One night, in bed, Grace had told Tug about her divorce, and about how Mitch had moved his things out of their apartment so quickly and thoroughly that she’d felt like she was being robbed. When she saw his frantic packing she resorted to stealing a few small things from his boxes — a photograph of him as a child, a teapot that had belonged to his mother — just so she wouldn’t feel like the entire world they’d built together was disintegrating completely. And then he put his stuff in storage and went off to the Arctic, leaving no phone or contact information, and she felt doubly bereft: both divorced and abandoned. Tug had shrugged. “When you realize you’re in the wrong place,” he’d said, “it makes sense to get out.”
His mother now peered at her. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some aspirin?”
“No, thank you,” Grace said.
The politeness was epidemic. At least with Tug’s parents. Marcie sat in an armchair and glowered, her legs crossed tightly.
Grace had already apologized several times, and now sat with her head swimming, wishing she had stayed at home. “Do you have any saltines?” she said.
“Let me check, dear,” Tug’s mother said. She practically ran into the kitchen, delighted to have a mission, and Grace could hear her opening and closing cupboards. Joy was a short, round woman with kindly green eyes. Tug resembled her more than his father — the same curly hair, the same sloped shoulders. Amid the nausea, another physical pang coursed through Grace’s chest. She missed his body, the warmth of his arm flung over her in sleep, the smell of his hair and skin.
Joy came back with a plate of Peek Freans cookies fanned decoratively on a plate. “Will this do?” she said. “I’m afraid we don’t have any crackers.”
“Perfect,” Grace said. “I’m so sorry about this.”
“We told you to stop saying that,” Tug’s father said gently. For all his kindness he was also appraising her, keeping his distance, much as Tug always had. He waited while she slowly ate a cookie, forcing it down. “So,” he said once she’d finished, “how did you know him?”
Grace bowed her head. Of course she would tell them everything; that was the price of being here. “I met him skiing one day, on the mountain. We became … friends.”
Marcie sighed, a long, sad whistle.
Tug’s mother ignored her. She was sitting very straight in her chair, her hands cupped together in her lap. Her dignity was immense; so was her pain. “My son was very fond of skiing,” she said.
“Yes,” Grace said. “We went a few times later, too. This winter.”
“You were with him,” Joy said slowly. “This winter.”
“Yes,” Grace said again.
At this Tug’s mother and Marcie exchanged a look.
Grace was deeply at sea, lacking any footing in the conversation, and wished desperately that she hadn’t come. She blamed Tug for not telling her much about his family, for being so mysterious, for being gone. Yet seeing his parents in front of her, the crazy quilt of features that had combined to produce him, was for a moment like having him in the room, and she was glad of that.
“Well, now we know,” Marcie said.
She wasn’t speaking to Grace, who answered anyway. “Know what?”
Marcie’s gaze was a slicing blade. “Where my husband was before he died,” she said.
In the silence following this remark, Grace sat perfectly still on the sofa, as if this might lessen her emotional exposure. But she couldn’t stop herself from eyeing the front door, trying to plan her exit. What had she wanted from all this? Not a confrontation with his family. She’d had so little of Tug, his presence in her life had been so glancing, that maybe she just wanted a picture of him as a child. Some tiny memento like that. She was like a beggar at this house, panhandling for loose change.
Just then a clicking sound came down the hallway and the Dachshund she had met that first night came ambling into the room, blinking his eyes drowsily. He made straight for Grace’s lap and settled himself there, just as he had in Tug’s apartment, and Grace began to cry quietly, small unstoppable tears.
“Oh, dear,” Joy said again.
“Sparky, come here,” Marcie said sharply.
The Dachshund slowly abandoned Grace’s lap and padded over to his owner.
Was Marcie living here? Grace felt she had no right to ask any questions. With an internal shrug, she let go of everything, including whatever dignity she had left. “I’m sorry I came here,” she said. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I just … ”
She could feel Marcie’s eyes on her, their almost palpable heat.
“I don’t know anybody else who knew him,” she said.
When she looked up, Tug’s mother was crying. There was so much pain in the room, and so little to say about it.
“So you thought you’d come rub my face in it, is that it?” Marcie said, her voice raspy with anger.
“Marcie,” Tug’s father said.
“Come on, Will. She shows up here looking for sympathy? The girlfriend? What am I supposed to do, give her a hug?”
“Let’s just stay calm,” Joy said, smiling weakly.
Grace couldn’t imagine that he had come from this place, the sad-eyed man of the world she’d known; his cynicism, his lust to see the world, his practicality, all of it seemed totally alien to this house of doilies and chintz. Which, she supposed, was as good an explanation as any of how people became who they were. In reaction to the homes where they were raised.
“When you came and wanted to spend time here, Marcie,” Tug’s father said, “we didn’t question it.”
Marcie’s eyes flashed around the room. “Are you comparing me to her?”
“Let’s have some more tea,” Joy said.
Shaking her head, Grace stood up. With a couple of cookies in her stomach she felt better, stronger, finally able to take command of the situation. “I’ll leave now,” she said, then turned to Marcie and looked her, with some difficulty, in the eye. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
She walked to the front door and opened it, but then Joy was beside her, putting a small, almost weightless hand on her arm. “Please,” she said. “Tell me how it was, at the end.”
It turned out that there were things all of them wanted to know, gaps they all needed to fill. Though of course no one could fill the greatest gap, that of Tug’s absence from their present and future lives. Still, thinking they could tell one another something useful, they forged a tentative alliance. Joy made a pot of tea, Grace thinking that there was comfort in rituals, in places set at the table, the tinkle of china and spoons. Then quietness stole into the room, and everyone took a deep breath.
Except Marcie, who looked at her in-laws as if they were traitors and left the room, taking the dog with her.
Tug’s father brought out a bottle of whiskey and poured a slug into his tea. His wife didn’t scold him. He tipped the bottle in Grace’s direction, but she declined. There was a secret lying inside her, only a few weeks old. Would she tell them? She didn’t know. She lifted a filigreed teacup to her lips and drank.
At first, Joy did most of the talking. Something in her seemed to have been released — whether by the tea, or by Grace’s presence, or by Marcie’s absence. As the three of them sat around the dining-room table, she spoke for almost ten minutes, an undammed flood of reminiscences that, Grace could tell, kept him alive for her.
“Johnny always had his eye on faraway places,” she said, “even as a child.”
For a moment Grace was disoriented, being used to his nickname, which had seemed so fully to suit him, his thoughts and memories always tugging him somewhere else. But of course he had been given a Christian name, had been a little kid, here in this very house, with these parents.