“I don’t think you have the right to say that.”
“Of course I don’t, but I’m saying it anyway,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like to have children. It’s so humbling and frightening. All we can do is beg you.”
“I think you’ve forgotten how humbling and frightening it is to have parents.”
Nora let out a tear-soaked laugh.
Carver finished lacing his shoes and stood. “You can go finish your movie,” he said, then moved toward his mother and did something he’d never done: he gave her a quick kiss on the head. “I’ll be back… I don’t know when. But I’ll have my phone on me.”
“Okay,” she said.
With that, he went out the door into the night.
It was cooler out now — only about 50 degrees — but Carver had a hoodie on over his t-shirt and running shorts, and made his way down the street to Aunt Josie’s at a brisk heart-pumping pace. He wanted to see Scott so badly. He felt as if they were two kids in a movie like Stand By Me or The Goonies, and he was theone who’d stumbled across a grown-up conspiracy.Scott, get a load of this! You’ll never believe it!
There was no one out this late, no cars on the road even. Carver walked in the middle of the road, following its curve, passing under the yellow beams of streetlights which reflected off the glossy leaves of the trees overhead and created a hazy halo around the street. Once the year reached mid-May, the tree canopy over the neighborhood closed and wouldn’t reopen again until early November. All of these lovely Georgian and colonial homes were now wrapped in foliage that dappled the sunlight and freshened the air. The streets smelled like blooming flowers.
For the first time he was appreciating what a physically nice place this had been to grow up in. All of his problems with it were social and emotional — the invisible structures of life. But the visible, touchable structures were faultless. He’d never once wanted for clean water or a strong roof, for some peace and quiet or a beautiful view. He was lucky that way.
Carver knew he should be worried about Lillian, but he couldn’t manage it. He really never worried about her physical safety; she could handle herself, she was the type of person you’d rely on to get you out of a North Korean prison. He couldn’t bring himself to be worried about their marriage, either. The anxiety just wasn’t there anymore. He woke up from his nap to find it gone, like a tooth that fell out overnight. Curiosity kept his tongue working into the hole it left, but that was all. He did care for her, he even loved her in some strange way, but he didn’t think he could stay married to her any more than he could stay married to a dead person.
He was lost in thought when he arrived at Josie and Hank’s house and almost passed it by accident, but stopped and doubled back when he recognized their mailbox, which had a cover printed with red geraniums and a pride flag affixed to its side. He hurried up their front walk and paused a few steps fromthe door, then backed up. There was their tidy three-bedroom Georgian with the blue shutters, two-car garage and short driveway, which held Scott’s dead black van.
The house was dark, and Carver didn’t want to wake up anyone but Scott. He called his phone twice with no answer, muttered, “Shit,” then started scrounging around the front lawn and its landscaping for small rocks. He was pretty sure the upstairs left front window belonged to the guest room, and began to toss pebbles at the glass.
After about a minute of this, the curtains swished, and Carver stopped. He stood there on the front lawn waiting, opening his sweaty palm and allowing the remaining pebbles to fall from it.
To his horror, the person who opened the front door was his aunt Josie in a bathrobe. The motion-sensing lights over the front step switched on over her head, and she squinted at him.
“Shit,” Carver said, striding over to her. “My bad, my bad. I could have sworn that was the guest room.”
“It’s okay,” Josie said, looking amused.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, no, Hank and I are just in bed watching House Hunters.”
Carver found it was a relief to see her. She looked a lot like his mother, but there was a knowing twinkle in her eye which he’d always found both comforting and confronting. He’d been visiting her less and less in the last decade, making up reasons in his head not to, convincing himself that she now thought he was a stuck-up asshole and didn’t want to see him anyway. Seeing the tender look Josie was giving him even after he’d dragged her out of bed at midnight, he felt like a moron.
“Did you see that comet earlier?” she said, filling the silence. “Pretty auspicious, right? Hank and I had rain and a rainbow at our wedding, but I think a comet beats that out.”
“Definitely,” Carver agreed, hearing how distracted he sounded.
“Guest room,” she repeated. “So, you’re looking for Scott?”
“Guilty.”
Josie pointed behind him, and he looked over his shoulder at the van in the driveway. “He’s sleeping in there.”
“In the van?”
“Yeah. I told him to come inside, but he insisted.” Carver turned back to Josie, who threw her hands up and shrugged. “I think your mom spooked him and now he’s punishing himself,” she whispered. “He was polite about it, but I could tell she got after him. She can be a tough customer. Well, who am I telling.”
“Right,” Carver said. He took a breath and studied her, then said, “My parents and I had a weird… bad night.”
“It sounded like it,” Josie said.
“Not with the Scott stuff, actually. That was kind of table stakes.”
