“What do you mean?” Maize said. “Robbie’s very smart.”
“I don’t think Robbie gets it. He thinks I wanted it to turn out this way.”
“What way?”
“This way. All of this.” His mother took her hand off the album and made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the room and perhaps her entire emptying house. “Me, my husband, Robbie—the whole mess. Honestly.” Her voice caught on the last word, but she recovered by clearing her throat. “It’s not like I planned it.” Then she improved her posture, looked in Maize’s eyes, and said, “Tell me something. Is Robbie all right?”
“Yes,” Maize said.
“You’d know a heck of a lot better than me these days.”
“Yes, he’s fine,” Maize said, though she wasn’t sure of it.
“He seems confused to me. He was such a clearheaded little boy that my husband and I used to call him ‘the junior executive.’ But when we split up he changed. He covers it, but he seems— Well,” his mother said. “I worry about him.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I worry about him all the time. Don’t tell him. All the time.”
“He’s fine,” Maize said loudly.
But as if to contradict her Robbie suddenly appeared in the open doorway to the bedroom, looking quite the opposite. His hair was frowzy and sweat-plastered, his clothes were disheveled, and he looked as stricken as someone who’d just been mugged. “Who’s fine?” he said.
His mother snapped the photo album shut.
“Nobody,” Maize said. “Where’s Daniel?”
“What’s that you’ve got there on your lap?” Robbie said.
“Nothing.” His mother tightened her grip on the album.
“Where’s Daniel?” Maize said. An alarm buzzed through her suddenly.
“Gone,” Robbie said. “Elsewhere. Daniel is gone.”
* * *
He and Daniel had been back in the basement that morning after breakfast, hauling boxes into various rooms upstairs and working in silence, which was a relief given the nasty things he supposed Daniel had wanted to say to him the night before. But after an hour in the heat Robbie couldn’t take it anymore. He said, “Would you like to explain the stunt you pulled last night, abandoning us?”
“Abandoning you. That’s rich,” Daniel said.
“Come again?” Robbie said.
“Let’s not get into it. You don’t want me to.” Daniel picked up a few unboxed, wrapped objects on the basement floor and headed toward the stairs. “I was tired,” he said.
“We’re all tired. We’ve all been working hard.”
“No, Robbie. You don’t understand me. As usual.” Daniel turned to face him. “I’m sick and tired of this situation.”
“What are you talking about?” Robbie said. “It’ll all be over in two days.”
“No it won’t,” Daniel said. He laid the wrapped objects on the floor between them. “Not my having to arm wrestle with Maize for your attention. Not your playing me off against the high school girlfriend you go to bed with whenever the mood strikes you. I mean, Jesus Christ,” Daniel said. “You don’t want anything to be different in the least, though you think you do. Maybe you should move up here with your mother. Or go to graduate school so you can bury your head in books again and never have a personal life. It’s kind of the same thing.”
“That’s absurd,” Robbie said. He looked at the objects on the floor and had to take a breath. There were a number of wrapped things on the floor, he thought, and even more things he could say in reply to Daniel, but what came out was “I don’t go to bed with Maize. We sleep together, literally, sometimes. And as for not wanting anything different: I’ve never even introduced one of my boyfriends to my mother before, much less invited him to stay in her house for a week.”
“Window dressing,” Daniel said.
“Fine,” Robbie said. “I don’t get what you want.”
“You know something, Robbie?” Daniel said. “Even if you don’t care about me, which you clearly don’t, you might think about how you’re holding that poor girl back. It’s selfish.” When Robbie didn’t answer he said, “And you’re an idiot, for the record. I could have been good to you.”
Daniel drew in a sharp breath, as if as surprised by what he’d said as Robbie was, and his eyes darted to a square wrapped box beside Robbie in a clear effort not to look him in the face. “I could have been good for you,” he said.
Daniel didn’t say it tenderly, as Robbie might have expected or read about somewhere. He spoke in the sternest tone possible, which only moved Robbie more. Robbie had the urge to step closer to Daniel, but he resisted it—why?—the same way he resisted the polite impulse to say, I could have been good to you, too, because it would sound pat, or he didn’t know how to say it, or he simply didn’t believe it.
His confusion took only a moment to solidify into something else. It hardened into anger and he indulged himself, because anger seemed stronger and clearer to him than whatever else was clouding up in him.
“All right then,” he said. “I suppose I should thank Dr. Daniel for illuminating the dark and deeply unexplored nooks of my massively fucked-up psyche. I guess I’m a latent heterosexual and poor Maize hasn’t figured out that I’m waiting to put the moves on her. Unless I can put the moves on my mother first. Which would be even hotter.”
He went on from there, spraying buckshot, but he hardly listened to what he was saying. It was like he was two people simultaneously, the one who raised his voice at Daniel and the one who interrogated himself even as he spoke. What was Daniel doing up here, anyway? Why had he led him here under false pretenses? Why hadn’t Robbie considered it more carefully before he’d invited him to do a job and thwarted him? Yet he didn’t say any of that aloud at the moment.
Instead he heard himself say, “You’re right, Daniel. I’m sorry for everything. Please. I need your help.”
He hardly believed what he was hearing although it was his own voice doing the talking. They were simple enough words—sentiments he could’ve expressed to Daniel or J. or other men over the years yet never managed to get out, like someone with a horrible stammer. Maybe he could still back away from them if he chose—pretend that he was still merely asking for help with his mother’s belongings—but he didn’t want to anymore.
He said, “I’m scared, Daniel. Okay? I’ve been scared all my life. I don’t even know why. I need you to help me.” When Daniel didn’t respond his voice trembled. “Maize is one of the few people who doesn’t scare me. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
That was the truth. It was only in Maize’s company and in his small, silent, private world of reading that he’d ever felt safe—free from the sense of estrangement that had clung to him everywhere, all his life and unavoidably, like his own shadow. Now he said, “Please help me.”
“I wanted to, but I can’t.” Daniel sighed. “So are we done here, Robbie? Are you finished?”
Robbie wasn’t sure he was yet. He was rattled by everything he’d just said and—among other things—the thought that from now on, every time he snuggled with Maize for a second, he’d have to push Daniel’s accusation out of whatever embrace they might be sharing. You’re holding that poor girl back. He flashed forward to the necessity of having to make that effort hundreds and perhaps thousands of times in the future and another bolt of anger shot through him.
He’d never gotten in the way of Maize sleeping with anybody. He’d listened to her entertaining accounts afterward and he’d encouraged her flirtations and crushes—only lightly, maybe, but he’d thought he was giving her what she wanted, which was to avoid sappiness. Maybe he could’ve wheedled more out of her whenever she mentioned her encounters with men (“That’s nice,” “Sounds fun,” “Good for you” was mostly what he’d said) yet he’d taken his cues from her, hadn’t he? She’d made her interest in them sound like a hobby.
The last time she had gone out with anyone—that guy from her office who
se name Robbie still couldn’t remember—she’d pressed herself against their front door upon returning, dizzy and panting as if after a sprint, and he’d done nothing but offer her paint chips to look at. Yet he’d never believed he could hold her back even if he wanted to. He considered Maize more advanced than him in countless ways. It was true that she hadn’t been romantically involved with anyone for a while but, as it turned out, he hadn’t been as involved as he’d thought he was, either. He hadn’t moved as far away from the old Robbie as he’d hoped and assumed.
“You didn’t answer me,” Daniel was saying now. “Are you finished?”
“All right,” Robbie said. “Yes.”
He turned his back and walked upstairs. In the locked bathroom he ran cold water over his wrists and the crooks of his arms, to cool himself down at the pulse points, and wiped the sweat off his forehead with toilet tissue. Then he sat on the edge of the tub and read whatever was lying around—a house-and-garden magazine with an article about brightening perennial beds with zinnias—as if nothing had happened and he wasn’t expected anywhere. It wasn’t until he found himself reading the photo credits on the back pages that he reminded himself he wasn’t finished. He had to do something.
Daniel had come upstairs by now. His door was ajar and there was noise coming from the guest room. When Robbie went down the hall to say one more thing—he wasn’t sure what yet—he was stopped by what he saw. Daniel was frantically packing his suitcase with one hand and using the other to phone the taxi company for a ride to the train station. He was shoving clothes and toiletries and whatever else was lying about into his bag frantically and indiscriminately, not bothering to fold or arrange them the way Robbie would, as if the cab were already honking in the driveway or he were a convict making a prison break. Then he threw his cell phone into the bag and tried to zip it shut. He had to try the zipper again and again, jostling things around since the suitcase was overstuffed, but he couldn’t close it. He didn’t notice Robbie standing there.
Robbie was thinking he should at least drive Daniel to the station—if his mother would give him the car and Daniel would allow it—at the same moment he saw a small wrapped object in the center of Daniel’s suitcase, nestled next to a peanut butter jar and half swaddled by disheveled clothes. He heard the paper crinkle faintly as Daniel tried the zipper again.
Together they’d wrapped hundreds of objects like that over the past week. They’d carried dozens and dozens of them to various rooms for safekeeping, so it could be any one of them. But when Robbie noticed the elegant cross-stitch of masking tape over newspaper he immediately knew it was his mother’s Murano vase in the suitcase. The same vase he’d had to convince Daniel not to throw onto the discard pile because it was more beautiful and valuable than Daniel understood, and which he’d wrapped with such grudging care.
He could have stepped forward and asked Daniel what he was doing. He could have pointed out that he was taking something that wasn’t his, intentionally or by mistake, and he could’ve protected his mother’s valuables better than he’d protected his own back in the city.
Yet he didn’t do that. Instead he found himself backing away from the guest room quietly, as if he were the one who’d packed away something that didn’t belong to him and he was terrified to be found out.
With each step backward he convinced himself that it was all right. It was all right, it was fair, it was just, it was acceptable, regardless of whether Daniel had done it on purpose. It was recompense for the fact that Robbie had wasted Daniel’s time and hadn’t a clue about how to love anyone properly yet, any better than he knew other practical things like how to use a drill or fix a flat tire. Although Robbie thought he’d known how to love somebody or that he could figure it out. Surely he could. He’d always been an excellent student.
Daniel was going home and Robbie probably should be going home, too. He and Maize would be doing that soon enough. But what would they be going home to? A silly internship that was the employment equivalent of blue balls, and no job at all for Maize. No boyfriends, no significant new relationships, no parties or meetings or avenues where they fully belonged, no serious prospects, no commitment to graduate school or rigorous self-education or anything else. And empty rooms just like these in his mother’s house, only smaller and shabbier.
At least he and Maize had each other. If they didn’t have romance or jobs or money or position or good housing just yet, they had their friendship. Friendship and company while they flailed.
He decided he’d give his notice at the newspaper as soon as he got back to the city. He would keep looking until he found a real job, even if it meant scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush. He would send out his résumé. He would interview like a demon. He would do anything he needed to move ahead. And Maize would be there watching him.
But for now he could only take steps backward. With each step down the hallway Daniel grew smaller and smaller through the half-opened guest room door until Robbie turned to face his old bedroom, and then Daniel disappeared.
* * *
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come back next week?” Robbie said to his mother. “To protect you from the big burly moving men?”
“Nah,” his mother said as she engaged her blinker and made a left turn toward the train station. “If those jokers think they can try anything with me, they should think again.” She drove half a block without saying anything, glancing in her rearview mirror and catching Maize’s eyes staring from the backseat. “Right, Maizie? Two tough girls.”
“You bet,” Maize said. She made a fist. “One false move and it’s brass knuckles to the jaw.”
“But I could help you set up the new house,” Robbie said.
“You’ve done plenty already,” his mother said. Then like a child reminded to show good manners she said, “And thank you. I appreciate it.” She looked over at Robbie and nodded. “I can’t tell you how much.”
A few minutes before they’d piled into this car, while Robbie was supposed to be packing, he’d overheard his mother pull Maize aside and ask what had really gone down with Daniel. His mother didn’t believe Robbie’s excuse—muttered into his collarbone—that Daniel had to attend to someone’s medical emergency in the city. Daniel wasn’t even a real doctor yet.
“It might have been me,” he’d heard his mother say to Maize. “We had this thing about my stupid wedding dress. Sometimes I can’t keep my mouth shut.”
“I don’t think so,” Maize had said. Robbie told her everything the night Daniel left. “I think it was a lot of things. I’m guessing it was all of us.”
A statement that struck Robbie as kind yet overly generous. It had been his fault far more than anyone else’s. No one else was to blame. When he’d recounted his final moments with Daniel to Maize—omitting his unmet pleas for help—she’d said, “I’m really sorry it didn’t work out between you and him,” and Robbie had replied, “Not between me and him, Maizie. Between him and me. Between everybody and me.” He’d shaken his head and murmured, “I have to do better next time. If there is a next time.”
“You will,” Maize had said. She’d opened her arms as if about to give him a reassuring hug but then she’d pointedly stopped herself. Robbie appreciated her not smoothing it over with an embrace. “I know you will.”
Now as they sat at the train station parking lot in the idling car, Robbie’s mother fished through her purse. She withdrew letter envelopes stuffed with cash. “This is for you, Maizie,” she said. “You’re a champ as usual.” She turned to Robbie and handed him an identical envelope. “And this is for Daniel. Please make sure he gets it right away. I don’t want him to think I’m a deadbeat.”
“All right,” Robbie said. He wasn’t sure how he’d get the final payment to Daniel. Maybe he’d leave the envelope at the front desk of Daniel’s dorm, hoping the security guard wouldn’t lift it, or he’d get a money order for the amount and mail it to him with a note that said nothing more than From my mother, with thanks. In
any case it would have to be delivered without them seeing each other again. Daniel had made it clear he didn’t want that. It was one of many things Robbie would have to figure out when he got back to the city.
In the meantime Robbie’s mother was shoving a third cash envelope at him and saying, “This is for you, Robbie.”
“What? No,” he said. “Don’t be foolish. I’m your son. Helping you out is my job.”
“Only a little,” his mother said. “Actually, not so much anymore. So take it. You’re a good boy.” Her eyes welled as she stared at him but then she looked away. “Besides, if an old broad like me can’t take care of herself by now, who the hell can?”
“Nobody,” Maize said.
Robbie shoved the envelope back at her and said, “Spend it on yourself. I’ve still got some of Grandma’s bonds, remember?”
“Take it. I’m the parent. Take it,” his mother said. “Do as I say.”
Robbie turned around to Maize and said, “You see what I have to put up with?” but she merely smiled.
“You can use it to repaint your apartment or something,” his mother said. “Didn’t you say you wanted to do that? Now would be the right time, with its being empty.”
“We did mean to repaint,” Maize said, “but we couldn’t decide on colors. We got scared. White’s boring but the wrong choice could be hideoso.”
“Our apartment’s already depressing enough,” Robbie said.
“You know something?” his mother said. “You should call your father and ask him about it. Your father always had a very good sense of color. Probably still does.”
When Robbie merely nodded his mother looked forward through the windshield and swallowed hard. “Get your father’s advice the next time you talk to him, Robbie. I’m sure he can help you.”
Maize said, “Yeah.”
In a dim voice Robbie said, “He’s never seen our place.”
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