Every Last Cuckoo by Kate Maloy Page A

care. She had grown up with potluck.
    At seven on the dot, as Sarah sat in the great room with a glass of wine, she heard Leila holler, “Sadie! Where are you?” Smiling, Sarah pushed herself up from her chair. No one else would dare call her Sadie. She got to the door in time to see Leila stomping snow off her boots and waiting for Addie, who was bumping the car door closed with her hip. Addie bore a casserole like a chalice, holding it out from her stocky, bosomy body in both hands. A strong gust whipped her straight, gun gray hair and the tails of her coat. It sprang up from nowhere, unwrapped her muffler, and escorted her roughly inside.
    Charles came downstairs, smelling of soap, just as Leila was putting her boots on the rubber mat in the foyer and rooting in a tote bag for some fuzzy slippers. Addie handed him the casserole and said, “This should go into the oven to reheat.” Charles brought his sneakered heels together and bowed, lifting the foil that covered the contents. “Curry,” he said, inhaling the spices. “Smells good.” He took the dish into the kitchen and set it on the stove. “Drinks?” he asked over his shoulder as they followed him.
    Addie handed him a jar of chutney she’d taken from her coat pocket and said, “Scotch, rocks.” Leila seconded the order. But Charles already knew what they wanted and reached for the bottle kept just for them.
    Sarah had left her glass of wine in the great room. She headed back that way, ushering Adelaide and Leila before her and leaving Charles to greet the Markses, who were just pulling in. Molly would be late, as always, but she would bring something fragrant with the herbs she grew year-round in her greenhouse.
    When Peter and Vivi came in with Charles, they brought guacamole and corn chips. “I meant to make something more exotic,” Vivi said, hugging Adelaide and Leila, “but Jonathan called from Siberia and we talked too long.” Her angled face was lit with fond joy. Her only child, born when she was forty, was half a world away, and she worried about him, though she would deny it. At twenty-six Jonathan was levelheaded and focused.
    â€œWhat’s new with him?” Addie asked. She had her own soft spot for the boy who used to play his guitar with Addie on piano and Leila on flute. He would make them laugh until they hurt, introducing sly jazz riffs and musical jokes into their classical repertoire, straight-faced and innocent.
    â€œHe’s a hero!” Peter declared, nodding to Vivi to tell the story, which she did with glee, acting out the drama between tree-trunk Jonathan and a scrawny fellow postdoc who went outdoors one night, fell down drunk, and could not, or would not, get up. Jonathan, working late, found him snoring when he went out to let the subzero night dissolve his sleepy stupor. The sodden drunk fought his rescuer, threw up into the snow, and went back to sleep. Jonathan shouldered him like a sack of sticks, lugged him home, and flung him snoring onto his bed. The next morning his friend, a slightly older man from Virginia, looked at Jonathan red-eyed and resentful and said in his soft Tidewater accent, “I would rather be dead than live through this hangover. If you saved me, as I believe you did, I do not thank you.”
    â€œThen you can go shit in your hat,” replied Molly, appearing without a knock or a noise and striking a theatrical pose. She had a drink in her hand and a long paisley shawl over her shoulders. She didn’t smile, but her old eyes glittered.
    Sarah hooted and embraced the old woman—
really
oldwoman, older even than Charles. She giggled as she tried to find the bony body hidden in the depths of the shawl, which tangled them both and splashed Molly’s drink. Scotch. Not her usual, but it had been sitting out on the counter.
    Over the dinner of Italian pie, Greek salad, West Indian curry, and French bread with rosemary and