The Widower's Tale (50 page)

Turo stepped into the room. "Gotta be off, man."

Robert walked him to the nearest subway stop. They made plans to meet up for the return trip; they wished each other luck with their interviews. Turo took the stairs that led down to the F train. He took them two at a time: as usual, certain of where he was headed.

Back in the apartment, Robert looked around the living room and began to notice the absence of specific objects (an eclectic gang of pillows on the couch, a pink glass chandelier) and the presence of their replacements (a small dark sculpture of a generic father and child, a delicately flowered wing chair). The TV was off; presumably, Lee and Filo had gone to their rooms.

Robert knocked on Lee's door. His cousin's room was painted navy blue, the walls a backdrop to posters of sports figures: Jeter, Favre, Nadal, Beckham, and a fierce-looking martial artist with a face twisted into a grimace and a leg raised toward the camera at an angle that looked totally impossible. "Dude!" said Robert. "Can you do that?"

"I'm not even a brown belt. I'll have to quit anyway, if we move."

"New Jersey has karate," said Robert.

"Tae kwon do."

"Sorry. But that, too."

Lee shrugged. He was lying back on his bed, an iPod tethered to his ears.

Robert sat beside him. "So. How is she? Your dad's girlfriend?"

"Moira?" He shrugged again; did everything matter so little? "She's cool. Tries hard to make us like her, so how can we not? Mom says that might change after they're married. She says to prepare ourselves for if they have a baby."

"She lives here now, though, right? You'd have seen the cracks if she were a phony, dude." Robert was appalled to think that Clover had started an evil-stepmother smear campaign.

"Whatever." Lee sat up. "Want an energy bar or something?" He freed himself from the iPod.

In the kitchen, Robert took a banana from a big cheerful fruit platter (also new), and Lee ate a bowl of dry multicolored breakfast cereal--which would have made Clover flip out.

He had to stop superimposing Aunt Clo on this scene.

"So your friend's like kind of an extremist, isn't he?" asked Lee.

"Turo's a believer in acting out your passions. He's dedicated to saving the earth. I mean, you know, working for people who do more than just talk about the environment, the habits we have to change. Like that."

Lee chewed busily for a moment. "At Thanksgiving? When we were skiing? Like he wanted to connect me with some group down here."

"What group?"

"They do recycling and composting and hand out stuff about saving energy. I've seen them in Prospect Park. I told Dad, and he says the soup kitchen's plenty. Except I have to do that with him and Moira. So I was thinking maybe this summer, after I get back from Mom's, I could maybe volunteer."

Was there no end to Turo's zest for recruiting?

"I think you've got enough going," said Robert. "I mean, with sports and school. I worked my butt off starting about your age."

"You're a genius, though. Mom says everybody doesn't have to go to
Harvard
, that it's a lot of money spent on mostly social connections. She went to U. Mass. and did just fine."

The sound of the apartment door spared Robert from deciding whether or not to defend his school.

"Someone is shoveling again!" The scolding was loud but merry. Lee put down his spoon. Robert turned around. Here she was, the flesh-and-blood Moira, holding two shopping bags against her chest. Paper shopping bags. Doubled. (He had to stop superimposing Turo everywhere, too.)

"Robert! The famously brilliant Robert!" she cried. "A banana? You must be starved!" There followed an awkward physical clash of putting down bags, hugging, introductions, covert assessments, offers of more food. Moira struck Robert as a happy-to-the-core, energetic, overtly maternal woman. She had a midwestern accent and wore, under her coat, a close-fitting beige wool dress you saw only on women who work in business or finance.

In a blink, she'd put a plate of M&M cookies on the table. Homemade. "I'm putting the groceries away, no argument," she said. "But then I'll put you to work. Can you devein shrimp?" she asked Robert.

Weird but true: he liked her. Aunt Clo, in any context, would have loathed her on sight.

Robert hadn't laid eyes on Uncle Todd in two years. He looked exactly the same, except for more gray hair. TV handsome: smooth skin, ordinary features, like he'd stepped from an ad for a Camry or premium cable. Robert couldn't help remembering Clover's claim that her husband might be gay. Did the guy look remotely gay? Robert tried to put this out of his mind as they ate and talked.

Todd acted completely comfortable with Robert--wanted to know all about Robert's parents, about Granddad. Robert told him the big news: that Granddad had a girlfriend. He decided not to mention the cancer. When he'd last seen Granddad, they hadn't talked about it. Robert had been afraid to ask. He knew his mom was treating her, but of course she told him nothing.

"Kudos to Percy," said Uncle Todd. "Fantastic news. It's about time. Though I have to confess, your mom did spill the beans on that."

"He's maybe thinking of selling the house," said Robert. "Maybe moving in with her. He didn't say so, but that's my hunch."

"Wow. That's even bigger news. Leave that house?"

"It's kind of huge for him, and she's this stained-glass artist. She lives in her studio. I went once, with Granddad. It's pretty weird to imagine him hanging around this funky loft all day."

Moira was in the kitchen, making dessert.

"That house," said Uncle Todd. "Clover and I used to have a fantasy we'd end up there. She called it the house of her mother's heart. I don't know how we thought that would happen. Well, obviously, it wasn't meant to be. Either way."

"Guess not." Robert glanced nervously toward the kitchen. How much did Todd and Moira talk about Clover? Because of the kids, maybe a lot. His cousins would now have three parents.

Over strawberry shortcake, Uncle Todd asked Robert about the jobs he was applying for. Robert explained his strategy: do work on the nature side of biology, rather than the medical, up to graduate school.

"If you get one of these jobs, you could live with us for the summer."

"Really?" Robert looked quickly at Moira.

"Moira's idea," said Uncle Todd. "She thinks you'll be a good influence around here." He glanced at Lee's bedroom door. (The cousins had been sent to do homework, which would earn them their share of shortcake.)

Careful to use his napkin, Robert wiped cream off his lips. "But Filo and Lee go to their mom for the summer, right?"

"Well, Filo's off to that riding camp, but Lee's going to stay here through mid-August. He's nearly failing English and social studies, so we're enrolling him in a kind of summer academy. It's right around the corner, here in the Slope. There'd be nothing like it in Matlock."

"We wouldn't charge you a thing," said Moira. "You're family. And I'd get that clunky sewing machine off that desk. All I sew anymore are curtains, and we've got plenty. For the moment anyway." She smiled at Uncle Todd.

Was Robert being signed up as Big Brother? Did it matter? He had practically zero savings. There was no way the stipend from either internship would cover New York expenses. Unfortunately, what this deal might cost him were Aunt Clo's affection and favor. He'd think about that later.

"Wow," he said to Moira. "I don't know what to say."

The whole changing-partners thing had to be something you never got used to, Robert thought as he pulled Garcia Marquez from his pack and turned down the sheets (daisies!) on the narrow bed. Yet people did it all the time, made the necessary adjustments. Did this handicap his parents, who could barely remember anything before Psych 101 back in college, their fateful assignment as lab partners? ("From lab to life. The first thing we shared was a white rat!" Robert's dad loved to say.)

The event Robert had dreaded for months finally came to pass: two weeks before, stopping in the Gato for a double dose of brain-revving caffeine and chocolate, he'd seen Clara, at a table with that guy who'd lived down the hall in her freshman dorm. Stuart Something. Tall as a totem pole. Varsity crew. Button-down shirts under wool sweaters straight from a catalog. Christ,
he
was straight from a catalog. The kind of guy Robert and Clara used to make fun of.

Their linked hands, on the table, framed a plate of carrot cake.

"Hey," said Stuart Something, spotting him first.

"Yeah. Hey," said Robert. He didn't want to look at Clara, but he had to.

"Hi," she said stiffly. "How's it going?"

Robert saw Stuart Something, blushing cotton-candy pink, try to withdraw his hands from Clara's, but she was holding on, making her statement.

"It's going along just fine," Robert said. "For you, too, I see."

His voice shook. Fuck.

She heard it, and her tone softened. "Good to see you."

"Good. Yeah." Only by sheer force of will did he manage to get into line at the counter, rather than flee back out to the Yard. He kept his back to her as he paid and moved toward the door. But when he paused to set down the coffee and put away his wallet, he felt her gaze. Turning briefly, hot-faced, he got the message loud and clear: Clara would never forgive him--and why should she? It was way too late even to apologize.

That night, Turo said, "She is now a callus."

"What?" said Robert.

Turo placed four fingertips on the heel of his opposite hand.

"Each relationship shed leaves a callus, man. Toughens you up."

"Thanks. I don't think I 'shed' her so much as ran her over a few times and left her for dead."

"I'm sorry, man. I don't mean to be cold. Clara was smart. Pretty. Sexy."

"I know what you're going to say. Lots more where she came from."

"You know it's true, my friend. Something we all learn."

"Yeah, and I know I have to learn a ton of stuff I am going to
hate
learning to get any decent job in this cruel world. I know lots of stuff I'd rather not but have to. Don't you?"

"Indeed I do. The next part is sorting out the stuff that really matters."

"Turo? Dude? Can we skip the life lectures just for tonight?"

Thankfully, Turo had dropped it.

Robert's interviews went well. He liked the Adirondack people best--and if he got that job, he'd get to do some fieldwork, collecting water and soil samples, camping out in the woods--so now he didn't know which he'd rather have. To his surprise, he received no texts from Turo before they left the city. In his free time, Robert went to the new MoMA and the Museum of Sex. He went to Williamsburg one night and stayed out late with a girl from his bioethics class who'd found out he was down there, too. No sizzle, but she was cool. He followed her back to a party at a loft where everybody was dancing and smoking weed. Robert was relieved when she left with another guy. He arrived back at the apartment just as Uncle Todd was getting up Monday morning to go to the gym. (A gym obsession; was that gay?)

"Bet you need coffee. Big-time," he said, and simply poured an extra cup.

No awkward questions. They ate toaster waffles and shared the
New York Times
. After Todd left, Robert made breakfast for his cousins while Moira showered and dressed. In a flurry of zipping backpacks, brushing hair, locating boots, they were suddenly gone, leaving Robert blissfully alone. He crashed.

The other two nights, he stayed in the apartment with his cousins, playing games, watching movies. Uncle Todd thanked him for "facilitating two date nights in a single week!"

Yikes. But not gay.
Negativo
.

"Man, you look bleached, like you've been up since I saw you on Friday!" Robert said when his friend got into the car. "No way you are driving."

Turo grimaced. "I took advantage."

"Of whom? Half the frosh co-eds at Barnard?"

"No names, amigo. No names."

"So. No more
senza ragazza?"

"I didn't say that," said Turo. "I am still free as a condor."

"Poetic. I can see you've been waxing poetic."

Turo leaned back.

"How'd the interview go?"

Without opening his eyes, Turo said, "They loved me."

"Don't they always."

Turo slept from the Henry Hudson Bridge to the toll plaza at the exit from the Mass. Pike. "Thank you, my friend," he said quietly when he came to. When Turo was groggy from sleep, the Spanish inflections rose in his speech. Robert would remember, then, how one of the things that had drawn him to Turo in the first place was his unusual history: exotic, though not to be envied.

That night, after they entered the apartment and went their separate ways, Robert pulled his laptop out of his pack and plugged it in. He'd forced himself not to check his e-mail in New York, aware that he had recently become as much an addict to connectedness as the average modern citizen. When he recalled his months off the grid in Costa Rica, sometimes he felt mournful, even depressed. It seemed as if no one--well, not counting Granddad--shared his ambivalence about the dense, sinewed matrix of communication enfolding Robert and everyone he knew. By contast, he thought of his net-shrouded hammock, his tent, the jungle: the industrial symphony of insects at night, monkeys at dawn, birds all day. Was this, too, part of what had drawn him to Turo: nostalgia for life in the tropics?

Predictably, the e-mails were all missable: somebody from chem lab checking an assignment; his mother wondering how his interviews went; his dad sending him (and, according to the address line,
27 more)
a joke about Bush and Katrina. Plus three spamlets that had squirreled their way through his filter.

He was about to close up when an IM from Turo flashed onto the screen.
Big MnM cmg up. U WILL b pt of it!

Robert sighed. He wondered whether, in the utopia Turo pictured, the ways in which to broadcast your words--your voice, images, avatars, aliases, whatever--would increase or decrease. Maybe you had to go off the deep end to find your way toward something simpler, more humble.