Bennis brushed it off, irritated. The way she reacted to these calls always made her feel like a hypochondriacal old maid. And it was so asinine. This idiot hadn’t been in her apartment. If he had, he’d know it had been redecorated. Still…
She headed for the living room, down the long hall bracketed by built-in bookshelves holding only the books she had written. One shelf was given over to copies of Chronicles of Zed and Zedalia, her second novel and the first fantasy ever to make The New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list. She prodded Michael Peteris with her toe as she passed his place on her Persian rug and dropped down on a green plush Louis XVI chair she’d bought because it “went with the room.” That was before she realized nothing would ever go with this room, because it had been built at a time when people who knew nothing about history were trying to invent it.
“Michael,” she said, “tell me what to do about the nut.”
Michael turned over and put his hands behind his head. If he hadn’t been as tall and broad as he was, he would have been ugly. He looked, as Bennis explained to Emma when Emma asked, “very Greek.”
“What you’re going to do about the nut,” he said calmly, “is what you always do about the nuts. Call Jack Donovan down at the station. Get a tap put on your phone. Then—”
“I’m tired of this, Michael. I really am. I want to be Stephen King and not have to go to conventions. I want—”
“From what you tell me, Stephen King does go to conventions. And if you’re tired of this, move.”
“Oh, hush,” Bennis said.
Michael shrugged and turned away. This was an argument he had no interest in repeating. Of course she should move. She’d known that the first time a nut called—the one who said he’d put a rogue troll in her underwear drawer—even before she’d asked him and he’d told her.
“Who else was on the phone?” Michael said. “I heard it ring twice.”
“What?” Bennis said. “Oh. That was my sister.”
“Emma, Myra, or Anne Marie?”
“Myra.”
“You are going to be in a bad mood tonight. Oh, well. What did she want?”
“What?” Bennis said again. “I’m sorry. My mind’s wandering.” It was, too. She was thinking about Daddy. She shook it out of her head and said, “Myra. Well, she wanted me to come home for Christmas. For the whole week between Christmas and New Year’s.”
“But that’s wonderful,” Michael said. “You call Jack. You get the tap put on the phone. Then you pack up and go to Sewickley, or wherever.”
“Wayne. That’s not what she wants me to do. She wants me to go out to Engine House. My mother just got out of the hospital.”
Michael sat up. “Do you realize what you just did? You told me about the nut first.”
“And that shocks you,” Bennis said.
“It would shock anybody.”
“Not if they grew up at Engine House.” Bennis stood, went to the drinks cabinet, and fished her cigarettes out from behind the gin. So much for cutting down on smoking by keeping your cigarettes in an inconvenient place. When she got a real nicotine fit, there was no such thing as an inconvenient place.
She went back to the chair, lit up, and said, “Besides, this isn’t exactly news. I’ve been living with this thing of Mother’s for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Fifteen years.”
“What’s she got?”
“Some kind of multiple sclerosis. I don’t understand it exactly. She’s been in and out of hospitals for years.”
Michael blew a stream of air into the room, like a pregnant woman hyperventilating to take her mind off labor. “Jesus God,” he said. “And half of you live out of town. What are you people, anyway?”
“Down dirty furious at my father, for one thing,” Bennis said. “Besides, I don’t think the rest of them know. I mean, Anne Marie knows. That’s why she’s never left home. Daddy knows, because he’d have to. I know because I was home once when she had one of those attacks.” She considered it. “Bobby might know. I’m not sure.”
“You mean your mother hasn’t told anybody?”
“Of course not. She wouldn’t want to be an object of pity.”
Michael shot her a look that said this attitude made no sense to him at all, and Bennis shrugged. Of course it didn’t. He came from an absurdly extended family, full of immigrant great-aunts and just-off-the-boat quasi uncles, people who stuck together because they were trying to get someplace. He would never understand how the Main Line worked.