The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [8]
“Cut. Cut!” Barry said. “Will someone please explain what this necklace has to do with you and Dad getting married?”
“Silver,” their mother said. “That’s what you give on someone’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.”
Barry leaned back, staring fiercely at the trees. “Got it,” he said.
“It was a sweet thing to do,” their mother said, but without the conviction Phoebe longed for.
Barry did not reply. Phoebe followed his gaze to a long, rainbow-striped kite twisting just above the trees. A muscle jumped near his jaw. “Don’t be mad, Bear,” she said.
“Oh, I see. Now it’s my fault.”
Their mother’s shoulders fell. Phoebe sensed her defeat and blamed herself, getting the year wrong. She looked at the trees, an old man tanning his face and chest with a blinding foil bib. Beneath all this lay a frame of past events, a structure upon which the present was stretched like a skin. A mistake in that frame made the world appear senseless—clouds, dogs, kids with fluorescent yo-yos—how did they fit? What did they mean? “’Fifty-two,” Phoebe said, trying to calm herself. “I can’t believe it was ’52.”
Barry opened his mouth to reply, then exhaled. Their mother took Phoebe’s hand in her own, slim and warm, full of strong veins. Phoebe relaxed. Her mother saw the frame; she saw everything.
It was time for their mother to go to her office. She worked often on weekends, a fact that drove Barry to paroxysms of rage at her boss, Jack Lamont. They rode in silence to her building, on Post Street. “I have the most wonderful children in the world,” their mother said, kissing them both as she left the car. Phoebe remained slumped in the backseat, leaving Barry alone in front. As he roared down Pine Street, running lights the instant before they turned green, she shut her eyes, trying to pinpoint when exactly it was that she and her brother had first turned against each other. But no matter how far back she went, it seemed already to have happened.
In the driveway Barry killed the engine. “I want to talk to you,” he said, leading the way to the house. All Phoebe’s life they had lived in this same sprawling Victorian on Clay Street. In recent years it had gone a bit to seed, the paint dull and chipped, overgrown trees leaning drunkenly at the windows. The third floor had been sealed off years ago, rented out as a separate apartment.
Barry followed Phoebe into the kitchen. “Sit,” he said, pointing at a chair. She obeyed, heart racing. “This has to end, Phoebe. You know it.”
“What?” Phoebe said. But he was right. She did know.
“You and Mom,” he said. “How you’ve been living.”
“But you’re hardly ever around.”
“That’s right,” Barry rejoined with energy. “It’s physically painful for me to come inside this house! I mean, Jesus, Phoebe, it’s been years and nothing’s changed; it’s like Great Expectations.”
Phoebe listened in dread. He was right, she thought, he must be right. She’d read Great Expectations, but couldn’t think which part he meant.
“You, I’m not worried about,” Barry went on. “You’re about to start college. But Mom, Jesus. Alone in this house, that asshole boss eating up all her time and she’s forty-seven years old, Phoebe. Think about it. Forty-seven.”
“But I’m not going to leave her,” Phoebe cried. “She won’t be alone ever.”
It was the wrong answer. Barry veered toward her, nearly wild-eyed. “Phoebe, don’t you get it?” he shouted. “You have to leave, that’s my whole goddamn point! You’re not what she needs anymore.”
“So that’s why you gave her that stuff,” Phoebe said, angry now. “So she can catch a new husband before it’s too late.”
“To put it crassly.” There was a pause, then Barry went on in a quieter voice. “After Faith, I don’t know, Mom just froze. It’s tragic.”
“You mean because of that one guy?”
“The only guy since Dad! And Mom was in love with Claude—”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“But after Faith died she just—”
“Stop it, Bear.” Phoebe covered her ears. But she could