She said, “I don’t know if you heard what happened last night.”
“Someone threw stones at the playhouse.”
“Yes, well.” And in spite of herself, she couldn’t keep out of her voice the tone of someone sharing bad news: “It was Ben.”
“Why the hell would he do that?”
“He says it was a joke. He just wanted to scare Julie a little bit.”
“Well,” David said. “I guess he succeeded.”
“Please. I’m extremely upset by this.” May was still fast asleep; they were speaking quietly.
“Of course, we’ll pay for the window.”
“Nobody cares about the window,” she said. “Ben says it was broken already. I don’t know what to think, I’m not sure I trust him anymore. I feel like I’m losing … contact. I didn’t know what to say to him.”
“I hope you told him to apologize.”
“He was extremely upset, too. He knows that something’s going wrong.”
“Let’s not exaggerate any of this. It’s schoolboy stuff. When I was at school …”
“I don’t want to hear about what you did at school.”
“I did much worse, when I was his age. He’s a twelve-year-old boy.”
“You act like this is happy behavior. This is not happy behavior. Sneaking out at two in the morning to throw stones at a window is not happy behavior. Trying to scare the … out of your cousin, and taking pleasure from that, is not happy behavior.”
“It’s a prank, Susie. It’s a stupid prank, but that’s all it is.”
He was still a little drunk from the Kirkendolls’ party and not yet willing to come down. Nathan had pissed him off on the car ride home (the way he threw his weight around generally annoyed him), but David’s response to irritation was to retreat into amusement. He had a few more days to get through, mostly he just needed to be patient. But he was also aware that it wasn’t just a question of patience; that being amused and patient was a way of defending himself, against Susie, too.
“The Essingers turn everything into a moral dilemma,” he said.
“What he did was evil. It’s not a big deal, it’s not the worst thing in the world, but it was evil.”
“Susie,” he said, more gently. “He’s your son. He’s Ben.”
She turned to look at him; May shifted a little against her chest. “I’ve been imagining what it’s like to stand out there in the middle of the night and throw stones at that house and imagine what Julie is feeling while she lies there listening. I don’t see how you can want someone to feel those things.”
“He’s a boy. It was a joke. He just wants attention.”
“Believe me, he has my attention,” Susie said, and David stood up.
“What do you want me to do about it? Do you want me to talk to him?”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you. He asked me to ask you not to.”
Almost in spite of himself he felt a kind of sugar rush of hurt—everything seemed to be happening on their turf, he felt left out. But this was only a short-term problem. In a few days they were flying back to Connecticut. “Let me know if you change your mind,” he said, walking out. There’s no point in fighting about it now, when you know perfectly well what she’s upset about. Moving to England, and that’s not an argument you have to win, because it’s happening anyway.
* * *
Jean had been checking her computer throughout the morning for updates on Henrik’s flight. In fact, for the past few days she had been tracking the weather forecasts in Chicago. Temperatures all week hovered around freezing, but so far there hadn’t been anything worse than a light rain, and Wednesday dawned clear and sunny. There was a Bowl game in Detroit that night, and she walked into the TV room after lunch while David and Willy were watching some pregame roundup on ESPN. The reporters outside Ford Field stood in mittens and heavy coats—snow fell silently behind them, and Jean felt her heart stop and her hands start to sweat. But it was stupid, Detroit is five hours to the east, and the storm system was traveling south along the I-69 corridor toward Tennessee. Anyway, Henrik was probably already in the air.
Willy sat with his head in his father’s armpit. He was still in pajamas.
“Is he all right?” Jean said.
“He’s all right.” And then, to his son, in a hokey American accent: “You’re a tough guy, right?”
“Let me know if I can get you anything,” and David looked up at her.
“Thank you,” he said, in his own voice. “We’re just zoning out.”
Around 3:30 she set off for the airport. It was much too early but she couldn’t help herself. Liesel met her in the entrance hall. “Are you going now?” She must have been watching out for her, she had put off her nap.
“I don’t know what the traffic will be like after Christmas.”
“Ich bin sehr gespannt,” her mother told her. I’m very excited, but the German word in Jean’s ears also had an overtone of something else. It could mean tension, too, something stretched between two points. “Is there anything he would like for supper?” Liesel asked. “I was going to make potato soup. I thought, something simple after a flight, but maybe he just wants to go to bed.”
Jean almost blushed. “Potato soup would be great,” and she walked out the door.
In fact, the roads were mostly empty, and she rolled under the highway toward East Austin and turned onto Airport Boulevard, stopping only for the lights. Some of the shops were open. There were Christmas trees twinkling in display windows, in the bright sunshine, and Santa hats or red and white scarves draped over billboards advertising fried chicken and 99-cent chalupas. The mild pulse of holiday traffic had a soothing quality. Nobody seemed in much of a hurry, and the blue sky spread out over the raised junction with 183 like the backdrop in a photographer’s studio: Still Life with Intersection. But the mountain cedar by the side of the road looked scratchy and gray; the grass was dirty, and Jean found herself narrating the past three or four days of family life for Henrik’s benefit, telling it to him the way she wanted to tell it, practicing.
She was early enough at the airport that she could park in the lot and walk out to meet him at the baggage carousel. He said he wasn’t checking any bags but that’s where you came out anyway. For his sake, she had put on a dress, with ankle boots and tights. She wore the bracelet he gave her for her birthday. Even in December the air-conditioned terminal was cold enough that she felt goose bumps rise along her forearms, so that she crossed them and worried that she looked defensive. It was a little after half past four—he was probably stuck in immigration. She walked outside again, into the shadow of the underpass, where passengers kicked their heels along the curb, smoking or sitting on luggage and waiting for their rides. The light was already declining over the flat countryside and gleamed yellow and red against the garage opposite. Trees grew out of limestone beds along the side of it, taxis waited in a line. She went back in.
*
Whenever he saw her again, after an absence, she seemed smaller than he remembered … younger, too, probably. Her boyish face, under the short hair, had filled out a little as she got older, but she still looked like the kid in school who was concentrating, who wanted to be good. He saw her before she saw him; she stood in the colorless artificial light on the marble tiles by the automatic doors. Her dress was a little too snug, she didn’t look comfortable in it, and with her hand on her backside tried to adjust it lower, working the hem down against the resistance of her tights. He was coming down the escalator with his backpack over one shoulder and in that state of heightened but still weirdly calm sensitivity to impressions that sleeplessness, long-haul flights, and airports produced in him. He felt curious about what her reaction would be, and then when he saw it, moved. She smiled with real happiness, the kind you have to hold back or keep down, and walked toward him.
“I probably stink a little,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
She kissed him. It occurred to him that for
a second she hadn’t recognized him—he looked like every other traveler, middle-aged and tired.
In London, at Heathrow, when he got out of the taxi, it was lamp-lit and dark, raining, the windshield wipers of the taxi squeaked against the glass, he got wet paying the driver, dawn seemed hours away. But now when they stepped outside, and crossed over the walkway toward the parking lot, he felt the soft December air, smelled car fumes in sunshine, and felt something of the generic traveler’s joy that being on location always gave him, and which was one of the reasons he liked his job. He liked new cities, he liked new climates, he liked finding his way and making decisions about what he liked and didn’t like in foreign places. The landscape was very flat around him, the skies were blue and pale and somehow thin-looking, as if they barely covered what was out there, and a Marriott hotel rose out of nothing amid the glitter of parked cars. Jean found her father’s Volvo, which looked twenty years old. All of this he found pleasant. He was interested in her family car.
“You know the joke about the old VW bug?” she said. “Zero to sixty? Yes! Well, maybe downhill.”
The tape deck didn’t work; the only thing it played was something funny and English, in a Cockney accent. A rainy afternoon/ Spent in the warmest room … Jean lowered the windows as they pulled on to the highway, and mild air flowed through the car. Yesterday afternoon, after Christmas lunch with the kids, Henrik cleaned up the cottage and packed up the car and drove five hours to London, so he could drop them off at their mother’s house, which was also the house he had lived in for fifteen years. It took them six hours; even on Christmas Day the M4 was a car park around Newport and the Second Severn Crossing looked like an architect’s model of a bridge, with model cars going nowhere. The white suspension cables were like the strings of harps; there had been an accident at the M5 junction.
“I don’t see why we have to spend Christmas Day in the car,” Freya said.
“I don’t see why you should either,” he had told her. “If your father had arranged his life better, you wouldn’t have to.”
“That’s such a … you always say things like that. That’s not an excuse.”
“I don’t know what I should say. I don’t want to fight with you, when you’re right.” And so on. This is how he argued with them.
They had supper at the Welcome Break in Membury. By this point it was already nine o’clock. Sasha had become a vegetarian and ate a pesto salad from Waitrose, with a plastic fork, sitting at the odd little table in the forecourt, with coffee stains and a fake linoleum grain, and looking unhappy and uncomplaining. The other two ate fries and burgers from Burger King. Sasha picked at their fries, and they had an argument about that, how many she had taken from each, and Henrik stood up and used the men’s room and waited in front of the mirror until he thought it might have resolved itself. And when he came back it had. His policy with the children after the separation was not to get angry—he let their mother do that—and it worked pretty well. He could keep his patience for a few hours on Wednesday, for twenty-four hours on Saturday, and for a few days in the holidays.
It was almost eleven by the time they pulled up at the house in Acton. Their mother had only just arrived from Bristol. It would have been easier for him to drop the kids off there but Monica had decided that one week with her parents was enough. You make these crazy arrangements because people are crazy. You can fight the craziness or go along with it, and most of the time it was easier to go along. She helped them carry their bags in—it was raining hard, and he had to park a few doors down. By this point their working relationship was perfectly functional. In fact, she let him spend the night on the sofa. His flight left at eight in the morning; he had to get a taxi at five, there was no point in going back to their cold apartment in Kensal Green. Was he packed? Yes, he was packed, so long as he could leave a few things at the house—he had a short connection in Chicago and didn’t want to check any bags. Of course, that’s fine, just leave them somewhere out of the way.
He set his alarm for four-thirty so he could shower. At five o’clock Monica came downstairs in her bathrobe. The taxi was waiting in the street; he was finishing his tea. She said, “You’re meeting her family, right?” The shutters were closed; his backpack lay in the hall. You could hear the heating coming on—the flow and drip of water in the radiators.
“Yes, her parents and her brothers and sister.”
“Have you met them before?”
“No. This is the first time.” He hesitated, then he said: “It’s not important to me, but since it’s important to her, I’m happy to do it. I’m even a little curious.”
“They must love the sound of you.”
“I expect not.”
She didn’t hug him or kiss him, but she stood in the doorway as he walked, ducking his head in the rain, to the taxi, and she waited until they drove away before closing the door. He hadn’t yet decided whether to mention to Jean that he had spent the night there. It was a matter of convenience for him, completely insignificant, but sometimes this is hard to communicate.
They were entering Austin now, what looked like the suburbs of a city. Recent developments were advertised by the side of the road, some of them half-built, and Henrik noticed rows of shops and restaurants between the gas stations. They had to stop at traffic lights. Jean had been talking most of the time; she had been telling him news.
“I feel like we haven’t talked all week,” she said. “By the way, you suck on the phone.”
“This is what people say.”
“I went for a drink with Dana, and she got hassled by some guy. Which isn’t her fault but it annoys me a little that she acts surprised by it. Anyway, she told me that she’s seeing somebody in New York. I don’t think Paul knows. And Liesel has this idea that she can bring them back together. That’s what all this is about. I want to tell her but I don’t think it’s my thing to tell.”
This is how she talked, a little nervously maybe, or not nervously but confidentially. She was a competent driver. Part of her attention was also occupied by the road. Everything looked to Henrik very makeshift, like a kind of encampment; houses here or there, front yards growing into the sidewalk, or neighborhood streets without sidewalks passing you by at odd angles. Chain-link fences. The shops set back behind their parking lots looked like they had been built in a day. Like a stage set, but a stage set would be more convincing, there would be a façade. It was very green, though the grass had faded with winter; there were many trees.
“Does Paul want to—I mean, get back together with Dana?”
“I don’t know what Paul wants. He’s sort of post-wanting. I’m worried about him.” She waited at a light, and then she turned, and they crossed tramlines or tracks of some kind, and she said, “Maybe you can talk to him. You might have some kind of insight.”
“What do you mean?”
“Into what he’s going through. Leaving his wife. Living apart from his son.”
She looked at him; he couldn’t read her look, but then she turned back to the road.
“It’s possible.”
“I’m sort of kidding,” she said. “Only sorta. In case you can’t tell I’m a little bit nervous.”
“Should I be nervous, too?”
“I’m just upset that Bill’s not here—we don’t know yet when he’s coming back. Everybody thinks that he’s the hard-ass but Liesel is much scarier.”
“It sounds like you think I should be nervous.”
“She’s making you potato soup. I’m not really nervous, I’m just happy.”
There was a park with a creek, and Jean turned right along the stretch of grass. The houses had large front yards, they crossed over a limestone bridge (into a strong sunset, like swimming against the current), and then an arch of trees shaded the asphalt, the road curved. In the middle of the bend, she pulled into an empty driveway; the back of the Volvo clanked at the dip in the concrete. A hedge with red berries hid the screened-in porch, but there were pillars rising up besid
e it, a few tiled steps, and you could sense the rest of the house through the leaves, with its blue and white trim and tall windows. Henrik stepped out of the car, stretching his back after sitting down. A gray-haired woman had opened the door and stood in the doorway. This is what he always liked, arriving somewhere to a new situation and figuring out how to make his way.
*
Liesel had just woken up from her nap; she felt internally disheveled, she felt like she looked old. She didn’t know whether to walk out or wait for them, but Henrik didn’t have any luggage, just a backpack, so she waited in the doorway, and he followed Jean up the steps and then shook her hand. He had strong hands; he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that showed off his forearms. Jean stood smiling on the little tiled portico—she looked like she was trying not to smile. Liesel said, “It’s nice to meet you,” conscious of sounding formal, and a little German. Her first impressions were okay. He was a middle-aged man, bald, with a clean scalp, attractive but not handsome and like he didn’t care much either way. He looked competent and tired.
“It’s very nice to be here,” he said. And then, in a rough Danish accent, “Wir können auch Deutsch sprechen.” We can speak German, too. But this was probably a mistake, it was a little too soon, and Liesel answered in English, “If you like.”
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