Ask Again, Yes

by Mary Beth Keane

  Peter told him, quickly.

  “But you’re on restricted duty? Not modified? A shrink has to clear you?”

  There were only a few civilians who knew the difference between modified duty and restricted, but George was one of them.

  “Yes.”

  “Something else happen?”

  What else happened, Peter said, steering the ship right back around, was that his mother was coming to lunch in a matter of hours, and Peter would appreciate it if George could be there.

  “Me?” George nearly shouted. “You want me to be there while she’s there? Oh, God. Rosaleen is going down the shore later. Her friend has a beach house in Avalon. A ladies’ weekend or something.”

  Peter didn’t see what that had to do with anything, but if George wanted an out, Peter understood.

  “Okay, well, don’t worry about it. I’ll let you know how it goes and we’ll make plans with you guys soon.”

  “Oh no, I’m coming,” George said. “You gotta give a guy a minute to think out loud. I got shook for a second is all. I’m coming. I’ll just come by myself.”

  “Really?” Peter dipped his head and pressed the phone to his ear with both hands.

  “You kidding me? Last time I ate a meal with Anne Stanhope she swung a vacuum at me. Can’t imagine it’ll go worse than that. And by the way, you should think about shipping the kids to a neighbor or something.”

  Peter laughed, and Kate leaned out from the kitchen as if he’d cried out in pain.

  “They’re staying. Kate and I already discussed it.”

  “More bodies if this goes bad.”

  “George,” Peter said, but he laughed again. “Jesus, why am I laughing?”

  “What else can you do?”

  “Don’t joke like that to Kate.” Peter glanced toward the kitchen. “She’s a wreck though she’s pretending she’s not.”

  “I wouldn’t. Anyway, what do you want me to bring?”

  “Nothing.”

  “And what about the restricted duty? What’s that about? I’m confused.”

  “Oh,” Peter said. The dread that had been lifted for a second or two felt heavier as it settled in again. “That’s a mix-up. We’re working that out now.”

  * * *

  Kate cleaned up the breakfast dishes, wiped down the counters. She checked that the London broil in the fridge was covered with marinade, closed the fridge door, opened it again to check that the pasta salad was tightly wrapped. Then she did all of those things a dozen more times. She asked Peter what he wanted, what he envisioned for the afternoon, but he didn’t know how to begin to answer the question, so he didn’t respond.

  Kate followed him around the house to their bedroom and then into the bathroom as he turned on water for a shower. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet while the bathroom filled with steam, and waited for him to talk to her, but he only washed himself, dried himself, got dressed.

  “I keep thinking of what my father will say.”

  “You’re the one who was all for this. You’re the one who said yes.”

  “I know.”

  “So don’t tell him.”

  “He’ll hear.”

  “How?”

  Kate shrugged. “He hears everything, eventually.”

  “Because you’ll tell him.”

  Kate sighed. “It’s like my mind is splitting into two. One part knows she’s your mother and I’m willing to see her because of that. She must have done something right because here you are.”

  “But?”

  “But the other part thinks of her as the crazy neighbor who almost killed my father. If it weren’t for her, he’d have put in thirty years. He wouldn’t have had an affair. Maybe my mother wouldn’t have gotten cancer.”

  Peter put down the razor he was swiping across his cheeks. “Do you really think that? Even about the cancer?”

  “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. There’s evidence cancer cells multiply at a faster rate when a patient is stressed.”

  He continued shaving. “She has a lot to be sorry for already. I’m not sure we have to add all that.”

  “But those are my things. You have your things. I’m not going to take away mine just because your list is long, too. She’s a destructive person. And here we are getting ready to have her over for lunch.”

  “So why’d you agree to this?”

  Kate got up and rubbed a circle in the steamed mirror so she could look at her own face alongside his. She met his eyes, but didn’t say a word.

  All morning he’d been trying to imagine how he’d feel if his mother didn’t show, or if she called and canceled. Would he be disappointed? Relieved? Both? The problem was that he didn’t know what he wanted, he didn’t know which way to root.

  At one point, he thought they should invite more people. Neighbors. The kids’ teachers. College friends. They should fill the house with guests so that they wouldn’t have to look at each other and talk. But then in the next instant he thought that he should take her over to the beach to sit in the sand, just the two of them. She wouldn’t be herself in front of Kate, in front of George. He kept remembering the kid he’d been—looking at the train schedule and trekking all the way to Westchester to see her—and he understood why he’d given up his Sundays. He loved her and he didn’t like to think of her alone. But she was no more alone than he was, sleeping on George’s pullout. She was no more alone than he’d been the day he walked across the hospital parking lot in Albany, already forgiving her for sending him away.

  Thinking so much about his mother that morning also made him think about his father. When Frankie was first born, Peter would spend a whole weekend with him, then get to work on Monday and take out his phone to look at his picture. Would Frankie change so much over the next few years that Peter, too, might be willing to walk away from his son and never see him again? He wondered if Brian Stanhope ever thought about Peter, about Anne, about the life he used to have. He tried to recall his father’s face but he couldn’t see it. He remembered objects better. His father’s car. His father’s gun. The nail clipper his father kept hanging from his key chain. Not long ago, Peter had told Frankie to keep his back elbow up when he was at bat, and to always let the first pitch go by. Who had taught him that? His father, he supposed, though he couldn’t remember when. He wondered if, standing in whatever southern city he’d settled in, his father ever marveled that there was once a day in March when he’d shoveled four feet of snow from his driveway. And that he’d had a son, who’d helped him. Peter had already brought both of his children to Citi Field, and he wanted his father to know that, somehow. To know that it was not actually all that hard to say you’re going to do a thing and then to do it. How many times had he told Peter he’d bring him to Shea? And the craziest part was that Peter believed him every single time.

  As soon as the digital clock on the cable box flipped to noon, he went down to the kitchen with Kate close on his heels. Without looking at her or in any way hiding what he was doing, he reached behind the cereal boxes above the fridge and, to Kate’s amazement, withdrew a bottle. He reached up again to a different cabinet, to the topmost shelf where they stored a line of shot glasses they’d collected over the years, and he took out one small glass. Then, turning to consider her for a second, he took out another. He poured from the bottle into each, and Kate, realizing what a hypocrite this made her, threw hers down in one go.

  “One more,” she said, returning her glass to the counter. “For you, too. And then that’s it.”

  * * *

  The shots worked. Kate slowed down, stopped following him, stopped opening and closing the refrigerator door. Peter felt a calm settle over him. He had one more when Kate went upstairs to change her hair again. It was being observed that he hated, and so he decided when his mother arrived he’d listen to whatever it was she wanted to say in private. But then he remembered that Kate said she really wanted to see the kids, and that threw him off. Maybe it was them she wanted to see and not him. And
why not? They were great kids. Funny and weird and smart. When one o’clock arrived the kids were outside playing tag with the neighbors. Molly fell trying to keep up with them and got a grass stain all down her dress. Kate brought her upstairs to help her change, to wipe her face, and they were still upstairs when a car slowed down in front of their house.

  “Kate?” Peter called from the bottom of the stairs. “Kate? I think she’s here. Are you coming?”

  He knew she was up there, standing at the top of the stairs, listening. She was going to make him go out there alone. He swallowed, squared his shoulders. What did he care? He had everything. He had Kate and his children. She couldn’t hurt him.

  “Kate?” he tried, one more time.

  * * *

  Upstairs, Kate hugged Molly tight, and buried her face in their child’s warm neck. Then, peering through the space between the windowsill and the bottom of the blind, she watched Peter cross the lawn. She watched him run his hands through his hair as he waited for his mother to open the car door. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, Kate thought, and was instantly sorry she’d done this to him, forced his mother on him, ambushed him like this. She clutched Molly hard as she watched Anne step out of her car and face him. She’d looked so frail and haggard during their middle-of-the-night conversation two weeks earlier, but now, her face was shining, full of light, and she turned all that light toward Peter. She’d gotten a haircut. Her clothes looked freshly pressed. She reached up and patted him on the back, so he patted her on her back. They didn’t embrace. They just kept patting each other, like a person might do to an upset stranger. Kate narrowed her eyes and could see that Peter was fighting like hell not to cry, his chest rising and falling. When he turned he had an expression on his face that she’d never seen before.

  “What are we doing?” Molly whispered eventually, and Kate told her to count to thirty, slowly. Then she set her free to clatter down the stairs before her, to say hello to this grandma she’d never met.

  * * *

  As if the terms had been decided in advance, they didn’t make any reference to the past. Without discussing it aloud, they all agreed they’d wind their way there, as slowly as they needed to go. They spoke of the kids, what each one was good at. Frankie looked like Peter but he also looked like Francis Gleeson, Anne said, and hearing her father’s name come out of Anne’s mouth gave Kate a jolt. Peter looked over at her. He’d felt it, too. But they recovered, moved on. They talked about the distance from their house to the beach, the quickest routes. Peter said they used to live in Manhattan, when they were first married, and Kate avoided Anne’s eyes. They talked about the upcoming presidential election, how what had seemed like such a long shot a year earlier now seemed like a real possibility. They didn’t ask Anne about what her life was filled with now, how she passed her days. Peter knew that she didn’t like too many questions. Once they sat and had talked long enough—a tray of cheese and crackers on the coffee table, music turned on low so that the room would never get too quiet—Anne told Peter that she heard he was taking some time off, that he’d had a rough patch at work.

  Peter looked quickly to Kate.

  “Yes,” Peter said. “We’re working it out.” To Kate, he already had that peeled-back look he got when he drank. She thought of the bottle behind the cereal boxes and wondered how many others were stowed around the house. He got up, left the room. Kate heard the rattle of the freezer door swinging open and without seeing she knew the frost on the Stoli bottle would melt where he placed his fingers, four brilliant fingertips and a thumb in the spots where he clutched the bottle in his warm hand and poured. The women met eyes and the problem they’d agreed to face together squatted there between them.

  Kate thought about how old Anne had gotten, and wondered how she and Peter looked to Anne. Peter’s hair had gone gray at his temples. Kate had been coloring hers for years. She had lines on her chest that used to fade by the time she brushed her teeth each morning but now were still there at lunchtime. Peter had deep grooves radiating out from the corners of his eyes. But they only noticed these things because they were still young and the changes were new to them. They’d be young for a few more years. Anne was so thin that the tunic blouse she was wearing kept sliding off toward one shoulder. Her clavicles looked like the handlebars of Molly’s bike. She shifted in the chair she’d chosen, as if she had pain in her hips.

  They were still in the living room when they heard George’s voice, and Kate looked to the window to find him giving out Popsicles he’d transported in a cooler all the way from Sunnyside. He’d brought enough for the kids next door, for any kid who might show up.

  Anne sat up tall and gripped her bony knees.

  “Did Peter tell you George was coming?” Kate asked lightly. But when would he have told her?

  “Anne FitzGerald,” George boomed when he came in.

  Anne stood up to greet him. “Hello, George,” she said, and took a frightened step back as he rushed her, pulled her into a hug. And then, “You sound just the same as Brian. Your voice. For a second I thought . . .”

  “That guy?” George said. “How can you even remember?” He greeted Kate as he always did, by hugging her tight and lifting her off her feet. He hugged Peter, too, as if he hadn’t seen them only a few weeks before. Then, from deep inside a canvas bag, he pulled out a carefully wrapped bowl of fruit salad, a paper bag of rolls he picked up from a bakery in Queens. Kate could see that he’d decided to play it like a normal get-together, as if they did this once a month, all past grievances wiped from the memory board. “I’m starving.”

  One by one they made a single-file line through the house and out to the patio, where Kate had already wiped down the chairs and moved them under the shade of the umbrella.

  Anne sipped her water, but felt so overwhelmed that she had to hold it in her mouth for a moment before swallowing it. She resented the fact that they’d included George, but now that he was there, it felt urgent that she tell him something. Silently, she practiced what she’d say and considered when she’d say it. Alone would be best, just the two of them. The kids would be upon them soon. Kate was slicing apples. Peter was opening a package of hot dogs and lining them up on the grill grate. My God, he was handsome. He was broader than Brian had been, more like Anne’s own father, whose face she wouldn’t have been able to recall until she recognized it in Peter’s. And he was drunk. She could see it in the big movements he made when he reached for a knife to slice open the plastic packaging. She could see it in the way he planted his legs wide. But he was good at it, well practiced. She never would have known if she hadn’t been looking. He kept up with conversation, added his two cents. George plopped down in the seat beside Anne’s but jumped right up again when the plastic burned the bare skin below his shorts. He grabbed a beach towel that had been thrown on the grass and folded it up under him.

  “Almost burned my arse off,” George said to no one in particular.

  Anne wondered if George could see what was happening to Peter. But one wrong subject, one wrong comment, and they’d slide right back down to the place where they began. She shouldn’t have said Francis Gleeson’s name. Another slip and Kate would decide she didn’t need her help after all. Another slip like that and she’d be heading back up the thruway to her little studio that seemed so much emptier now. She’d returned home after that middle-of-the-night conversation with Kate and seen it for what it had always been—a place she was meant to stay for just a little while, not a home. But even as she coached herself to stay to safe subjects and to think hard before she spoke, she felt her urgency grow stronger.

  “I want to thank you,” she said without looking at George. He’d untucked his shirt and now there was a ring of sweat circling his belly. “For everything you did for Peter.”

  Peter turned from the grill. Kate looked up from the cutting board.

  “It was an extraordinary thing you did, taking him in like that. I am very grateful to you.” Anne’s voice caught an
d cracked.

  There, she said it, and right away she felt dizzy with the weight that had been lifted. Therapist after therapist had promised her that one day, when the time was right, this might be a thing that would be good to say, for herself as much as for anyone else, but she’d never really believed it until he walked through the door that afternoon. Until that hour, she never thought she’d have the chance. “We repeat what we don’t repair,” Dr. Abbasi had said to her once, and for so many years she’d taken the limited interpretation of that as pertaining only to herself, and figured she was safe since she’d have little chance to repeat her worst errors anyway, having no family left, no one to abandon and no one to drive away. But from the moment Kate’s face appeared at her car window that night, she wondered if all that time she’d misunderstood the warning. That the “We” in the doctor’s aphorism (one, admittedly, she’d rolled her eyes at when it was first delivered to her) was larger. “We” could include Peter, could include his children, all the people connected to Anne by invisible thread.

  George nodded once, quickly, caught completely off guard.

  “It was my pleasure,” he said after a moment, and then cleared his throat into his meaty hand.

  * * *

  They didn’t talk about Gillam, or Kate’s parents, or speculate as to what golf course Brian might be standing on at that moment. They talked about the food, and the oppressive heat, and how kids don’t seem to feel weather the way adults do. Gently, in a roundabout way, George asked where Anne lived now, and when she told him, he asked whether she liked Saratoga. He said he’d been there a few times to see the races, but not for many, many years.

  “I was in a hospital in Albany for several years,” she said, as if they didn’t already know. “So I was already in the general area.” Peter wondered if she even remembered that he’d tried to see her that time.