Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [88]
“Thirteen,” said Joe, after thinking it over.
“Thirteen years old, naturally a difficult … I wouldn’t even mention it, except that when I suggested we have a talk he just wrenched away and ran out, and never returned. Now we notice that you, Mr. St. Ambrose, that you drop him off for mass every Sunday, but in fact he’s stopped coming inside and simply sits out front on the steps and watches the traffic. He’s, you might say, playing hooky, but—”
“Shoot,” said Joe. “I get up specially on a Sunday morning to drive him there and he plays hooky?”
“But my point is—”
“I don’t know why he wants to go anyhow. He’s the only one of them that does.”
“But it’s his withdrawn behavior that worries me,” the priest said, “more than his church attendance. Though it might not be a bad idea if, perhaps, you accompanied him to mass sometime.”
“Me? Hell, I’m not even Catholic.”
“Or I don’t suppose you, Dr. Tull …”
Both men seemed to be waiting for her. Jenny was wondering about the baby’s diaper, which bulged suspiciously, but she gathered her thoughts and said, “Oh, no, goodness, I really wouldn’t have the faintest—” She laughed, covering her mouth—a gesture she had. “Besides,” she said, “it was Greta who was the Catholic. Slevin’s mother.”
“I see. Well, the important thing—”
“I don’t know why Slevin goes to church. And to Greta’s church, her old one, clear across town.”
“Does he communicate with his mother now?”
“Oh, no, she’s never been back. Got a quickie divorce in Idaho and that’s the last we heard.”
“Are there any, ah, step-family problems?”
“Step-family?” Jenny said. “Well, no. Or yes. I don’t know. There would be, probably; of course these things are never easy … only life is so rushed around here, there really isn’t time.”
“Slevin is very fond of Jenny,” Joe told the priest.
“Why, thank you, honey,” Jenny said.
“She won him right over; she’s got him trailing after her anyplace she goes. She’s so cool and jokey with kids, you know.”
“Well, I try,” Jenny said. “I do make an effort. But you never can be sure. That age is very secretive.”
“Perhaps I’ll suggest that he stop by and visit me,” the priest said.
“If you like.”
“Just to gab, I’ll say, chew the fat …”
Jenny could see that it would never work out.
She walked him to the door, strolling with her hands deep in her skirt pockets. “I hope,” she said, “you haven’t got the wrong idea about us. I mean, Joe’s an excellent father, honestly he is; he’s always been good with Slevin.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh, when I compare him with some others I could name!” Jenny said. She had a habit, with disapproving people, of talking a little too much, and she knew it. As they crossed the hall, she said, “Sam Wiley, for instance—my second husband. Becky’s father. You’d die if you ever saw Sam. He was a painter, one of those graceful compact small types I’ve never trusted since. Totally shiftless. Totally unreliable. He left me before Becky was born, moved in with a model named Adar Bagned.”
She opened the front door. A fine, fresh mist blew in and she took a deep breath. “Oh, lovely,” she said. “But isn’t that a hilarious name? For the longest time I kept trying to turn it around, thinking it must make more sense if I read it off backward. Goodbye, then, Father. Thanks for dropping in.”
She closed the door on him and went off to fix the children’s supper.
This would be a very nice house, Jenny was fond of saying, if only the third-floor bathtub didn’t drain through the dining