He has trouble speaking to the police officer in charge, and as a result instantly forgets the name of the funeral home the officer recommends to him and to which Bob agrees they should send the body, so that, a few minutes later, when he is speaking on the telephone to Sarah, his brother’s widow, he is unable to tell her where they have taken Eddie’s body.
“You asshole,” she says, and she quickly apologizes but then begins to speak to him as if he were an adolescent boy. She tells him that she’ll fly down this afternoon and for him not to bother picking her up at Orlando, she can get out to the house on her own. “Just leave everything the way it is,” she instructs him. “And don’t let anybody inside the house. No lawyers, no bankers, no accountants, no nothing,” she says. “You stay there and watch TV or whatever you want, but don’t touch anything and don’t let anyone into the house. Jesus, what a fucking mess, excuse my French. Did he leave a letter or a note or anything around?”
Bob says yes, there was a note.
“What’s it say?”
He pulls out the envelope and reads the note to her, slowly, as if reading it for the first time.
Sarah laughs. “I guess the hell he was a failure. Took him long enough to admit it, though.”
“Sarah, for God’s sake! How can you say stuff like that? The man’s dead now. You’ve changed, Sarah.”
She is silent for a second, then says, “No, I haven’t changed. You just never paid attention in the first place. Just like him. I’m sorry he’s dead, of course I’m sorry he’s dead, but our marriage went down the tubes years and years ago, whether you wanted to see it or not. So I can’t pretend to be the grieving widow. Frankly, I’m pissed. I’d feel a lot sorrier for him if it had been a car accident and he was drunk and hit a pole or something. But Eddie was a bastard. You know that as well as anyone. And he was a sad bastard, a pathetic little boy of a man, and I always knew that. And you did too. No, I feel sorrier for Jessie than anyone else, because now she has to live with the fact that her daddy killed himself because he felt sorry for himself. Because he thought he was a goddamned failure.”
“Shit, Sarah, let’s not talk like this, not right now. Okay? He’s my brother. I’ve lost my brother. Let me … let me just be …”
“I’ve lost a husband,” she cuts in. “And Jessie’s lost a father. I’ve got a right.”
“Yeah, I know. I know. But let’s not argue about what kind of man he was, or how we ought to be feeling. Plenty of time for that later. It doesn’t matter right now what kind of man Eddie was. He’s a dead man is what matters. You know?”
“Yes. Fine.”
“I’ll … I’ll get the name of the funeral home they took him to. I’m sorry about that, it was just that I was kind of upset right at that moment and all and wasn’t paying the right kind of attention. I’ll take care of things here, till you get here, I mean.”
“No,” she says. “Just stay in the house, and don’t do anything, you hear? Don’t let anyone in, either. Things are more complicated than you know. Eddie got everything screwed up, so it’s not gonna be easy to untangle things. The bastard.”
“Sarah, he tried. Eddie tried. For Christ’s sake, I know a little bit.”
“Bob,” she says sweetly, “you only know a little. I know a lot.”
Bob tries to argue with her, not to prove her wrong, just to soften her feelings somewhat, but he can’t get over the wall of authority she’s put up between them: she knows the truth, has always known the truth, and he knows almost nothing.
He does know, however, that his wife Elaine, unlike his brother’s wife Sarah, will not treat him and Eddie in such a hard, self-centered way, and he’s right, for when he calls her and tells her about Eddie’s death, she is indeed properly dismayed and feels deep pity for both Bob and Eddie, which pleases him and fills his heart with renewed affection for her. But not for long. When he tells her what he planned to tell her, that he will take an evening job himself, as soon as he gets back down from Oleander Park, which may be a few days, since he has to run things up here, she responds coldly and says only that she can make more money as a waitress in one night than he can pumping gas part time for a week. And when he unfolds to her his plan to borrow enough money from Ave to buy the remaining three-quarters of the Belinda Blue from Ave, she laughs outright. “For God’s sake, Bob, now you sound just like Eddie,” she says, as if she were talking to a child and the consequences of his acts could in no serious way affect her life, only his.
When Bob Dubois is confused, he often responds by becoming angry, and now both his sister-in-law and his wife have confused him, so he slams down the phone and stalks out of Eddie’s kitchen, a large, shadowy room cluttered with dirty dishes, glasses, pots and pans, piles of dirty laundry, unread mail and newspapers, the room smelling of old garbage and burned cooking, and heads for Eddie’s liquor cabinet below the wet bar in the living room. The shades are drawn here, and the room is dim and sedately gray. Bob pours himself a double shot of Canadian Club and tosses it back in two gulps.
Refilling the glass, he eases himself down into the large, L-shaped, wine-colored sofa, picks up the phone from the table next to it and dials his old friend Avery Boone.
It’s Honduras who answers. Bob does not want to talk to any more women. He speaks to her as if she were a receptionist. “Ave, please.” She recognizes his voice and laughs, that same, high-pitched, mocking laugh she threw at him from the boat last night. “Let me speak to Ave, please,” he repeats.
“I got some stuff of yours here, Bob. Pair of pants, tee shirt, shoes and socks. Even a pair of underpants. All nice and clean, freshly washed and dried and pressed. Got your wallet here too. You were right, honey, you are broke.”
Bob says, “Just put my stuff on the boat.” The wallet he needs only because his driver’s license is inside it; the money in his pocket now is what’s left of a twenty-dollar bill he took from Elaine’s purse before leaving this morning. He’s suddenly afraid he won’t have enough money to get home on. Maybe he can borrow some money from Sarah when she gets in from Connecticut this afternoon. Oh, Christ, he thinks, I don’t have enough money to buy a damned newspaper when I want to. I have to live like a goddamned kid, begging and borrowing money I can’t pay back from the grownups, who all happen to be women now.
“Where’s Ave?” he asks.
“You know, honey. Still out on the boat with Tyrone.”
“Tell him when he gets in that I have to talk with him, so he should call me right away.”
“Now, don’t you go carrying any tales back to him. You were just as bad as me, you know.”
“Yeah, don’t worry, I won’t say anything. But last night was it, girl. Never again. You understand?”
She laughs and says, “Of course,” as if she does not believe him, though it’s not clear to Bob if that’s because she thinks she’s irresistible or he is. He decides it’s because she thinks she’s irresistible, which means he’ll have to be on his guard from now on. Bob understands men; it’s women who confuse him and make him angry, which he is, once again, and so once again he slams down the receiver and knocks back the Canadian Club.