You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [12]
Frank shook his head.
“You should see them someday. They’re beautiful things to see.” She spoke in a slow, reflective manner.
“You came home, then,” he asked, “when you left college?”
“Yes, to my parents’ house.” She smiled. “Jack was just starting as an officer down at the bank. He’d spent a year at the state university, read a good deal. He didn’t want to stay here forever. Kept telling me that, because he knew it had been hard for me—coming back. He’d drive me out to the lake in his convertible. And he’d talk about a house in a town out in California. Always California. An orange tree in the backyard, how you could drive with the roof down all year round, a porch with a view of the ocean. I kept thinking of being close to a museum. I could enroll in classes again; it wouldn’t have taken many to finish. And near a city, I might do research. Jack—he’d nod at that. I was a college girl, you see, a catch.” She chuckled. “Twenty-five years ago, that ghost you saw out there—he was a handsome boy.” Her eyes came to rest on the floor by her feet. “Are you married, Dr. Briggs?”
There was a familiarity, almost a caring, to the way she asked the question, as though she were inquiring not for her own information but to give him the chance to tell her.
“No,” he said. “I’m not.”
“Is it something you hope to do?”
He imagined his professors judging him unprofessional for answering these questions. “Yes,” he said, “I’d like to.”
She nodded but made no reply.
“You married soon after you returned?” he asked.
“That’s right. Jason, my first son, he came early on. Of course, it made sense to save money for a while. Get a house here, just for a year or two, before the big move. I imagine you went to a Montessori, didn’t you? Or a country day school—maps on the walls.” She smiled at Frank, a wan, generous smile. “He was so bright, Doctor, from the very beginning. I wanted him to have all that. I really did.
“I’d kept my books from college, and there were the ones Jack had, and some I bought. So while the school taught him George Washington every year, I read to him. I wasn’t a fanatic, I didn’t throw the television out, we didn’t ground him. I read him books after supper and when he got older he read them himself. And I showed him things. I played him records, drove him to Chicago once, took him to the museum. He liked the paintings all right, but you should have seen the look on his face when he saw the height of those buildings and all the people in the streets—delighted, that’s what he was, delighted. I couldn’t stand the idea of him hanging around here, waiting for some dead-end job. Of course that made me a snob, wanting more for him. Those teachers down at the high school, they didn’t like me. Too much trouble.
“Round about when he was fourteen, this place, it started doing its work on him somehow. I could see it happening. The little tough guy stance, afraid of anything that wouldn’t make him popular. His father had started drinking by then. Everything was going to hell around here, prices dropping through the floor, all these farms that couldn’t make a dime. Jack spent his days taking people’s homes and property their families had owned for decades. So it didn’t worry me at first, I figured the man deserved a drink or two when he came home. That was before the bank went under. And as for symptoms, yes, to tell you the truth, I was depressed. I was. Things hadn’t gone like we’d planned. I kept thinking about the girls I’d roomed with, visiting Europe, standing in front of those pictures. I shouldn’t have done that—let myself look back that way. It’s the sort of thing kids notice, the way you’re not really there in the room with them.”
She paused. It appeared to Frank as though she were deciding whether or not to go on. Their eyes met briefly, but he said nothing.
“There was a kid,” she said, eventually. “Jimmy Green. His parents had lost their