“He lives in France,” Fenno says primly.
“He hides the lot of us over there, on the other side of the pond. I’m the brave pioneer, the first one to sally forth and visit.”
“I’ve always made it clear you’re welcome, all of you.” Fenno looks uneasy at Tony’s attention to his brother, though it’s not clear whom he wants to protect. Fern remembers, long ago, introducing Anna to Tony, not sure if she wanted them to like or despise each other, seeing safety on both sides.
“After your fashion, yes,” says Dennis.
Tony says wryly, “Oh, I know that fashion. More Helsinki than Milan.”
“Excuse me, but . . . anyone?” Richard’s holding a small object aloft between his fingers. “It’s the real, Rastafarian thing.”
Tony doesn’t answer; Fenno shakes his head. When Richard glances at Fern, she says, “Oh no,” and he grins. “Good girl,” he says.
But Dennis is positively beaming. “My wife would macerate me, but oh yes, I’ll try a bit of that. And my children aren’t around to see how foolish I’ll be.” His hand meets Richard’s over the roses. Fern catches the first whiff of dope. She can count on one hand the number of times she’s tried it—not because she disapproves but because it always scorched her throat and perhaps because she doesn’t like the idea of losing control in some unpredictable way. So the fragrance of marijuana brings her no specific memories, only the general sense that she is refusing a certain kind of intimacy. She feels reluctant, apprehensive, stodgy; she feels flashes of an old indeterminate sadness.
She is contemplating this feeling, even as she tells herself that for once she is in a dissenting majority, when Fenno startles, as if stung or kicked, and reaches into his shirt pocket. He pulls out a compact cell phone and opens it, turns its face toward the candles. He scowls at it, then tucks it back in his pocket.
“Now will you look at that,” says Tony. “Rob Roy girds up for the twenty-first century.”
“Just checking the thing’s on. It’s new; I haven’t actually used it.”
“But you’re on the alert, just in case an order of coffee table books goes astray? Or what? This guy,” Tony says to Richard, “doesn’t even have e-mail.”
“I’m sort of on call, for one of the girls.”
Tony laughs and shakes his head, as if he’s caught his friend at some unsavory scheme. “You mean, at that Lulu’s place?”
“That’s right,” Fenno says agreeably.
Tony turns to Fern. “Now you will love this. Ask the guy what he does with his spare time—I mean, practically does for a living. Go on. Ask him.”
“Oh yes, this is stellar,” says Dennis. He hands the joint to Richard and sits back in his chair.
Fenno leans toward Fern. “What Tony finds so titillating, because he’s never got past his pubescent squeamishness about the birds and bees, is that I volunteer at a drop-in center on the Lower East Side for single girls who are pregnant and waiting to have their babies. It makes him squirm to think of me mixing it up with all that conspicuous fertility.”
“No, I love this, I really do,” says Tony. “I don’t think I know anyone who does anything this Good Samaritan and really enjoys it, does it for the fun, not the do-gooder brownie points. I’m being serious here.”
“Wow. Like you’re a midwife?” Richard giggles. “A mid-husband?”
“Vocational training. I teach a class on composition skills and another on desktop publishing. We produce a small newspaper.”
Tony cuts in. “
Girl Talk.
Soon-to-be-welfare-moms give their opinions on the Mideast peace talks.”
Richard says, “Don’t be catty, I think it’s cool,” but he drapes an arm around Tony’s shoulders. Fern sees Tony pull slightly away.
“Girlspeak,”
Fenno says, “and they give advice to other teenage girls on things like health and diet and love. They research subjects like city services for mothers. Some of it’s a little absurd, I agree, but they’re proud of it. We’re up to six pages, biweekly. If we get a grant I’ve gone out for, we can introduce color and distribute to other school districts.” He seems unruffled by Tony’s goading; he loves describing this part of his life, even if that’s what brings it out into the open.
“So what’s with the phone? Breaking stories on birth control?”
“What’s with the phone is that one of the girls I teach asked me to be her Lamaze coach. She’s due a week from today.”
“La-mahz.” Tony’s laugh is high-pitched, the way it gets when he’s drinking too much wine. “So you, what, took those classes and practiced positions and all that? Chanted ‘Push!’ with all the hubbies?”
“I took the classes, yes,” says Fenno.
“And I bet you loved it.”
“
I’d
love it,” says Dennis. “Entrée into the mysteries of another tribe. I have four children, but my wife’s a bit old-fashioned there. She let me in that room only for the final moments of truth.”
“Your wife’s not old-fashioned,” says Fenno. “She’s what’s known in these parts as a major control freak.” He shakes his head with amusement. “And it’s not mystical, what I learned. It’s a lot of very practical stuff, like why a woman gets heartburn so much when she’s pregnant, why babies are born with conical heads. I know about the best brands of breast pumps, where to lease them, and how to massage a blocked milk duct—a skill I hope I’ll never use. I know all about the pros and cons of
circumcision
.” He leans in for effect, knowing, as Fern does, that under the table all the men’s thighs are tensing.
A wave of loud male laughter follows, and everyone glances at Fern. Richard covers his mouth dramatically, as if to apologize for their boyish reaction.
“All that and runs a bookstore too,” Tony tells her. “Right around the corner from you. Plume!” He says the name with fanfare, and of course she knows it: a watch pocket of a place that catches you off-guard with its cool, Green Mansions interior; not a hole in the wall but a garden in the wall, the kind of shop where you are compelled by its very perfection to buy something, anything, and feel forlorn if you walk out empty-handed.
“That’s a dangerous place, I’ve spent a lot of money there,” says Fern, though in truth it was Jonah who bought so many books there, so many expensive books, for which she would scold him. Books on Giotto, Caravaggio, Goya, Vermeer. Jonah’s mother owns most of them now.
“Thank you,” says Fenno.
They pass the platters back and forth for seconds. Richard and Dennis exchange another round of tokes. Dennis exhales audibly and says, “You’ve got to wonder, what kind of mums could these young girls possibly make?”
“First off,” says Fenno, “a good number give their babies up for adoption. And with those who keep them, the social workers at the center follow up for years. Some of them make very decent mums. Some of them even marry the fathers, though I often wonder if that’s so wise.”
“Oh, my mom had me when she was seventeen,” says Richard. “I hardly know the guy I’m supposed to call Dad. But she’s been just fantastic, I still can’t bear to live too far away from her. We talk on the phone like every other day. Go ahead and laugh, but she’s my best friend.” He looks at Tony, knowing full well who’d laugh first. But Tony just smiles, no comment.
“Well, against all modern logic,” says Dennis, “maybe starting out young isn’t such a bad idea. Maybe you don’t have enough time to take your selfishness for granted. Vee was twenty-four when we had Laurie, and I worried about that. I thought, you know, she should enjoy her freedom longer and rubbish like that, but she was certain. She’s quite the devoted mum.”
“Twenty-four is ten years and a world away from fourteen,” says Fenno.
“Yes, yes, point taken—but think of our mum, getting on to her thirties when she had you. She had all these
routines
that had nothing to do with children, and then she got the dogs. I tell you, I can’t think of a time when I didn’t almost wish I was a puppy; the
pups
were the ones who got that unconditional love we’re all supposed to give our offspring.”
Fenno frowns. “She loved the dogs as you’re supposed to love dogs: consistently.”
“Yes, but also more intimately, with more real attention, don’t you think?” Dennis seems unaware of the corn kernels stuck to his chin. “Like dear old Roger, may he rest in peace. Do you remember the way she kept him close while she was dying? She’d whisper in his ear and nuzzle up with that dog as if he were human. She talked more to him than to Dad!”
Richard laughs. “Well
dogs
. When it comes to love, dogs make pretty steep competition for us people. And rightly so.”
Fern looks at Tony, who hasn’t spoken in a while. His arms are folded, his expression no longer wry as he watches the brothers debate.
“What was your mother like?” she asks him.
“Above reproach.” Typically, his tone discourages any sort of reply.
Looking around the table, Fern pictures these men as sons, little boys adoring and resenting their mothers by turns. She tries to picture the mothers themselves. Richard’s would be pretty in an ordinary way, and flaky, but warm and loyal; perhaps a drinker (the caution inspiring Richard’s near-purity), living in one of those flimsy little houses shaped just like the houses in a Monopoly game. The Scottish mother she envisions as an artistocratic, dog-besotted Brit, a tumble of Jack Russells under her long tweed skirts; her voice loud and trilling but holding the children (when not with a nanny) to quieter standards. Tony’s mother remains a cipher, a generic Madonna behind dark glasses and a long white cane. (How does a blind mother negotiate city streets with a baby? How does she push its carriage, aim a spoon at its bobbing and weaving mouth?)
“So, boys, what makes the perfect mother?” says Fern. “Tony?” She nudges his elbow. “Since yours sounds as if she was.”
He hesitates but says, “Stands up to any bullshit your father deals out.”
Before Fern can ask,
Like, for instance, what kind of bullshit?
Dennis says emphatically, “Just being there when you turn around. That is the cardinal virtue of the perfect mum.”
“Amen to that!” says Richard.
“But that could hardly describe the mother of your children,” Fenno says to Dennis. “Véronique with her ambitious career.”
“You forget that Vee works at home!” Dennis says. “Oh yes, she’s out and about to meet with clients, but she totes the wee’uns along, especially now that she’s in demand, and when she’s in the garden or the office, she’ll drop just about anything at a moment’s notice.”
“As you don’t think our own mum did.”
Fern wonders if it’s because he’s stoned that Dennis seems to take this subject so lightly, that he seems not to notice the stern expression on his older brother’s face. “You know how there were wife-swapping parties way back when?” he says now. “I remember reading about them in some tabloid when I was away at school and thinking, well, what a curious thing it might’ve been if we’d had a chance to mum-swap now and then. You know, see, just see, what it was like to have one of those domestic mums, about the house and baking biscuits, plumping your pillows . . .”
“You’d have been suffocated,” says Fenno.
“Yes well perhaps, perhaps. But didn’t you feel like she ought to have been a bit more regretful, shed just a single tear perhaps, about sending us off to school, to ice-cold washings and canings and all that militaristic rubbish?”
“For God’s sake, they stopped caning by the time you and Davey were there. And everyone we knew got sent away to school, some a lot sooner.”
Dennis pauses, looking at his brother with an odd smile. “You know, she was off on this jaunt to New Zealand when Davey had that awful fever and had to go in hospital because she couldn’t take him home.”
Fenno looks confused and annoyed. “We all got fevers now and then.”
“No, no, this was the mumps or some other pox you’re not supposed to get when you’re twelve. I’ve never asked Davey since, for obvious reasons.”
“You are high as a fucking kite. What are you talking about?”
Van Morrison’s wheedling voice forces itself on the room for a long moment before Dennis lets out a mulish, snorting laugh. “You don’t know that’s what did in his sperm?” He tries to stop laughing but fails. “Oh crikes.”
Fenno says, “You blame Mum for Davey’s getting sick at school?”
Dennis shrugs dramatically. “Silly, isn’t it? And Mum did plenty of things just right. I mean look at us. We love what we do, and isn’t that a rare thing? I think she taught us to hold out for that, I mean by example, don’t you think? All three of us. No coincidence there. And we’re
mates,
I think she made sure of that. . . .”
Fenno appears to be rearranging his napkin in his lap.
“That’s incredibly important, loving what you do,” says Richard. “I love what I do, too.”
There’s a slight pause before Fern says, “What do you do?”
“I groom dogs right now, which is also a fabulous way to meet interesting people, but I’m training to be a veterinary technician.”
Another pause follows, but imperturbable Richard plunges on: “I do housecalls and charge a top rate. I groom Ross Bleckner’s dogs and Kim Basinger’s and once I did Mike Nichols’s, too. He has the most beautiful Gordon setter.”
“Roth Bletchner, is that someone famous?” says Dennis.
“Society painter,” says Tony. “Party animal, mainly. Hangs out at fund-raisers for charity cases like unemployed interior decorators or lifeguards who just came out of the closet. Gets his picture taken with liposucted debutantes.”
“I think you’re jealous,” says Richard. “Ross is a great guy. Not a snob at all. He even asked my advice about the Lyme’s disease vaccine. He has this standard poodle that’s one of the smartest dogs I’ve ever met. She likes to listen to opera while we work. Isn’t that fabulous?”
Tony snorts. “A poodle. Well need you say more.”
“No, no. You’re confusing standards with miniatures and toys. Standard poodles are the real thing, a dog bred for hunting. Steady and smart.”
“The real thing. Well, I stand corrected.” Tony’s hands are poised over his plate, his fingers splayed like talons and blackened by char from the chicken skin. Fern has never seen him so persistently edgy; she doubts he would behave this way if he and Richard were alone. He must be embarrassed before the others that his date (his gigolo?) is this happy-go-lucky dog groomer. But that’s no excuse. What did he think, that the boy would show up for dinner and debate the fallout of Clinton’s impeachment or deconstruct Don DeLillo?