The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [30]
“So,” Mrs. Halloran says, “I guess the young people had quite a night of it.”
“The young people?” Gwen is honestly confused, assumes that Mrs. Halloran is referring to Tim’s daughters, three steely-eyed beauties who give the impression of having said something devastating about someone else in the room. Go-Go’s children are little more than babies, and Sean’s son did not make the trip from Florida. Neither did his wife, come to think of it. There was something about a commitment on his son’s part, something he couldn’t get out of without ruining it for others—a big game, a performance?—and Sean’s wife stayed behind with him.
“You and the boys,” Mrs. Halloran clarifies. “And that Mickey.”
“Thanks for calling me young,” Gwen says. “But I didn’t go out. I had to check on my daughter. Even though I’m staying here, I drive home to put her to bed each night.”
So don’t gossip about me, Doris Halloran. Of course Mrs. Halloran would be within her rights to speculate about Gwen’s marriage. But she can’t know based on the information available to her, so she would be gossiping.
“I just assumed you were all together,” Mrs. Halloran says. “He said you were all out late, talking about old times, and he didn’t think he should drive, so he stayed over at Tim’s.”
“Sean always was the sensible one,” Gwen says.
“Yes, he’s a good boy.” Doris Halloran sips her tea, takes one of the cookies, but holds it in her hand, as if she can’t remember what it is. “All my boys are good boys.”
Gwen notes the present tense in her voice. It is a lie twice-over. Go-Go is no longer anything, and he was never good, everyone knows that. Not bad, but not good. The statement is like this plate of stale, off-brand cookies. Baffling, challenging, passive-aggressive. She decides to agree. “Yes.”
“You know—” Mrs. Halloran says, then pauses significantly, and Gwen realizes she doesn’t know, that she has no idea what Mrs. Halloran is going to say next and that’s actually unusual in life. Even when she told Karl she was leaving him, he wasn’t particularly surprised. “You know, I called Tim’s wife this morning.”
“Is everything okay?”
“There was a pair of gloves, I thought it belonged to one of the girls. Pink ones. Tim said they might be Lisa’s. The funny thing is that Arlene didn’t mention that Sean had stayed over.”
Gwen feels she’s being taunted, but she’s not sure how or why. The only thing she knows is that she wasn’t with the boys last night. But maybe that’s what Mrs. Halloran is trying to find out? The old loyalties kick in, as automatic and destructive as ever.
“Maybe she assumed that he had called you.”
“Why would she assume that?”
“Because Sean has always been the conscientious one, of all of us. He always does the right thing.”
This, apparently, is what Mrs. Halloran has come to hear, or close enough. She finishes her tea and leaves, taking with her the washed plate, her little Trojan horse of an offering.
Gwen goes into the sunroom, now the sickroom. Her father’s awake, alert, staring into space. It’s the aide who sleeps, dozing in her chair, her head bent at a painful angle.
“Poor Doris,” he says in a whisper, careful not to wake the woman who is supposed to be caring for him. So he knows Mrs. Halloran came to call, probably heard their entire conversation but didn’t ask to join them. “I do feel awful that I couldn’t go to the funeral.”
“That’s okay, Dad. I was there. I represented for our family.”
“It’s unnatural,” he says. “To outlive one’s child.”
Gwen knows he’s right, she said as much at the wake. But there’s a part of her that finds it surprising that Go-Go made it to forty. She sees him in her memories, scurrying along high, flimsy branches near power lines, taking his sled down slopes far scarier than so-called Suicide Hill. There was never any joy in his risk taking, come to think of it. He wanted to fall, to be shocked, to hit a tree. Go-Go has been reaching for things and running into things as long as she’s known him. Could a little boy