Elin Hilderbrand - Summerland

Would she be disappointed in him? Would she do the predictable thing and blame Claire? God, he hoped not. Claire was so nervous that she couldn’t eat at all, but Hobby reacted the opposite way. He guzzled down his ginger ale and shoveled in chip after chip loaded up with tangy salsa. His mother had added jalapeños to the salsa, which was something she used to do only when Penny was at a sleepover or away at camp. Penny didn’t eat spicy food; she worried it would damage her vocal cords. And so the fact that Zoe had added jalapeños to the salsa and presumably would be adding jalapeños to the salsa every time she made it from now on- since Penny was dead -further depressed Hobby and made him eat even faster. His manners, which were usually pretty decent, were appalling right now; he knew this, but he couldn’t help himself. Salsa dropped from his chip and stained his khaki shorts. He had crumbs down the front of his shirt. The speed with which he had polished off the ginger ale caused him to emit a loud and prolonged belch that smelled like onions. Claire shook her head at him. She was probably wondering why she had ever allowed herself to couple with such an artless boor. She was probably fearing for the way he would raise their unborn child.

“Excuse me,” he said.

Claire’s eyes looked weary. She was sick, or sick of him, or sick of their situation. They might have been married for forty years already.

“Let’s tell her now,” Claire said. “I can’t just sit here and wait. ”

Hobby brushed the crumbs off the front of his shirt and sat up a little straighter. Yes! Tell her now and get it over with. Waiting was torture. He burped again, more quietly this time. He regretted having eaten so fast.

“Okay,” he said. “I think you’re right. You’re definitely right. We’ll tell her now.”

“Just like we talked about,” Claire said. “You start.”

The phone in the house rang. Hobby’s heart seized. There were ringing phones and there were ringing phones, but this ringing phone was so ill timed that Hobby could imagine only that the person on the other end was someone who had chosen this precise moment to spoil their news. It must be Beatrice McKenzie, the librarian at the Atheneum, or Savannah Major, the principal’s wife, calling to congratulate Zoe after hearing “through the grapevine” that she was going to be a grandmother.

A grandmother. Zoe was forty years old. Hobby burped again.

Inside, Zoe answered the phone, a fact that Hobby found startling. He heard her murmuring, using her private voice. It was the same voice she used when she talked to Jordan on the phone. Hobby wondered if there was any way the phone call could be from him. God, that would be something! But it was the middle of the night in Australia now.

Zoe stepped out onto the deck. She said, “Hobby, can I speak to you for a minute, please?”

Hobby twisted in his chair. His mother’s face was inscrutable, but he was no dummy, it was something bad. She knew. He felt his insides start to roil; he burped again and tasted jalapeños. She knew. Someone else had told her. She wanted him… what? to come inside? She did realize that he had an eight-pound cast on his leg and that moving from one location to another was still an arduous task for him, right? He struggled to his feet. Even on his worst days he moved more gracefully than he was doing right now. Something about his mother’s face and Claire’s face-man, truthfully, Hobby couldn’t even look at Claire’s face, but he knew it was bad-and the hot sun and his aching, itching leg and the goddamned jalapeños in the salsa, and Penny dead, never to not eat jalapeños again or use her vocal cords again: all of these things conspired against him, and his stomach heaved, and he pivoted with the help of one crutch, and then he projectile-vomited off the deck, down into the dune grass below.

“Hobby!” his mother cried.

He vomited again. He hated to admit it, but it felt good, getting the poisonous stuff out. He could hear Claire making unpleasant noises behind him. She was probably going to sympathy-puke. This was like some godawful Monty Python movie. He closed his eyes and saw colors-swirling pink and orange-and he thought, Penny, can you help me here, please? She would probably refuse him. He could just hear her, wherever she was, saying that she was not some angel slave whom he could just summon whenever he got into a tight spot.

A glass of ice water appeared at his elbow. His mother. She said, “Are you okay?”

He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and accepted the water. “Yeah,” he said. “I ate too fast.”

She said, “I really need to talk to you inside. Privately.”

Hobby checked on Claire. She was sitting ramrod straight with her eyes closed and her legs folded in a way that reminded him of a yoga position. He said, “Claire? I’m going in for a minute.”

She nodded, though barely.

Hobby crutched his way inside and followed his mother into the nether regions of the house. Her bedroom. He looked around as though it were a room in a museum. It had been years and years since Hobby had done anything more than peek in here. Penny used to go into their mother’s room all the time, she would spend a string of nights sleeping in Zoe’s bed. Zoe and Penny had been ridiculously close, they’d had that best-friend thing going on, a girl thing, and Hobby had been more than happy to stand clear. Still, there were aspects of the room that Hobby had memorized long ago: the oval mirror with the gilt frame (true, not as big as Penny’s mirror, not even close), the dressing table with the engraved silver brush with the soft white bristles that, as a child, Hobby had liked to rub across his face, the photograph of Zoe and Hobson senior on the steps of the Culinary Institute, both of them in their chef’s whites and toques. A large pink conch shell that Zoe had gotten on a trip she’d taken, alone, to Cabo. The faded quilt on her spindle bed that she’d inherited from her mother’s sister, who had married an Amish man and lived somewhere in Iowa. Over the door, the enamel cross that Zoe had bought in Ravenna, Italy, where she had gone on vacation a million years ago with her parents. The one time Hobby had asked her about the cross, she’d said that she viewed it as a piece of art, not a religious symbol. The cut crystal candy dish filled with beach glass on her night table, next to a stack of books. The bottom book was The Collected Works of M. F. K. Fisher . This was Zoe’s favorite book of all time, and it had been Hobby’s father’s favorite book as well.

All of these things about his mother’s room were as familiar to Hobby as the parts of his own body, and yet somehow he’d forgotten about them.

Why were they talking in her room? Wasn’t the kitchen private enough? Or the hallway? This was very bad. This was what he’d been dreading, or worse.

Zoe closed the door.

Hobby collapsed on the bed. At that moment he yearned for his old body back. He wanted to run away as fast as he could. He wanted to jump fences and swim ponds. Anything to get away.

Penny, help me!

Zoe said, “Lynne Castle just called.”

Hobby thought, Oh, Jesus.

Zoe said, “Demeter is in bad shape. She’s going away to a hospital called Vendever to be treated for alcohol abuse.”

“What?” Hobby said.

“They’re holding her right now at the hospital,” Zoe said. “And she’s asked for one thing before she goes.”

“What’s that?” Hobby said.

“She wants to talk to you.”

Hobby brushed his teeth and splashed cold water on his face. He thought, Demeter wants to talk to me.

In the living room he found Claire lying on the sofa with a wet washcloth over her eyes.