But there was Maggie, looking at her with her eyes bright and hopeful, and she was so interested in what Lu was going to say next, and she was so young and unsullied and her potential was vast and untapped, so there was nothing for Lu to do but to meet her gaze levelly and say, “Yes. You’re right. Yes.”
“Ohmygod.” Lu watched Maggie take all of this in—she watched her understand the help Lu needed with the boys, the time she spent on the computer, with the drawing pad. The inordinate amount of cooking for a family with one-quarter gone most of the time. “That’s my very favorite food blog. My mom’s too. We read it all the time! We make all of his recipes! You’re like—you’re a celebrity! I can’t believe it.”
“Sometimes,” said Lu, “I can’t believe it either.”
“Mom!” This was Sebastian now, calling from upstairs. “Mommy! It’s important.”
“What is it?” She couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice.
“I had a really big poop and the toilet is all clogged!”
Oh, for heaven’s sake, thought Lu. She smiled ruefully at Maggie. “You can’t tell anyone, though, okay? You can’t blow my cover.”
“Wait, but—how did you? How do you—?”
“The longer version I’ll tell you another time,” said Lu. “But the short version is: I just took a chance,” said Lu. “If you want something badly enough, sometimes you just have to take a chance.”
Chapter 39
Anthony
“Would you read something I wrote?”
This was Anthony, age twenty, home from Dartmouth the winter holiday of his junior year, let into the sanctum of his father’s study, clutching a copy of the story he’d written for his fiction workshop. It was just before five o’clock and the sky had surrendered its color, graying before their eyes. Anthony approached his father with an uncertainty so thick it felt as though it covered him like a cloak.
By way of an answer Leonard gestured to the straight-backed chair in the corner of the room and then, still without talking, made a motion with his arm to indicate that Anthony should move the chair closer. He held his hand out for the story, and Anthony, with a trepidation so great it deserved a different name, a stronger name, handed it over. Maybe it was terror. It felt to him like he was handing over one of his organs, his very soul.
The Uttermost table clock in the corner struck five, and here was Anthony’s mother, knocking softly, carrying the scotch.
“Anthony has brought some writing to show me,” said Leonard significantly, and Dorothy, understanding immediately, departed and returned with a second glass of scotch, this one for Anthony.
Anthony, whose drinking experience at that time was limited to keg beer at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house and a bottle of shared Pinot Grigio on a date with Lindsay Hendricks at Peter Christian’s in Hanover, accepted the glass somberly and sat holding it while his father read the story. He was far too nervous to sip it. Even smelling it, he felt a little drunk.
Those were the longest fourteen and a half minutes of Anthony’s life. The only sounds in the room were the soft tick of the Uttermost and the light rustling of the printed pages. Anthony took a cautious sip of his scotch, just to have something to do, then another, then a third, trying not to shudder like a child swallowing cough medicine.
Finally—finally! after an eternity!—Leonard put the story on the desk and tapped the edges of each page into place. He blinked down at the pages for a long moment before he spoke, and Anthony wondered if a fairly fit twenty-year-old could possibly suffer a heart attack, because he felt something in his chest squeezing and squeezing. (There was heart disease in his father’s family, it wasn’t out of the question!)
“You might be better at this writing thing than I am,” said Leonard Puckett. He was squinting, first at the pages, and then up at Anthony, and he wore an expression that combined consternation and pride, perhaps with a small dose of disbelief mixed in. There had been an early snow that year, and the spot in the garden where the roses would bloom come summer was overlaid in a white that was scarcely visible in the diminishing light. Anthony could feel the scotch building a fire in his chest. “There’s just so much in here—” Leonard’s voice broke off and he took a long sip of his own scotch. “You might be a prodigy.” He said it softly, as though he couldn’t quite take it in himself. “Look, we’ll work on this together . . . We’ll polish it here and there, and then, well.”
“Then what?” asked Anthony. He’d meant to breathe the words but instead, because of the scotch, he’d ended up sort of yelling them. Together? He couldn’t remember a moment when his father had suggested that they do something together.
“Then you really should send it out,” said Leonard. “You must.”
With those words, whether he meant to or not, he laid the mantle upon Anthony’s shoulders.
Granta accepted the story, and it happened that a literary agent named Huxley Wilder read it and took a particular liking to it, calling the magazine, the way the agents do, to secure Anthony’s contact info.
The first thing that happened after Anthony’s crime was revealed was that Anthony stopped running. He stopped eating fruit; he stopped eating vegetables. He developed a soft pudding of a stomach. At night he couldn’t sleep; he prowled the house like a cat burglar. I’m sorry, he whispered, over Max’s sleeping figure. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. He watched all five seasons of Homeland, even the third season, which most people agreed was terrible. (Anthony thought it had its good moments and had been too harshly judged.) When Cassie was in her studio working and Max was at preschool, he slept for hours on end, burrowing deep into his bed as though the covers were a rabbit warren and he an eastern cottontail. I’m sorry, he said, when he woke up, to Cassie, to Max. I’m sorry I slept so long. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Sometimes he woke in the night, sweating, to find Cassie’s place in the bed empty. She was working, she said, when he inquired in the morning. And yet she was always freshly showered, smelling like a summer garden. She was with Max, or she was driving back and forth between home and the art gallery in the South End, where she was helping Glen Manning “mount a show.”
Anthony thought about all of the potential different uses for the word mount. He poured another drink.
More dreams. His father as Jupiter, holding a lightning rod, raising it toward Anthony. Why? Leonard Puckett thundered. Why, why, why? His father as Jesus, nailed to the cross, and Anthony kneeling at his feet along with Mary Magdalene and the rest of the sinners, Leonard pausing in his great suffering to deliver unto Anthony a look of great consternation and disappointment.
He tried his very hardest with Max. Oh, he tried so hard! He did! He wanted to be a good father. He didn’t want Max to see him break down. But one night, while he was reading The Runaway Bunny at bedtime, the words reached out and choked him.
Max was concerned. “Why are you crying, Daddy?” He plucked a Kleenex from the box on his nightstand and began to wipe at Anthony’s face. It was all very organized and businesslike, and that made Anthony even sadder.
“It’s just a sad story, buddy,” Anthony said.
“It’s not that sad,” said Max reasonably. “The mother gets to keep her little bunny, doesn’t she?”
This only caused Anthony to cry harder.
One day he came home from the liquor store—although, if anybody had asked, he was at CVS, picking up cough drops for a tickle he was starting to feel in his throat—and discovered a suitcase packed and sitting by the front door. He found himself smiling expectantly for the first time in, oh, how long? He thought Cassie had planned some sort of trip for them, an overnight where they could talk over a bottle of Sancerre, the way they used to. Or maybe they wouldn’t talk at all—maybe they’d get drunk and have shower sex, which was also something they used to do. He was willing to bet Max was going to stay with his parents. Dorothy Puckett always welcomed a visit from her only grandson.
He heard Cassie’s soft footsteps on the stairs�
��she walked lightly, like a ballerina, one step below floating.
“You need to pull yourself together,” said Cassie. She didn’t look like someone who was about to go on an overnight; she was wearing running shorts and a tank top and a baseball hat, and she was sweating prettily.
“I know,” he said. “I’m trying. Tomorrow I’m going to—”
Cassie cut him off. “Not here.” Her voice was crisp and sure, like a kindergarten teacher directing the class to the story circle.
“But . . .” The set of her eyes caused in him a physical reaction, like a punch to the stomach would. “But I live here.”
“I can’t do this anymore, Anthony.”
For the first time in his life Anthony understood—more than that, he inhabited—the phrase completely struck dumb. They were not going on an overnight. There would be no shower sex. He waited for some time, until he was un-struck, and then he said, “You can’t do what?”
“I can’t watch this shitstorm unfold anymore. It’s not good for anyone here. It’s not good for Max to see you like this.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” He cringed at the plaintive note in his voice. “Where am I supposed to go, Cassie? I live here. With you and Max.”
“Not anymore,” she said. “Not right now, you don’t.”
If ever there was a bender, Anthony Puckett was on it. He had a rum concoction at Captain Nick’s. Two Narragansett IPAs at Ballard’s. A Cocktail Crush at Mahogany Shoals, where he listened to a guy from Galway singing Irish sea chanteys. Before the guy sang, he quoted Yeats, which Anthony thought was a nice touch. How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
When he stumbled home sometime later—who knew how much later; he had forgotten about the way time stretched and bent when you were drinking—he tripped over something just outside his front door. He almost kept going without checking what it was, but then he saw that it was his cell phone. He’d forgotten about his phone halfway into his second IPA. It had been sort of refreshing, to be out of touch, not to have wondered if Joy was trying to call, if anyone was trying to call.
He had twenty-seven missed calls and thirteen text messages from Cassie, and they all said different versions of the same things. His heart lurched and every dream he’d had about Max came shooting to the surface.
Max and Dorothy were missing.
Chapter 40
Lu
This had better not be you, Nancy, thought Lu, when the doorbell rang after Maggie had gone. It was too late for Nancy to be out and about anyway. She tended to stay on her own side of the island once Henry had fixed her her first gin and tonic, and very wisely so.
Sure enough, Nancy was not on the other side of the door. It was Anthony, smelling like a brewery that made very hoppy beer and looking like he’d just crawled out of a Dumpster. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was messed, his signature gray T-shirt had a stain on it in the shape of a cumulus cloud.
“Sorry to bother you.” He was slurring. Oh, boy. Anthony had fallen off the wagon, and he’d fallen really hard.
“No bother,” she said. “Come in.”
“My son took my mother and is missing.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not right, my mother took my son. They’re missing. And I can’t get home, because there’s no more ferries.”
Lu glanced at the clock. Nine-thirty. It was a Tuesday; the last ferry departed at seven forty-five on Tuesdays. “Missing?” she said. “What do you mean, missing?”
“I mean gone,” Anthony said. He made a move to sit on the couch but misjudged and ended up on the floor. Lu helped him up. She took off his shoes. “Kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?”
“Maybe.” Anthony wrinkled his forehead. He looked confused.
“Did Cassie call the police?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she put out an Amber Alert?”
“I’m not sure.” Anthony rubbed his face. “I’m—”
“I know,” said Lu. “Drunk. I can tell. Here, sit down on the couch. Let me see your phone, maybe I can figure it out.”
Obediently Anthony handed over his phone. Lu scrolled through the texts. The first one said, Have u heard from ur mother?!!?!! The second one: She and Max are gone. It went on and on from there. I called to tell her I was coming 2 get him and by the time I got there she was gone. Toward the end, R u ever going 2 answer ur phone. And, Ur mother is a psycho.
“Oh, boy,” said Lu. She glanced at Anthony. He was standing in the middle of the living room, swaying like a newly cut tree that had not yet landed. She led him to the couch. “Sit down,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She took from the refrigerator two of the leftover banana pancakes she had given the boys for dinner two nights ago (Breakfast for dinner always cheers up Charlie and Sammy if they’ve had a rough day!) and spread them with her homemade almond butter (she had unearthed a Cuisinart from the basement—it was ancient, but it had done the trick). She poured a glass of milk—an old college trick, or maybe just an old wives’ tale, something about the protein soaking up the alcohol—and she sat next to Anthony while he ate and drank everything.
“I need to call Cassie back,” he said. Anyway, that’s what she figured he meant to say. What he said sounded more like, I peed in the closet sack. He couldn’t keep his words going straight, even though he looked like he was concentrating very hard on each of them.
“No, you don’t, not now,” she said. “You’re not exactly making sense.”
“I’m not?”
“Not at all. Lie down for a few minutes. You can call when you’ve sobered up a bit. Give me your phone. I’ll hang on to it, and if you fall asleep I’ll wake you when there’s news.”
Anthony obediently lay down. Lu found a white cotton blanket covered with blue seashells and draped it over him. She put Anthony’s phone on the table next to her. She thought about texting Cassie back, but what would she say? I’ll call you when I’m sober? That wouldn’t engender confidence. No, she’d just have to wait, and hope that news came by text or that Anthony would be ready to talk soon. She checked on the boys upstairs; both were sleeping in disorganized lumps. She poured herself a glass of wine and tapped her fingers on the side of the glass, then sat on a chair near the couch and made sure Anthony’s eyes were closed, that his breathing was deep and even, until she could see his eyes moving rapidly behind his eyelids.
Part 4
August
Chapter 41
Anthony
Anthony was dreaming, but the dreaming was more like remembering: a movie of his life playing out on the screen of his sleeping brain.
“Believe me,” said Huxley Wilder. “Nobody gets this attention the first time around. Nobody.”
It was five years ago, and A Room Within was on the cusp of publication.
“Seriously, nobody,” said Huxley. “Your occasional Jonathan, a Josh here or there.” Safran Foer, thought Anthony. Ferris. And: Holy cow. This is my life.
There was a profile in the Sunday New York Times, an article in the Boston Globe Style section, a cover reveal in Entertainment Weekly. Blurbs that other writers had to chase came to him like a cow to a bell. Every review came with a star, every mention with a rave.
Especially—especially!—the one that counted the most.
“The book is excellent,” said Leonard. All the doubts Anthony had about his father vanished, all the weirdness between them. Leonard took Anthony and his mother to dinner at Asta on Mass Ave. in Boston to celebrate. They clinked the glasses of champagne that came automatically at the beginning of the meal and the brandy that came at the end. Anthony couldn’t believe the way his father was looking at him: he couldn’t believe the paternal approval that was washing over him.
Anthony couldn’t believe any of it.
The book came out.
“It hit the list,” said Huxley. “Right out of the gate. I knew it would.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Anthony. He couldn’t!
He couldn’t believe how many people showed up at his readings. Lines out the door. MFA students, older women, teenagers. Middle-aged men. Men his father’s age. Book clubs full of young mothers who’d left their children with babysitters.
And, in Chicago, one Cassie Fontaine, from Burlington, Vermont, by way of the South End, Boston: a vision in her mid-twenties, gorgeous, with full pink lips and a lithe yoga body and a celestial voice that sounded like silver and gold spun together and poured into a crystal goblet. Cassie was visiting a former college roommate and was amazed to find that Anthony was in town too. She’d rushed right over to the bookstore as soon as she saw the poster. She loved the book. She leaned in close as she presented her copy for signing. She smelled like a midsummer garden. She slipped Anthony a piece of paper with her phone number on it.
Anthony thanked her. He was dating someone at the time, in New York City, where he lived. He wouldn’t call this woman, this stranger with the dizzying beauty! Of course not. But still. The thought that things like this actually happened made him giddy. He put the piece of paper in his pocket. He forgot about it, but not really.
Cassie came to another reading, this one in Boston, at the public library. His parents were at the reading. His father sat in the back row and nodded occasionally—approvingly!—as Anthony read from the first chapter and answered questions. Cassie bought three more copies of A Room Within, and had Anthony sign them all to her.
Anthony’s publisher had put him up at the Lenox. Anthony invited Cassie to have a drink with him at the hotel bar. Then another. Anthony was drinking Dark ’n’ Stormys and Cassie was drinking rosé sangrias. Her fingers were long, like the fingers of a pianist. They went upstairs.
In the morning, he couldn’t believe it all over again. She was even more beautiful in the light streaming in from Boylston Street. She had literally no physical flaws. She was perfect.
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