The Grown Ups (17 page)

“I was just talking to your mother about tomorrow,” their father said.

Eli and Josh looked quickly over at Suzie and then down at the floor. “We have it covered,” Suzie managed in a voice that was barely controlled.

Their father gave a curt little nod. “I told Sarah that if anything extra needs to be done, just let me know. Although I really think your mother can beat this on her own. She's strong.”

“Fuck off,” Suzie said. “She has a disease. Can she cure that on her own?”

Sarah made a noise that sounded like a baby bird. Suzie shot her mother a look, incredulous that she could still fall for her estranged husband's bullshit.

Suzie knew she should stop, but she couldn't. “Or would you like to take another shot at it? 'Cause I think if you do, the next place we'll be gathered is her funeral.”

Their father looked at Suzie's brothers as if to garner support,
then hung his head in a show of shame. Suzie didn't believe it for a moment.

“Rehab is your only choice, Mom. The last stop. You do understand that?” Sarah Epstein looked down at the blankets and nodded. “Rehab keeps you out of jail. You could have killed someone, and somehow you didn't. Not this time, anyway. So we're clear, right?” She looked over at her father before turning back to her mother. “I'll get you some clothes and bring them back tomorrow.” To her brothers she said, “I'll wait downstairs.”

When she got down to the lobby she made a dash for the double sliding doors at the entrance. She just needed to breathe. She walked along the perimeter of the grounds until she came to a row of benches, all unoccupied, and chose the one at the far end. She wanted to think that her father didn't affect her after all this time, but he did. He always would. Had it really been seven years since she had seen him? Since her freshman year at Harvard, when she told him she didn't need his help?

Suzie sighed. She half thought that she should just walk away from this entire mess right now. Let her brothers and father take on the rehab of Sarah Epstein. Let them do whatever the fuck they wanted. But no matter how badly she wanted to, she couldn't totally abandon her mother.

She rummaged in her bag for her phone. Michael had left two voice mails. The first said he loved her. The second said he was on his way to Boston. Suzie dropped her face into her hands and cried in relief.

The next morning
Suzie arrived at the hospital before anyone else. William Bennett would be the only one accompanying Sarah Epstein to Silver Hill, so Michael had gone to the cafeteria
on the pretense of needing coffee, to give Suzie some time alone with her mother.

The plastic bag the hospital had given Sarah with her belongings contained a dirty canvas tote bag covered in wildflowers that proclaimed: A Weed Is But an Unloved Flower. Seeing it made Suzie cringe, especially after seeing the state of Sarah's gardens. Before Suzie gave the bag to her mother she had gone through it to make sure she didn't have a hidden bottle or mouthwash, anything that could contain alcohol. But there had been only her wallet, some used tissues, and an old issue of
People
magazine.

Suzie had not been prepared for what she found in her mother's bedroom. When she'd opened the door the stench hit her immediately, like a bar the morning after, except this accumulation had been building for years. The instinct to gag was overwhelming and Suzie had to put her hand over her mouth and nose. There were piles of filthy clothes, books, magazines, newspapers, plates, and takeout containers. Bottle after empty bottle of vodka was strewn across the room. The mirrored closet doors that Suzie remembered her mother pirouetting in front of before a date with her father were broken; one was cracked, as if her mother had thrown something at her reflection, the other completely gone. The sheets on the bed were slick and stiff from spilled food and drink. Suzie pushed the bathroom door open with her foot and peered inside. The tub that was large enough for two looked like a tarry black crater.

Suzie backed out of the room and shut the door quickly. Then she asked Josh to take her to the mall. At the drugstore she picked up basic toiletries, a new hairbrush, mini bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and at the last minute a pale pink lipstick, as if her mother were going on some fantastic trip. In a clothing store she had chosen several pairs of pull-on pants because of her mother's
bloated belly, and simple sweater sets to match. She bought everything in size extra-small. Before they returned to the house she had Josh take her back to the hospital so that Sarah would have the clothes for the morning to avoid any delays.

Now, in the hospital, Sarah was nervously pawing at the pressed fabric. She was dressed in a pale blue and brown combination, and even the extra-smalls hung from her wasted frame. Suzie felt defeated. She'd done the best she could, but it wasn't enough. It would never be enough.

Suzie sat on the corner of the bed. “Mom? About Dad? You don't need him. Let yourself get better. Let the doctors help you.”

Her mother winced. “I don't want to be alone.”

Michael returned, carrying a small clutch of carnations from the gift shop. He handed them to Suzie's mother, kissed her cheek, and said something quietly into her ear. Sarah looked dizzy, and Suzie thought she saw her mother blush like a little girl. Michael glanced over at Suzie, caught the look on her face, and excused himself again, ostensibly to go and check on the paperwork that Suzie knew was already completed.

“Mom?” Suzie tried again. “You're not alone.”

Her mother waved a feeble hand. “What do I have?”

Suzie looked at her mother. There was nothing she could say. She wasn't moving back home.

Moments later Michael, Eli, and Josh arrived along with William Bennett. The discharge papers were signed, the court papers filed. William patted his briefcase as Suzie handed him an envelope with a check and all the documentation for her mother: medical records, phone numbers, insurance cards, bank account routing numbers. She looked over her shoulder for her father, afraid at any moment he could show up and derail the plans.

Suzie relaxed only when her mother was loaded into the trans
port van that would deposit her safely in New Canaan, Connecticut, on the doorstep of Silver Hill and William Bennett took his seat next to the driver. She could see the top of her mother's head through the glass, as well as her own reflection. Suzie stood on the curb and watched the van pull away before she took a deep breath and slowly turned back to where Michael and her brothers stood in a knot by the entrance to the hospital.

On the train
back to New York, Suzie rested her head on Michael's shoulder. He let her talk without interruption. She went over the last twenty-four hours, the scene with her father, the condition of the house, the looks on the faces of her brothers when they realized she really had to leave.

Late last night over pizza and beer, she, her brothers, and Michael had come up with a plan for the house. Or really, it had been Michael who organized their thoughts, yellow legal pad at his elbow, who made the lists of things to be done: Dumpsters to be ordered, contractors to be called, a Realtor to be found. There was plenty of money in the bank; Suzie didn't really want to think about the fact that it most likely was from her father. When Sarah got out of rehab, if she was able to live alone, she needed a fresh start, not the house that stank of failure.

Her brothers had committed to making the improvement and selling of the house their summer job, and while Suzie didn't really hold out much hope that they would stick with it, she had no other choice. She and Michael would come back and forth when they could to help, and that would have to be enough.

Now, on the train, Michael held Suzie's hand in his lap. When she was done getting it all out, after they had been quiet for a while, he said, “I want you to marry me, Suzie.”

Suzie said nothing at first. The pulse at the base of her throat fluttered and she pressed a fingertip against it.

“I was going to ask you the other night,” Michael went on, “when we both had off. But then, well—” He shrugged, and Suzie's head slid off his shoulder. Quickly she repositioned it, in time to hear him say, “Somehow this is better.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head.

Suzie rubbed her cheek against the soft cotton of his shirt. She thought about how the night before, Michael had held her in the same bed she had slept in as a teenager, how he had told her that he would help, that he wouldn't leave no matter what happened.

When her parents had agreed to try again, Sarah Epstein had explained to Suzie about
bashert,
the Yiddish term for people brought together by fate. At the time Suzie had thought her mother had just been looking for a reason to welcome her father back. She'd had no idea about what it meant to believe you had found your soul mate. And if that's what her mother really believed she'd had with Suzie's father, then Suzie wanted no part of it.

But now she knew differently. Michael had changed what she thought she knew about love, had shaped the idea of love into something kind and generous and caring. The idea that he could love her forever felt impossible and unpredictable. And still, it was real. No matter what happened next, she could never undo what he had given her. Suzie sat up and leaned back a little so she could see Michael.

His expression was sheepish. “I'm embarrassed I don't have a ring. I hoped we could do that together?”

She touched his arm and smiled. “Yes,” Suzie said quietly, watching Michael's face change as he heard her answer. “Yes,” she said again, laughing as his smile grew. “Yes, yes, yes.”

S
am, come here, take a look.” Marguerite waved to Sam from
the makeshift table in the backyard, a tube of blueprints spread out across the plank of plywood. She and his father were in the beginning stages of a massive remodel that was to include a master suite, a mini gym, and a vaulted-ceiling family room open to a gourmet kitchen. After they put the house back together there were plans for a pool, a pool house, and a hot tub. Sam's father, according to Marguerite, was finally going to live like he deserved. It sounded obnoxious, as if Hunt had no idea how to live until he met Marguerite, but Sam knew that wasn't her intention. She just wanted to make his father happy. Sam had no idea where she planned to put the takeout menus and soy sauce packets in the new kitchen, but he was pretty sure his father would claim a drawer.

The back wall of the house was open to the late-spring breeze, the tarps flapping like flags as Sam walked past the picnic table his mother had found years ago abandoned on a curb. She had made Sam help her lift the table into the back of the station
wagon. All the way home she talked about summer dinners outside, hinting of campfires and s'mores to keep his interest. Now Sam could recall only one dinner on that table. The bugs had been so bad his father and Michael had retreated into the house with their plates, while he'd sat in the flickering candlelight slapping his arms and legs, waiting for his mother to finish a bottle of wine.

Marguerite wanted to include Sam in the kitchen planning process because he worked in a restaurant. He had noticed an awkwardness when she addressed him directly. She seemed very aware that Sam and his father had been alone a lot of years before Marguerite, so she tried even harder. Which was why he guessed that every attempt to engage him seemed based upon his interests, as if he were a well-behaved child at a cocktail party, instead of twenty-four years old. She and Sam had been reduced to having conversations about Marguerite's favorite restaurants, as if he were a Zagat guide and not a line cook in a shitty tapas bar. The kitchen remodel gave them something else altogether.

“Sam!” Marguerite pointed at the drawings again. “Sam, what do you think about soapstone for a sink?”

Sam reached the table and smiled as genuinely as he could. “I don't know a damn thing about soapstone. Professional kitchens are all stainless steel.”

Marguerite frowned at this piece of information. Sam knew she really didn't need his opinion on anything. They both knew that Marguerite had assisted in the building of multiple kitchens because of her family's construction business. She had met Hunt when he represented her family in a wrongful death suit against the manufacturer of the scaffolding that had given way and caused the death of Marguerite's father and two workers.

Sam's stomach gurgled. His father and Marguerite had lured
him out with the promise of lunch, and he was starved. Over Marguerite's shoulder was an earthmover, its pterodactyl-like neck and basket poised to attack. To the left was a Dumpster filled with shards of the back wall of the house. Marguerite, in her crisp white shirt and slim gray skirt, looked impossibly clean amid the destruction. She tapped her index finger against the blueprints. Sam admired the nail, short and buffed to a pale pink.

Sam turned around. He could see his father standing at the open refrigerator as if he might find something inside. The kitchen cabinets and pantry had been cleaned out, most everything passed on to Goodwill. All the doors yawned open as if a gang of hungry people had ravaged the place.

Marguerite smiled widely. She wore no makeup on her tanned face that Sam could tell, and her shoulder-length brown hair was streaked with strands of gray. He genuinely liked her and was really trying to get her to see that. He hoped she would relax soon. “You'll be the first to cook in the new kitchen, okay, Sam? We'll have a party and invite some of the neighbors, your brother and Suzie.” A crease appeared between her eyebrows. “I'll have to see when would be the easiest time for them. Doctors' schedules leave no time for lives.”

From what Sam knew, Marguerite was a widow with no children. She had once been married to a surgeon, but he died when he was only thirty-two, in a car accident on the Hutchinson River Parkway with a tractor-trailer that he never saw coming. Sam hadn't heard much more than that, and he certainly wasn't about to ask.

“Hunt?” Marguerite lifted a hand to shade her eyes. “Hunt? Hunt!” The panic in her voice the last time she called his father's name made Sam turn around. His father was leaning against a support beam, a hand to his chest. He lifted his head only slightly
in acknowledgment. Marguerite ran past Sam and yelled, “Call 911!”

Sam stumbled after her, only to see his father straighten up and wave her off. By the time he got to them Hunt was totally upright, his cheeks ruddy as if rubbed raw from the wind. Marguerite had her hand cupped around his elbow and he had reached out to touch her cheek. Sam, embarrassed by the tender gesture, almost took a step back. “Dad?” he asked.

Hunt turned from Marguerite to Sam. “I'm fine. I only had coffee this morning. I'm fine, really.”

“It doesn't matter what you say, Hunt,” Marguerite said. “We need to get you to the doctor.”

“Marg,” Hunt said gently, “I'm really fine. What I am is starving. Besides, you know Frank Ross is on the golf course right now, it's Saturday, and I don't need to go to the ER and explain my medical history to a stranger only to have them tell me to go home.”

Marguerite did not look convinced. Her fingers went for Hunt's wrist and Sam could tell she was feeling his pulse rate. Sam relaxed at the mention of Johnny Ross's father. He had been the family doctor for years, and Sam had never given it much thought. But now the offhand way in which his father had mentioned him seemed enough to keep them all safe.

“Can we go eat now? Please?” Hunt laughed. “If you let me eat I will allow you to take my pulse all through the meal.”

“That's not funny,” Marguerite said. “At all.” She grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter and rummaged around inside, ultimately producing a small bottle of aspirin. She shook two pills into her palm and handed them to Sam's father. He accepted them and waited for her to give him the bottle of water that she also pulled from her bag.

Sam watched him swallow and then turned back to Marguerite. The tip of her nose was red and her eyes were watery. She returned his gaze and released his father's wrist, but not before she found his fingers and threaded them through her own. “Hunt, maybe we should call Michael,” she said softly. “He can check you out.”

Sam's father held out his tongue as proof he had swallowed the aspirin, and then laughed as if he was hoping to lighten the mood. “Come on, we can talk this over in the car on the way to Stern's. My mouth is watering for pastrami on rye. How about Sammy drives and we sit in the back?” He winked at Marguerite while he fished his keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Sam.

Sam caught the keys midair and turned away from them to walk around the house and to the driveway. He wasn't quite sure who had won back there, if he was driving to the ER or to Stern's. It had scared the hell out of him to see the blood drain from his father's face. Suddenly, instinctively, Sam spun around. “Dad?” Hunt looked up and smiled. His color was back, his eyes looked clear. Sam needed to believe he was okay. He returned his father's smile and joked, “Can you hurry it up? I'm starving.”

Peter Chang purchased
his family home, unable to see himself living anywhere else, and when he graduated from MIT he moved back permanently. By then, Mrs. Chang was happily settled in the Villages, a city-like complex in Florida for retirees that had enough daily activities to fill several bucket lists. Peter and Mrs. Chang joked that the Villages' motto should be: Keep Them Moving Until They Can't.

The formal living room, where Mrs. Chang had kept two white couches and marble end tables with glass figurines, and where they had never been allowed as kids, now functioned as Peter's
office. The large room had been taken over by a leather sofa, three long conference tables, five laptops hooked up to tremendous viewing screens, and notebooks and notebooks of scribbled code. Peter still used the basement as his primary place to unwind, and it was there they sat on the same old broken couch that afternoon before Sam returned to the city. He was tired, feeling the effects of gorging at lunch, and enjoying the silence that only old friends will give each other without question. They passed a joint while Peter showed Sam his latest game, the second in a trilogy. He offered to give Sam a demo copy to take home, and when Sam told him he didn't have a computer or a TV, Peter looked at Sam as if he had suggested technology didn't exist, which Sam supposed for him it didn't. Even his cell phone was a throwaway, and half the time Sam forgot to charge it.

When Sam went upstairs to retrieve some beers he wasn't surprised to see that the kitchen, without Mrs. Chang, was home to a tower of pizza boxes stacked neatly by the back door and a trash can filled with empty takeout coffee cups. The refrigerator held three six-packs of Sam Adams and that was it. He grabbed two beers and went back downstairs. “How do you survive?” he asked Peter.

Peter shrugged and took the beer Sam offered him. “I don't need much. Coffee, pizza, and beer. What else?”

Sam took a swig from the bottle. “Nice kitchen gone to waste.”

“Then you cook in it.” Peter slid a notepad off the trunk in front of the couch. “Anytime, seriously.” He scribbled something while frowning and tapping his foot. “And don't start sounding like Mindy. She shows up from time to time to spend the night and in the morning complains I don't have coffee or even a coffeemaker.”

“What? Like how often?” Sam knew Mindy and Ruthie had
joined Bella on a backpacking trip through Europe after college graduation. Then Ruthie went off to Chicago for a graduate degree in women's studies and Bella to Iowa for an MFA. Sam thought Mindy had stayed in Europe.

Sam made it a point to never ask about Bella, not even to Peter. It was easier that way. But his father always managed to somehow drop her name and whereabouts into their conversations, information most likely culled from Mr. Spade over the watercooler. Thinking about how he had behaved toward Bella felt like poking a hot stick into his soul to see if it was dead yet, so Sam tried very hard not to think about her. But she showed up sometimes in his dreams. Dreams that felt so real he'd spend days afterward trying not to dial her number.

“Once a month?” Peter said.

“Man.” Sam shook his head. Not at the revelation that Peter was content to continue screwing the girl who had treated him like shit since forever, but that he had no one else and a pretty low sex drive. Despite Sam's allergy for attachment, he was horny all the time. “Where is she?”

“Grad school, Sarah Lawrence.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“You could buy a coffeemaker.”

“Why would I do that?”

It occurred to Sam that maybe Peter was enacting his own revenge for how Mindy had treated him all those years by refusing to buy the coffeemaker. “I have an idea. Come into the city and hang out with me some night. I can introduce you around to the group I work with now.” Briefly, he thought of Clara the pastry chef and the tattoo on her lower back that had been revealed to be an owl sitting in the branches of a tree. For a few nights they
had burned fast and furious and then it had died to a simmer when her shift had changed, and he hadn't minded at all. “Maybe you need to get out of here.”

“Why would I do that, Sam?” Peter looked around. “I have everything I need. I like routines. You know me, I've never been a seeker.”

Sam closed his eyes and leaned back against the couch to enjoy his buzz. He realized he had no argument for what Peter had said.

Two days later
, after a morning in court, Sam's father had a heart attack in the lobby of his office building. The security guard whom he had greeted moments before watched Hunt crumple to the floor as if he were, as the guard put it, “taking a knee.”

Sam was the last to arrive at the Mount Sinai ER. He saw Michael and Marguerite in the hallway, but no sign of Suzie, for which he was first relieved, then ashamed. Shouldn't he be thinking of his father, not Suzie Epstein?

Marguerite was standing with her back flattened against the wall. Her eyes were closed and her chin tipped to the ceiling. Sam had no idea if she was religious, but it seemed like she was praying, so he approached mutely. Michael's head was bent over a clipboard. He was wearing his white doctor's coat, a stethoscope draped around his neck. When Sam joined them the first thing he noticed was the gray tint to his brother's skin. He was either terrified or exhausted.

“Where is he?” Sam asked too loudly, feeling a cold sweat break across his back and in his pits.

“Upstairs for tests.” The muscles in Michael's jaw pulsed furiously. “The surgeon is on his way down here now. He's the guy we want.”

Sam nodded. “As in the best?” Marguerite had yet to open her eyes or to acknowledge his arrival.

“Yes, I told you. He's the guy we want.”

Sam nodded again. He wished Marguerite would look at him. “Do you know about Saturday?”

Michael narrowed his eyes at Sam. “Yes, I was told. Today. What the fuck were you thinking?”

Sam thought he heard Marguerite whimper, but he couldn't look at her. He tilted his head in her direction and then shook it from side to side. “We were listening to Dad. He seemed fine. He ate his usual lunch.”

Michael frowned. The pulse throbbed again in his jaw. “Well, he shouldn't have. Technically, Dad has atherosclerosis. Three arteries are almost completely blocked. He presents as a classic case; naturally, his blood pressure is off the charts, that's worrisome but not a surprise. Bypass surgery is the most likely course of treatment.”