job.
—I know, I say, thinking I’ll wait for a better time to explain. He tends to fuzz out on the worst aspects of reality until he’s ready to grapple with them. I reach out and take his hand.
—Tommy’s going to miss us as much as we’ll miss him, I say.
—You love Tommy, Thad says.
—We all do.
—But you’re going to lose your head.
Thad is more than still now, looking circumspect.
—Ah. I see. Did you let Mom know this? I say, and touch my throat.
—I said Lynie’s going to lose her head.
—Okay. That’s okay. So look, I’m going downstairs to talk with Mom for a while. I think your favorite show’s on soon. Will you come down and watch it with me?
—You’re my favorite show, he says, looking at the rough wood of the train table, touching my name in blue marker there. Sometimes he likes to write my name on surfaces. I hug Thad lightly because I don’t want him arresting suddenly and bashing his head on the table.
—I love you, Thad.
—I love you, Lynie.
*
I’m headed to my room to change when Allison calls me to come downstairs for a minute. I stop and get a scarf out of her top dresser drawer and tie this around my neck, feeling the Marie Antoinette chill in the air. The thing is, Thad’s not always right about his predictions and even if it is true, it might not happen for another fifty or sixty years, and by then maybe I’ll be grateful to lose it.
Allison calls a second time from the library. We have, thanks to my first father, Frank, one the best collections of books on gladiators and ancient Rome in the United States. Some in English, some in Italian, French, and so forth. Many are illustrated. I spend a lot of time hauling volumes up to my room, poring over them, and as much as Allison hates it, taking them into the tub with me.
There’s a Living experience that Allison loves, based on an old television production of Jackie Kennedy’s tour of the White House. And when Allison invites Jackie into our home, so to speak, she complains bitterly that the press has never done a program on our house, on our remarkable library.
—They could shoot it in a similar style to your tour, Allison likes to tell her. —I could wear my large sunglasses. I know our home isn’t as big as the White House, but it is impressive.
—You’d want to give them the history behind the collection, Jackie always says, turning her teacup so the lipstick print faces away from Allison. —How the first book was purchased, what it means to you personally, how each husband enlarged upon or codified the collection. Why don’t you visit us at Hyannisport this summer and we’ll discuss this at length?
In many ways, I think it has been Allison’s most simpatico Living experience—sitting with the president’s femme like that—because Jackie was frozen in a particular slice of time with Jack, and Allison could relate. Sometimes Allison mimics Jackie’s honey-on-melon voice. Coming home from school, I’ve walked in on her giving the tour to the walls. If Allison could be frozen in time, I don’t know which husband she would have about. I suspect Mouse. I imagine she still retained a hopefulness about things then.
Now I drop into an overstuffed library chair across from hers and she hands me one of the bottles of water with Tommy G.’s name printed on the label. It has an illustration of Tommy pouring water over his head, fresh from competition, streams of diluted blood finding his abdominal muscles—the deeply quenched look. We have about three thousand bottles in the basement up on shelves in case it floods.
we know not what we do.
—Mark and Lloyd left, she says, and runs her hands along the arms of her chair, up to the edge and back again.
—Thad told me he took a fall.
—Barely a scratch. But he was pretty startled. Have you had lunch? she asks.
She looks into her glass, clinks the ice cubes together.
—I’m fine.
—You’re always fine, but have you eaten? she
—I know, I say, thinking I’ll wait for a better time to explain. He tends to fuzz out on the worst aspects of reality until he’s ready to grapple with them. I reach out and take his hand.
—Tommy’s going to miss us as much as we’ll miss him, I say.
—You love Tommy, Thad says.
—We all do.
—But you’re going to lose your head.
Thad is more than still now, looking circumspect.
—Ah. I see. Did you let Mom know this? I say, and touch my throat.
—I said Lynie’s going to lose her head.
—Okay. That’s okay. So look, I’m going downstairs to talk with Mom for a while. I think your favorite show’s on soon. Will you come down and watch it with me?
—You’re my favorite show, he says, looking at the rough wood of the train table, touching my name in blue marker there. Sometimes he likes to write my name on surfaces. I hug Thad lightly because I don’t want him arresting suddenly and bashing his head on the table.
—I love you, Thad.
—I love you, Lynie.
*
I’m headed to my room to change when Allison calls me to come downstairs for a minute. I stop and get a scarf out of her top dresser drawer and tie this around my neck, feeling the Marie Antoinette chill in the air. The thing is, Thad’s not always right about his predictions and even if it is true, it might not happen for another fifty or sixty years, and by then maybe I’ll be grateful to lose it.
Allison calls a second time from the library. We have, thanks to my first father, Frank, one the best collections of books on gladiators and ancient Rome in the United States. Some in English, some in Italian, French, and so forth. Many are illustrated. I spend a lot of time hauling volumes up to my room, poring over them, and as much as Allison hates it, taking them into the tub with me.
There’s a Living experience that Allison loves, based on an old television production of Jackie Kennedy’s tour of the White House. And when Allison invites Jackie into our home, so to speak, she complains bitterly that the press has never done a program on our house, on our remarkable library.
—They could shoot it in a similar style to your tour, Allison likes to tell her. —I could wear my large sunglasses. I know our home isn’t as big as the White House, but it is impressive.
—You’d want to give them the history behind the collection, Jackie always says, turning her teacup so the lipstick print faces away from Allison. —How the first book was purchased, what it means to you personally, how each husband enlarged upon or codified the collection. Why don’t you visit us at Hyannisport this summer and we’ll discuss this at length?
In many ways, I think it has been Allison’s most simpatico Living experience—sitting with the president’s femme like that—because Jackie was frozen in a particular slice of time with Jack, and Allison could relate. Sometimes Allison mimics Jackie’s honey-on-melon voice. Coming home from school, I’ve walked in on her giving the tour to the walls. If Allison could be frozen in time, I don’t know which husband she would have about. I suspect Mouse. I imagine she still retained a hopefulness about things then.
Now I drop into an overstuffed library chair across from hers and she hands me one of the bottles of water with Tommy G.’s name printed on the label. It has an illustration of Tommy pouring water over his head, fresh from competition, streams of diluted blood finding his abdominal muscles—the deeply quenched look. We have about three thousand bottles in the basement up on shelves in case it floods.
we know not what we do.
—Mark and Lloyd left, she says, and runs her hands along the arms of her chair, up to the edge and back again.
—Thad told me he took a fall.
—Barely a scratch. But he was pretty startled. Have you had lunch? she asks.
She looks into her glass, clinks the ice cubes together.
—I’m fine.
—You’re always fine, but have you eaten? she
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