And there was Ben. Bigger Ben.
"Hi."
Ben ran towards him, and then, before he even got close— ran away. Ben ran and Richard ran after, half chasing him. It was a game and it wasn't a game. Ben stopped in front of Richard, Richard got down on his knees, and Ben hit him hard, laughed, and then ran away again.
When it was time to leave, Richard hugged the boy. "Bye-bye," Richard said, and Ben began to cry.
ALL PERIL. His mind leapt to insurance. He had the homeowner's policy with him somewhere; was he really not covered?
All peril, pencils, peppermints, Pepcid; it was like the game $20,000 Dollar Pyramid — things an insurance agent keeps in his drawer?
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING," the crying woman says, startling him, "watching me sleep?"
"I was thinking."
"You were staring; I was watching you."
"How could you have been watching me? Your eyes were closed. Did you call your family?"
She shakes her head.
"Don't just leave," he says, out of the blue. "They may not appreciate you, but you have to try. Make rules. Dinner is at six-thirty. You do the cooking, they do the cleaning. Be tough." By telling her what to do, he is telling himself what to do. "Got it?"
She nods.
"Early flight; sleep well," he says, heading towards the bedroom.
"If it's OK, I'll stay on the sofa; I haven't slept alone in almost twenty-five years."
"Wherever you're most comfortable."
PERSPECTIVE. In the morning he drives back to the house, thinking he's going to check the progress of the hole, go inside, and take a look around. From the outside his house is a box, a box with windows and a view. He drives up, slows down as he passes, and then steps on the gas. At the top of the hill, he turns the car around and zooms down, past the house with the horse, past the movie star, past his own house, all the way down — to see Anhil.
"I will drive you to the airport."
"Who'll watch the store?"
"I will call my brother; he will come, and I will drive you, and I will take your car while you are gone. I will give it good exercise."
While they are waiting for the brother to arrive, Anhil serves Richard breakfast — the cereal, the Lactaid milk, and a cup of hot water with lemon — good decongestant for the plane.
"Thank you for the car," Anhil says, leaving him at the airport.
"I'm not giving it to you, I'm loaning it."
"I understand," Anhil says. "It is too much to give."
FLYING COACH, he settles into his seat and puts on his headset, and he's fine, on the verge of enjoying himself, thinking he's escaped, gotten out. He drinks his complementary water and eats his complementary pretzel sticks. He's fine until the plane lands, until he gets in his rental car, until he pulls up at the brother's house, and then it's as though he's been getting smaller and smaller ever since he woke up that morning, shrinking as he brushed his teeth, as he zipped his suitcase, as he left the hotel, as he went through the X-ray machine at the airport, shriveling on the plane as he put his bag in the overhead, as he buckled the belt, even smaller still in the rental car, pulling the seat forward, amazed he could reach the pedals or see over the wheel. Smaller and smaller, so that by the time he arrives at the brother's house, he is less than four feet, a child again.
He pulls up, uses the snow scraper that's in the car to dust off pretzel crumbs, and goes in. The dog barks at him. "Stop barking," he says, and the dog stops. He goes into the kitchen, gets a glass of water, stands at the sink drinking it, then rinses the glass, dries it, puts it back in the cupboard, goes into the den, and sits. He sits on the edge of the sofa, like it is a waiting room, a way station, as though he has arrived here en route to someplace else. He thinks of leaving. If he gets up and goes, if he doesn't touch anything, no one will know that he was there, that he came and went. If he does it right, he could leave without ever having been noticed. He could put his bag back in the car, the key back under the mat, and check into a hotel, designed for exactly this purpose — dealing with the discomfort of the unfamiliar. The dog jumps onto the sofa, spins a circle, lies down with his head on Richard's thigh, and swallows. Richard sits for a few minutes and then lies down next to the dog, resting his head on the nubbly plaid sofa filled with crumbs, with dog hair, the meaty scent of life. He sleeps.
One of the children comes home. A girl who looks just like her mother, brainy, open-faced. She is a thing about to bloom, not yet self-conscious, not yet self-editing.
"What's wrong with you?" she asks.
"What do you mean?"
"They said if you were coming here something was wrong — otherwise why would you come. Are you dying? Broke? Are you going through that thing?"
"What thing?"
"Men-o-pause?"
"Men don't go through menopause."
"Then why is it called menopause?"
"I don't know."
"So why are you here?"
"I don't know, I felt like I needed to come, like I needed to see everyone. Do you ever feel like you need to see someone, just to make sure they still exist?"
"Are you having a nervous breakdown? That's what people talk about when they're having a nervous breakdown. Does having the nervous breakdown makes you wonder about that, or does wondering about it give you the nervous breakdown?"
"That's always the question. How old are you?"
"Almost twelve."
IT IS Thursday night; Meredith's mother is there, the two girls, and a six-year-old boy Richard didn't know existed. Dinner is a well-orchestrated production, out of the fridge, into the oven, and onto the table; everyone helps.
After dinner they pile into the family car, a beige minivan; he's in the second row, in a thick captain's seat that reminds him of the one time he went deep-sea fishing.
"All aboard?" his brother asks.
The mother-in-law is having an opening at a local coffee shop, paintings she's done since her stroke. After a lifetime of doing everything with her right hand, she is now reliant on the left, dragging the right side of her body around like a deflated Siamese twin.
Friends of the family come to the Bean N' Brew. They take the mother-in-law's paintings seriously. They ask questions: How long have you been painting? Do you paint every day? Have you ever tried gouache? Everyone is proud. No one mentions that the paintings look like paint-by-number. They give compliments: I love your use of color, your brush strokes are so lush.
"I have always had a passion for color," the mother-in-law says, her speech slurred. "Anyone can paint," she tells him, "even you."
Equally enthusiastically, they introduce Richard to their friends.
"My brother," his brother says, slapping him on the back.
"I always thought you were an only child."
"Older or younger?"
By virtue of getting a Ph.D., marrying first, and having a baby first, his brother and Richard long ago traded places: Richard went from being the older to the younger, losing whatever early advantage he might have had.
"Older," Ted says, handing the title back.
"SO — WHAT brings you to Boston — business?" the brother asks, when they are back at the house.
Silence. He forgot to make up a story.
"Everything all right?" the brother asks.
"I think so," Richard says. "And you?"
"Good. Everything is good. At least I think it's good; I've had a lot on my mind."
His brother, Ted, is a physicist, an inventor, a visionary who is not stopped by anything. When Richard was younger, people used to ask, "What did your brother invent?" and Richard would say, "The world."
"Let's get you set for the night," the brother says, leading Richard upstairs to Barth's room.