“I’m coming!” I called, halfway down the stairs, as the knocking persisted.
On the counter, in the kitchen, there was a note. William’s handwriting.
You were all asleep, so I made Harry and me breakfast. See you around midday!
I smiled. Sometimes my biggest little boy seemed so mature.
More knocking.
Oh. Right.
“Delivery for Mona Springer,” the man said. He was holding a massive carton.
“I didn’t order anything.”
The man set the carton down inside the doorway. “No, but Denny Springer did.” He handed me a bill. “Funny, I didn’t know he had a new wife.”
“I’m not his—” I started to object.
But the man was already walking away.
I shut the door, stared down at the box. What was this?
“Oh, good!” Denny’s voice. “It’s here.” He pulled at some tape on the box, but it wouldn’t come away. “Do you have a knife?”
I handed him a steak knife, and he squatted down, slitting the tape on the sides before pulling away the big strip in the center. Then he opened up the flaps and extracted a bottle of wine.
“Ah!” he said. “Chateau Latour Pauillac, 1990!”
“What’s that?”
“Didn’t I just say?” He looked at me like I might be dim. “It’s a 1990 Chateau Latour Pauillac.”
“Yes, I did get that part.” Not that I knew what a Chateau Latour Whatever was, no matter what its year. “But what’s it doing here?”
“I called around the liquor stores first thing when I got up this morning. I did say last night that I was making a note, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but—”
“And you specified you preferred your wine red, French, and expensive.”
Actually, he was the one who’d specified the latter two points. I’d said I was content with just the first.
“It wouldn’t do for you to keep drinking that plonk your neighbor was pouring yesterday.” He looked around the counters. “Do you have a corkscrew handy?”
“You want to drink it now?”
“I think we should try it, yes, make sure it’s good.”
“But it’s not even noon!”
“So? We’re not going to drink the whole case, Mona. And I’m not driving. Are you driving?”
It seemed easier to comply than argue, so I rooted around in a drawer until I found a corkscrew, handed that to him, and pulled down two dusty wineglasses from the cabinet.
With a few practiced gestures, he expertly extracted the cork, poured two glasses, and handed me the first before taking one for himself.
“Cheers!” He clinked his glass to mine, moved the glass toward his lips.
“Wait! Aren’t we supposed to let it breathe for a while, or sniff it first and talk about the bouquet or something?”
“Nah.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to be pretentious. Well, actually, I just want to try it right away. We can always let the others breathe.”
We clinked again, sipped simultaneously. I was thinking how good it tasted when he turned to the sink and spit the contents from his mouth all over the porcelain.
“I thought you said we weren’t going to be pretentious about it,” I objected. “Now we’re doing the spitting thing?”
“I wasn’t,” he said, wiping at his lips with the back of one hand. Then he dumped the contents of his glass in the sink, followed by mine, and finally he started pouring out the whole bottle.
“Hey!” I said. “Are you insane? That must’ve cost a small fortune!”
“Small fortune. Large fortune. What’s the difference?”
I picked up the bill from the counter, looked at it. “About seven hundred and seventy-four dollars a bottle!”
He stopped his pouring long enough to glance at the bill. “No. See? We got the case discount—ten percent off.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Then what is? All I know is, I didn’t order this so you could drink an inferior version of a great wine. That bottle had gone off—not all the way, maybe, so as an unsophisticated palate would notice, but still. When it comes to my Latours, I want them perfect. Here, where’s that corkscrew again?”
He repeated the process: extract, pour, divide the glasses, clink. My own clink was now nervous. This time, I only hoped I’d get to taste more than one sip before he dumped the rest of my glass.
I’d heard people say before that there’s not much difference between an expensive bottle of wine and a cheap one, outside of cost, and I’d always smugly agreed. After all, I did know my cheap wines. But this?
I rolled the wine around in my mouth.
There was caramel. There was chocolate. There was licorice. There were even roasted fruits. And the individual parts were integrated into the whole of dark cherry.
And then…
Oh my God!
On the one side, there was every other beverage I’d ever consumed in my life—the wines that tasted serviceable on first sip but by the third glass were a struggle to swallow, even causing a person to gag; the pleasant wines that paired well with whatever food was being eaten; the wines I’d thought were fine—and then there was this.
“Good, right?” Denny said with a smile and a firm nod.
I put my hand to my mouth. “I think my mouth just had an orgasm!”
He raised his eyebrows and saluted me by tilting his wineglass in my general direction. “Now, there’s your wine.”
• • •
It would be inaccurate to say we were drunk by the time the boys returned for lunch, but buzzed wouldn’t be far off the mark. Jack had come downstairs when Denny and I were halfway through the bottle. We’d poured him a glass, he loved it, and we’d gone on to open a second. We even took the time to let that one breathe. Somehow, it never seemed wrong to have a beer early in the day. I mean, obviously, we never did that back home when we were working. But here? It went perfectly with the warm weather and felt more refreshing than alcoholic. But having red wine so early in the day, particularly red wine that cost over seven hundred dollars a bottle, never mind the ten percent case discount? It felt downright decadent.
“Are you OK, Mummy?” William asked now as we all sat down to lunch on the porch.
Denny had had a craving for something with lobster in it, so he’d called Matt and Walter, and they’d gone out with Jeeves in search of the perfect thing, coming back with pounds of a lobster salad, which I was serving up now.
“Why?” I said. “Do I look sick?”
“Only, you look like you sometimes do at night, just a bit funny.”
Well, that was sobering.
When Denny moved to refill our glasses, I covered mine with both hands. “None for me just now, thanks.”
I turned to the boys, who looked excited. Well, they almost always looked excited about one thing or another—sometimes I found myself envious of this, the youthful ability to find magic in the things in the world that were for me commonplace—but they looked particularly jazzed just then.
“So what’s got you two going today?” I asked, stabbing a fat chunk of lobster and popping it into my mouth. I closed my eyes. Sublime.
“Only,” William said, “Biff heard me telling Billy and Tommy that my birthday’s coming up—”
“When’s that going to be?” Denny asked.
A normal uncle would know something like that, I thought.
“In two weeks,” William said, barely looking at Denny. They still hadn’t warmed up to Denny and never called him “Uncle,” only responding if he said something to them first. I got the impression they thought of him not as a real relative, but rather, as this strange person they bumped into from time to time. I don’t think they disliked him or anything like that; I think they simply found his presence odd, didn’t really know what to do with him, and just felt shy.
“He’s going to be ten,” I supplied, sur
e this was a fact Denny was completely unaware of. “Harry turned eight before we left England.”
“Eight! That’s fantastic!” Denny said to Harry. And then to William, “Ten! Wow, that’s a big deal!”
“Yes, I guess so,” William said, that shyness on evidence. But when he turned to Jack and me, all that bubbling excitement was there again, so much so he was practically bouncing out of his chair. “Anyway, as I was saying, Biff heard me talking about my birthday and—get this!—he offered for me to have my party at his place!”
Perhaps it was the fault of wine early in the day, but I wasn’t quite getting this.
“How do you mean?” I said.
“Just what I said,” William said in that way children sometimes have, the way that makes you feel you must be thick. “My party. His house.”
“But I thought we’d have it here, like we always do. Well, not here here—we’ve never had it here before—but like we do back home. You know, a family celebration.”
Poor William. He looked stricken—he hated ever making anyone else feel bad—and I felt awful for having put that look on his face.
“Well, of course we’ll still do that, Mum,” he said, “I always love doing that, I’ll want to have that party every year for for-ever, it wouldn’t be my birthday without it.” He was so good, it was heartbreaking. But even William couldn’t keep from adding, “Only, I was just thinking…”
“That the house next door is much bigger?” I added helpfully.
“Well, yeah.” He sounded relieved that I was finally catching on. “Don’t get me wrong, this place is great—great, I tell you! In fact, it’s my favorite house in the world, outside of our house back home of course. But Biff’s place being so big, I can invite every kid we’ve met, boys and girls—Biff said I could—and it will be the most amazing…!” He stopped himself. “Unless of course you’d rather I didn’t because—”
“Wait,” I said. “Biff said you could invite every kid?”
William nodded eagerly.
“That’s too much,” I said, and it was. I was well aware of the fact that relative to our summer neighbors, Jack and I were along the order of poor relations. I didn’t like feeling that way, nor did I want to take advantage. “Think of the expense.”
“That’s exactly what you shouldn’t be thinking about,” Denny interjected.
“Pardon?”
“When a person has a lot of…material wealth, and that person wants to do something special for someone they’re fond of, they don’t want the person they’re fond of to become obsessed with the expense. They just want to do it. If the situation were reversed, wouldn’t you do the same?”
Well, when he put it like that…
“What do you think, Jack?” I asked.
“No objections from me.” Jack waved his lobster fork. “The boy gets a party that will be—what’re the words you used, William?—the most amazing. And someone else does most of the work and deals with other neighbors’ complaints when the party gets too loud? Sign me up. Where can I get one of these parties for myself?”
“Mum?” William looked at me hopefully.
“Well…” I dragged out the word, narrowing my eyes at him. “Who gets to make the birthday cake?”
“You do! Of course. You do!” He held out his open palms, practically vibrating them. “How could I ever want anything else?”
“Well, OK then.” I broke into a wide grin. “Actually, this all does sound pretty fab.”
“I know!” William cried. “Only, you know, don’t feel like you have to make a cake big enough for everyone because—”
“Stop!” Harry punched his brother in the arm playfully. “You’re going to blow it!” Then he collapsed into giggles. “I was sure you were going to blow it. Every step of the way, I was sure.”
William reddened but then he started giggling too. “I know! I’m the worst at asking for anything!”
“This is going to be so great,” Harry said. “You know, William’s the only one with a summer birthday, so this is just going to be huge. Huge!”
“I can see that,” Jack said. “So, what were you thinking of for presents for this huge birthday?”
“Presents?” William practically screamed, turning to Harry. Then both boys screamed something unintelligible simultaneously as they did some kind of combination high-five/hand-clasp thing.
“I was so wrapped up in everything else,” William said, “I forgot all about presents.”
“William, my lad,” Jack said, “take no offense, and please don’t send me the therapy bill years later for saying this, but you are a strange boy. So, what’ll it be?”
“I think William would like a bicycle,” Harry said.
“That’s not really practical, is it?” Jack said. “He’d only get to ride it here. He’d have to leave it behind when we go back home at the end of the summer.”
“True,” Harry said. “But the older boys all have bikes to ride around on. I really think William would like one of those.”
“It doesn’t have to be a bike,” William said quickly. “There are plenty of other things I wouldn’t mind having. That is, if it’s OK.”
He proceeded to name them. It was a surprisingly long list, including small sporting equipment and various games—in particular a replacement for the Monopoly board game they liked playing with Matt and Walter in the evenings. All of the play money in that was hopelessly wrinkled, and the dog game piece was missing its head.
“I’m sure we’ll come up with something good from that list,” Jack said, stopping William when it began appearing he might go on with his list making all day.
“What about from me?” Denny asked William.
“From you?” William appeared puzzled by the question.
“Yeah. What can I get you for your birthday?”
“He did just provide a whole list,” Harry pointed out.
“True,” Denny said. “But that was for your parents, wasn’t it? I’d like to give William something too. Is there anything else you want?”
“Well, I really think he could use a bike,” Harry said.
William studied his empty plate for a long time. That’s one of the weird things about having boys. They talk so much, getting excited about everything, a person would think they never have time to eat too. And yet, when you look at their plates, they’re always miraculously empty.
At last, William took a deep breath. And then he shifted his gaze up, looking Denny directly in the eye.
“Could you sing ‘Happy Birthday’?” William asked.
“Of course.” Denny laughed. “That’s what you do at a birthday party, right? Everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’?”
“Only, I meant just you, no one else.”
“That’s in two weeks,” I said. “Your uncle might not even still be here then.”
Would he be?
“OK. But if he were still here—” William turned from me and faced Denny squarely again. “If you were still here, could you do that? Only, there’s this girl, Roberta—”
“William likes her!” Harry sang.
“Shut up or I won’t let you play with my new Monopoly board!” And back to Denny: “The thing is, I do like her, but she doesn’t notice me much. She likes one of the other boys, an older boy. I think she thinks I’m too young for her. But if you did that, if you sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me solo, if you could make it somehow special like…” William trailed off. “I don’t know what I mean.”
“She’d see you in a new light?” Denny supplied.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it! That’s what I mean!”
“That’s not going to happen, William,” Jack said. “You can’t just use your uncle like that, to gain social currency.”
“Talk English, Dad,” Harry said. “We don’t know what social currency is when it’s at home.”
“But you both understand using people, right? And that it’s wrong.”
&nbs
p; “What’s the big deal, Jack?” Denny said easily. “I don’t mind being used. Wouldn’t be the first time.” Denny turned to William. “When did you say this party was again?”
“In two weeks,” William said, “on a Saturday.” And then, as if any of us needed reminding at this point, he added, “It’s my birthday.”
“Yeah,” Denny said, settling back in his seat. “I think I could maybe do something like that.”
I was grumbling to myself, practically smashing the dishes as I loaded them into the washing machine.
What was wrong with that man? Who did he think he was?
After Denny told William that he could “maybe do something like that,” meaning sing “Happy Birthday” at his party, William had erupted out of his seat in excitement.
“Are you serious? Is this for real? But wait. What if you’re not still here?”
“Well, it would be hard for me to do it if I’m not here. But I will. Still be here, that is,” Denny said, adding the magic word, “promise.”
“Wow!”
Then Denny held both palms up, and, after only the briefest of hesitations, William slapped Denny’s palms with his own, doing the same high-five/hand-clasp thing he and Harry had done earlier.
It was enough to make me sick.
“It’s enough to make a person sick,” I grumbled now, smashing around some more plates.
“Do you always talk to yourself when you’re doing the dishes, Mona, or is this the Chateau Latour talking?”
Of course it was Denny.
I whirled on him.
“Don’t you Chateau Latour me!”
“What’s this all about?”
“You. You have a habit of promising people presents and then not delivering on your promises.”
He looked surprised at the accusation. “What are you talking about? I always do what I say. At least, I always try to.” His expression when he said this was completely innocent, which made it that much more galling. Did he just say whatever crap he wanted to, making it up as he went along, or did he actually believe the things that came out of his mouth?
“Jack’s and my wedding,” I said as though the implications should be obvious.
The Other Brother Page 14
