His father told him that his brother Mike was doing okay, the kids were fine, Claire was skinny and nervous as always, and her cooking was going from bad to worse.
“Kee-rist, last Sunday’s chicken was cooked so hard you couldn’t tell where meat ended and bone started.”
Adam didn’t defend Claire because he disliked her. In fact he thought if he ever felt anything for a member of his family, it would be hatred for his sister-in-law.
The old man railed on about her and her cooking for a while, then asked Adam, “Got a girlfriend yet?” as he always did.
“Not yet.”
His father looked at the little mantel clock. The half hour they forced themselves to spend in this room was up. “What say we pop a few in the kitchen before they get here?” he said. “She,” meaning Claire, “always looks at me like I’m an old bum when I drink out of the bottle. Not dainty enough for her highness, I guess.”
He followed his father down the narrow hall to the kitchen. The carpeting was worn through the nap. “Need new carpet, Pop.”
He said the same thing every month, his father gave the same reply. “Fuck it.”
His father entered the kitchen, but Adam hesitated. This room always made him uneasy and he had to make himself step over the threshold. His father opened the refrigerator to get the beer, and Adam took a deep breath and went in. The kitchen was as dismal as the rest of the house, but maybe it bothered him more in here because this had been the heart of their home when his mother was alive, full of smells of baking cookies, roasting meat.
The old man clicked on the little Sony Adam and Mike had chipped in to get for him, and they settled down to a baseball game—Red Sox and someone, Adam didn’t pay attention.
Their silence was more companionable than their attempts at conversation and Adam dozed a little, woke, then dozed again.
It had been almost two when he’d finally finished cleaning up last night and gone to bed, and he’d had to be up and out by eight to make the once-a-month, three-hour drive to Sawyerville to see his father.
“Hey, Adam.”
His eyes snapped open.
“They’re here.”
Tires ground over the gravel in the driveway. A moment later, a child’s voice piped something Adam didn’t get and there was a knock on the back door. He sat up and rubbed his grainy, burning eyes. He had to keep his guard up in spite of his tiredness because of Claire, who was sharper and smarter than his brother or father could ever be. As smart as Adam, maybe. And she disliked him as much as he did her.
The kids burst into the kitchen and threw themselves at him. He tolerated them.
“What’d you bring us, Uncle Adam, what’d you bring us?” the boy who was seven yelled, dancing on feet that looked huge in their cloddy shoes at the ends of his skinny legs.
“What’d you bring us?”
The little girl was four and she clung to the sleeves of Adam’s jacket and stared up at him with Michael’s large dark-blue eyes that looked black in the overhead light.
“Something good,” Adam said. A huge hand stuck itself into his sight line to shake; it was his brother, Michael, who’d taken over the old man’s small, not very profitable contracting business. He’d been the one to stay home to make money to pay for Adam’s living expenses at Dartmouth (Adam had gotten full scholarships for tuition). Mike had never gone to college, had only been out of Sawyerville a few times in his life—to Niagara Falls for his honeymoon, a few other places, mostly on hunting or camping trips. But he’d never shown the slightest envy or resentment and Adam knew he should be grateful. Would have been grateful if he’d known how. Then his sister-in-law’s long thin shadow fell across the table in the light coming through the window over the sink.
She was almost as tall as Adam, who was almost as tall as Mike, and she was very thin. An arrow of a woman with a square jaw and a shock of curly dark-brown hair that looked too heavy for her birdbone neck.
“Hello, Adam,” she said coolly.
“Hi.” He tried to dredge some warmth into his voice and failed.
She carried a large plastic container covered with foil.
“Good to see you,” he said.
She nodded, but didn’t lie back that it was good to see him. She started rummaging in the cabinets for a pot to heat the contents of the container in. “Brought some chili,” she told the old man. “It’s getting cold out, thought it’d warm us up.”
Adam looked quickly out the window. The sky had a whitish look that meant frost back in Glenvale, snow up in Raven Lake.
Raven Lake. What had been so familiar about Raven Lake?
Maybe the old man knew but Adam couldn’t ask without admitting he’d been there.
“Get the presents, Uncle Adam,” Mike Junior screeched. “Get them!”
“Sure thing,” Adam said.
He went out the back door, down the steps, and round the house to the front where he’d parked the car. Mrs. Van Damm, who lived across the street, was watching from her front window as usual.
He took out two packages with pom-pom bows they’d put on them at the Walgreen’s in Saugerties. He’d bought his nephew a cap gun, which he’d probably shoot incessantly, driving his mother nuts, and for his niece, a tropical Barbie Doll with a sarong.
Claire served the chili, which tasted like the old joke about throwing away the beans and eating the can. Mike ate with gusto, Adam and the old man picked at the mess. The kids ate, then went out in the yard, and Mike Junior started shooting at May with the cap gun. Snap, snap, jarringly loud, and she screamed.
“God damn,” Claire cried, and raced out. Mike and his father were engrossed in the game; Adam looked at his watch. It was after four, and he had to be in Glenvale early tonight.
Claire came back in with the cap gun and gave him a filthy look.
“Stupid fuckin’ present for a seven-year-old.” She dropped the gun on the table. Adam stared at it in a daze of boredom. It looked amazingly real, a little like his father’s Colt.
The Colt must still be upstairs on the shelf in the master bedroom closet, and all at once Adam wanted it. Maybe because of the feeling of being watched last night.
“’Scuse me.” He stood up; no one paid attention.
He went quietly up the stairs and down the musty-smelling hall to the master bedroom, another room in the house he didn’t like going into. When his mother had been alive, the candlewick spread on the bed had been blinding white, perfectly smooth. Now it was yellowed, the fringes unraveled or gone.
He stood in the doorway.
This was almost as bad as the kitchen, maybe because he hadn’t been in here for so long. He’d have to tell Bunny, “Hated going into my folks’ bedroom, Bunny. Must be all sorts of symbolism there.”
“Why did you go in there?” Bunner would ask.
“To get my father’s gun.”
More symbolism, Adam thought, smiling to himself. He wouldn’t mention it after all.
He opened the closet; his mother’s clothes were long gone, but he still imagined a lingering odor of talc and laundry starch that he associated with her. The smell filled his nostrils even after all these years, and he started to sweat. Quickly, he reached up, felt along the shelf, and found the old shoebox his father used to keep the Colt in. It was very heavy—the gun was still there. He lowered it, backed quickly away from the closet, shut the door, and opened the shoebox.
The Colt was wrapped in chamois; it was cleaned and oiled, the only thing his father owned that he’d ever taken care of. He rewrapped it, put it in the box, carried it downstairs. The TV was blasting; no one would hear him. He slipped out the front door and went to the car. He opened the trunk and saw the curtains over Mrs. Van Damm’s window twitch. But she’d only see him stashing a shoebox. Cobbies for Colt, he thought, and he grinned and waggled his fingers at the window. The curtain twitched again, then hung still.