”

She nods.

“And then there’s the money,” she says quietly.

He waits.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s—I get nauseous just thinking about it.”

“You’re talking about the will?”

She nods.

“It’s—a lot,” she says.

“What they left you?”

“Him. It’s—it’s his money. It’s not—”

“He’s four.”

“I know, but I just want to—couldn’t I just keep it all in an account until he’s old enough to—”

“That’s a version,” says Scott. “But what about food or housing? Who’s going to pay for school?”

She doesn’t know.

“I could—” she says, “I mean, maybe I make two meals. A fancy one for him or—I mean, he gets nice clothes.”

“And you get rags?”

She nods. Scott thinks about walking her through all the ways that her idea makes no sense, but he can tell she knows it. That she is working her way toward accepting the trade-off she’s been given for the death of her family.

“Doug sees it differently, I’m guessing.”

“He wants—can you believe?—he thinks—we should definitely keep the town house in the city, but I don’t know, we could probably sell London and just stay in a hotel whenever we visit. Like when did we turn into people who go to London? The man owns half a restaurant he’ll never open because the kitchen’s not done.”

“He could finish it now.”

She grits her teeth.

“No. It’s not for that. We didn’t earn it. It’s not—the money is for JJ.”

Scott watches the boy yawn and rub his eyes.

“I’m guessing Doug doesn’t agree.”

She worries her hands together until the knuckles are white.

“He said we both want the same thing, but then I said, If we both want the same thing, why are you yelling?”

“Are you—scared—at all?”

She looks at him.

“Did you know that people are saying you had an affair with my sister?”