A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [83]
“Okay! Here you go!” She laughed and drove her fist into his shoulder. “Have some punch!”
“Oh,” he said after a moment. “Some punch. I get it.” He tried to smile.
“I think you hurt him! Poor Uncle Gordon,” Delores called as Annie ran off, giggling. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? She looks so much like her mother. And Jimmy, God, he reminds me so much of Dennis.” She sighed. “It’s amazing when you think of it. I mean, having a child that’s so much like you and yet they’re their own person. My sister Babbie said with her first baby it was all like such a miracle. But then when the second one came along it hit her, that these were really real people and not just babies she was bringing into this really real world.”
In the corner of the yard, an intense badminton volley continued over a drooping net. Dennis watched with his arm around Lisa, talking to Father Hensile and a man he’d met earlier, an older man leaning on hand braces.
“That’s Ernie,” Delores said. “He owns a company that makes umbrellas. They’re famous for their golf umbrellas.”
Umbrellas, he thought with a pang. The poor guy can’t even hold an umbrella.
“They look so happy,” Delores said after a moment.
“Do you think she knows?” Gordon said. There was a rasp of leaves in the quick wind.
“You mean about that night?” She leaned toward him, continuing in the same informative tone. “Probably not that. But she knows Dennis, so she knows. How could she not? He’s always been a ladies’ man.”
He stared at them, his family, his stability and mooring point. Without them he had nothing. No one. Dennis’s hand dangled over Lisa’s shoulder. Her arm was tight around his waist. If Delores was right, he didn’t know which was more upsetting, their easy pretense or the false intimacy. It changes everything. Cheapens it. His brother had everything but wanted more. Didn’t he know what could happen? Didn’t he care? One wrong move, a misstep, that’s all. He gripped the chair arms, but he wanted to leave.
“Gordon?” Delores touched his wrist. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“You look so . . . so sad. Do you feel all right?”
Dennis and Lisa walked hand in hand toward Lisa’s parents. Annie was sprawled in her grandfather’s lap, head back on his shoulder. Mrs. Harrington gestured, and Dennis leaned close. Whatever she whispered made him suddenly seize Annie as if to run off with her. With all the adults laughing, Annie struggled free and leaped back into her grandfather’s outstretched arms.
“How could he do that? What’s wrong with him?” Gordon said.
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with him.” Her hand pressed on his arm. “Some men just . . . well, they need more than others, that’s all.”
“Need more what?”
“They need the respectability and the security that comes with being married, but they have other needs, too. They need someone who understands them, who knows what . . . what those needs are. Someone who . . . someone who doesn’t expect much back.” Her voice faltered. “He’d never leave Lisa, though, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
He watched her try to scrape a ketchup stain from her pant leg with a fingernail thick with fuchsia polish. She has no good sense, no judgment, he thought. Her kindness to Jada Fossum now seemed only careless and indiscriminate, an act of giving, meritless because of its easy availability, because she couldn’t say no. Her charity was earthy and promiscuous. She had done it not for the girl’s sake or his, but for her own. In helping others, she was pleasuring herself. It was a way of insinuating herself into people’s lives, feeding off their needs and their loneliness.
Delores drove slowly. She lingered at stop signs, waiting so long after lights turned green that cars had to sound their horns before she moved on.
“Well, thank you,” he said, opening his door when she finally pulled up in front of his house.
“I wonder how the puppy’s doing. I hope Jada’s still giving him the medicine. Dr. Loop said she should use it all up.”
“Well, thanks again.” He managed to get one foot out onto the street.
“Do you know she can barely read?”
“Really? She seems smart