Donald hated this. He hated this snobby restaurant, he hated his aunt’s advice, he hated his uncle’s assumption that he’d be better off single. Most of all, he hated the fact that in an hour he would be back in his quiet, messy apartment, with the beautiful summer evening empty before him. Since he stopped drinking, beauty just made him want to cry.
‘Oh, Milly,’ he whined. ‘You have no idea what my life is like.’
‘What is your life like?’
Pause.
‘I know,’ she blurted, when he didn’t answer. ‘I know it’s not easy.’
‘My life is fine. I’m fine, okay?’
Jack and Milly drove Donald back to his apartment. He had no car, no job, no money, and now no fiancée. He soaked the full humiliation of sitting in the back while his uncle drove and his aunt asked him if he was still taking vitamin C. The expensive lunch formed a hard bitter ball in his gut.
‘So what’s your plan now?’ asked Jack, rather belatedly as Donald opened the door to get out.
‘I’m going to travel again. I told you.’
‘No you didn’t.’
‘I’m leaving next week. South America.’
An afterthought of kissing Milly – he turned back from his front steps, indicated she should roll down the window, leaned in and kissed her soft cheek. He shook Jack’s hand across her chest.
‘Thanks again. Great lunch. Take care,’ he said.
His voice was heavy with emotion. What kind of emotion was difficult for them to tell. Jack decided Donald sounded defensive. Milly thought he sounded tired, overwrought, like he needed a glass of milk and an early night. Donald had always needed sleep to cope.
‘Bye then,’ said Donald.
‘Goodbye,’ said Jack, looking in the rear-view mirror to check traffic.
‘Be careful, Donald. Write! Phone us anytime!’ called Milly. ‘No hitchhiking!’
‘Yup!’ He mumbled something else, smiled, and then he was walking away, and Jack and Milly were driving in silence.
‘Did you hear that last thing he said, Jack?’
‘Nope.’
‘I think he said he loves us.’
‘Yeah, right.’
Milly remembered the day her sister left. They’d both been hungover from Jack’s fortieth birthday party. Louise’s voice on the phone from some service station, rushed and nervous.
Milly remembered the drive to her sister’s apartment, and gathering up the boys. The grabbing of sweatshirts and pyjamas, T-shirts and jeans. Randomly stuffing them in grocery bags, then pulling the boys out to her car. They’d been twelve and thirteen; small for their age, shorter than Milly. A pair of skinny adolescents with croaky voices and gawky walks. They’d shaken her hand off, politely, proudly, and followed her to the car. They’d known, by then. They had read the note left on the kitchen table. Unbelievably, they were not crying or acting traumatised. At one point they even had an argument about who was going to carry Hammy’s cage. Apparently the hamster belonged to them both.
‘Come on, come on. It’ll be okay,’ she kept repeating. She had left Billy strapped in his car seat all this while, counting on him not waking. Then back home, she ordered pizza and everyone ate it standing up in the kitchen, then later watched Bewitched in silence. All five children had piled on the sofa, Billy sucking his thumb on Elisabeth’s lap. Jack and she had sat in their usual armchairs, and she remembered him knocking his ashtray to the floor twice, swearing, and she’d scolded him in a whisper. As if everything was normal and swearing was still not allowed. She’d set up two camp cots in Sam’s room with sleeping bags.
Donald wet the bed. In the morning, he apologised to her for spilling a glass of water, but he couldn’t find the glass. Then he accused his big brother of spilling water – Danny was always teasing him. When he realised it was his own urine, his face darkened. She hadn’t been able to decide whether to take the boys to school or not. She had to get Sam and Elisabeth off to school first. In the end, she took her nephews and Billy to the International House of Pancakes, and the boys finished their tall stacks of blueberry pancakes and link sausages and hash browns. They ate as if they were starving, and even giggled when the waitress teased them about playing hooky. High-pitched, girlish giggles.
The boys later asked when they could go home, and she told them she hoped they felt at home in her own house. That she loved them, the whole family did. They shyly reminded her they each had their own room at home. They spoke in a confidential tone, with trust, as if she could arrange for the same privacy. As if she was Samantha Stevens in Bewitched, and could wrinkle her pretty nose and magic two more rooms. It was a three-bedroom house. Elisabeth was the only one with her own room now; Billy was still in his parents’ room.
‘Here’s the plan,’ she said over the maple-syrupy plates. ‘I’ll get bunk beds, and I’ll mark territory in the room. So you’ll each have a bit that’s only yours. It’ll be great. You can give your bit a name, like a country name. Or a football team. And no one will be allowed unless you invite them, right?’
They both stared at her.
‘Who gets to keep Hammy?’
‘You can take turns. I’ll make a rota.’ Still not a minute to think of her sister. Her head had squeezed with not thinking of her. Louise taking that dawn Greyhound, heading to Texas, her shabby yellow suitcase in hand, her sons still in their beds.
‘Jack, Jack! Stop the car!’ she commanded now, after a few blocks. The panic had been building up, filling her chest like a liquid.
He slammed on the brakes. The car behind him honked, so did the car behind that car.
‘Jesus, Milly. What is it?’
‘We have to go back.’
‘Goddammit, why?’
‘Something’s wrong. We have to turn around, Jack.’
‘Are you insane? You are insane.’
‘Jack. Please. Please, Jack.’
‘Donald is twenty-seven years old. If he’s in trouble, he’ll have to deal with it. Did we go running to our parents when we were twenty-seven?’
