“Is anybody home?” he called out.
“Back here,” Mark called back. “Go through the dining room.”
Gregor went through the dining room. On the far side of it was a door. Through the door was the kitchen with its corner breakfast nook. Mark was sitting at the small round kitchen table, a large-sized paperback book opened and lying down in front of him, a glass of orange juice the size of a small pitcher in his hand.
“Kafka,” Gregor said. “I’m surprised. I’d think he was a little too depressing for you.”
“He is,” Mark said. “But if you think about it, he’s better than people like J. D. Salinger. In the depressing department, I mean. At least he’s got an imagination. Giant cockroaches. Lots of violence. With people like Salinger, everybody sits around having a nervous breakdown about you don’t know what and the world sucks.”
“Right,” Gregor said.
“There’s juice in the refrigerator and Mom had Ms. Vernon get those coffee bags before we came. I’ll put on some water if you want.”
“Please.”
“Luis took your car up the road to Andy’s to get something done to it. Gas. I don’t know. I’ve got the number. When you want him, you’re supposed to call and he’ll come and get you.”
“Luis?”
“Your driver. If you’re going into town, will you drop me at the library? Mom said I could meet her there if I wanted, and God knows I’m bored out here. Mom took Geoff and Grandma out to do some stuff, see the physical therapist and the doctor, like that. They’ve got that stupid woman with them, too. Ms. Vernon.”
“Are you always this awake first thing in the morning?”
“I’ve been up since six. It’s almost ten o’clock. You going to tell me what’s going on here or am I going to have to listen at doors when you talk to my mother?”
Mark was on his feet and moving. Gregor sat down at the little table and let him put a tumbler full of orange juice in front of him—hadn’t the boy ever heard of juice glasses?—and then a thick ceramic mug with a coffee bag in it. The kettle was already on the stove. Mark would have been bustling, except that he was too enormous to manage it.
“So,” Mark said. “What about it? I know I’m only fourteen, but I’m not stupid.”
No, Gregor thought, you’re certainly not stupid. The kettle whistled. He sat back while Mark poured water over the coffee bag. “You said yesterday that you were going to call Jimmy Card,” Gregor said when the water was safely in the cup. “Did you?”
“Yeah. He’s coming out as soon as he can get here. Probably not before tomorrow, or else really late today. He was not happy.”
“I can imagine.”
Mark sat down again. “The thing is,” he said, “this is totally nuts. Mom doesn’t have to be here. Jimmy could have sent people to clear up the details and make sure Grandma ended up in a decent nursing home in Connecticut. It’s not like Grandma even likes her, because she doesn’t. And all that stuff about the publicity is crap. So what’s she doing here?”
“Maybe she wanted to come back and see how it felt, now that she’s successful. Maybe she wanted to let her old friends see how successful she’d become.”
“She doesn’t have any old friends. You know that book, Carrie? Maybe you saw the movie. Mom was Carrie. Except her family wasn’t poor and she was smart. But she was like that. Everybody hated her.”
“All the more reason to come back for a few weeks and let everybody see how well she’s done.”
“You don’t think showing up in People walking into the Oscars on Jimmy Card’s arm is enough for that?”
“She can’t see their faces when they react.”
“Yeah. Okay. Maybe.” Mark slumped, stretching his long legs straight out in front of him. He scratched the side of his face. It was still a smooth face, in most places, but there were patches of beard here and there. In a couple of years, the beard would be full, and he’d have that ticket to teenage popularity, a face that looked old enough not to get carded in liquor stores.
“You met Maris Coleman yet?” he asked.
Gregor shook his head. “That’s the woman that Mr. Card, ah—”
“Thinks is planting the stories in the tabloids. It’s not a secret. Mom knows he thinks that. I think it, too. You met her yet?”
“No.”
“She was here. She came from Hollman. And Mom and Maris both went to Vassar for college, so they were together in college, and from what I can see, Maris was a bitch to Mom there, too. But that isn’t the point. The point is, it’s really weird.”