So what’s your – Robin begins, but Nora says sorry, can we just, and Bren pauses with his wrap halfway to his mouth.
Can we just establish, she says, moving her hand in a small circle, that if you’re not willing to be critiqued on the way you liveyourlife, Bren, why is it that you get to criticise your mother’s?
I wasn’t critiquing, Robin says, to Bren. I was just asking.
I wasn’t criticising her, Bren says, and Nora grabs Robin’s wine glass for a drink, her own glass empty except for the foam from her beer.
What did you mean then, she says, and Bren is not sure what she wants him to say; what will make things better, between them. Because this isn’t about his mother. This is about how she stayed here, and he didn’t. She is, it seems, so angry with him – when really, he should be angry withher– and she’s using his mother as an excuse to get all self-righteous. He knows it. She knows it. Robin, who doesn’t know it, is watching them both, his own tortilla stilled in his hands.
I was just saying it’s not so different, doing what I do, Bren says, with his one-shouldered shrug. Making money, holding down a job.
I think you were saying it’s entirely different, actually, Nora says.
Bren lowers his wrap to his plate; it slowly unfolds itself, revealing a mush of peppers and chicken.
It was just an observation, he says.
Nora, Robin says, in a tone that Bren can’t unhear. Like he understands something Bren does not, when Robin is the one that doesn’t understand all the things between the two of them. Long summers. Longer winters. Family barbecuescut short, so they could hang out alone, in his games room or on the village green, trading hoodies and jokes and small, unspoken parts of themselves. And yet Nora responds. Puts his wine glass back down on the table and nods, almost imperceptibly, in Robin’s direction.
The Philippines! Robin says, out of nowhere. You’ve been there too, haven’t you?
Yes, Bren says.
Tell me, Robin says, is it true they’re obsessed with karaoke?
Er, yeah.
And what, Robin says, and this is a very personal question, Bren, for such an early stage in our friendship.
Okay.
What is your karaoke song of choice? You look like a Ricky Martin man, to me.She Bangs.
Nora laughs; Bren doesn’t.
Now don’t be shy, Robin says, and he has perfect white teeth, the sort Bren has seen advertised inside in-flight magazines; the result of Invisalign, surely, or gallingly good genes. I’m right, aren’t I?
Bren would be thelastperson on earth to singShe Bangs, Nora says.
Bren would be the last person on earth to sing at all, Bren says.
Come on, man. You actually lived in the Philippines and didn’t once partake in their ancient customs?
Karaoke is hardly ancient, Bren says, and Robin says he’s aPurple Rainfan, himself, quite fancies Prince’s white gloves, too, for a special occasion. Circa 1985, The Brits. For the wedding maybe! He hadn’t thought of that! And Nora, this dinner is exceptionally good, by the way. As inauthentically Mexican as it is.
Agreed, Bren says, and Nora dips her chin; half in apology,half appeased, Bren thinks. She offers him a third tortilla, which he takes.
The conversation loosens up, from there. More jokes, fewer questions; they keep eating, talk less about travel and work and home and more about inconsequential things, which are, by Bren’s own admission, more significant. Nora still sews for fun. Embroiders poetry and names into napkins for christenings, or birthdays, makes a bit of money on Etsy as well as via her own shop, doesn’t charge enough, Robin says, for her talent. Robin is a photographer (I was close, Bren thinks); specialises in antiques; fusses with grids and snoots and chases a lot of unpaid invoices. Freelance, though he prefers the term footloose and fancy free. Favourite city: Paris, or Madrid (Bren’s is Rio). Never been outside of Europe apart from when they went to Boston for a wedding; they went to New York for the day, Nora cried at the MOMA. What’s MOMA, Bren asks, and Robin thinks he’s kidding.
And how do they spend their Friday nights? Bren likes to hike, rock climb, yes, he’s bungee jumped and skydived, too, multiple times, but the water is where he likes to be; forget Full Moon Parties and night clubs and local bars, lazing down a creek under a setting sun is the only real high that he craves, while Nora and Robin are jointly obsessed with animated movies, some of them dark as hell.Watership Down,The Last Unicorn,The Plague Dogs–
Donot, cries Robin, talk to me aboutThe Plague Dogs!
And things are finally normal, like Bren had hoped it might be. Old friends, having dinner, although something is still fizzing inside him as he sits across from her, like this. At her kitchen table as they exchange scraps of each other but are still, he thinks, holding back, somewhat, presumably because Robin is here.
He goes with it, though. As Robin plugs his final wrap with sour cream to soothe the spice, and Nora scatters red chilliesinside her own; as Bren does the same, mirroring her movements in a gesture that means nothing, or perhaps, in some buried, awakening part of him, says see, Nora, we shouldn’t hold back. Because you and I? We can handle the heat.
_
