“You’re going to make it so nice, you’ll have to stay,” Marci said. She’d come in while they were making their strategy, listing tools, materials, inventory. “Start a new life.”
“I just want to stay until it snows.” Mason turned to her, as she rolled the sleeves of a white shirt. After work, she wore a big shirt and Levi’s. “Get some good out of that new roof. Until the snow falls, I’m just a sidekick to Handy here.”
Marci crossed the room with her glass of merlot and sat at the butcher-block table with the two men. “Well, I want to get everybody up here once before that, a dinner or something. Could Jimmy come?”
“There are days,” Mason said. “Kathleen told me he could go out.” They watched a car turn up from the street, its lights now coming up the long drive. “There’s Kathleen,” Marci said. “She’s giving you the tour.”
“It’s a date,” Craig Ralston said.
“It’s my hometown,” Mason said, standing up.
“What should I do about Frank and Kathleen?” Marci asked.
Craig shrugged and said, “Invite them both. They’re big kids. It’s been long enough. I’ll tell Frank not to bring the girl. It’ll just be the old-timers.”
They saw Kathleen stand out of her blue Volvo and wave. “It’d be good to get everybody together,” Mason said. “Let’s do it. I’ll bring the keg and my tambourine.”
“Don’t joke,” Craig said. “We’ll fire up the drums at least.”
“I’m gone,” Mason said. “You two behave. I’ll be home by ten.”
“Touch-up tomorrow,” Craig said. “And I’ll rent that sander for the floors.”
• • •
In Kathleen’s automobile they talked about Jimmy. Mason had made arrangements to pay for the medications, but Kathleen had filed under the state Medicaid plan. “I’ll just get it all,” he had told her.
“He’s indigent,” she said. “It’s covered.”
“We want more than just the standard stuff,” he told her. “I know there are levels of these things.”
“There are. And we’re getting him the best. I know you’ve got money, Mason. It doesn’t exactly work like that. I know what’s available as it comes available. I’ve always gone to the top drawer for all our patients. Jimmy Brand is not the first person with AIDS in Oakpine.”
The speech was a scolding, and Mason took it as such. He’d seen Kathleen a couple times since his return, and he understood she was smarting still or something, maybe it was that she was pinched by the embarrassment of Frank’s decision; she was stiffer than he’d known her. He had felt familiar with the woman until that moment, and now he saw what it was.
Lights were on in the gigantic new homes well back in the thick scrub oak on Oakpine Mountain—these huge yellow plates printed the branchy imbroglio as Kathleen drove them down. He was a stranger come to town, lording it over everybody. He wondered if he’d been too bossy with Craig as well.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you know what to do. If I can help, I will. But don’t let me—”
“I won’t.” She drove down the mountain road.
After a minute of silence, which then folded and magnified, Mason said, “You want to talk this out, or should we just carry on? I’m real good with the latter. I can do it for years. Correct that: did it for years.” Kathleen turned and made a serious face at him, and the way the lost light fell on her cheekbones, Mason could see her freckles, the shadow of them. Didn’t freckles fade?