The Secret History - Donna Tartt [192]
“He has certainly been quite a help,” said Mrs. Corcoran coolly.
“You bet your boots he has. I don’t know what we would’ve done this week without him. You kids,” said Mr. Corcoran, a hand clamped on Henry’s shoulder, “better hope you’ve got friends like this one. They don’t come along like this every day. No, sir. Why, I’ll never forget, it was Bunny’s first night at Hampden, he called me up on the telephone. ‘Dad,’ he said to me, ‘Dad, you ought to see this nut they gave me for a roommate.’ ‘Stick it out, son,’ I told him, ‘give it a chance’ and before you could spit it was Henry this, Henry that, he’s changing his major from whatever the hell it was to ancient Greek. Tearing off to Italy. Happy as a clam.” The tears were welling in his eyes. “Just goes to show,” he said, shaking Henry’s shoulder with a kind of rough affection. “Never judge a book by its cover. Old Henry here may look like he’s got a stick up his butt but there never breathed a finer fella. Why, just about the last time I spoke to the old Bunster he was all excited about taking off to France with this guy in the summer—”
“Now, Mack,” said Mrs. Corcoran, but it was too late. He was crying again.
It was not as bad as the first time but still it was bad. He threw his arms around Henry and sobbed in his lapel while Henry just stood there, gazing off into the distance with a haggard, stoic calm.
Everyone was embarrassed. Mrs. Corcoran began to pick at the house plants and I, ears burning, was staring at my lap when a door slammed and two young men sauntered into the wide, high-raftered hall. There was no mistaking for an instant who they were. The light was behind them, I couldn’t see either of them very well but they were laughing and talking and, oh, God, what a bright sudden stab in my heart at the echo of Bunny which rang—harsh, derisive, vibrant—through their laughter.
They ignored their father’s tears and marched right up to him. “Hey, Pop,” said the eldest. He was curly haired, about thirty, and looked very much like Bunny in the face. A baby wearing a little cap that said Red Sox was perched high on his hip.
The other brother—freckled, thinner, with a too-dark tan and black circles under his blue eyes—took the baby. “Here,” he said. “Go see Grandpa.”
Mr. Corcoran stopped crying instantly, in mid-sob; he held the baby high in the air and looked up at it adoringly. “Champ!” he shouted. “Did you go for a ride with Daddy and Uncle Brady?”
“We took him to McDonald’s,” said Brady. “Got him a Happy Meal.”
Mr. Corcoran’s jaw dropped in wonder. “Did you eat it all?” he asked the baby. “All that Happy Meal?”
“Say yes,” cooed the baby’s father. “ ‘Yes, Drampaw.’ ”
“That’s baloney, Ted,” said Brady, laughing. “He didn’t eat a bite of it.”
“He got a prize in the box, though, didn’t you? Didn’t you? Huh?”
“Let’s see it,” said Mr. Corcoran, busily prying the baby’s fingers from around it.
“Henry,” said Mrs. Corcoran, “perhaps you’ll help the young lady with her bags and show her to her room. Brady, you can take the boys downstairs.”
Mr. Corcoran had got the prize—a plastic airplane—away from the baby and was making it fly back and forth.
“Look!” he said, in a tone of hushed awe.
“Since it’s only for a night,” Mrs. Corcoran said to us, “I’m sure that no one will mind doubling up.”
As we were leaving with Brady, Mr. Corcoran plumped the baby down on the hearth rug and was rolling around, tickling him. I could hear the baby’s high screams of terror and delight all the way down the stairs.
We were to stay in the basement. Along the back wall, near the Ping-Pong and pool tables, several army cots had been set up, and in the corner was a pile of sleeping bags.
“Isn’t this wretched,” said Francis as soon as we were alone.
“It’s just for tonight.”
“I can’t sleep in rooms with lots of people. I’ll be up all night.”
I sat down on a cot. The room had a damp, unused smell and the light from the lamp over the pool table was greenish and depressing.