Into the Fire(60)
“Looks like someone’s having a party,” the driver said.
“Could you slow down, please?”
As they passed the house, Max spotted the catering vans in the driveway and felt a familiar hollowness at his core. “Pull up here on the right,” he said. “Up a little farther. A little farther.”
The cab crept beside a tall hedge at the neighbor’s house. “If I didn’t know better,” the driver said, “I’d think we were trying to hide.”
Max opened the door, set one foot on the curb. “Would you mind waiting for me?”
“Your dollar, your desire.”
Leaving the idling taxi behind, Max eased out from behind the hedge, the Spanish-style mansion edging into view. On either side of the porch, immense concrete pots held artfully spiraled lilies, a tornado of white buds.
The post-funeral reception.
The front edge of dusk muted the sky, making the house lights pop. The drawn front curtains allowed a panoramic view of the expansive front room and the crush of well-wishers it accommodated—cops and cousins and colleagues. Scattered throughout, men and women with coiffed hair and impressive bearings seemed to have their own gravitational fields, drawing whirlpools of beholders. Community leaders, no doubt, like Grant.
Wearing an elegant widow-black dress, Jill was in the thick of it, directing traffic in between fusillades of cheek kisses. Despite her concerns she was managing the event with the family’s usual aggressive competence.
The swinging door to the kitchen emitted a steady stream of servers bearing silver trays laden with canapés. Failed actors in white shirts and black vests scurried from the catering vans, hauling Saran Wrapped serving platters, royal chafers, crates of glassware.
Standing among the impeccably trimmed juniper cones, Max suddenly felt quite small. Whatever he’d planned on saying, it wouldn’t get said. Not here, not now.
And yet he found himself unwilling to take his eyes off the scene inside. As he scanned the crowded room, he realized he was searching for Violet.
One of the servers hauling food from the van paused en route to the house and caught Max lurking there among the shrubbery. A flash of white teeth. “Hi. Are you with the party?”
Max’s T-shirt was rumpled, his jeans worn, and he was three days unshaven. He’d cleaned off his shoes before getting into Evan’s car, but smudges of mud remained at the outsoles.
“Yeah,” Max said. “But now I’m feeling a little overdressed.”
The guy laughed. His tray was spotted with what looked to be endives filled with candied walnuts.
Max said, “I was his cousin.”
“I’m sorry. That sucks. What happened to him.”
Max nodded.
“Well, come on in. There’s certainly plenty to eat.” The server hoisted his tray and vanished inside.
To avoid further attention, Max took a few strides to the side of the house. Two years and seven months later, and here he was blending into the vegetation, risking humiliation. Just to catch a glimpse of her.
The sounds carrying over the adobe wall signaled that the reception had already filled the backyard, too. The wall wasn’t much taller than Max’s head, but he wasn’t going to risk peeking over.
As he turned to leave, the hardwood arched gate clicked open and his father walked through, head lowered, extracting a cigarette from his shirt pocket. They almost collided, the Marlboro falling to the gunmetal-gray wood chips carpeting the flower beds.
“Oh, excuse m—” Terry looked up, recognized his son, and froze. “Max. I was just…” His hands circled as if to conjure up a better excuse. “Sneaking a smoke.” He patted the air. “I know, I know. I’m too old, they’ll kill me, lung cancer and blood clots. I just have the occasional stick. When I’m … upset.”
His expression slackened for an instant, and Max saw the grief he’d been holding in. His father had always loved being Uncle Terry to Grant. It was as though the image of himself he saw reflected back in Grant’s eyes was better than what he’d been expecting.
Until Violet, Max had never gotten it. How you could like yourself better just because someone else did. With her, for a brief time, he’d seen his own promise and potential. Even his own deep-buried flaws and vulnerabilities had been teased to the surface and warmed by the light of her gaze until he understood that maybe they weren’t so unique, so shameful. They were just other pieces of himself that he had a shot at accepting because, after all, she had.
He hoped he’d done all that for her, too.
Before.
Max crouched to pick up the fallen cigarette, and as he handed it back, he saw that his father’s eyes were rimmed red. They stayed that way after he cried, all the next day. Max remembered from his childhood—mornings after his mom’s birthday, their wedding anniversary. He wondered what Grant’s death had loosed in Terry. Another life cut short, another truncated family member. It had to have set the tectonic plates shifting inside him, rupturing along old fault lines. It struck Max that he’d been too goddamned scared these past days to notice that it had done the same to him.
“Thanks, son.” Terry gave him an awkward pat on his shoulder, and Max smelled beer on his breath. “Why—” He halted.
Max finished the thought for him: “Why am I here?”
“Goddamn it, can’t I say anything without…” Terry tucked the cigarette back into his pocket. “Do we really have to do this again? Here?”