The Widower's Tale (9 page)

Robert watched Tamara ForTheEarth as she picked up her child-size backpack (sporting Dora the Explorer, clearly a "find") and shook Turo's hand, businesslike. She'd talked about riding her bicycle everywhere--avoiding even public transit unless the weather made it too dangerous to bike--so Robert wondered how ostentatiously "free" that was, too. Maybe she had a Barbie bike, just a little too small, with pink tassels on the handlebars. A Ninja Turtles helmet.

"I can tell, just from your wiseass expression, that you're overanalyzing again." Turo had somehow sneaked up on Robert after seeing Ms. FTE out the door. He spread one hand across the top of Robert's head.
"Haya paz
, dude."

Robert laughed. Sometimes he wondered if he should steer toward psychiatry, once he got to med school. If he got to med school. Weirdly, his mother didn't seem to care one bit whether he became a doctor. She hardly ever talked about it and never gave advice. Maybe she was cleverly steering his course by mostly leaving him alone.

"Hey," he said to Turo. "So if she's squatting, how do they power that toaster?"

"They borrow the juice."

"What?"

"They siphon electricity from a hardware store on the same block."

"Wow. I get it. No buying, but piracy is cool."

"It's a huge chain. Ace or something."

Robert snorted. "Excess justifies the crime?"

"But it does, you know? Think of it as a rad form of economic sanctions. And Tamara, she is the real deal." Under Turo's left arm was the mayo/money jar. It contained five or six bills and about a cup of loose change.

"Maybe so," said Robert, "but meanwhile, I'm going home to cook up some capitalistically store-bought spaghetti."

"Count me in. And then let's drive out and sneak a swim in your granddad's pond."

"Hey," said Robert, "some of us plan not to flunk out. Not yet."

"And some of us like to live on the edge." As they crossed Mass. Ave., Turo shifted the jar to his other arm. The loose coins rattled against the glass.

The expression
chump change
lit up in Robert's brain. God but we're spoiled, he reminded himself.

They'd been waiting in the front of My Thai for fifteen minutes--Robert, Clara, his parents, and his aunt--when Granddad strolled in. He was grinning blandly, and he was alone. Robert saw his mom flash Granddad a look of frosty panic. But Clover hugged her father tight. "Daddy, we have got to buy you a new watch," she said.

"Watches are for working people," he said. "And in any case, I have two excellent reasons for being tardy." He walked back to the door and held it open.

In walked Filo and Lee, giggling.

Clover nearly flung her kids to the ground, she hugged them so hard. "Oh my
darlings!"
she cried out, turning heads in the dining room. "This is the best birthday present
ever!"
Robert saw Lee, in the crush of his mother's arms, grimace. Lee looked about two feet taller than when Robert had seen him last. It was as if his cousin had aged six years in the space of one. He was twelve now, twelve on the verge of fifteen.

At the table, there was a flurry of contention over who should sit where. Clover insisted that Granddad, not she, take the head, and then there was a kind of Chinese fire drill to get Filo next to her grandfather, Clover between her children. Robert's parents ended up next to each other, Clara at the foot of the table by default. Granddad hardly acknowledged Clara's presence. Had he even greeted her? Sometimes Robert had the bizarre sensation that his grandfather was actually jealous of his girlfriend.

Once seated, Clover clamped an arm tightly around each of her children, as if they might otherwise flee. Even when the waitress passed out menus, she did not loosen her grip.

"I've heard their pad thai is just out of this world!" Clover turned toward her son. "Lee, I'll bet they have those spring rolls you love so much at that place in Chelsea. Oh, if I'd known the two of you were coming, I'd have chosen the French place. But I'm just so glad you're
here."
She had tears of elation in her eyes, which made Robert feel happy for his aunt but also a little embarrassed. How awful it must be to know that when half the world looked at you, they couldn't help wondering how you'd fucked up so hugely that you'd given up custody of your own kids. Robert figured he didn't know the whole story, but he knew enough to wonder why she wasn't trying to go back to New York, at least to be near them.

"Order whatever you wish, all of you," Granddad announced. "It's my treat. Do you suppose the Siamese people serve anything approximating good champagne?"

"Let's order a whole bunch of adventuresome things and share all around," said Clover. "And I need no champagne to feel high on life right now."

"It's your day, my dear," said Granddad, though Robert heard a note of exasperation. Nowhere was Granddad more of a geezer than in a restaurant.

"I love that crispy whole fish. Do they have that here?" said Robert's mother. "It's usually sea bass...." She scanned the menu.

"Is sea bass one of those overfished species we're supposed to boycott?" said Clover, and then she blushed. "Oh never mind, never mind. Like Daddy says, everyone should have whatever they want most. What about you two?" She pulled her children closer.

"Mom, you're like totally squishing me," said Lee.

Robert's father pulled a small notebook from his pocket, along with a pen. "Why don't I write it all down, make life easy for the waitstaff?"

"My organizer-in-chief," teased Robert's mother.

The waitress was an alarmingly skinny woman who looked about sixteen years old. She arrived at the table with a bottle of Korbel and a pitcher of orange juice. A waiter who looked even younger--surely not much older than Lee--followed her with a tray of those thick, shallow glasses from which, according to Robert's mother, the "less privileged" drank champagne.

"Just leave them here and I'll do the honors," said Granddad, clearing space on the table. "Let's get our food orders in, shall we?" He turned in his chair to face the waitress. "Well, a proper good evening, young lady. We are here to celebrate my daughter's birthday." He nodded toward Clover.

"Oh. Is happy birthday," the waitress said, bowing slightly, her smooth face crinkling with nervous laughter.

"Thank you," said Clover. "It
is
happy. Very happy."

The waitress pulled out her pad and said, with servile cheer, "Any question?"

"I do have a question," said Granddad. He pointed at the menu. "How does one pronounce the name of this dish, number forty-three?"

The waitress bent to read the menu. "Is shrimp. With lemongrass and basil. You like spicy?"

"Ah. Well that does sound enticing, but to order it, I'd like to be able to pronounce it correctly."

"Pronounce?" said the waitress.

"Dad, just say you want the lemongrass prawns. Or number forty-three. That's why they have the numbers," said Robert's mother. She looked at the waitress. "He wants the prawns. Not too spicy."

The waitress said the name of the dish in her native language, giving him the answer to the question he'd asked in the first place.

"That sounds positively melodic. You must be Thai."

"Yes."

"Do you have a green card?"

"Dad!" barked Robert's mom.

"Green card--yes." The waitress wore a terrified smile.

"That is fortunate. There are many opportunities hereabouts. You've landed in an excellent region of the country. Are you taking classes?"

Now Clover chimed in with her sister.
"Dad!"

"My dear daughters, this young woman will want to practice conversation. How else will her English improve?"

Under the table, Clara was squeezing Robert's hand. He could feel her trembling, trying desperately not to laugh. Robert was used to Granddad's extremely warped M.O. Unless you broadened your sense of humor, it could look demented or just plain rude. But Robert knew that his grandfather really and truly meant the things he'd said; he suspected that even the waitress, at some deep intuitive level, understood this, too. But not Robert's mom, who for a number of reasons (some understandable; others a complete, ridiculous mystery) had a low tolerance level for her father's idiosyncracies.

"I am so sorry," she said to the waitress. "Ignore him and do your job. I will have the whole sea bass, number fifty-one."

Robert's dad ordered a spicy beef dish. To compensate, Robert ordered tofu. Clara ordered noodles with mushrooms. By the time the waitress took their order to the kitchen, Robert was ravenous. He whispered in Clara's ear, "Food doesn't get here fast, I might eat you."

She laughed softly. The beads that dangled from her earlobe tickled his lips. He pulled his napkin securely across his lap.

His mother leaned toward them. "You two seem to have a secret."

"The secret is that we skipped lunch," said Robert.

"Oh Trudy, these are simply"--Clover had just opened the agate earrings and was holding them up to the votive candle before her--"these are just luscious, like ... mm, like giant jeweled candycorns." Playfully, she touched one of the earrings with the tip of her tongue. Robert had picked them out (defying the notion that only Clara could exercise good taste) and didn't mind the comparison, but he saw his mother wince. Maybe she had germs on the brain. Doctors were like that. Doctors who were mothers were the worst. The smell of Dial soap, to Robert, was the core odor of childhood.

"I'm so glad you like them," said his mother. "I did get a little help from Robert and Clara. The gift is from all three of us. But now--now tell me all about the school, how it's going in the barn." She flashed a smile at Granddad, as if to let him know she'd forgiven him for his behavior toward the waitress.

As Clover talked about the first month of school, all the adjustments, the reactions of the older children who'd known the space at the church so well, she looked happier than Robert had maybe ever seen her. Teaching seemed like a cool thing to do, but Robert couldn't understand getting excited about the bureaucratic stuff: ordering supplies, putting together a nursery school newsletter, organizing parties to basically beg for money that would pay for, what, crayons and gluesticks? There was going to be some glitzy auction the following spring, and Clover was already looking into music and a caterer. "I am psyched," she'd told him while they were waiting for Granddad.

Robert leaned across the table. "Hey," he said quietly to Lee, "so how's the bad old city treating you these days?"

Lee shrugged. "Fine." But he was pleased to be noticed by his older cousin. "I'm doing soccer and tae kwon do. My dad's also making me work with him at a soup kitchen. Like every other weekend."

"That's cool. That's good," said Robert.

"It's okay. It's weird to see the same guys you see sitting on the street asking for money. Like, I don't know if I'm supposed to act like we know each other when I'm handing them a plate of food. Not that we do."

"But look," said Robert, "to me it would be the only way to live in a place like New York and hold on to your conscience." Although, it occurred to him, how was New York different in this respect from Matlock, or Newton--or Harvard, for fuck's sake? And was he, Robert, ladling soup for the crazies? Was going to college a legit excuse for giving it a pass? Not according to Turo. Nothing entitles you to take a break from your debts to the real world, he would say, not in times this dire, this have-or-have-not.

Lee had no reaction to Robert's statement. He ate a bite of his spring roll and said, "Dad's taking us to Washington, D.C., for Columbus Day weekend."

"See the monuments, stuff like that?"

"Yeah. Museums and stuff. But we get to stay at a hotel with a really huge pool."

"Cool," said Robert. Turo had blogged a whole diatribe on the evils of swimming pools: the energy, the chemicals, the waste of so much money and water. But Robert had promised his mother not to talk politics at his aunt's birthday dinner. Not like Clover was a Republican, but his mom always feared that politics would send Granddad into some devil's advocate spiel that would embarrass her in a room full of strangers. She was weirdly adolescent that way.

Granddad was asking Filo about third grade. Robert heard her talking about the classroom cockatiel, whose name was Jacaranda Star Wars. He tried to remember if he'd ever been in a classroom with a pet. Why couldn't he remember such a thing? He tried to summon third grade. Mr. Redmond. Who smelled awful but told great jokes and gave out treats if the Red Sox or the Bruins were riding high. Those were the kinds of things Robert retained from elementary school. What happened to the stuff you supposedly "learned"? Did it fill some deep-down reservoir in your brain, like an aquifer of knowledge from which you could draw only without being conscious of it? What the hell was the crux of education? He felt like he'd learned more when he was helping build that lodge in Costa Rica than he had in his first two years at Prestige U.

The food arrived in a rush of steamy warmth, the dishes set down on the table by their waitress plus three helpers. "Oh my gosh!" exclaimed Clover, pressing her hands together, such a corny kid-gesture. Maybe if you worked at a preschool, you picked up four-year-old gestures and expressions. You probably had to train yourself to say things like "Feathers!" and "Shoelace!" instead of the instinctive obscenities. What did that do to your brain? (Though maybe it made you age more slowly, too.)

"But first I am opening
your
gift." Clover smiled at her children.

Inside the colorful box they'd brought was a pair of dark green leather gloves, long and slim. Immediately, Clover put them on, raising her suddenly stylish hands high above the table, careful not to dip them into the various dishes of open food waiting to be eaten. "Oh my gosh," she said again. "How. Exquisitely. Elegant." She waved her hands in the air, like fluttering birds. "I feel like ... Helena Bonham Carter!"

She kissed her children and slipped the gloves back into their box. Robert noticed that Filo and Lee looked just the tiniest bit perplexed, and he didn't think it was the reference to Helena Bonham Carter. He wondered if they'd had anything to do with picking out her gift. His mother had a theory that their father was still in love with Clover and always would be, even if the guy had confessed to her that maybe he was gay.