Dennis nodded.
“Can I get you a beverage?” said Paul.
Dennis nodded again.
Marse and Margo and I went to the kitchen. Marse handed me a bottle of red wine to open while Margo admired the house. “I’d like a big kitchen,” she said. “Next house, I want a really big kitchen. It doesn’t even matter that I don’t cook very much. I just love a big kitchen.”
“I don’t cook much,” said Marse.
“I don’t remember the last time I cooked,” I said.
“The benefit of having a spouse with a feeding tube,” said Marse. She was the only one who could say things like that to me. “Paul expects dinner at the table every night. He’s had my chicken carbonara a dozen times.”
“And the rest of the time?” I said.
“Takeout.”
Marse collected beers from the fridge and poured one into a plastic cup for Dennis—it would fit perfectly in an attachment that swiveled up from the side of his wheelchair—and in the cup she placed a long, aqua-blue straw. It touched me, the efforts they’d gone to. She left the kitchen to deliver Dennis’s beer, then returned and started arranging a plate of cheese with strawberries. Margo said to Marse, “Are you going to marry Paul?” and we both looked at Marse expectantly.
She looked mischievous. “Do you think I should?”
“Oh, my Lord,” I said. I put my hand to my throat. “Are you engaged?”
Marse held out her hand—I was ashamed that I hadn’t noticed—and on it was a beautiful (and elegant, and not at all showy) diamond ring. I grabbed her and shrieked. Margo came around the counter and hugged Marse, saying, “Congratulations!” and for a moment I just stood there, my hand over my mouth, watching my friend. She was as happy as I’d ever seen her.
Paul and Stuart and Dennis came into the kitchen. “I guess you heard,” said Paul.
Margo hugged Paul, and said to her father, “Did you know?”
He nodded.
“You knew?” I swatted his arm.
He nodded again, smiling.
“We’ll toast,” I said, handing everyone a glass. “To our friends. May your life together be long and happy.”
Dennis grunted and we all looked at him. He gestured to me, then to himself, then back to me.
“As happy as yours,” said Paul quietly. Dennis again gave his awkward thumbs-up.
“Hear, hear,” said Marse, and when I looked over at Margo, I saw that she had started to cry. Seeing this, Stuart threw up his hands and left for the backyard. Marse recovered for all of us. “We’ll eat,” she said, pulling a lasagna out of the oven. I put my arm around Margo and, seeing that the lasagna was in a carry-out container, said to Marse, “So sweet—you slaved!”
“Shush,” she said. “I’m going to be a wife.”
We carried water glasses to the back patio, where a table was set. I looked around for Stuart but didn’t see him. Margo said, “He’ll probably walk home.”
“That young man is temperamental,” said Paul “Am I right?” He looked at Dennis and Dennis nodded.
“I remember another temperamental young man,” I said to Paul.
He looked up to see if I was smiling—I was. “Guilty as charged.”
“Don’t defend him, Mother,” said Margo.
“She’s not defending him,” said Marse. “She’s equivocating.”
“Don’t equivocate,” said Margo.
Dennis laughed and a bit of his beer spilled. Paul wiped it up and said, “Better an interesting marriage than a perfect one, I say. Am I right?”
“Absolutely,” said Marse.
“Just you wait,” I said.
Margo was looking at me. “I know you suspect him.”
“Sweetheart, I’m not sure this is the time—”
“Dad and I talked about it,” she said.
I looked at Dennis. I saw something like contrition in his eyes. If times had been normal, if Dennis had been well, I would have told Margo we’d discuss this in private. But these weren’t normal times, and it was rare that Margo wanted to talk, so I put my napkin in my lap and leaned back in my chair. There was a warm breeze off the golf course. It was almost eight o’clock, and still men drove carts this way and that, their deep voices carrying in the breeze. “OK,” I said. “What is it I suspect him of?”
Dennis made a sound to get Margo’s attention, then shook his head.
“You didn’t tell her?” she said to him. She sounded touched. To me, she said, “It was months ago. Dad told me that Stuart and the therapist—well, they’re a little too close for comfort.” She put her fork down on her plate. “That pixie bitch.”
“Oh, my,” said Marse.
Paul said, “Sweetie, he’s a flirt. A lot of men are. It doesn’t mean—”
“He thinks he’s in love,” she said.
Paul looked at Dennis and Dennis shrugged, agreeing. I scooted my chair until I was beside Margo. It made scraping noises on the cement patio. I put my arm around her, but she wasn’t crying anymore. She looked relieved. “People make mistakes,” I said. “They get caught up. They go overboard.” I could scarcely believe I had said it.
“They do, people do,” said Marse. She was on Margo’s other side, holding her hand.
“It’s been a year,” said Margo.
“Has anything happened?” said Marse.
“He says no,” said Margo. “He swears. And now he wants to take this contracting job, and move, and he expects me to go with him, even after this.”
“Move where?” I said.
She wouldn’t meet my eye. “Seattle.”
“You can’t possibly move to Seattle,” said Marse. “It rains every day there.”
Paul nodded. “Seattle is out of the question.”
“Well, he’s going,” Margo said. And—it shames me to remember—my first response was panic. I couldn’t have Margo so far away, and—this was possibly even more imperative to me at the time—Stuart could not leave, not yet. We needed him. He was the only one who could lift Dennis out of the bathtub when Lola wasn’t around. He was the only one who liked to do yard work and play poker past midnight when everyone else but Dennis wanted to sleep. He could drive the boat and load the wheelchair into the car, and, most important, he was distracting. If he’d been with us at the table, I might have told him so. As it was, I said to my daughter, “Then you’ll just have to let him go.” I’m glad I said it. It was the right thing to say, I thought, and when Margo looked at me—my daughter, searching my face for guidance—I was sure of it.
That night, I lay next to Dennis in his little cot, my head on his chest, and listened to his raspy breathing. “I didn’t know you were suspicious,” I said to him. “Did you know I was?”
He shook his head. I wanted him to talk to me. I wanted so badly to talk.
“Did you not tell me because you didn’t want to upset me?”
He shrugged.
“Did you not tell me because I depend too much on Stuart?”
He was still.
“I guess I do,” I said. “Some mother I am.”
He made his sweet, throaty laugh sound.
“Should I have told her?”
He made a noise, a definitive sound that meant no.
“Why is it that you can break her heart but I can’t?”
He shrugged again. It was true—if I had told her, she would have argued with me and been angry. Dennis, though, had leeway. It wasn’t meddling when it was her father. She trusted him never to hurt her intentionally. This wasn’t rational, and I didn’t think it was based on historical evidence, but it was how things were.