A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [110]
“I just need—”
“That’s okay, I—”
“—to be alone.”
“—understand.”
Jada came twice to his door, but he would not answer it.
“Gordon!” she called this last time. “Hey, Gordon, you in there? It’s me, Jada. I just gotta ask you something, that’s all.”
He heard her breathing against the door. “Jesus . . .” She sighed and then went away.
His sister-in-law called and left a message, inviting him and Delores out to dinner next Friday night. He called back and said he couldn’t on Friday. She was disappointed. It would be their only free weekend for a while. And then Dennis would be away for a week at the International Oral Surgeons’ Symposium.
“In Bermuda.”
“Bermuda?”
“Yes, it’s one of my favorite places,” Lisa said. “But this year it’s going to be seminars all day long, even some at night, Dennis said, so he doesn’t want me to come. He says it’ll just be too frustrating if I’m out on the beach while he’s stuck in a conference room somewhere.”
He hung up feeling even worse. So now Dennis was going on trips with Jilly Cross. He felt guilty in his silence, and weak. He had tried talking to his brother. He couldn’t say any more to Jilly Cross without enraging Dennis further. Life was going terribly wrong, but he didn’t know how to make it right. The grass below his skeletal rose canes was covered with blighted leaves. Of course his father’s roses would die with the son’s touch. There had been no place for him then, and still there was not. Even in Fortley he had never felt this helpless. He only had to get through each day there. The rules had been basic, primitive in some respects. His expectations had been foolish. It was far too complex here. And insidious. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be.
That night he lay in bed, unable to sleep. He reached for the phone and set it on his chest. After a few minutes he lifted the receiver and pushed in the glowing numbers, all but the last one. He hung up. A few minutes later he tried again but still could not push the last button of Delores’s number. In the morning he woke up startled by the phone looming at eye level, rising and falling with each breath.
CHAPTER 17
“Gordon!” Delores said when he finally opened the door. She had never seen him unshaven. The whiskery stubble made him look old and worn, his eyes faded. “Sorry for all that banging, but I’ve been so worried. I just stopped by the Market. They said you don’t work there anymore.”
He nodded. “Neil fired me. A week and a half ago.” He shrugged, shaking his head as if unable to say more.
“That selfish, no-good bastard,” she blurted over his low voice as he tried to explain how shocked he’d been, too ashamed to tell anyone. Not even his brother. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. As it was, Dennis didn’t want anything to do with him.
Now wait, it wasn’t the disaster he thought it was, she said, then felt like a hypocrite, remembering her own devastation at being fired. But of course Gordon said nothing. People lost jobs for one reason or another all the time, she continued. He’d find another, probably one that paid a whole lot better than the Market had. He was staring at the floor. “Gordon?”
“I’m sorry. I’m not very good at things like this.”
“Things like what?” she asked too quickly, the old dread numbing her heart.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Everything, I guess.”
“What do you mean, everything? Nothing’s everything, Gordon. Nothing is.”
He looked out the side window saying nothing as she drove. Just getting him out of that stale little house had seemed achievement enough, but now, miles from Collerton, her excitement grew. They never went anywhere together. He wouldn’t spend the night at her apartment, so she always went to his house. Though he never said as much, it was obvious she was expected to leave after they had made love. He would turn on all the lights, then slip downstairs to wait while she dressed. Their last time together she had pretended to be asleep. He came back up, gently nudged her awake, and said it was getting late to be driving home alone.