The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (41 page)

“Disapproving, huh?” Carter says fondly.

“And my mother was absolutely wild. She’d laugh and laugh at me about it.” Cheryl is halted suddenly, choked by old horror as Judith twists free, shattering the suffocating confections in which Cheryl has attempted to convey her to Carter, and she is shouting, hoarse and frantic, from the next room, and some man is there shouting, too. And Cheryl keeps watching frozen from the doorway until—so quickly that she sees it happen over and over again—Judith folds inward, as Cheryl’s own legs buckle, onto her knees, and covers her mouth with her hands.
No more!
But the blood seeps out through Judith’s fingers, and then it is Carter, instead of Judith, that Cheryl finds herself guarding through the clearing screen of blood. She turns away, sickened. What is it that he wants? “It’s easy to hurt a person who’s like that,” she finishes, closing down the commotion. “It’s easy to disappoint them.”

“Disappoint them,” Carter says. “Yeah, I know the sort of person. I’ve got limited patience for that myself. It’s always
their
expectations,
their
ideas about everything, that they impose on you. Like that girl Suzannah. And you’re supposed to feel guilty about disappointing them.”

Something winds off from Cheryl in a slow coil and slides out of reach. What has happened?

“What’s the matter?” Carter says. “I know what it is. You always take care of people, don’t you, I bet. And no one takes care of you. You haven’t even had anything to eat tonight, you know that? Going to waste away, leading this life. What do you want, a salad? Chef’s salad?” Carter picks up the phone. “Steak? How about some chicken? High-caliber protein, very healthy. Too boring, huh? Speak to me, they got a lot of stuff down there. Shark? Roast pig? Your own personalized roast pig, little apple in its mouth? You tell me, they got everything.”

Wonderful—the waiter arriving with a silver trolley, covered dishes, the waiter in his white jacket, looking at her, the dealer’s girlfriend. Cheryl shakes her head, shaking him away. “I’m not hungry,” she says. “Please don’t call down.”

“O.K., O.K.,” Carter says. “No calling down, we won’t call down. I don’t know what you got against it. Your pig, though. Come on, tell you what—let’s check out the archives.”

The kitchen is vast and spotless. A frying pan, an insubstantial-looking pot, and a spatula stand out in the dim light with an accusing and vaguely ludicrous purity. “Anyone ever been in here before?” Cheryl says. “It looks like a…it looks like…”

“Right,” Carter says. “It looks like a museum. On the moon, for after it’s all over. Kitchen Division of the Moon Museum of Humans. No, hey, I use this place all the time. Look, all sorts of stuff. Cornflakes; milk for cornflakes; orange juice, except it’s museum property, probably about a thousand years old; capers. What’s this?” He takes a paper bag from the bottom shelf of the refrigerator and peers into it. “Pastrami on rye,” he comments, returning the bag to the shelf.

“Keeping that for hard times ahead?” Cheryl says.

“What hard times? No hard times ahead. I’m keeping it for…I’m keeping it for a keepsake. Can’t just throw a magnificent thing like that into the garbage.”

Carter picks up the box of cornflakes and inspects it closely. “Not so fast,” he says, holding the box over his head as Cheryl reaches for it. “You don’t think I know what I’m doing, do you? Listen, I make these things all the time. All us great chefs are men.” He takes two heavy bowls from a cupboard and pours cornflakes into them, finishing with a sommelier’s flourish and a glance of sly triumph at Cheryl.

“That’s really something.” She smiles, waiting for Carter to hand her the carton of milk and the bowl filled with packets of sugar, but he is lost in contemplation of a cornflake. “These things are absolutely incredible,” he says, “you know that? These things are insufficiently appreciated. If they cost a hundred dollars a box, rich people would line up for them.”

Cheryl draws over to admire the cornflake in Carter’s palm, and it does seem an impossible thing, all suspended froth. “How do they make these things, anyway?” she asks. “What are they?”

“‘What are they?’” Carter says magisterially as he puts an arm around Cheryl. “What are they? They are…a mystery.” The two of them sway slightly, considering the magnitude of things, and Cheryl traces, with slightly drunken precision, the outline of an island on his shirt, that happy sea.

“You like my shirt,” he says. “You like my shirt so much I’m going to give it to you.”

“You can’t give it to me,” she says.

“I’m about to experience an anxiety surge. I’m developing severe feelings of competition in regard to my own shirt. I’ve got to give it to you.”

“You can’t give it to me,” Cheryl says. “It’s your souvenir.”

“Souvenir,” Carter says. “If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s a souvenir. Come on, I want to show you.”

In the bedroom Carter plants himself in front of the closets with a piratical stance. “Booty,” he says, flinging open the door from behind which Suzannah had earlier removed her things. “What about this suit? This was when I was a mobster. Look at those lapels. Could carve a tusk with them, huh? Now, this thing—this was from a duel. Fight over some lady. She was a tart, though, as it turned out.” He pauses to raise an admonitory eyebrow at Cheryl. “Fatigues, satin jacket—well, that one wasn’t wardrobe, we all got that, from my last movie, still sitting on a shelf somewhere.”

Carter continues to ransack the closets, piling costumes and objects on the bed in mirrored splendor. “Powdered wig, motorcycle helmet, pith helmet, space helmet, five-pound jar of Gummi Bears from an A.D., little model Chrysler Building. Yeah, I been in a lot of different time zones, a lot of different incarnations. Oops,” he says, remembering, “I was gonna give you my shirt. Turn around. I’m very self-conscious about my chest. I don’t want you to see my chest.”

“I’ve seen your chest,” Cheryl points out. “I saw your chest about two hundred times tonight. Everybody in the world’s seen your chest.”

“Ha—” Carter wags a finger. “You’re trying to confuse me, trick me into exposing myself. Think I don’t know the difference between…whoops, the difference between—”

“You win,” Cheryl says. She could use a little pick-me-up in any case. “I’ll wait for you out there.” And she is surprised, upon entering the living room, to see her little gold spoon lying on the coffee table, because she never leaves it out. Never.

In a moment Carter appears, wrapped in a huge black cape. Vampire? Swordsman? And he hands Cheryl the shirt folded small and bright, like a little flag. In return Cheryl holds out for him her spoon, containing almost all that remains of what Danny had deposited on the coffee table.

Silent in the gauzy first light, they sprawl on the sofa, feet to feet. Cheryl is feeling a little ragged. She is usually regulated by Danny’s rather sparing intake, she realizes, although she has suspected on recent occasions that Danny is involved with greater quantities than he lets on.

“You’re a lovely kid,” Carter says. “Lovely kid. Actors always need new life.” He sighs. “I’m beginning to be afraid of things, you know? I don’t know how that happened to me. When I was your age I used to see people acting out of fear—I never thought it would happen to me. I thought, I’ll never get like that. These days I’m so scared I can hardly walk across the room. Sometimes you see people, their life just hasn’t worked out. Ever worry that you’re going to be one of those people?”

“Sure,” Cheryl says. But what does he mean, worked out? She reaches over, pressing at the residue of white on the coffee table, and licks her finger.

“You can really scarf that up, can’t you?” Carter says. “You’re a real little vacuum cleaner.”

“I’m just keeping you company,” Cheryl says, stung.

“
You’re
keeping
me
company,” Carter says. “That’s pretty funny. Hey, don’t look at me like that. I’m just being honest. It’s for your own good. End up on the trash heap, you go on like this.”

His foot is jiggling wildly, Cheryl notices. “Want a drink?” she asks. “Or I might have some Valium.”

“Shit,” Carter says, as tears gather in his eyes. “I’m so fucking sick of being confused.”

Cheryl sighs. Danny could have left them one more tiny little eighth or so if he was going to be away this long. He’d certainly know they’d be needing some by now.

“Sorry,” Carter says. “I’m sorry, but you don’t know what it’s like to be frightened. Really frightened, I mean. You’re too young to know what that’s like. But me, everything I do is motivated by fear now. At least Suzannah’s got that part right. I can’t even work anymore. I don’t have the heart to work. I’m afraid to do this play, I’m afraid to do a movie—”

God, he is
tireless
, Cheryl thinks. And she just isn’t interested in some whole new…“Do you want her to come back?” she says reluctantly. New
exercise.

“What—Suzannah?” Carter says. “Where’s that drink you were going to make me? Truth is, though, at one time she was a very good friend to me. We took acting class together years ago, and this’ll probably seem pretty strange to you but I didn’t know anyone like her. All I knew was these very snooty, very convoluted prep-school kids. And at first she seemed so fresh to me, so clear. Course, all it is is, like a lot of good-looking women, she’s got a stake in appearances. And that’s why she’ll never be a good actress, she’ll just be one more dime-a-dozen model. Until they turn her out to pasture.”

Out to pasture.

“What’s the matter?” Carter says, sitting up to look at her. “You don’t like me now. You have to like me. I made you like me.”

Cheryl hands him his drink without looking at him.

“You forgot the lime,” he says, but she still won’t look at him. “You’re fired, you forgot the lime. Hey.” He tugs gently at a lock of her hair, and she closes her eyes. “O.K.” He shrugs. “You don’t want to play anymore. I don’t know why everybody’s always so pissed off at me.”

“She’ll come back,” Cheryl says. “If you want her to.”

“Not this time,” Carter says an instant before the house phone rings, and Cheryl thinks she detects once again a muted triumph as Carter goes to answer it. “Well, there’s the man, I guess,” he says. “Certainly took his time, didn’t he?”

Danny is breathless and apologetic.

“Shouldn’t have left me alone with your girlfriend,” Carter says. “We’re in love, except of course she won’t speak to me.”

“I am really sorry,” Danny is saying. “Listen, I really didn’t expect this. I got very hung up by this guy, and there was absolutely nothing I could do. I mean, he’s a very good friend. My broker, actually. But he’s had some big problems lately, and he really needed to talk. By the way, if you’re looking for a broker, this is definitely a guy to consider. He is very, very sharp. And a very fine person.”

Still, Cheryl thinks. At least he means it. He does mean it.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Danny says, “you’re not mad ’cause I had to work, are you?”

Cheryl glances involuntarily at Carter, who looks quickly away. Surely he couldn’t think Danny stayed away intentionally—
how dare he?
“We have to go,” she says. “I’m tired, and Carter has a big day ahead of him. Meetings, decisions…”

“Right, that’s right,” Danny says. “Oh, yeah, wait—I promised you something to help you sleep, didn’t I?”

“I can’t sleep,” Carter complains. “I’ve got to talk to those guys.”

“Sleep first,” Danny orders soothingly. “It’ll do you good. These little green ones are for that, and here’s something to get you back up again. Help you with your ordeal.”

Carter makes no acknowledgment of the few capsules and the new little glass bottle Danny places on the coffee table.

“Oh, wow,” Danny says to Cheryl, seeing her gold spoon lying there. “Don’t forget this.”

“Or this.” Carter doesn’t look at her, but he stands to hold out the garish folded shirt, and when Cheryl makes no move to take it from him he tucks it directly into her purse. “What do I owe you?” he asks Danny quietly. “For this stuff?”

“Please,” Danny says. “Absolutely not. Not this time. Say, that’s some—What do you call that thing—a cloak?”

“What a character,” Danny says as the doorman holds the door open onto the bright, noisy street. How loud everything is out here! “Literally gave you the shirt off his back, huh? If he decides to stick around, we’ll probably be seeing a lot of him. Look, I got a parking space right here. Is that luck, or what?” His face is an impenetrable mask of sweetness, well disposed and as satisfied as if he’d just rolled the evening up and tucked it back into his pocket. He reminds her of someone, Cheryl thinks. Oh, yes: he reminds her of Danny.

Cheryl climbs into the car next to him. A ride home, why not? She is fantastically tired, truly exhausted, and it won’t be much fun, later, to wake up. She closes her eyes, and Danny bobs up in the pitching dimness and away. All her surroundings are coming loose, peeling off as the dimness balloons—her antecedents, chunks of her life crumple like Danny and blow past. There is nothing she recognizes, no one even to wave to! What a pity—she smiles slightly, and an instant before she is engulfed by a blissful wave of fatigue she opens her eyes and sees the man who was Danny smiling, too—what a pity that she so eagerly handed Judith over, in a version as diminutive and harmless as Judith ever rendered herself, to serve the transient purposes of a stranger. It would have been so simple just to let Judith out, all ravenous and fractured and appalling, to make some splendid uproar in commemoration of this departure. She thinks her mother might have done that, for her, with pleasure.

For years after Isobel left town (was sent from town, to live with an aunt in San Francisco) Lynnie would sometimes see her at a distance, crossing a street or turning a corner. But just as Lynnie started after her Isobel would vanish, having been replaced by a substitute, some long-legged stranger with pale, floaty hair. And while Lynnie might have been just as happy, by and large, not to see Isobel, at those moments she was felled by a terrible sorrow, as though somewhere a messenger searching for her had been waylaid, or was lost.

It was sixteen years after Lynnie had watched Isobel disappearing from view in the back seat of her father’s car when Lynnie really did see her again. And then, although Isobel walked right into Lynnie’s shop, several long, chaotic moments elapsed before Lynnie understood who Isobel was. “Isobel,” she said, and, as the well-dressed customer browsing meditatively among the shelves and cases of expensive food turned to look full at Lynnie, the face that Lynnie had known so well—a girl’s face that drew everything toward it and returned nothing—came forward in the woman’s.

“Oh,” Isobel said. “It’s you. But Mother wrote me you were living in Boston. Or did I make that up?”

“You didn’t make it up,” Lynnie said.

“Well, then,” Isobel said, and hesitated. “You’re back.”

“That about sums it up,” Lynnie said. She let her hand bounce lightly against the counter, twice. “I hear you’re still in San Francisco,” she said, relenting—they were adults now.

“Mmm,” Isobel said. “Yes.” She frowned.

Lynnie cleared her throat. “And someone told me you have a baby.”

“Oh, yes,” Isobel said. “Two. And a husband, of course. All that sort of thing.” She and Lynnie smiled at one another—an odd, formal equilibrium.

“And you,” Isobel said, disengaging. “What are you doing these days?”

“This—” Lynnie gestured. “Of course, I have help now.”

“Heavens,” Isobel remarked unheatedly.

“‘Heavens,’” Lynnie said. “I know.” But either more of a reaction from Isobel or less would have been just as infuriating. “Heavens” or “How nice” was all that anyone had said when Lynnie retreated from Boston and managed, through effort born of near-panic, to open the store. All her life Lynnie had been assumed to be inadequate to any but the simplest endeavor; then, from the moment the store opened, that was something no one remembered. No one but her, Lynnie thought; she remembered it perfectly.

“Isn’t it funny?” Isobel was saying. “I drove by yesterday, and I thought, How nice that there’s a place like that up here now. I’ll have to stop in and get something for Mother, to cheer her up.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” Lynnie said.

“Yes,” Isobel said. “God. I was just at the hospital. They say the operation was successful, but I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. It seemed they might mean successful in the sense that he didn’t die during it.” Her flat green glance found Lynnie, then moved away.

“Hard to think of him…in a hospital,” Lynnie said. “He always seemed so—” He’d seemed so big.

“Strong,” Isobel said. “Yes, he’s strong all right. He and I are still on the most horrible terms, if you can believe it. It’s simply idiotic. I suppose he has to keep it up to justify himself. All these years! You know, this is the first time I’ve been back, Lynnie—he came out for my wedding, and Mother’s made him come with her twice to see the boys, but I haven’t been back once. Not once. And there I was today—obviously I’d decided to get here before he died. But did he say anything—like he was glad I’d come? Of course not. Lynnie, he’s riddled with tumors, he can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds, but he behaved as though he were still sitting in that huge chair of his, telling me what I’d done to him.”

Lynnie shook her head. How easily Isobel was talking about these things.

“So,” Isobel said.

“Well,” Lynnie said.

“Yes,” Isobel said.

“I’ll wrap up some things for your mother if you want,” Lynnie said. “I’ve got a new pâté I think she’ll like. And her favorite crackers have come in.”

“Lovely,” Isobel said. “Thanks.” She pushed back a curving lock of hair and scanned the shelves as though waiting for some information to appear on them. “So Mother comes into your store.”

“Oh, yes,” Lynnie said.

“Funny,” Isobel said. Isobel looked like anyone else now, Lynnie understood with a little shock. Very pretty, but like anyone else. Only her hair, with its own marvelous life, was still extraordinary. “How’s your mother, by the way?” Isobel said.

“All right,” Lynnie said, and glanced at her. “So far.”

“That’s good,” Isobel said opaquely.

“And at least she’s not such a terror anymore,” Lynnie said. “She’s living up north with Frank now.”

“Frank…” Isobel said.

“Frank,” Lynnie said. She reached up to the roll of thick waxed paper and tore a piece off thunderously. “My brother. The little one.”

“Oh, yes,” Isobel said. “Of course. You know, this feels so peculiar—being here, seeing you. The whole place stopped for me, really, when I went away.”

“I’m sure,” Lynnie said, flushing. “Well, we still exist. Our lives keep going on. I have the store, and people come into it. Your mother comes in. Cissy Haddad comes in. Ross comes in, Claire comes in. All six of their children come in….”

“
Six
—” Isobel stared at Lynnie; her laugh was just a breath. “Well, I guess that means they stayed together, anyway.”

“Mostly,” Lynnie said. But Isobel only waited, and looked at her. “There was a while there, a few years ago, when he moved in with an ex-student of his. Claire got in the van with the four youngest—Emily and Bo were already at school—and took off. It didn’t last too long, of course, the thing with the girl, and of course Claire came back. After that they sold the stone house. To a broker, I heard.”

“Oh,” Isobel said. Absently she picked up an apple from a mound on the counter and looked into its glossy surface as though it were a mirror.

“They’re renovating a farmhouse now,” Lynnie said. “It’s much smaller.”

“Too bad,” Isobel said, putting down the apple.

“Yes.”

“Was she pretty?” Isobel asked.

“Who?” Lynnie said. “Ross’s girl? Not especially.”

“Ah,” Isobel said, and Lynnie looked away, ashamed of herself.

Isobel started to speak but didn’t. She scanned the shelves again vaguely, then smiled over at Lynnie. “You know what else is funny?” she said. “When I woke up this morning, I looked across the street. And I saw this woman going out the door of your old house, and just for an instant I thought, There’s Lynnie. And then I thought, No, it can’t be—that person’s all grown up.”

For a long time after Isobel had left town, Lynnie would do what she could to avoid running into Ross or Claire; and eventually when she saw them it would seem to her not only that her feeling about them had undergone an alteration but that they themselves were different in some way. Over the years it became all too clear that this was true: their shine had been tarnished by a slight fussiness—they had come to seem like people who were anxious about being rained on.

Newcomers might have been astonished to learn that there was a time when people had paused in their dealings with one another to look as Ross walked down the street with Claire or the children. Recent arrivals to the town—additions to the faculty of the college, the businessmen and bankers who were now able to live in country homes and still work in their city offices from computer terminals—what was it they saw when Ross and Claire passed by? Fossil forms, Lynnie thought. Museum reproductions. It was the Claire and Ross of years ago who were vivid, living. A residual radiance clung to objects they’d handled and places where they’d spent time. The current Ross and Claire were lightless, their own aftermath.

Once in a while, though—it happened sometimes when she encountered one of them unexpectedly—Lynnie would see them as they had been. For an instant their sleeping power would flash, but then their dimmed present selves might greet Lynnie, with casual and distant politeness, and a breathtaking pain would cauterize the exquisitely reworked wound.

It is summer when Lynnie and Isobel first come upon Ross and Claire. Lynnie and Isobel live across the street from one another, but Isobel is older and has better things to do with her time than see Lynnie. And because Lynnie’s mother works at the plant for unpredictable stretches, on unpredictable shifts, Lynnie frequently must look after her younger brothers. Still, when Lynnie is free, she is often able to persuade Isobel to do something, particularly in the summers, when Isobel is bored brainless.

They take bicycle expeditions then, during those long summers, often along the old highway. The highway is silent, lined with birchwoods, and has several alluring and mysterious features—among them a dark, green wooden restaurant with screened windows, and a motel, slightly shabby, where there are always, puzzlingly, several cars parked. Leading from the highway is a wealth of dirt roads, on one of which Lynnie and Isobel find a wonderful house.

The house is stone, and stands empty on a hill. Clouds float by it, making great black shadows swing over the sloping meadows below with their cows and barns and wildflowers. Inside, in the spreading coolness, the light flows as variously clear and shaded as water. Trees seem to crowd in the dim recesses. The house is just there, enclosing part of the world: the huge fireplace could be the site of gatherings that take place once every hundred, or once every thousand, years. The girls walk carefully when they visit, fearful of churning up the delicate maze of silence.

For several summers, the house has been theirs, but one day, the summer that Lynnie is twelve and Isobel is just turning fourteen, there is a van parked in front. Lynnie and Isobel wheel their bicycles stealthily into the woods across the road and walk as close as they dare, crouching down opposite the house, well hidden, to watch.

Three men and a woman carry bundles and cartons into the house. Bundles and cartons and large pieces of furniture sit outside, where two small children tumble around among them, their wisps of voices floating high into the birdcalls and branches above Lynnie and Isobel. The woman is slight, like a child herself, with a shiny braid of black hair down her back, and there is no question about which of the men she, the furniture, and the children belong to.

Lynnie squints, and seems to draw closer, hovering just too far off to see his face. Then, for just a fraction of a second, she penetrates the distance.

The sun moves behind Lynnie and Isobel, and the man to whom everything belongs waves the others inside, hoisting up the smaller child as he follows. Just as Lynnie and Isobel reach cautiously for their bicycles, the man looks out again, shading his eyes. They freeze, and for a moment he stands there peering out toward them.

Neither Lynnie nor Isobel suggests going on—to town, or to the gorge, or anywhere. They ride back the way they’ve come, and, without discussion, go upstairs to Isobel’s room.

Isobel lies down across her flounced bed while Lynnie wanders around absently examining Isobel’s things, which she knows so well: Isobel’s books, her stuffed animals, her china figurines.

“Do you think we’re the first people to see them?” Lynnie says.

“The first people
ever
?” Isobel says, flopping over onto her side.

Lynnie stares out Isobel’s window at her own house. She doesn’t know what to do when Isobel’s in a bad mood. She should just leave, she thinks.

From here, her house looks as though it were about to slide to the ground. A large aluminum cannister clings to its side like a devouring space monster. “Do you want to go back out and do something?” she asks.

“What would we do?” Isobel says, into her pillow. “There’s nothing to do. There’s not one single thing to do here. And now would you mind sitting down, please, Lynnie? Because you happen to be driving me insane.”

As she leaves Isobel’s, Lynnie pauses before crossing the street to watch her brothers playing in front of the house. They look weak and bony, but the two older boys fight savagely. A plastic gun lies near them on the ground. Frank, as usual, is playing by himself, but he is just as banged up as they are. His skin is patchy and chapped—summer and winter he breathes through his mouth, and even this temperate sun is strong enough to singe the life out of his fine, almost white hair. She looks just like him, Lynnie thinks. Except chunky. “Chunky” is the word people use.

Inside, Lynnie’s mother is stationed in front of the TV. At any hour Lynnie’s mother might be found staring at the television, and beyond it, through the front window, as though something of importance were due to happen out on the street. The television is almost always on, and when men friends come to visit, Lynnie’s mother turns up the volume, so that other noises bleed alarmingly through the insistent rectangle of synthetic sound.

Lynnie brings a paper napkin from the kitchen and inserts it between her mother’s glass of beer and the table. “May I inquire…?” her mother says.

“Isobel’s mother says you should never leave a glass on the furniture,” Lynnie says. “It makes a ring.”

Lynnie’s mother looks at her, then lifts the glass and crumples the napkin. “Thank you,” she says, turning back to her program. “I’ll remember that.” A thin wave of laughter comes from the TV screen, and little shapes jump and throb there, but Lynnie is thinking about the people from the stone house.

Lynnie’s mother can be annoyed when she knows that Lynnie has been playing with Isobel; Isobel’s father works for the same company Lynnie’s mother works for, but not in the plant. He works in the office, behind a big desk. Whenever Lynnie is downstairs in Isobel’s house and Isobel’s father walks in, Lynnie scuttles as though she might be trodden underfoot. In fact, Isobel’s father hardly notices her; perhaps he doesn’t even know from one of her visits to the next that she is the same little girl. But he booms down at Isobel, scrutinizing her from his great height, and sometimes even lifts her way up over his head.

Isobel’s mother is tall and smells good and dresses in neat wool. Sometimes when she sees Lynnie hesitating at the foot of the drive she opens the door, with a bright, special smile. “Lynnie, dear,” she says, “would you like to come in and see Isobel? Or have a snack?” But sometimes, when Lynnie and Isobel are playing, Isobel’s mother calls Isobel away for a whispered conference, from which Isobel returns to say that Lynnie has to go now, for this reason or that.