The Engagements (10 page)

When they first met, Delphine rather liked his name, but over time she had come to regard it as childish. She thought he ought to go back to Parker. She sometimes wondered if he was trading on his youth too much. Every time he got written up in a newspaper, the writer would remark on the fact that he was “just twenty-four.” Twenty-four was hardly young as far as musical prodigies went. But they had been writing that about him since he was only seventeen, only eighteen, only nineteen. When would he reach an age where his talents would stand on their own?

She had once been taken in by what she saw as his rawness, his honesty, and the way these traits seeped into his music. But she no longer thought he was as talented as everyone said. Nor was he raw. Everything he did was cultivated—from the odd charity concert that he’d give only if he was guaranteed coverage in the press, to the way he had built a wall between his family and himself.

James and Sheila lived in a suburb of Cleveland, in a house with a big
backyard, in which an aboveground pool took up more space than seemed reasonable. The house was a good size, but too small for six people, with only four bedrooms. Delphine and P.J. would sleep on a pull-out sofa in the den.

Over dinner, James asked her, “So what’s it like living in France?”

Could she sum that up in a word, or a sentence? What would he say if she asked him about living in America? that,” she said.me. They breath

He continued, “Is everyone over there really as crazy as they say about Jerry Lewis?”

“Dad, shut up,” P.J. said lightly, though he seemed embarrassed. “You know that’s just a dumb stereotype, right?”

“It was a joke,” James said.

“It’s all right,” Delphine said. “Most of my knowledge of America came from watching
I Love Lucy
on television.”

They laughed, everyone easing up a bit.

Sheila said, “The ring looks pretty on you. You have such long, skinny fingers.”

Delphine looked down at it, feeling self-conscious. It was Sheila’s ring, really.

“Do you snag it on things a lot?” Sheila asked. “I had to stop wearing it because it was always getting caught on stuff.”

“Yes!” Delphine said. “I’m a left-hand writer, so I use that hand quite a bit.”

“We say ‘lefty,’ ” P.J. said.

James smiled and shook his head, like she was an adorable yet stupid child. “ ‘Left-hand writer,’ ” he repeated.

They all drank a lot. The wine was dreadful, but she gulped it down as if it were the best she’d ever had.

Sheila cleared the plates and P.J. rose to help her. Delphine wasn’t sure if she should also help. She stood up, but Sheila said, “You’re a guest! Sit!”

Delphine did as she said, still wondering what was really expected as she watched them carry the dishes into the kitchen. Americans so often said one thing when they wanted another.

James was telling her that his dog, Frank, had been listless all week. “Even for a basset hound,” he said with a laugh. “I may have to bring him to the vet tomorrow.”

Delphine nodded, but her ear was trained on what was being said in the next room. She could hear the heat in their voices, but not the words. And then suddenly their volume increased just enough so that she could make
out Sheila saying, “I gave you that ring for Shannon. Not some foreigner who you’d only known for five minutes. Suppose she goes back to her husband and takes it out of the country.”

“You gave it to me to give to the woman I wanted to marry, and that’s Delphine,” he said. “What are you so upset about, anyway? You never even liked that ring.”

“It’s not that. It’s not just the ring.”

“What, then?”

“It’s the fact that she has this husband,” his mother hissed. “I don’t want you to have to go through the rest of your life knowing you broke up a marriage. You’re just a kid. You don’t understand what it means.”

A moment later, she came through the swinging door with a big smile on her face, and offered Delphine a slice of ice cream cake.

When they got into bed that night, she said, “Why did you tell your mother I was married?”

“I don’t know. Because you were. Or are. It was probably dumb of me to think she would be cool with it.”

“You
“So? I gave it to you.”

“Well, why doesn’t she wear it herself? I don’t understand.”

“My father gave her that ring to prove something to himself. It was a stupid thing for him to spend money on when they had none, my mother always thought so. He traded in this old car to buy it. She wore it because she thought it would do something for him—make him feel like more of a man. When they were just kids, he gave her a flat ring that cost nothing, so she could wear it to work at the hospital. That was the ring she loved, not this. This ring is for a totally different kind of woman. Someone like you.”

She realized that he felt fine giving her a ring that was meant for someone else because he saw it as just an object. It was the same reason he could buy the Stradivarius and never wonder whether the Nazis had killed for it.

They lay in bed without touching. Delphine couldn’t sleep. She stared at a photo on the wall, in a frame with the words
HOME SWEET HOME
running around the border. The picture was of a tiny, gray house on the corner of a crowded street. In the background, you could make out a car on cement blocks sitting on the next-door neighbor’s lawn.

Sometime after two a.m. she got up for a glass of water. James was
watching television in the darkened living room. When she saw him there, she turned to go, but he had seen her too, and said, “Come in.”

There were five empty beer bottles lined up like tin soldiers at the base of his chair. He held another in his hand.

P.J. had told her that for as long as he could remember, his father had been a drinker. Not quite a drunk, he said. But close.

“Sit down,” James said.

She sat on the sofa, looked toward the TV.

“Frasier,”
he said. “That’s the name of the show. It’s set in Seattle. Ever been?”

“No,” she said.

“Me neither. They say it’s the best place on earth to have a heart attack. CPR is a public high school graduation requirement there.”

“Oh.”

“That or a casino,” he said. “In the casinos, you’re on camera and someone’s watching you every second. You collapse, somebody’s going to notice.”

“Huh.”

“Sorry, it’s just boring paramedic stuff,” he said.

“It’s not boring.”

“I was part of the first generation. It turns out now that a lot of the things we did back then were wrong. We’d intubate a cardiac arrest patient. Now they say that’s the worst thing you can do. CPR was completely different then. There were a lot more ventilations. In some cases, we were hyperventilating people. It kind of haunts you to think about it. All the patients you thought you were saving, but you weren’t.”

“You must have seen so many awful things,” she said. “Did they have some way of helping you cope?”

“Nowadays we have therapists on staff to talk to the guys. But when I was in the truck, you coped by going to the bar at the Ground Rou all the way back to Massachusetts.f lagnnd after your shift was over and sticking your head under the tap.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, until a commercial for denture cream came on.

“Let’s hope this isn’t the year I start needing that stuff,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“It’s my birthday.”

“Oh, that’s right, it’s past midnight!” she said. “Happy birthday.”

He waved her off, as if he hadn’t been the one to bring it up.

“I hate birthdays,” he said. “Fifty years old. Christ.”

Delphine was shocked to hear his age. He was six years younger than Henri.

There was a newspaper on the coffee table, and he pointed his beer bottle at it.

“I saved that for you,” he said. “There’s an article about him in the Arts section. Ran a couple of months ago. They called us up for a quote.”

“You must be very proud,” she said. The same thing people always said to her.

He swallowed hard, nodded.

“Do you have kids?” he asked, and though it wasn’t impossible, the question struck her as odd.

“No.”

“You want your kids to do better than you did,” he said. “That’s what the American Dream is all about. But it’s hard when they outgrow you. It hurts like hell.”

Delphine wasn’t sure what to say.

“P.J. loves you very much,” she said.

“Of course he does,” James said. “No one said anything about love. Love’s the easy part. It’s just that he can’t stand being around us.”

“No!” she protested.

“We haven’t seen him in a year.”

“He’s so busy,” she said. “I live with him and we barely see each other.”

James nodded, but seemed unconvinced.

“When the older boys were little, I used to take them to redeem cans up at this garage. This was back when we lived in Massachusetts. They loved it. The two of them got to split whatever measly amount of money they made. Parker started going into Boston for violin when he was eight, and about two months into it, he was too good for the cans. He’d duck down in the backseat while Danny and I went in.”

She frowned. “Kids,” she said.

“That was nothing. Do you know he was on Johnny Carson when he was twelve? After that it all started happening so fast. He never really wanted us around. We embarrassed him.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” she said.

“The worst part was that at the same time he was embarrassed of where he came from, he started using us as a story he could tell. Poor kid from a bad family made good.”

“I know that’s not how he thinks,” she said. “If anything, it’s Marcy, his manager, pushing all of that.”

“Right. His manager. These b Providence.

“Everyone has to grow up,” she said.

“Sure. But let me ask you: What do you say to your kid after he has performed for the emperor of Japan and you’ve never even been to California?”

He drank down what remained in the bottle, then got to his feet. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I went off like that. I shouldn’t have.”

“It’s okay.”

“Naw, it’s not,” he said. “This is why I hate birthdays. They get you thinking about your life in such a way. I know he had to give up a lot for his dreams, but what about us? My wife and I grew up in this town outside of Boston, all our friends are there, and Sheila’s family. We uprooted our whole lives and came here so he could study in a prestigious place with a teacher who wanted him. Me in Cleveland? It’s like, well—maybe it’s a little like you in Cleveland.”

She smiled. “Why didn’t you go back to Massachusetts once he left here?”

“Life has a certain momentum. You get attached, even when you don’t plan on it. The younger boys haven’t ever known anyplace but this. We’ve got steady jobs here.” He trailed off. “I’m gonna get one more beer before I turn in. Do you want anything?”

“No thank you,” she said. “I think I’m ready for bed.”

“All right then. See you in the morning. And hey, don’t worry about Sheila. She’s just protective, that’s all. I’m sure you make a great couple.”

Delphine finally fell asleep sometime a

James steered the car onto Morrissey Boulevard. He turned the radio up and spun the dial, but every station was playing Christmas carols and he wasn’t in the mood. He listened to a few verses of “Feliz Navidad” before pushing in whatever tape was already in the deck.

It was the Ides of March. “Vehicle” blared from the speakers, that opening horn solo that made you feel ten times more powerful than you would ever actually be.

He noticed the cruiser in his rearview mirror before the officer hit the siren. When the blue lights flared, his heart began to thump. There were no other cars anywhere nearby.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” he said under his breath. So that was it, then. He pictured Sheila getting the call from the cops. He was a thief now, and he’d been dumb enough to steal from a patient, which meant that in addition to being a criminal, he would also be out of a job again.

James pulled to the right. He thought he might vomit when he had to roll down the window and act like everything was normal. The cruiser picked up speed, getting closer and closer before zooming past him.

He exhaled. Unclenched.

He was still exhausted, but he felt artificially hopped up. The ring was like a living thing in his pocket. He could swear it had a pulse.

James felt disgusted by the whole episode now. How had it all the way back to Massachusetts.8al his inheritancel. The even happened? Maybe he ought to mail the ring back in a plain white envelope. But mail it back to who? If he pawned it, he’d get the money, and no one would ever be the wiser. If he mailed it back, they might somehow trace it to him.

By the time he arrived at his mother’s place, it was close to eight. James tested the front door, and was grateful to find it locked. He knocked, and waited, listening for her footsteps.

She came to the door in her housecoat.

“Merry Christmas!” she said. “Come in out of the cold. Take off your boots! I’ve already had a call from your brother.”

“That’s weird. It’s like five in the morning out there.”