He leaned against the wall and briefly closed his eyes.
“So we’ve set the funeral for Friday,” his mother said, “assuming her people agree to it. Did she ever happen to tell you who her people were?”
“She didn’t have any. You know that.”
“Well, distant relatives, though. Isn’t it odd? I don’t believe she once mentioned her maiden name.”
“Lucy … Dean,” Ian said. “Dean was her name.”
“No, Dean would have been her first husband’s name.”
“Oh.”
“There must be cousins or something, but the children couldn’t think who. We said where could we reach their daddy, then? They didn’t have the slightest idea.”
“He lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming,” Ian said. As clearly as if he’d been present, he saw Lucy heaving her package onto the post office counter. She looked up into Danny’s face and asked in her little cracked voice how much it would cost to airmail a bowling ball to Wyoming.
“Your father has already called every Dean in the Cheyenne directory,” his mother said, “but he came up empty. Now all we have to rely on is someone maybe seeing the obituary.”
Two boys were walking down the corridor. Ian turned so he was facing the other way.
“Ian? Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“I told your father I wasn’t going to phone you. I said, why interrupt your studies? But he thought maybe you could come on account of the children. Well, goodness, I can handle the children but they’re so … the baby hasn’t slept since she got here. And Thomas just sits around hugging that doll of his, and Agatha’s being, oh, Agatha; you know how she is. Somehow I just never have felt like those two’s grandma. Isn’t that awful? They can’t help it! But somehow … and your sister’s all tied up with Davey’s measles …”
Ian could guess what this was leading to. He felt suddenly burdened.
“So your father said maybe you could come help out a few days.”
“I’ll catch the next Greyhound,” he said.
He rode to Baltimore that evening on a nearly empty bus, staring at his own reflection in the window. His eyes were deep black hollows and he appeared to have sharper cheekbones than he really did. He looked stark and angular, bitterly experienced. He wondered if there was any event, any at all, so tragic that it could jolt him out of this odious habit of observing his own reaction to it.
His father met him at the terminal. Neither of them knew yet how they were supposed to greet each other after long separations. Hug? Shake hands? His father settled for clapping him on the arm. “How was the trip?” he asked.
“Pretty good.”
Ian hoisted his knapsack higher on his shoulder and they walked through the crowd, dodging people who seemed to have set up housekeeping there. They threaded between stuffed laundry bags and take-out food cartons; they stepped over the legs of a soldier asleep on the floor. Outside, Howard Street looked very bustling and citified after Sumner.
“So,” his father said, once they were seated in the car. “I guess you heard the news.”
“Right.”
“Terrible thing. Terrible.”
“How’re the kids?” Ian asked him.
“Oh, they’re okay. Kind of quiet, though.”
They entered the stream of traffic and drove north. The evening was still warm enough for car windows to be open, and scraps of songs sailed past—“Monday, Monday” and “Winchester Cathedral” and “Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On.” Ian’s father said, “Your mom put me to work this afternoon hunting Lucy’s relatives. I don’t know if she told you.”
“She told me you tried calling Cheyenne.”
“Yes, well. No luck. And I stopped by the Fill ’Er Up Café—remember the Fill ’Er Up? Where Lucy used to work? I was hoping to find those two waitresses from the wedding. But the owner said one had walked out on him and the other moved south a couple of months ago. So then I went through Lucy’s drawers, thinking there’d be, oh, an address book, say, or some letters. Didn’t find a thing. Hard to figure, isn’t it? This is what we’ve come to, now that people phone instead of writing.”
“Maybe there just aren’t any relatives,” Ian told him.
“Well, in that case, what’ll we do with the children?”
“Children.”
“The older two have their father, of course. Soon as we track him down. But I suppose it’s expecting too much that he would raise the little one as well.”
“Well, naturally,” Ian said. “She isn’t even kin!”
“No, I guess not,” his father said. He sighed.
“He doesn’t even keep in touch with the two that are!”
“No.”
“Couldn’t you and Mom, maybe …”
“We’re too old,” his father said. He turned up Charles Street.
“You’re not old!”
“We’ve just reached that time in our lives, Ian, when I think we deserve a rest. And your mother’s not getting around so good lately; I don’t know if you’ve noticed. Doc Plumm says this thing in her knees is arthritis. Can’t exactly picture her chasing after a toddler.”
“Yes, but—”
“Never mind, I’m sure we’ll come up with someone or other,” his father said, “once we find that ex-husband.”
Then he went back to deploring how no one wrote letters these days. Pretty soon, he said, this country’s mail service would be canceled for lack of interest. Turn all the post offices into planters, he said, and his lips twisted into one of his wry smiles before he recollected himself and grew serious again.
At home, Beastie nosed Ian’s palm joyfully and lumbered after him into the living room, where his mother was walking Daphne up and down. She kissed him hello and then handed him the baby, who was too near sleep to do more than murmur. “Oh, my legs!” Bee said, sinking onto the couch. “That child has kept me on my feet all evening.”
Thomas sat at the other end of the couch with his doll clutched to his chest, her yellow wig flaring beneath his chin like a bedraggled sunflower. Agatha sat in an armchair. She surveyed Ian levelly and then returned to her picture book. Both of them wore pajamas. They had the moist, pale, chastened look of children fresh from their baths.
“Have you eaten yet?” Ian’s mother asked him. “I fed the children early because I didn’t know.”
“I can find something.”
“Oh. Well, all right.”
Daphne had gained weight, or maybe it was her sleepiness that made her feel so heavy. She drooped over Ian’s shoulder, giving off a strong smell of apple juice.
“Your father’s been through … various drawers,” his mother said. She glanced toward Agatha. Evidently Lucy’s name was not supposed to be spoken. “He didn’t find a thing.”
“Yes, he told me.”
Agatha turned a page of her book. Ian’s father crossed to the barometer on the wall and tapped the glass.
“Ian, dear,” his mother said, “would you mind very much if I toddled off to bed?”
“No, go ahead,” Ian said, although he did feel a bit hurt. After all, this was his first visit home.
“It’s been such a long day, I’m just beat. The older two are sleeping in Danny’s room, and I’ve set up the Port-a-Crib in your room. I hope Daphne won’t disturb you.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“He looks downright domestic, in fact,” his father said, and he gave a snort of laughter. Doug belonged to an era when the sight of a man holding a baby was considered humorous. He liked to say he’d changed a diaper only once in all his life, back when Bee had the flu and Claudia was an infant. The experience had made him throw up. Everyone always chuckled when he told this story, but now Ian wondered why. He felt irked to see his father drift behind Bee toward the stairs, although his knees were not arthritic and he might easily have stayed to help. “Night, son,” he said, lifting an arm.