Laura Lippman - The Most Dangerous Thing

“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 at 3 P.M. Sitting in the bar where his father used to go, which probably hasn’t changed much in all that time. He takes out his phone, checks e-mail-a note from Vivian, saying that they’ve landed, all is well, although she’s appalled by the hotel the church group has chosen and is trying to rebook; a few odds and ends from work, even though it’s a holiday on the calendar. He calls up a number that he has left on his log yet never stored in his contacts. He summons it up, puts it down, summons it up, hits the wrong button, finds himself making the call that he honestly wasn’t sure he was going to make until this moment.

McKey doesn’t even have an outgoing message. It seems odd at first, this complete void. He could be speaking to anyone’s phone, even though he’s pressing the number that her phone sent his phone last month, almost as if the technology was calling the shots. He decides the lack of a message is reassuring. McKey, unlike, say, Gwen, doesn’t need to put everything in words. You can’t imagine her with a Facebook page or a blog or a Twitter account. He speaks into the space she has left: “I’m in town. We should get together to talk. All of us-Tim, Gwen, me-or just you and me, whichever you prefer.”

He’s pretty sure which she’s going to prefer.

G ood Friday reminds Gwen of how deeply Catholic Baltimore still is. Although it’s not an official holiday for businesses, many companies offer it as a flex day. And if schools are not already on spring vacation, students are guaranteed the day off. So she has brought Annabelle to her office, never really a good idea. The place fascinates Annabelle-for about forty-five minutes. Then the whining begins. Gwen has parked her in a conference room with a DVD player, a stack of Disney movies, a stapler, and some scratch paper and asked her to “work” on the paper. Like many children, Annabelle yearns to be useful. She quickly abandons the project, curls up in a chair, and begins sucking her thumb as she watches princesses cavort.

“There will be something,” another parent in Gwen’s group told her when she entered the China adoption program. This woman was going back for her second child, and Gwen initially appreciated her advice and expertise. “What do you mean by something?” she asked. They had met-it seems silly now-in a Chinese restaurant up in Towson.

“Well, in our first group, one of the girls was a hoarder. She hoarded immense amounts of food, trash. She was older, almost two. Another child clearly had medical problems. The question was how serious they were. The family had to take a leap of faith to bring her home.”

“And?” Gwen could not believe how nervous she was about the answer to her question, how invested she had become, in the space of a sentence, in a family about which she knew nothing.

“She was fine.”

“Did your daughter-”

“Lily.”

“Yes, Lily. Did she-?”

The woman stared off into space, but that didn’t keep her eyes from welling with tears. “There was a bonding issue. She was very attached to my husband, but she had nothing for me for a long time. It was hard.” She swallowed, blinked, smiled. “But it turned out great. These are such great kids.”

Inevitably, Gwen started trolling the Internet. She lasted about a week on a forum for prospective parents. It was too much, an aggregation of nightmares and dreams.

In the end, she didn’t really have something with Annabelle, other than the expected developmental delays. She had been warned that Annabelle would think her new parents smelled funny and looked funny, that she would stare at the ceiling when overwhelmed. But her daughter had an indomitable spirit. It was a strange thing to think, but Gwen sometimes finds herself wondering how Annabelle would have fared if she hadn’t been adopted. She believes she would have thrived. She believes her daughter would have thrived anywhere. Though Gwen and Karl are important to her, beloved by her, they’re not shaping her in any way. She is who she is. All Gwen can do is stand by, rather helplessly, and love her to pieces.