by Condition
He noticed that she had pretty hands.
"So Scott just showed up there? You must have been floored."
Billy popped half a wonton into his mouth, already feeling queasy with guilt. He rarely ate fried food, and certainly not a week before a race; but the dumplings were Gwen's favorite. She'd shown up at his apartment the night before, her eyes red from crying. Billy hadn't seen her cry since she was a little girl. In this condition, he couldn't refuse her anything.
"Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this," he said, "but Mom called me about a month ago in a panic. She wanted me to fly down there and bring you back."
"You're kidding me."
"You're surprised?"
"No, I guess not. Mind if I finish this?" Gwen held up the carton of fried rice. "It makes sense that she asked you first. I mean, why would she have picked Scott?"
Billy chuckled."Last resort, I guess."
"He was stoned out of his mind when he showed up."
"That figures," Billy said."Then what? He tried to talk you into leaving?"
"For about a minute. Then he sort of forgot about it." Gwen shrugged."We sat on deck and watched the sunset. Then I drove him back to his hotel."
"But it worked," Billy said, puzzled."I mean, here you are."
"It had nothing to do with Scott." Gwen's eyes began to well."I just came to my senses, is all. New subject, please."
And as always when they were together, they spoke of childhood.
Lying in the grass, rubbing his bloated stomach, Billy told Gwen about the time Paulette took him into Cambridge to spy on his father.
It was a morning in September, his first week in the eighth grade.
Paulette had kept him home from school, a thing she'd never done before; they dropped Scotty and Gwen at Pilgrims, then drove into town.
To this day he wasn't sure why she'd taken him along, what possessed her to include him in their jazzy adult gaming. Maybe she'd merely needed a witness, someone to share in her triumph when she caught Frank in a lie.
Billy hadn't understood, at first, where they were going. Then they made the turn into Cambridge and he recognized the square buildings of MIT where, that summer, his father had taken him to spend a day in the lab. That other day had begun brightly, with orange juice and muffins in a university cafeteria. Then his father had walked him through the lab, pointing out the different equipment, letting him look through the microscopes. Finally he left Billy in a corner with some scientific journals—to browse through, it seemed, as though he were waiting for the dentist—and started banging away at a typewriter, the bell ringing periodically as he came to the end of a line. At first Billy waited patiently, staring at the old Seth Thomas clock—the humming sweep of the seconds, the caffeinated jump of the minutes.
Later he waited impatiently, fidgeting in his chair. It didn't matter which he did. His father never looked up from his report.
Finally his father's secretary, a blond girl named Betsy, walked past the open door and saw him sitting there. She took him into a cramped room filled with filing cabinets. The radio was playing, which surprised him. At home he listened whenever possible, but he'd always thought adults didn't like music. This seemed to be true of all the adults he knew.
Stacks of manila folders were piled on the desk, the cabinets, the floor. The papers had been moved from some other office and Betsy was supposed to file them. She asked if Billy would help.
Sure, he said, happy to do something besides stare at the clock, yet nervous, because Betsy had very long hair and wore fruity perfume and smiled at him when she spoke.
She showed him the code written on each file, a long string of letters and numbers, corresponding to labels on the cabinet drawers.
They worked back-to-back, their bodies nearly touching, Betsy's perfume filling the tiny room.
They worked that way minutes or hours, who could tell, until a particular song came on the radio. Billy recognized the opening bars immediately. The song was "Billy Don't Be a Hero."
He knew all the words, of course—if you were a kid in those days and your name was Billy and you listened to the radio ten hours a day, you couldn't not know the words. It was a silly song he secretly liked, a girl pleading with some Billy who was going to enlist and get his head blown off unless he came to his senses and married her.
Listening, he marveled at how stupid this other Billy was. Of course it was the girl he identified with, the girl who had the passion and the good sense, who was clearly in the right.
It's your song! Betsy squealed. She upped the volume and, with a goofy expression on her face, stared into his eyes and sang the song to him, her pretty girl voice stronger on the high notes. It was a moment he would always remember, Betsy in her short skirt and dangling earrings, holding an imaginary microphone to her pink glossy lips. Betsy's shoulders bobbing to the music, a spoofy anguish in her voice that filled him with delight.
And so there he was a few months later in his mother's station wagon, circling the building where his father worked. Billy spotted Frank's new car, a dark green convertible, parked on the street. His mother parked illegally, blocking a fire hydrant, and left the engine idling. Billy looked at the gas gauge. Like everybody, he was obsessed with gas then, the intrigue of filling the tank on even or odd days, depending on the license number.
We're wasting gas, he almost told his mother, but didn't. He sensed that something important was about to happen.
They sat there a long time, until Frank came out of the building with Betsy. A breeze played with her long hair. She laughed as his father spoke. Billy watched his mother. Her lips were white; she had chewed away her lipstick. Round red splotches were on both her cheeks, like a clown's makeup.
There's a cafeteria in that building, he said. Dad took me there once.
They're going to eat lunch. That's not bad, he wanted to add, but didn't.
They're just eating lunch. He was old enough to grasp the basics, the reason for his mother's pain.
"Did Dad see you?" Gwen asked.
"Nope. We drove back to Concord and I remember Mom was very quiet. I wanted to turn on the radio and she said no, if she didn't concentrate she was going to crash the car. Then we got home and she made me a sandwich." Billy paused."But here's the weird part. The very next morning she did crash the car. Not the station wagon. Dad's convertible. The Saab 97. Remember this?"
"Sure," said Gwen."It was the day before my birthday. She went to the bakery to get me a cake."
"Yeah. I don't know why she took his car, though. It was a stick shift, which she hated. I remember how mad she was when he bought it, this car she could barely drive. Remember?"
"I remember when she wrecked the car," Gwen said slowly.
"Dad was bullshit. But the other thing? The spying?" She frowned. "I thought they were happy then. Before—" She stopped.
Before the doctors, before the Turner's. Before I ruined everything. Billy thought for a second that she might say it. But she was Gwen, and did not.
"They always had problems," he said. It wasn't you, he wanted to add, but didn't. It wasn't your fault.
That evening, waving at the back of Gwen's taxi, which had been joined by so many others that he might have been waving at the wrong one, Billy wondered why he'd told the story at all. He hadn't thought of that day in years. It was true: his parents' marriage had been rocky all along. Yet when anyone asked what had caused the divorce—Sri, Matthew Stone, the few friends close enough to ask personal questions—he found himself telling a very different story.
My dad couldn't handle Gwen's condition. After she was diagnosed, he was out of there like a shot. That was his mother's version of events, and Billy realized—on some level, had realized all along—that it wasn't entirely true. For one thing, Frank had hung on for nearly a year after Gwen's diagnosis, the marital bloodshed escalating until Billy, for one, had been relieved to see him go.
Why are you so tough on Dad? Gwen often asked him. It was Frank, after all, who'd
gotten her properly diagnosed, who'd pursued what were then cutting-edge treatments for Turner's. No father could have been more concerned, more involved. Yet in Billy's eyes, Frank's few virtues didn't cancel out his many failings. The damage he had done.
Better than anyone else, Billy knew how Paulette had suffered.
All through the divorce he'd been her confidant. Your father is leaving us. Abandoning your poor sister. Honestly, it's more than I can bear. Her tears had frightened him, the sheer force of her rage. Each time he waited silently for the storm to pass, ashamed of his helplessness, his inability to comfort her. He felt obligated to blame his father. It was a sign of loyalty, one his mother seemed to require. At fourteen, fifteen, he had dreaded school vacations: the ongoing drama of shuttling Gwen to doctors, the bitter parental arguments that preceded and followed.
How gratefully he'd returned to Pearse, finally free of both his parents.
Free, even, of Gwen. Back then it had seemed safer and wiser to keep them all at a distance. In this way, the System had begun.
He crossed the avenue and climbed the stairs to his apartment, feeling suddenly exhausted. Not by the easy eight he'd run yesterday—his training was in the tapering phase—or by his sister's company, but by his own. All weekend he'd worried—grimly, relentlessly—whether he was saying the right things, whether he'd done enough to help. Sri, if he'd been there, would have seen him fretting, his thoughts spinning like laundry in the washer. You're doing fine, Sri would have told him, and Billy would have believed him. Sri was no expert on Gwen —since Billy's accident they'd had no contact beyond pleasantries on the phone—but he was an expert on Billy. You've got to stop improving, Sri had once told him. You're so busy trying to do everything better that you're missing your whole life. Stop. Stop.
And it helped. When Billy worried—about his patients, his tricky IT bands that acted up a week before a race, an impending visit with his neurotic family—Sri's face was a silent reminder: stop, stop.
Billy made a quick tour of the apartment—cleaning, straightening—and headed into the kitchen. He scrubbed down and began chopping—carrots, celery, scallions, ginger. Sri would be home in two hours, and Billy intended to surprise him with dinner, something he rarely did. He wasn't a bad cook—you didn't live alone for ten years without learning to flip an omelet—but most of his old repertoire was now off-limits.
His arteries were nearing forty, and he couldn't spike his blood with sat fat the way he once had. He had learned to love the freshness of Sri's cooking, the way you could detect the delicate flavors of foods you didn't think had any: rice, lettuce, milk. This would be delicious the old way, Sri sometimes said wistfully as he sampled a dish. His grandmother had cooked with ghee, a notion Billy found appalling.
It's better this way, he told Sri. We'll live forever.
What he meant, but didn't say: I want to grow old with you.
Even thinking the words had unleashed a tide of feeling in him; he didn't trust himself to speak. His love for Sri ambushed him at odd moments. Last week, when their clean laundry was delivered, he'd spent a long moment placing Sri's things in his bureau, profoundly moved by the neat stacks of folded jeans and T-shirts, the soft piles of his lover's clothes.
He'd recalled that feeling as he watched Sri packing, the rough, angry way he'd stuffed clothes into his overnight bag, oblivious to the care that had gone into folding them, the young Chinese girl creasing them with delicate hands.
It's just for a couple of days, Billy had said. And then, disingenuously: I'm worried about her. I have to make sure she's okay.
Sri had silenced him with a look. They both knew this wasn't the point. By all means, take care of your sister, the look said. But why must you kick me to the curb?
They'd parted without kissing good-bye. "I'll call you," Sri said over his shoulder.
But he hadn't called.
For two days Billy had distracted himself with Gwen's problems.
Now his anxiety returned in a wave. Nursing his sister through heartbreak was taxing enough, strange and awkward and worrying enough.
Would she confide in him? Expect wise counsel? Dear God, was she going to cry? The presence of his boyfriend would have heaped on more strangeness. Yet Gwen had seemed surprised by his absence.
"Where's Sri?" she'd asked the moment she walked through the door.
It was true, what Sri often said: he was terrified of change.
He was thinking such thoughts when the telephone rang.
"Hey," he said breathlessly.
"Billy?" His mother sounded puzzled. "Dear, I can't believe you answer the phone that way."
"Sorry," he said, flustered."I was in the middle of something."
"Well, don't keep me in suspense. How did it go with your sister?
I've been so concerned about her."
Here we go, Billy thought. His own fault: he had told Paulette that Gwen would be visiting. He had brought this on himself.
He settled into the sofa."She seemed a little—stunned, I guess."
"Did she tell you anything? Of course I'm delighted to have her back, but I'd love to know what happened. What changed her mind?"
Rico wasn't the person I thought he was, Gwen had explained.
"She didn't say much. They had a fight, I guess."
"How did she look?"
"Different," he said thoughtfully. Walking to the diner Saturday morning, they had passed a hip hair salon, and for a moment he'd considered dragging Gwen inside—her hair was long enough, finally, that a stylist would have something to work with. But he had stopped himself. The gesture would have been far too gay.
"Darling, that's not very helpful. Can you at least tell me what she was wearing?"
Typical Paulette.
"The usual," Billy said.
"Oh, dear." She paused."And what about work? Can she get her job back?"
"She doesn't want to." She'd sooner work the drive-through window at a burger joint, she told Billy, than go back to the Stott.
Maybe I'll finish my dissertation, she said without enthusiasm. I haven't figured it out yet.
Billy heard a strange whirring at the other end of the line."What is that noise?"
"A saw, I believe. Your brother is in the backyard cutting some wood."
"Scott?"
"Yes, dear. He's been here all weekend, working. I can't tell you what a relief it is, to have something done about the porch."
"Scott?" Billy repeated.
"He's doing a magnificent job. I didn't realize how complicated it was to do an authentic period restoration. Your brother has done quite a lot of research."
Billy frowned. His brother doing anything constructive—hell, anything not patently de structive—was hard to imagine.
"That's great, Mom," he said, eyeing the clock."Tell him I said hi."
More whirring, followed by a shrieking.
"Tell him yourself, if you like. He's eager to talk with you."
Oh, Jesus, Billy thought. He waited.
"Hey, Bill," Scott huffed, sniffling."Mom said you saw Gwen."
"She was here for the weekend." He was struck by the oddness of the situation: his brother was in Concord with their mother, and Billy himself was not. Except for his grudging holiday visits, wife and rug rats in tow, Scott hadn't visited in Concord in years.
"What happened, man?" Scott demanded. "That dirtbag kicked her out?"
"Um, no," Billy said, a little confused. "She left him, apparently."
"She did." Scott's tone was skeptical, as though he knew otherwise. As though Billy had gotten it all wrong. "O- Kay. Why would she do that?"
"I'm not sure." Billy hesitated. "I got the impression that he was up to something—illegal, maybe. And Gwen caught wind of it."
"No shit," said Scott."What exactly did she say?"
"'He wasn't the person I thought he was.' Something like that."
Billy paused. "You met the guy. Could he have been some kind of criminal? A drug dealer maybe?"
"That's an interesting question," Scott said expansively, as though warming up for an oration on the subject. There was something oddly familiar in his tone—a self-importance, a leisurely appreciation of the sound of his own voice. For a moment he sounded just like their father."He was definitely nervous. You should have seen the look on his face when I showed up out of the blue. He was shitting his pants. Of course he was on good behavior with me. The brother from the States.
But there was something slippery about him. A little too smooth, if you know what I mean. A drug dealer?" He paused as if weighing the matter."Yeah, it's possible. Wouldn't surprise me a bit."
Thank you for your expert opinion, Billy thought.
"Anyway, all's well that ends well," said Scott.
Billy thought of Gwen as she'd looked when she'd appeared on his doorstep, her eyes swollen, as though she'd spent the whole flight from Pittsburgh crying like a child. No, not a child: the sorrow had remodeled her face in ways that seemed permanent. As though, like a war widow, she'd been crying for months or years.
"What are you doing there, anyway?" Billy asked."Fixing Mom's porch?"
Scott laughed, a low, hearty chuckle. "I wish it were so simple.
The porch is beyond repair. I'm starting from scratch here, Bill, and given the historical value of the house, I want to get it exactly right.
It matters, you know? I mean, for the National Register of Historic Places—"
"The house is on the register?"
"No, but it should be. Josiah Hobhouse and all. I'm looking into nominating it. But one thing at a time, you know? Anyway, long story short—"
Too late for that, Billy thought.
"I met this carpenter the other day—he knows Mom, actually—and he does nothing but historic restorations, on the Vineyard mostly.
He's walking me through the whole process, which materials to use—"
"That's great, Scotty. Listen, I have to run. I have something on the stove."
"You're cooking?" Scott whistled. "Say no more. She must be something."
"Must be," Billy agreed. "Good luck with everything, and give Mother a kiss from me."