“I’ll order at the bar,” says Timothy. “You feeling gin-ish, or rum-ish?”
“Neither,” says Amy, then, after a moment, “Both or either.”Her heart is beating fast and her fingers feel warm. She’s not used to arguing: the prospect of it is making her physically and emotionally uncomfortable. While Timothy is gone she looks around, trying to put her feelings in order, getting the lay of the land. So many bikinis. So many cocktails. So much volleyball. Amy has never been on a Caribbean vacation, but she imagines the vibe is not too far off from this: cabanas in the sand, a tiki bar, a band setting up for live music. Are they really in Rhode Island?
Timothy returns empty-handed and says, “I think we have waitress service here.”
“Serverservice,” she corrects. “I don’t think we saywaitressanymore.”
He rolls his eyes and picks up the menu. “They have lobster thirteen ways! I think they only had one when we were growing up.” He turns in his chair and cranes his neck. “Is that asushibar?”
Clearly Timothy is deflecting the real conversation. Okay. Amy will play along with that for a minute. “Geez. Sushi at Ballard’s. Mom would roll over in her grave.”
“And then she’d order a California roll.” They are both quiet, neither of them mentioning that their mother’s body was cremated, so the joke doesn’t land. (Amy had arranged for the cremation. Of course. As well as the service and the luncheon after the service.)
Just then a lovely suntanned young woman with an Eastern European accent comes to take their order.
“Two Rum Runners, please,” says Timothy. He looks at Amy for approval and she nods. Why the hell not? She has the whole ferry ride to sober up. “With a rum floater,” Timothy adds. “What’s your best rum?”
“I’m not sure,” says the server.
“What’s your most expensive rum?”
“I’ll have to check. This is only my second day—”
Timothy holds up his hand. “Don’t worry about it. Just tell the bartender a floater of the best rum.” Amy tries not to let this irritate her, but she can’t help it: It does.Excuse me,Timothy seems to be saying,where do I put all of this money I have? Give it to the bartender. Give it to my sister. Give it to the rum lords. Just put it somewhere, because I can’t hold it all.
The drinks arrive quickly, and Amy, searching for a misdirect, nods toward the volleyball courts and says, “I have never understood how people play volleyball in a bikini.”
“It is one of the mysteries of the universe,” Timothy agrees. “But I don’t think that’s what you want to talk about.”
She flexes her hand, then makes a fist, then releases it. “No, you’re right,” she says. “It’s not.”
“So what is it? Like I said, I thought we were okay about the paycheck thing on Friday.”
“We were. We are okay about the paycheck thing. But when I was home over the weekend, I don’t know, the paycheck thing spurred all these other thoughts that I’ve been trying to keep down this summer. And they just... well, excuse the plumbing imagery, but they bubbled up.”
He purses his lips; he doesn’t even smile at the plumbing joke. “What kind of thoughts?”
She takes a deep breath. “When Mom had only a month to live, and it was her eightieth birthday, you had Hugh Jackman call her and sing to her. Do you remember that?”
Amy can see by the way he tilts his head, by the way he looks away and blinks rapidly before meeting her eyes, that he’s known all along that the Hugh Jackman thing bothered her. “Of course I remember that. This is what’s on your mind four years later? Hugh Jackman?”
“What’s bothering me,” says Amy, “is your not being present at the end of Mom’s life. What’s bothering me is your leaving it all to me. And, yeah, when I learned you lied to me about the paycheck—”
“I didn’t lie!”
“When I learned youomitted the truth,and when you show upafterthe toilet is unclogged, offering to help, and when you lure Sam away with a beautiful house, yeah, I guess I’m feeling some resentment.”
Timothy takes a long sip of his drink and says, “I was as present for Mom as I was able to be, Amy.”
“Getting Hugh Jackman to sing to herdoes not count as being present,Timmy! That’sgivinga present.Beingpresent is driving to the appointments and getting the ice chips and changing the sheets when she sweated through them and asking the nurse for more fucking morphine because she couldn’t stand the pain. That’s being present.”
“I lived across the country. I was working!”
“I was working too, Timmy. I’ve gone to work every single day of every single school year for the past twenty-five years. I think I’ve missed something like eleven days total over all those years, one of them being Mom’s funeral. And don’t you dare point out I’ve had summers off because most of the summers I’ve worked too.”
He takes a long sip of his drink. “You could have hired someone for all of that care for Mom. I would have paid. I told you that at least seventy times. I offered to payyou,Amy. I knew how much time that was taking. But you refused!”
“That’s not the point! The point wasn’t to outsource. The point was to be there, in the flesh. To be there for her.”
