“I think he’s enjoying this,” Graciella said.
“And a little afraid to be in the room with you.”
“You think so?”
“He doesn’t want to disappoint you,” Irene said. “Don’t worry. He will, sooner or later.”
Graciella gave her an appraising look. “How about that drink?”
They sat at the dining room table, among the file folders and boxes from NG Group Realty. Graciella picked up one of the listings that Irene had marked up with red pen. “How bad is it?”
“Could be worse,” Irene said. She walked her through what she’d found in the last two years of files. Going by the number of properties being handled, most of the business was legitimate. But the cash flow was seriously weighted toward the suspicious house trades—and almost all of those were done by one agent.
“If you’re going to run this clean,” Irene said, “you’ve got to fire this Brett guy. And if you’re going to make a profit, the other agents have to sell a lot more houses.”
“I appreciate that you’re not sugarcoating it.”
“Who has time?”
“I’ll drink to that.”
They both did. “To fucking Nick.”
“Junior and Senior,” Irene said.
“And how about your guy?” Graciella asked. “How’s that going?”
“Down in flames,” Irene said.
“I thought you seemed down after your trip. You broke up with him?”
Broke up. With Lev, her almost husband, and with other boyfriends, the phrase felt right; she broke them off from her, let them fall away like the spent stage of an Apollo rocket. She was stronger without them and never looked back. With Joshua, though, it was as if she’d left a piece of herself behind. She was the one who was damaged, incomplete, adrift. Destined to grow cold and die alone.
She needed a story to tell Graciella, however, so she invoked a different destiny. “It was never going to work,” she said. “He can’t leave Phoenix. He’s got a daughter, and they have split custody. He wanted me to move out there, get a job with his company, but I couldn’t even get through the interview.”
“What happened?”
“I found out they’d instituted a uterus tax.”
Graciella laughed. “Oh, one of those places.”
“Let’s just say that I’ll never work for those fuckers. I just hope I didn’t get Joshua fired.”
“Is he mad at you?”
“No! He feels guilty. Says he should have known more about what he was putting me into. He thinks I’m great and everybody else isn’t worthy.”
“Sounds like you’re up on the pedestal, right where you belong. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that he’s delusional.”
Graciella put two fingers to her pursed lips and bent forward—the signal used by sane people to indicate that they would have spit their drink in laughter, if only they were a teenager or Lou Costello. Irene appreciated the gesture. Graciella swallowed and said with a smile, “Explain.”
“We’ve only known each other for a couple months,” Irene said. “We’ve barely spent time with each other. He hasn’t even met the family!” And I haven’t met his, she didn’t say. “He keeps talking like everything’s going to be so easy, so wonderful, nothing but unicorns in the garden. He has no idea what it would be like to live with me on a daily basis.”
“The psychic thing?”
“Ah. Teddy told you about that?”
“He’s not a bit ashamed of it.”
“Well, I just know I wouldn’t be able to handle it when he started lying to me.”
“You’d be surprised what you can handle,” Graciella said. “I knew what Nick was when I met him. It was part of the attraction. And for almost twenty years, it was fine. I didn’t have to think about what he did with his father. I knew he was still doing things, not-so-nice things, but our family was good. If he hadn’t been arrested, I’d still be the happy homemaker.”
“Must be nice,” Irene said.
“To be happy?”
“To live like that. To not notice the lies.”
“Oh, I noticed them.”
“Really?”
“You haven’t been married, have you?”
“I got threatened with it once.”
“Here’s the secret. You both have to lie sometimes to make it work. He says, ‘You look great in that outfit.’ You tell him he’s right about Clinton. And when he comes home at three a.m. with a bag of fucking teeth, you make sure not to ask him who they belong to.”
“Jesus,” Irene said.
Graciella stared at her glass. “You’re right. That’s awful. How did I live like that?” Her eyes shone. Irene had never seen Graciella get emotional.
“I knew when Nick wasn’t where he said he was,” she said. “Or when he made up some story when he was working for his father. And I just…let it go.”
“You had the boys to think about,” Irene said.
“I was thinking of myself. All the things I had.”
“It is a pretty good house,” Irene said.
Graciella shrugged, admitting it. “Is Joshua well-off?”
“Better off than I am.”
“And you’ve known him for all of two months.”
“Almost three. We met online.”
“Online. I don’t get that. How much have you been with him in person?”
Irene tried to count the days. “Maybe a week’s worth? Ten days?”
“That’s crazy, Irene! Ten days and he wants you to move to Arizona?”
“I know. It’s not like me.”
But what was like her? Stay home and take care of the boys, for sure. To be the Designated Adult in the room. To put herself second. She said, “I’m just not sure what person I want to be anymore.”
“Stay here, then,” Graciella said. “Work for me. Take care of the money.”
“You want me to be your bookkeeper?”
“We’ll hire a fucking bookkeeper. I need you to be the chief financial officer. Someone who knows where all the bodies are buried.”
Irene made a face.
“Monetarily speaking,” Graciella said.
“You’re serious?”
“Dead serious.” Then: “I really need to find a different way of expressing myself.”
“I’ll think about it,” Irene said.
“I see. This is you being an adult. Non-impulsive. Let’s drink more.”
A few minutes later, Dad’s Buick slid past the picture window, heading for the driveway. Irene said, “Let’s get the boys.”
But Matty wasn’t in any of the bunk beds. Irene went up to the attic and knocked on his bedroom door. “Supper, kid!” After no answer, she knocked again. “Matty?”
She tried the knob. It didn’t turn—which meant that Matty had locked it from the inside—but the door wasn’t sitting flush in the frame. She pushed it open.
Matty lay in bed, unmoving, hands under the covers. Jesus Christ, not again, she thought. She started to back out of the room, then realized his eyes were wide open.
“Matty?”
She waved her hand in front of his eyes.
“Matty. You hear me?” He didn’t move. She put her hand to his neck and verified that he was still breathing.
“God damn it,” she said. Her son was an astral fucking traveler.
It was in the limo ride to the cemetery that she thought, Maybe now we’ll be normal. At the end of the service she realized: Nope. Never gonna happen.
On the way there, Dad seemed to be in a trance. He sat in the backseat, his hat beside him, watching the telephone poles slip by. It was Irene who had to keep Frankie and Buddy in line. Buddy had refused to sit on the seat, and was lying on the floor mat, drawing in crayon on his big pad of paper. Frankie kept putting his feet on top of him and saying things like “Wow, is this footrest comfortable!” Buddy would slap his feet away, and Irene would yell at both of them, and as soon as she looked away the whole process would start all over.