The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [34]
“I love you, Mattie,” Kathryn said. “You have no idea how much I love you.”
“Oh, Mom, the worst part . . .”
“What?” Kathryn asked, pulling away from her daughter and bracing for another revelation.
“That morning, before Daddy left? He came into my room and asked me if I wanted to go to a Celtics game with him on Friday when he got back. And I was in a bad mood, and I wanted to see what Jason was doing on Friday first, and so I said couldn’t we just wait and see? And I think . . . Oh, I know he was. He was hurt, Mom. You could see it on his face.”
Mattie’s mouth began to contort. She looked considerably younger when she cried, Kathryn thought. Still a child.
How could Kathryn explain to her that such rebuffs happened all the time? Parents got hurt and swallowed it and watched their children leave them, incrementally at first, and then with head-spinning rapidity.
“He understood,” Kathryn said, lying. “He did. Really. He told me before he left.”
“He did?”
“He made a joke about how he was second-string now, but really, he was fine about it. When he jokes about something, it means he’s OK.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
Kathryn nodded her head vigorously, willing her daughter to believe her.
Mattie sniffed. Wiped her upper lip with the back of her hand.
“You have another Kleenex?” she asked.
Kathryn gave her one.
“I’ve cried so much,” Mattie said. “I think my head is going to blow up.”
“I know the feeling,” Kathryn said.
Julia was sitting at the table when they returned. She had made hot chocolate for them both, which seemed to please Mattie. As Kathryn gingerly sipped the hot liquid, she noticed that the bottom lids of Julia’s eyes were reddened, and she was suddenly frightened at the thought of her grandmother crying all alone in her kitchen.
“Robert called,” Julia said.
Kathryn looked up, and Julia nodded.
“I’ll call him from your bedroom,” Kathryn said.
Julia’s room was, oddly, the smallest bedroom in the house. She had always maintained that she didn’t need much space. There was only her own single body in the bed, and she had always lived by the philosophy that less is more. But it was not without charm, a kind of feminine charm that Kathryn associated with women of that generation. Long pleated chintz drapes, an upholstered chair in a peach silk stripe, a pink chenille bedspread, and an item Kathryn hardly ever saw anymore — a dressing table with a skirt. Kathryn had often tried to imagine Julia at that table as a young woman, fixing her long dark hair, perhaps with thoughts of her husband and of the evening to come.
The phone was on the dressing table. A voice Kathryn did not recognize answered on the first ring.
“May I speak to Robert Hart?” she asked.
“Who’s calling?”
“Kathryn Lyons.”
“Just a minute,” the voice said.
She could hear other voices in the background, male voices. She pictured her kitchen filled with men in suits.
“Kathryn.”
“What is it?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m OK.”
“I told your grandmother.”
“I thought you might have.”
“I’m coming to get you.”
“That’s ridiculous. I have a car.”
“Leave it there.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
“I need directions.”
“Robert.”
“There are people here who want to ask you some questions. I think you and I should talk first. Also, you don’t want them at Julia’s house. Not with your daughter there.”
“Robert, you’re scaring me.”
“It’s OK. I’ll be right here with you.”
Kathryn gave him the directions.
“Robert, what questions?”
There was a short silence at the other end of the line. It seemed to her that the silence was absolute, that all the voices in her distant kitchen were suddenly quiet.
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said.