“But right now, you have no sympathy from me. You are still too young. And you have had my sympathy your whole life, but when you say your father is evil, well, your father is not evil. Is he broken? Yes, we’re all broken. Frankly.”
And then Bob had to sit down. His chest was hurting. When he looked at Larry, Larry was pouting; this went through Bob’s mind. The kid—who should have been a grown man—was sitting there pouting, and this was unattractive to Bob.
*
Later, in Park Slope, Jim listened to Bob in his study and then said quietly, “Thanks, Bob. You’re a good brother.”
“Well, your son is really pissing me off right now.”
Jim waved a hand listlessly. “Let him go. Let him be.”
Then Jim looked at Bob and said, “Are you all right? You look kind of awful.”
“I’m tired.” It came out as a murmur.
“Ah, Bobby. You shouldn’t have had to come here for me. For this crap with my son.” Jim sat back in his chair, putting one leg across the other. “Also, you need a haircut.”
Bob said, “I promised Helen when she was dying that I’d help out between you and Larry, but I just fucked it up more because I was so pissed off at him.”
“Bob, really, I’m telling you, you tried, and I appreciate that. Don’t take it so personally.”
Bob held a hand up for a moment. He waited a while and then he said almost in a whisper, “I’ve fallen in love, Jim. I’m in love with Lucy Barton.” Tears began to roll down his face. He could not stop them. His big chest shook as he wept.
Jim leaned forward, watching him carefully. Then Jim sat back and said quietly, “Oh you poor fuck.” Jim shook his head slowly and said, “You poor, poor fuck.”
They sat in silence while Bob continued to weep, wiping at his nose and eyes with the backs of his hands, and then Jim said, “Is she in love with you?”
“No idea.”
Jim shook his head slowly. “Oh Jesus, Bob. You are the only person in the world who doesn’t know if someone is in love with him.” Jim sat forward again. “Of course she’s in love with you. You two take walks all the time, and you talk, right?”
Bob nodded.
“I always remember reading—it was years ago now—an article in which a famous director said: There is nothing sexier than talking. I always remember that. And that’s what you and Lucy do—you talk. All right, now listen, Bobby. Don’t tell her you’re in love with her. Do not have that conversation with her. Because once you do, once you start confessing this stuff to each other, you’re going to be screwing like rabbits, and your whole world will fall apart. Margaret will probably die as a result, even William might die, so don’t do it, Bobby. It’s not worth it. Do not do that.”
“I know. But I want her, Jimmy. Oh God.”
“You’re going to have to get over that. Seriously. Take it from me, I’ve been there, and I know you, and you will not be able to live with yourself. You can live with being in love with her, hard as it is, but you will not be able to live with yourself if you touch her. You’re Bob Burgess. I know you.”
10
And so life continued in Crosby, Maine. Margaret was now firmly once again in her job after the death of the previously-often-sleeping congregant Avery Mason—her homilies stayed sincere and good, Bob noticed—and Mrs. Hasselbeck asked Bob to once again water down the gin he brought her every other week, she said she had almost had a bad fall, and so Bob watered it down even more than half, and the locksmith who was a heroin addict took off for Florida, or so it was said, and also it was June, which is a glorious month in Maine, although it rained a lot and was chilly. The rhododendron screeched out their color against many houses in town. Tourists began to appear once again, people grumbled about them, but for Bob they brought a sense of openness to the place. Matt Beach had received two letters from women who wrote to say that they were very sorry about all they had read in the newspapers. Matt asked Bob what he should do, and Bob said, “If they sound like nice people, you should answer them.”
*
And Charlene Bibber did in fact now have a man in her life. She had found him online at a political site she frequented, and it turned out that he lived two towns away and had been divorced for years. His name was Carl Dyer, and he was tall and lanky and had pale hair and was two months older than Charlene. Charlene’s life had changed completely, as these things will do. He wanted to know everything about her—everything! As they lay together on her bed, she told him about her friendship with Lucy, and he wanted to know more, and so Charlene told him, as she stroked his long, gentle arm, about Lucy’s sister not liking Lucy and how Lucy was now living with her ex-husband at that house way out on the point. Carl pulled the sheet down and gazed at Charlene, who blushed at this sudden exposure. “What a beauty you are,” Carl said.
She touched her stomach and said, “Oh right, this flab is beautiful, that’s for sure,” and Carl said, “All the more for me to nibble,” and he began to do just that as Charlene shrieked with laughter.
The week before, Louise from upstairs had called Charlene to complain about all the noisy sex she and Jerry had to listen to. “Jerry’s sick,” she had said. So now Charlene was staying mostly at Carl’s house. Carl owned a roofing business, but he’d had an accident, and so now his employees worked without him. He asked her why she worked in the food pantry, and she told him about how when she was a kid there was sometimes not enough food in the house. Carl turned on his back and said he knew some people who didn’t really need the food and who had stolen from the food pantry in his town, people who just drove up and took it, and when he got done with the story, Charlene felt an uncertainty.
“But it’s up to you if you want to keep working there,” he said, looking over at her.
As time went by, Charlene stopped volunteering at the food pantry in Crosby, and she gradually stopped taking Lucy’s phone calls.
—
And in this way the situation in the country divided itself further.
*
Then there were Bob’s walks with Lucy.
He craved them in a way that almost sickened him, and oddly it made him think of Pam, and how she had given up booze, because he felt addicted to Lucy, felt he would have done anything to see her, and maybe that was what it had been like for Pam with her drinking. So he called Pam, and she was cheerful. “Bob, I’m good. I have so much more energy, I can’t believe it, and I’m going to suggest—next week, in fact—to Ted that we separate, except that scares me, and so I don’t want to do it quite yet, but I’m getting ready. How are you?” she asked.
And Bob said he was all right.
“What’s the matter, Bobby? I can hear in your voice, something’s wrong. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing at all,” he said, and this was a lie, and Bob did not like to lie, so he asked more about her, about the boys, and then they hung up.
When he saw Lucy standing by the fence the next day, he almost did not like her. She was causing him too much pain, and so he walked to her slowly. “Are you okay?” she asked; he could sense her looking at him, but he did not look back.
“I’m okay,” he said.
As they started to walk, Lucy talked about a woman she had known in college. Her name was Addie Beal, and Lucy was thinking about telling Olive the story she had just finished telling Bob about this Addie Beal. It had been quite a long story.
“Yeah, tell her. Great story. But super sad,” Bob said.
