They May Not Mean To, But They Do(34)

“Nice, isn’t he?” he said.

“Oh yes.”

Joy wondered why she didn’t tell Danny who Karl was. She certainly had nothing to hide. “Daddy just lit up when he saw him.”

Karl had been so gentlemanly, waiting at the gate to the park to let her and her entourage out first. She thought wistfully of Aaron, what a gentleman he had always been. He still was sometimes, an instinct that had outlived his memory. Joy noticed it when she stood up from the table, the way he tried to stand up, his hand reaching out to help her pull her chair back.

“Good,” Danny was saying. “Maybe it will warm up for real sometime soon. This weather is ridiculous. And people don’t understand it’s a symptom of climate change, just like global warming. They think it counters global warming…”

She listened contentedly as he talked about energy, how we squandered it, how there would be no energy left.

“I have no energy. Can you people help me?”

“Mom.”

Danny had devoted his professional life to combatting climate change. If he occasionally lost his sense of humor when it came to the environment, you couldn’t blame him. She just forgot now and then, forgot not to tease him.

“Danny, I’m sorry. That was glib.”

“Sorry, Mom. It’s just that I deal with these idiots all day long…”

He patted her hand, and she had the urge to put her cheek against his, to press against his cheek, to kiss it, to grab both his cheeks with both of her hands and kiss him some more.

She could see he was getting restless.

“Wanda gave Daddy too much fruit today,” she said.

“Did she?”

Joy simply did not want to mention Karl, that was all. It would start up a whole conversation, wouldn’t it? All about the past. The past was too alive to her as it was without stirring up memories.

Danny kept looking at his phone, pulling it out of his pocket, staring down at it as he held it below the level of the table, as if that made it somehow more discreet, like holding a napkin in front of your mouth when you picked an annoying bit of food from between your teeth.

“It’s very rude, what you’re doing,” she said. “Is this the way it’s going?”

“Is this the way what is going?” Danny asked, still looking at his phone.

“Civilization. Everyone always looking at those electronic things.”

He looked up. “Sorry.” He looked back at the phone.

“People are going to forget how to talk to each other. That’s all.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

Joy could feel the tears welling up. She took a deep breath. Danny was dog-tired, he was overburdened at work, he had so much on his mind. The changing climate, the melting polar ice, droughts and floods, the girls getting into decent schools …

“How are the girls?” she asked.

Danny gave her a suspicious look.

“They’re very busy, Mom. They have a lot of homework.”

And birthday parties, Joy thought. It was mathematically impossible, the number of birthday parties those little girls went to. Homework and birthday parties, a balance of a sort. “I know, sweetheart. They work so hard. So do you.”

“Yeah,” he said, mollified. “We do.”

Joy hadn’t seen or heard from her grandchildren in over a month, but that was not why she asked about them. Danny was prickly about his family, as if any inquiry were a veiled criticism. She had asked about the girls because she had suddenly pictured them, like two kittens, their big eyes and silky hair, the way they snuggled into each other like kittens, then batted each other away. They were beautiful, sweet, eccentric girls. It was only natural that she missed them. Only natural that she asked about them. She understood they had their lives and that their lives were imperative and irresistible in that way that a child’s life is.

“I’d love if they called. You know, just to say hello.”

He laughed unkindly. “You sound like Grandma Bergman. Your finger broken? You can’t dial a phone? I mean, you can call them, too, Mom.”

Joy could not explain this to her son, would have been too ashamed even to mention it, but when she did call his house, everyone there was always so busy. It made her feel awkward and intrusive, out of step.

“Grandma Bergman,” she said. “Them’s fightin’ words.”

But there were circles under his eyes, his shirt was wrinkled and his tie rumpled, he’d been up since five, and still he made time for this visit. She got up to spoon out his ice cream herself.

She stood at the door watching as Danny, large and wilted and fiddling with his phone in his pocket, waited for the elevator, and she was glad for once that the elevator was so slow. She could not take her eyes off him.

“Your briefcase is so heavy, Danny. You should get one with wheels.”

He laughed, walked back, gave her another hug. Over his shoulder she could just make out the elevator door opening. She said nothing, holding her big, tired son in her arms. The door closed and the elevator began its slow ascent to some other floor. A high floor, she hoped, her face against his chest. Maybe the penthouse.

That night, Joy pressed her back against the cushions of the sofa. It was late, after 3 a.m., but it was not dark. It was never dark in New York, and tonight the cloudy sky reflected the city lights in a pale green glow. It was quiet, though. Those few hours when all the creatures of the city, the screeching, roaring buses, the howling ambulances, all seemed to take their rest, when the garbage trucks had not yet trundled out of their caves. She could hear Walter changing Aaron’s colostomy bag. God bless you, Walter, she thought. May the lord bless you and keep you and shine his countenance upon you.