The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [120]
“Oh—Sean,” his mother said. “I didn’t know you were coming in.”
“I wasn’t,” he said, his happy secret shriveling, dying within him, displaced by whatever accident, tragedy, fuck-up had befallen Go-Go. “What’s wrong with him?”
“A little woozy from loss of blood,” his mother said.
“Loss of blood?”
“An accident,” his father said. “Very common this time of year, according to the ER doctor over at St. Agnes. That place is a sea of sliced thumbs and fingers.”
The bandage was on Go-Go’s wrist. Sean looked at it, looked at his father, and decided not to say anything.
While his parents led their youngest son upstairs, Sean went back to the kitchen, examining the knife in the sink. It was clean. The cabbage may have been left behind, but there was time to wash the knife. Or maybe the knife was innocent. Maybe Go-Go had raked something disingenuous across his wrists just to get attention.
Go-Go wore long sleeves to Thanksgiving dinner. Sean thought of taking Tim aside and saying something, but Tim had brought his girl, Arlene, and was too wrapped up in her, wouldn’t leave her alone for more than a minute or two with either parent, although both seemed to like her. And suddenly it was Sunday and it was time for Sean to fly back to St. Louis, and there was never a time, really, to ask anyone—his mother, his father, Go-Go—what had happened the day before Thanksgiving. To this day, he has never told Tim about the incident. What would he tell? He knows nothing. He supposes that he should be the one arguing that Go-Go’s car accident was a suicide, given what he knows. But he believes it was like the Thanksgiving Day incident—not serious, an attempt at an attempt that caught Go-Go off guard by being successful. He was always trying to get attention.
At least, Sean thinks, getting into a cab that would probably cost forty-some dollars, I learned not to try to surprise my parents. What was the point, really? That was Go-Go’s role in the family.
He arrives to a shining house, a cake on the sideboard, the table set for tea. “You didn’t have to do this for me, Ma,” he says, kissing her papery cheek. He likes being reminded that he’s her favorite, even though he knows he’s no longer deserving of the post. How did he and Tim end up switching places in life? How did Tim become the reliable one? And does that make Sean the loudmouth? Sean thinks it’s the difference between Arlene and Vivian. One wife pushes her husband toward his family, the other drags him away. He wonders how Vivian will feel if Duncan falls in with a girl as relentlessly out for her family as Vivian is, as sure that her family does everything right and Duncan’s does everything wrong.
And if it’s not a girl—but Sean’s mind balks, again. He simply has no idea how that works.
“Oh,” his mother flutters, embarrassed. “It’s not for you. I mean, of course I hope you’ll join us, but an old friend is stopping by. Do you remember Father Andrew from St. Lawrence?”
“Not really. He came after I was already at Cardinal Gibbons, remember? I remember you talking about him, though. He gave you that Waterford pitcher, the one that Go-Go dropped, and he used to come to the house.”
“Once,” his mother says. “Just the once. For tea.”
“Mom—” Suddenly he wants to ask her about that long-ago Thanksgiving. He wants to ask her about everything, all the things that they weren’t supposed to ask. Why was his father so angry all the time? Why is she sad? Was she always sad and he didn’t notice, or is the sadness new? Is he still her favorite? Does he deserve to be her favorite? What would she think if her only grandson—?
He says: “I’ll clear out, after I’ve had a shower, let you two talk over old times.”
Within an hour, he’s sitting at Monaghan’s Tavern, enjoying a beer, watching ESPN. He feels totally outlaw—a beer