“Don’t pick on your mother when she’s not here to give it back.”
“I’m not, Dad. I’m proud of her. But Mr. Kirby, please be sure to compliment her on that robe. You must admit it is so robelike and so perfectly opaque.”
“You talk,” Wade said to Larry. “This kid is a case.” Wade lowered the tailgate, and the boys hauled the bed frame to the porch and called, “Give us an hour, and this place will be home sweet home!”
• • •
Mason’s actual plan had been to return to Oakpine and camp in the house; he’d been ready for something spartan. But the place had been too torn up and dirty. Marci and Craig had insisted, and so he’d been staying up in the guest room at their new house on Oakpine Mountain for five days, but he was moving down tomorrow. Marci had been in their class and was part of the circle of high school friends that centered on the old band. Mason and Craig were up early every day and gone before Marci came downstairs, but yesterday she caught them, and she and Mason had coffee while Craig readied the van.
“I’m sorry to hear about Elizabeth,” she said. Marci moved about the kitchen, putting breakfast things away and loading the dishwasher. She wore a brown checked tweed jacket and a snug black skirt. Mason had been surprised by her appearance every time he’d seen her.
“Right,” he said. “We were good for a while, and then we fell asleep at the wheel.”
She looked at him questioningly. “There’s a metaphor.”
“And?” he said.
“As opposed to the truth.”
“It was my fault. It still sounds like a metaphor. I don’t have an answer for it except to know I won’t be that guy again.” When he went into this place in his thoughts, he shook his head, and he shook his head now. “I’m a success, you know. You get a couple of divorces with that.”
She folded her arms and nodded.
Since they weren’t playing games, he went ahead. “It hurts. I hurt some people. You don’t start out to hurt anyone, but I evolved, we’ll say. I felt bulletproof, which means arrogant and careless, and I lost true north and made my own personal mess. I’m glad to have this house to pound on.”
“Well,” she said. “I’m sorry. We met her at the wedding . . .”
“Seventeen years ago.”
“She seemed nice.”
“She is nice,” he said. “And she’s a success too. Denver’s full of success.”
“I’m going to rinse this pot. You want another cup?” She held up the glass carafe.
“I do.” She poured the coffee. “You’ve got a fine character in Larry,” Mason said. “He’s brighter than we ever were.”
“He’s seventeen. You were a genius at seventeen too.” She had lifted a white paper box of pamphlets for the museum show onto the counter and taped it shut.
“My dad, who was not a poet, said that part of us is always seventeen.”
“Could be.”
“I’ll carry that down for you,” Mason said, standing. “Larry says you’re a ticket.”
“Meaning?”
“I wouldn’t know. Just a metaphor. I’d say you have the look of a successful person.”
“Oh, for chrissakes, Mason. A woman wears a suit to work in a small town, and she’s lost?”