Adam Haslett - Imagine Me Gone

For the longest time, I didn’t have the energy to do anything to the yard. But eventually I dug up the old beds that had gone to seed, and tilled a larger patch in the back for a garden. I cut off the lower branches of the trees that blocked out the sun, and took the evergreen bushes that had climbed up past the windowsills down to their stumps. The garden doesn’t amount to anything grand — daffodils, tulips, a few rosebushes, some tomatoes and herbs. But there’s satisfaction in it.

Alec, whose chicken is actually quite tasty, explains to Michael how a thirty-year mortgage works, speaking to him like a tutor incensed by the dimness of his charge. He’s trying to get through to his brother that I’m still paying for the house, and will be for years, which is why, he says, Michael can’t keep relying on me to pay his student loans for him.

“What business is that of yours?” Celia retorts, instinctively shielding Michael, who keeps his eyes on the table. “She can do whatever she wants to. You’re obsessed with money.”

I’m inclined to agree with her, but I don’t say so just now, as it seems unfair to Alec.

“I had an interview this week,” Michael interjects. This comes as a surprise. I’ve heard nothing of it. He usually tells me everything, in great detail. “It’s a record distributor. They’re not sure they have the money yet. She said she’d let me know soon.”

“That’s good,” Alec says, more softly now, chastened by the news.

He gets so frustrated with Michael. They think that I don’t see these things, that I’m distracted or exhausted. But I see them as clearly as when they were little, chasing each other around the octagonal house, shrieking in the yard, Alec forever wanting his brother’s attention. Most all of who they are now was there then. They trace themselves no further back than adolescence because that’s when they began getting their ideas. But so much of them has nothing to do with all that. They are their natures. Which they’d shout me down for saying.

For dessert, Michael is kind enough to split a berry tart with me; he leaves me most of the filling, and I leave him the crust.

When the bill arrives, I reach for it first, and am astounded by what I see. Michael and Alec had one beer each; there were three entrées, a soup, and two desserts. And yet you’d think we’d emptied the cellar and kitchen. When I dare to express my disbelief, they exhale in unison.

The trouble is that my direct deposit isn’t for two more days, and my checking account’s off because of Christmas. They should have just let me cook. Michael didn’t even finish his pork chop. I reach into my handbag and get out my credit card, but Alec says, “You’re not paying.”

“Don’t be silly, there’s no reason for you all to do this. It’s too much. Really, it is.”

He’s counting the bills Celia has handed him from her wallet. From his messenger bag, Michael produces a ten, which he holds out sheepishly to his brother. Alec takes it without looking up and adds it to the count, which Celia follows from across the table. He puts the cash in his wallet and clicks a Visa down against the bill, closing the plastic folder over it and sliding it to the edge of the table. I’m still holding my card out but he ignores it. I just can’t help wishing we’d gone somewhere less lavish. I appreciate their intention to treat me to something, but I’d honestly be more relaxed at home.

We wait in our own little zone of silence while the nice young waitress takes our bill to the register. A moment later she is at our shoulders again.

“So this got declined,” she says. “Did you want to try another card? Cash is fine too.”

“Yes, another card,” I say, holding mine up to her, but Alec has already snatched the bill and tells her we’ll need another minute. “Now come on,” I say, “don’t be ridiculous,” but he’s left the table, bill in hand, and is headed out the front door of the restaurant into the beginning of the snow.

“Of course,” I say to the other two, “there are perfectly nice places that aren’t quite so expensive as this.”

Celia shoots a glance at me in a clear warning of anger. She’s the only one who looks at me that way, who can wither me with my failings so easily. All I didn’t protect her from is right there on the surface still, in her shiny black eyes.

“It wasn’t my idea,” she says. “It was Alec’s.”

“Did he go to get cash?” Michael asks, as if he materialized at the table seconds ago and has no idea what is transpiring.

“Yes,” Celia says.

A woman at the door waiting to sit down with her family glares at us, as if our delay in paying were a purposeful goad to her. I look the other way, at a couple in their late fifties who are eating one table over with a young man in a blue blazer and a young pregnant woman who is either their daughter or daughter-in-law. By the horsey features she shares with the older woman, I’m guessing she’s the daughter. I noticed the husband earlier, when we came in, consulting with the waitress over the wine list. John was no expert, but he always chose the wine, and took great care in doing it, which I appreciated, making me old-fashioned, I’m sure.

Alec takes the bill straight to the cashier’s podium and disposes of it there. We gather our coats up and follow him into the parking lot.

The snowflakes are small and dry, floating like dandelion seeds over the tops of the cars. They haven’t begun to stick and are barely visible on the drive home, even looking for them as I do from the backseat, gazing over the darkened public school athletic fields, where only Celia did much playing, and into the yards of the houses, and across the lawn in front of the town hall, sights I take in now as I never do when driving by myself.

It’s inevitable, I suppose, that when they’re here I feel guilt for having dragged them back, knowing that they’d rather be getting on with their lives apart from me and this place, and yet their presence is such a comfort, the chance to be able at least to shelter and feed them, no matter how powerless I am to help them out in the world. Even their size is comforting, how they take up so much more space than they used to, their bodies warm and full, a good in themselves, not nearly so fleeting as all their worries.

I’ve vacuumed the house, tidied and dusted in the hopes Michael and Alec won’t be quite so affected by whatever it is in the air that bothers them. None of them seems to notice, but then they’ve just arrived so I suppose there’s no reason they should.

It’s Michael who resists the place the most, though he lives the closest and is here most often. It’s been true since we first moved here.

From the kitchen, I hear Alec sneeze, followed by the tap and release of Michael opening a bottle of beer. Celia’s bag knocks against the spindles as she climbs the staircase.

It’s only when they return and I see these rooms through their eyes that I realize how little of the inside I’ve changed. I did strip off the dried-grass wallpaper in the study and paint over the dining room’s drab green walls with a few coats of solid white, but most everything else I’ve left as it was: a watercolor landscape we were given as a wedding gift still hangs over the couch; the side tables I found decades ago at a stall in Chelsea sit on either side of it, supporting the fluted-glass lamps my parents gave us for our wedding, and which we had in our living room in Samoset. When they’re not around I see right through these objects, back to when the five of us were all together.

It’s late already, but if I go straight up for my bath, I’ll miss the chance to sit with them a little longer, so I fold the paper to the crossword and take a seat by the empty fireplace, waiting for them to settle.