But how should her questions be answered? It wasn’t just the problem of balancing tact with honesty, the etiquette of talking with someone so terribly sick, it was her own painful uncertainty as to what the answers really were. Did she still love Larry? She supposed that she did, but her ‘Yes, of course’ had about it the ghost of a qualification, as though she had said ‘probably’, or ‘most of the time’, or ‘not like I used to’. The difficulty was being able to see him clearly, to have, as she had had in the past, a single clear idea of him. These days he seemed to shimmer, being at the same time the man she had strolled with on Muir beach in the weeks before the wedding, the pair of them lit up, laughing because they were getting away with it, this remarkable trick of happiness, and some stranger who shambled in and out of the rooms of the house in shorts and sweatshirt (his favourite had ‘Barney’s Beanery’ printed over the heart), tumbler in one fist, cigarette in the other. He reminded her sometimes – still a big man, still solidly built – of a boxer who, the night before the fight, has unaccountably lost his nerve and begun to unravel. What was his problem? What had so bent him out of shape? His father? The drink? Losing his job? Was it something organic? Something in the air? Lead insult? How was she supposed to tell?
As for having another child, to Alice she said, ‘I’m not sure this is really a great time.’ But the reality was simpler and sadder: how could they have a child when for months they had slept with a wall between them? (Two walls: the bedrooms were separated by the passageway.) And what of the child they already had? Hoffmann had rung the evening before she was due to fly with some talk of another episode, though, oddly, he had seemed more concerned about Larry, who, according to the professor, was ‘struggling to articulate the appropriate responses’. What exactly he had meant by this she was unsure, she preferred not to ask, but the phrase looped through her head during the flight over until it acquired some ominous quasi-mystical significance that had threatened to bring on a migraine. Worst of all, it seemed to support her own most private misgivings, the unpalatable fact that she was less and less comfortable leaving Ella alone with Larry. She had seen the way he crossed roads, jaywalking through the traffic, not yet trying to stare it down, not raging at it, but playing with the danger. And he laughed at the television – news items, sad movies – in a way that spooked her. When Natasha Khan, her friend over in Sunset, asked if Larry had a gun in the house (Natasha’s ex kept an assault rifle in the games room) she had immediately gone home and turned out all the drawers in the guest bedroom, uncovering a small stash of pornography and sports magazines, a quart of bourbon, a flight schedule (SF to Vancouver) and, most miserably, a pair of her own panties, not even clean, which he must have fished out of the laundry basket in the shower room. But no gun. And then at Heathrow, Ella on Larry’s shoulders holding up a sheet of paper saying ‘HELLO MOMMY’, they had looked fine together, just fine, and she had felt ashamed of herself. Whatever Larry was, whatever he was becoming, there was a reserve of sweet water in him it was mean of her to doubt. It was Hoffmann perhaps, Hoffmann she should give up trusting.
From the landing Larry called: ‘Decent in there?’
‘We’re decent!’ sang Kirsty.
He came in, flushed in a way she immediately and wearily recognized.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘It’s nice for her feet,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Supper in fifteen minutes. Let’s get your shoes on, Mum.’
She had a pair of trainers, large white cushioned shoes with Velcro straps in place of laces. These had been Una’s suggestion, and though they looked cartoonish on the end of Alice’s skinny legs, they were gentle to her skin, and after the first time she wore them she no longer complained of their ugliness. The thought that they were in some way fashionable had even made her smile.
‘You want some gas?’ asked Kirsty. The bottle, industrial black, was at hand’s reach on the covers.
‘Just the inhaler, dear.’ Larry passed it to her, watched her spray it twice into her mouth; the inadequate in-breath followed by the inevitable, miserable coughing. He slid his arms beneath her shoulders and righted her. She stood, leaning her head against his chest, then they shuffled on to the landing.
‘I’ll go get Ella to wash her hands,’ said Kirsty.
Larry asked: ‘How do you want to do this?’
‘Slowly,’ said Alice. ‘Very slowly.’
The stairs were too narrow for them to descend side by side, so Larry went in front of her, and by keeping two steps below her she could hold on to his shoulders. Her arms were trembling, a feeble electricity that Larry felt through the whole length of his body. When they reached the dining room the others were standing by their chairs, waiting.
‘Here I am,’ she whispered.
Larry guided her to her chair at the head of the table. Alec had found the candles and set them in their silver stems, but the flames, paler than the light that came through the windows, barely showed.
It took another five minutes to get her settled, a cushion wedged behind her back, a linen napkin tucked into the collar of her dress. Sometimes, as she moved, she let out a low, involuntary moan.
‘Hey,’ said Kirsty, ‘don’t you think Alice’s hair looks great? I wish I had someone like Toni at home. Doesn’t her hair look great, Alec?’
‘Yes,’ said Alec. ‘Toni’s very good.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t know,’ said Alice. ‘Everything’s a mystery to him, poor soul…’
She looked at Alec, who had the place on her left. Larry, serving out the risotto, noted it: another of those exchanges he had seen three or four times during the last week, part of some on-going wordless discussion between them. Something he was outside of. He didn’t like it.
‘I hope you’re going to eat this, El.’ He put a spoonful of the sticky rice on to her plate, passed it to her and sat opposite. ‘Bon appétit, everyone! You see, Mum, I learned that much.’
‘Ella’s been learning some cute French songs at school,’ said Kirsty. ‘What’s the name of your teacher, honey? They start the kids real early.’
‘Is this a mushroom?’ asked Ella, holding up a grey comma on the tines of her fork.
‘Yes,’ said Larry. ‘A special kind of delicious mushroom. Try it.’
Ella scraped the mushroom on to the rim of her plate and started picking out the others.
‘Ella!’ He turned to Kirsty. ‘Make her eat something, will you.’
‘You mean force her?’
‘I mean she’s old enough not to play with her food like that.’
‘So she doesn’t like mushrooms. It’s not a major failure, Larry.’
‘Look at him,’ said Alice. She nodded to the photograph on the sideboard of Grandpa Wilcox in uniform. ‘Look at him watching us all.’
‘We’re going to the house, right?’ asked Kirsty.