Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

But no one would take him up on that (a Kazmerow had no business tossing around the subject of the Gaitlins’ angels), and so he proceeded to Wicky. “And last but not least, our charming hostess. Nazdrowie , Wicky!”

“To Wicky,” we chimed in, raising our glasses. (All except for J.P., who was busy with a marshmallow.) Even Opal shyly held up her Pepsi can. Wicky said, “Oh, go on. I didn’t do anything much!”

I saw Dad give Mom a look from under his eyebrows, warning her not to second that.

If a meal is mainly dessert, it’s hard to know when it’s over. Wicky got up to clear, finally, but she refused all offers of help, and so the rest of us went on sitting around the table. I saw my reserve bottles of wine rapidly disappearing. In fact, I suspected Jeff was getting tipsy. “Pass that bottle on down” he said at one point, in his new, fat-man voice. “Who’s hogging the bottle?” And when it turned out to be finished, he sent me for some of his own private stock from the basement. Or the “cellar,” was what he called it. “Fetch me a cabernet from the cellar, will you, Barn? There’s a good fellow.” His accent was becoming just the teeniest bit British.

I rose obediently — I was feeling very sober and responsible, maybe on account of Pop-Pop’s speech — and went through the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement. A fully stocked wooden wine rack sat next to the washing machine. I picked out the most expensive-looking cabernet I could find and climbed the stairs with it.

In the kitchen, Wicky was scraping plates. Her dress was a beige knit, cut narrow as a tube, and she was standing in a way that made her rear end look like two small, tight grapefruits nudging against the fabric. They just called out to be cupped by two hands. They ordered it. I got one of my irresistible urges, and I set the wine bottle on the counter and took a step closer.

My mother said, “Barnaby.”

My heart stopped.

I whirled around and said, “What? I was just getting wine! Jeff asked me to bring up some wine.”

“Yes, but I don’t think we need it, do you? We’ve all had more than enough,” Mom said.

“Oh,” Wicky said, turning. “Should I be making coffee?”

“Let me do it,” Mom told her. “You go out and sit awhile.”

“Why, thank you. That’s so nice of you!” Wicky said.

Of course, she had no idea that Mom claimed the coffee tasted more like tea when Wicky made it.

I grabbed the wine bottle and started to follow Wicky into the dining room, but Mom laid a hand on my arm “Barnaby,” she said again.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I still wasn’t sure if she’d guessed what I’d had in mind for Wicky’s two grapefruits.

“I want you to take this back,” Mom said, and from somewhere in her clothing she brought out a folded powder-blue check.

I said, “Huh?”

“It’s your money.”

“What money?”

She pressed it into my hand. I think it was because it was in the form of a check that I was so slow on the uptake. First I set the wine bottle down on the counter; then I unfolded the check and peered at it for a moment. Pay to the order of Barnaby Gaitlin, Eight thousand seven hundred and no/100 dollars.

“Why?” I asked her.

“I’ve decided not to keep it.”

This didn’t thrill me as much as you might expect. I went on studying the check, hoping it would tell me something further. The space after For had been left blank. If only she had filled it in! I raised my eyes, finally.

“Why?” I asked her again.

“Oh …,” she said, and she turned away and reached for the percolator. “It just seemed the right course of action,” she tossed over her shoulder.

“But you’ve always said I should pay it back.”

“Oh …”

“You said that was the right course of action.”

She noisily ran water into the percolator.

“You just want me to stay fixed in my accustomed role,” I said. “You would feel more comfortable if I went on being indebted.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she told me, shutting off the water.

“Now that I’ve repaid you, you’ve got nothing to hold over me.”

“That’s absurd. You can never repay me.”

“Pardon?”

She wouldn’t answer. She made a big show of measuring out the coffee.

“I just did repay you,” I said.

She kept her lips clamped shut.

“Eighty-seven hundred dollars,” I reminded her. “Every cent. In cold cash.”

She wheeled on me. She said, “Do you honestly believe money will make up for what I went through? Visiting all our high-class neighbors, throwing myself on their mercy, pleading with them not to press charges?”

“I never asked you to do that,” I said.

“ ‘Well, Mrs. Gaitlin, we’ll need to think this over,’ ” she said, putting on a pinched and simpering tone of voice. “ ‘We’ll need to give it some thought,’ they told me. That insufferable Jim McLeod: ‘I doubt if you fully comprehend, Mrs. Gaitlin, what a rare and valuable object that ivory happened to be.’ They loved to see me beg! Upstart Margot Gaitlin. It goes to show, they were thinking: you can take the girl out of Canton, but you can’t take Canton out of the … ‘Just look at her son, if you need proof,’ they said. Oh, always you were my son. I suppose I felt that way myself. Jeff was more related to Dad, but you were related to me. You I had to personally apologize for. You think you can repay me for that? You can never repay me. Not with eight thousand, not with eight hundred thousand! Take your money back.”

“Don’t you wish,” I told her, and I ripped the check in two. Then I made confetti of it, ripping it again and again and letting the little pieces flutter to the floor. My mother just stared — her mouth open, a spoonful of ground coffee suspended between us.

I had imagined that we’d been shouting, but when I stormed into the dining room I realized none of the others had heard us. They were still lounging around the table, and all Jeff said when he saw me was, “Where’s the wine, bro?”

“Oops,” I said, and I made a U-turn into the kitchen and retrieved the bottle. It was no affair of mine how much he drank.

The Pilgrim candles were headless now, their shoulders curly-edged bowls of wax. They looked like torture victims. Wicky rose and blew them out, saying, “Let’s adjourn to the living room, shall we?” By the time Mom brought in the coffee tray, I was on the couch, playing a game of cribbage with Opal. I waved the tray off without looking up, and no one thought anything of it.

Opal had learned cribbage just the day before, her first evening at my parents’, but already she was good at it. I felt kind of proud of her. “Fifteen-two, a run of three for five, and his nobs for six,” she said smartly. I never remembered to call the jack “his nobs.” I said, “Way to go, Ope,” and she sat back and grinned at me. With her legs tucked under her, you could see that the knees of her black tights were about to develop holes. I found that encouraging, somehow.

I had this sudden, startling thought: Would Opal get a visit from her angel, somewhere on down the line?

She was a Gaitlin, after all. Strange to realize that. She did have my last name and at least a few of my genes, even if they weren’t obvious.

Wicky was rocking J.P. to sleep, humming something tuneless. Jeff was poking the fire. (Another patriarchal activity, I guessed.) Sophia sat next to Gram on the love seat, and Dad occupied the one remaining chair. So when Pop-Pop returned from a trip to the John, he had to nudge me down the couch a ways. “Ah, me,” he said, sinking heavily into the cushions. “How’s the car, Barnaby?”