NoNo waited, fork poised in midair, but Poppy seemed to have finished. “When is dessert?” he asked Biddy.
“In a minute, Poppy.”
“Oh, good.” He dabbed his mustache with his napkin.
“But what was her method?” NoNo asked him.
“Hmm?”
“Cousin Sophie’s method. What was it?”
“Why, everything that you told her had happened in the past, she just turned it around on you. Claimed it would happen again. If you could really call that a method.”
“It would do,” Will said. He was smiling; he seemed genuinely amused.
But NoNo said, “I’m sure there must be more to it than that,” and she popped a bite of ham into her mouth.
Out in the parlor, Hakim was still singing. Rebecca suddenly recognized the tune. It was “O Danny Boy,” of all things. “O Abdul boy,” he rumbled, “the pipes, the pipes are calling…”
“At any rate,” NoNo told Will, “I get that your daughter’s about to start liking you. Take my word for it. And I didn’t ask a thing about your past, now, did I.”
“No,” he said, still smiling, “you didn’t. Well, thank you very much. I’m encouraged.”
The others were smiling too, all around the table. Rebecca had one of those moments when her family seemed extraordinarily attractive — the girls with their animated expressions and black silk hair, the men so handsome and intelligent-looking, Poppy lending an air of distinction with his stately mustache. She let her eyes rest on each face in turn, feeling privileged and nourished, while Hakim sang softly in the parlor. “’Tis I’ll be here! in sunshine or in shadow,” he sang. “O Abdul boy, my Abdul boy, I love you so.”
* * *
It was a sign of how well the evening had gone that everybody stayed on after dinner. Min Foo got over her snit and agreed to accompany people on the piano; Troy and Biddy did their Nelson Eddy — Jeanette MacDonald routine; and Barry turned out to be a wonderful tenor, although perhaps “The Lord’s Prayer” was not the piece Rebecca would have chosen. It was nearly midnight before they all left.
Then she led Will to the kitchen—“Just to keep me company while I see to what can’t wait till morning,” she said — because she figured that would jog Poppy into going to bed. She was hoping she and Will could have a little privacy.
But no, Poppy came along with them, claiming he needed warm milk in order to sleep, and while he was waiting for it to heat he took it into his head that Will should be shown the family album. This came about because of a chance remark that Will made to Rebecca. “I had a little trouble,” Will said, “sorting out who was who. Why is that one stepdaughter Chinese? And that person Troy: is he Biddy’s husband? He seemed, er, not the husband type.”
“Boy, have you got it wrong!” Poppy crowed, pivoting from the stove on his cane. “Min Foo is not a stepdaughter; she’s Beck’s daughter. And she isn’t Chinese, either. I guess you were fooled by her name. And Troy for sure is not Biddy’s husband; he’s queer as a two-dollar bill.”
“Three,” Rebecca said.
“Huh?”
“Queer as a—”
Oh, Lord, she was turning into her mother. “Poppy,” she said, “aren’t you exhausted?”
“No, not in the least,” he told her. “I believe I’ll go get your friend the family album.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” she said. “Basically, he’s seen the album.”
She meant the refrigerator door, with its multiple layers of photos. But Will couldn’t have known that; so when Poppy asked him, “You have?” Will said, “Why, no, I don’t think so.”
“I’ll be right back,” Poppy said, and he left the room.
“Now you’re in for it,” Rebecca told Will. She switched off the gas beneath the milk. “Did you enjoy the evening? Did you like my family?”
“Yes, they were very interesting,” Will said.
“You didn’t see Min Foo at her best, I’m sorry to say. She’s not usually so short-tempered. I’m worried she’s beginning her same old pattern: have a baby, ditch the husband.”
“Of course, they’re all of them quite… outspoken,” Will said.
“It’s kind of like those nature programs on TV, where the female does away with the male after he donates his sperm.”
“Pardon?”
Poppy said, “Here we are!”
He wasn’t even in sight yet, but they could hear his cane pegging rapidly down the passageway. “Every light in both parlors was turned high as it could go,” he told Rebecca as he entered. “You seem to think you have to siphon off excess electricity in case it might explode or something.”
The album was clamped under his free arm — an ancient cardboard scrapbook bound with a tasseled string. He set it on the table and lowered himself, stiff-legged, into the nearest chair. “Sit down, sit down,” he told Will, patting the chair beside him. “We should start with my late wife, Joyce. She passed away in 1969. I miss her to this day. Now, where are we. Let’s see. Trouble is, there’s no order here. Everything’s jumbled up.”
Rebecca poured Poppy’s milk into a mug and placed it next to the album, using the excuse to set a hand on Will’s shoulder as she leaned past him. He looked up at her and smiled.
“What I’m hoping to find is the picture of Joyce when we met,” Poppy said, turning a page. “She wore the most fetching hat. It resembled two bird wings.”
“I bet this is the one you call Patch,” Will said. He was looking at a snapshot of a child with a bunch of balloons. “I recognize her freckles.”
“Oh, then we’re way too recent,” Poppy told him. “I met Joycie long before Patch came along.”
“And this is the one you call NoNo, I think.”
Rebecca wished Will wouldn’t refer to the girls as “ones,” as if they were specimens of something. She settled in the chair across from him. “Yes,” she said, peering at the upside-down picture, “that’s NoNo at a birthday party. And here is Biddy. Doesn’t she look cross? She used to hate to dress up, is why. She said dress-up dresses itched.”
“So many parties,” Will said.
“Isn’t that the truth,” Poppy agreed. He reached for his mug and took a loud sip.
“Everywhere I look,” Will said, “—the refrigerator, the album — everybody’s celebrating. We just get through drinking a toast and then you sit me down and show me pictures of other toasts, years of toasts. Even the children are drinking toasts! Do you really think that’s wise?”
“We give them only a sip,” Rebecca told him.
Poppy said, “Why am I not finding Joycie? That picture of her when we met. I hope it isn’t lost.”
“And after all,” Rebecca told Will, “these are photographs. You don’t usually photograph people reading books or playing chess, although we do those things too.”
Poppy looked up from the album. “Chess?” he asked. “We don’t play chess.”
“Well, Dixon does, sometimes.”
“I see your point,” Will said. “It’s just… maybe you have an unusual number of parties, don’t you think? Why, any time you and I try to get together, we have to work around all your social events.”
“Social? Those are professional!”
“Yes, but… it seems you’re the social type, you know? Hobnobbing with your mechanic, for instance; sharing a stranger’s marital secrets.”