A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [26]
“And did you?”
“No, because she came over. She just came,” he added, though his brother clearly didn’t regard this as the intrusion it had been.
“Well, you dropped the ball, then, Gordon. I mean, after all she’s done for you through the years. So now you’re home and you don’t even call her?”
“I . . .” He felt oddly winded. “I just didn’t get to it.” He took a deep breath. Then another.
“Dennis.” Lisa sighed.
“She’d be someone to do things with, that’s all! Get out of that depressing house and meet people!” Dennis said, not to Gordon but to Lisa, who glared at him.
“I get out. I meet people. Every day I meet interesting people.”
“Where?” Dennis smirked. “At the Nash Street Market? Come on, will ya, Gordon! What kind of a life is that?”
“I—”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this!” Lisa’s voice trembled with anger.
“Don’t you see?” Dennis asked, looking at him now. “It’s the same old thing, isn’t it. Just like coming back here. Instead of taking a chance somewhere else, you’ll just keep on settling for less, won’t you?”
“No!” Gordon spoke quietly but firmly. “I’m just trying to ease into things, that’s all. I don’t want much. I don’t need anything. I’m fine.”
“But you’ve got to want things! You’ve got to be ambitious! Otherwise you might as well be back in there trying to hold up your pants with your elbows all the goddamn time!”
Lisa gripped the table edge with both hands. “How can you talk to your brother like that? Who do you think you are?”
Gordon was shocked. He had seen them bicker occasionally on their visits, but nothing like this. It pained him to be causing this deep anger between them, yet he understood. Dennis loved the idea, the concept, of having his brother back. It was the sweating, grunting, blundering reality of Gordon he couldn’t tolerate. He stood up and said it was getting late; he probably should be going now.
“No. Please, don’t,” Lisa said.
Dennis apologized and asked him not to leave. Gordon continued to stand while on either side the children stared up in wide-eyed intrigue. Even for their sake he couldn’t manage a smile. “Actually, I’m really tired. I think that little bit of beer did me in,” he said, stooping to kiss the top of Lisa’s head.
“I’m just trying to help, that’s all,” Dennis said, hand raised suppliantly.
“No, I know,” he said as Lisa reached back for his arm. “I just hate causing you two any more trouble, that’s all.”
“Believe me, it’s not you.” Lisa squeezed his arm hard.
“She means me,” Dennis said with a rueful smile, then told him again that he was sorry.
He let Dennis take him only as far as the bus stop. He found himself enjoying the rackety bus ride home. The driver, a woman with an orangy buzz cut, kept smiling at him through the mirror. A white-haired woman in soiled turquoise pants was the only other passenger. Clamped between her legs were three bulging shopping bags filled with smaller plastic bags. When he had gotten on the bus, she’d stared angrily out the window.
He knew how she felt. The hardest part of prison life had been not the lack of freedom, but being surrounded constantly by people. He’d always thought he would have been one of the few who could have endured solitary confinement without going off the deep end. But then of course he’d never done anything wrong or broken the rules. That was not to say he’d been a model prisoner. Not like Jackie McBride, who worked at improving not only himself, but everyone around him. The old man thrived on the ruthless complexities of prison society. In another time and place, Jackie might have been an inspiring general or congressman instead of a steel-nerved Mob underling. It had taken Jackie a long time to break through Gordon’s reserve. He had admired Gordon’s pursuit of a college education. While other inmates openly derided Gordon as the “spook,” Jackie considered his aloofness a sign of intellectual superiority. The old man had died two weeks before Gordon got out.
Prison life already seemed so distant that even when he tried to recall them,