The Cousins by Rona Jaffe Page B

have hit her in return and made her think twice about abusing him.
    “Why didn’t you stop her?”
    He looked at her and didn’t answer.
    Because she was too fast for him? Maybe. “How could you have let her do that?”
    He just shrugged.
    Because she was his mother, Olivia thought.
    “Do you ever see your mother anymore?” she asked.
    “Yes.” He looked disgusted. “From time to time she insists on visiting. She pretends to be the devoted mother and acts like she can’t remember anything from the past. I won’t let her stay with me. She has to stay with Taylor. I won’t let her in my house.”
    “How does Taylor get along with her?”
    “She can’t stand her either, but she does the best she can.”
    “What’s Earlene doing anyway?”
    “Still living in Santa Fe. She’s got her widow’s pension. Is there any more champagne?”
    “A whole bottle,” Olivia said. “And how about coffee?”
    “Sure. I’ll help you.”
    He cleared the table and started drinking the second bottle of champagne while Olivia made the coffee. She wasn’t even high because he had done most of the consumption. She wondered whether he was drinking so much because stuntmen did, which she had heard; or because he had inherited the tendency from his mother, which was likely; or because he was obviously so unhappy. His depression was palpable, a presence in the room.
    She brought grapes and a plate of biscotti back to the table for dessert, and Grady pulled some photographs out of his wallet. “You still haven’t seen my new house,” he said. “It’s near the one I used to have, which you also didn’t see, but bigger.” He laid the pictures out on the table.
    The house looked like it belonged in an architectural magazine, with high beamed ceilings, fireplaces, a rustic motif and a look of tasteful if slightly fussy luxury, set in a thickly treed area. “It’s beautiful,” Olivia said.
    “There are a few things from Grandma,” he said. “See?”
    “I never understood why you and Taylor wanted to go back to live in Topanga after your horrible childhood,” Olivia said.
    “It’s our home. We like it there.” He dipped his biscotto into his champagne. “You know, it hurt me a lot when Earlene gave my room away.”
    “I guess it was because she needed the money, and you were at boarding school. That’s how she’d think.”
    “Mm. But this house is giving me a lot of trouble. I’m suing the people who sold it to me because they lied and said I could get a variance to build my deck out over the side of the mountain and it turned out I can’t. The deck was half finished and then I found out. I’m not allowed to complete it and I refuse to tear it down so it sits there like an eyesore and every time I look at it I feel sick. I’ve spent a fortune in legal fees already.” To her surprise he was shaking with emotion. Olivia remembered how Aunt Julia used to say that Grady was a perfectionist where his living quarters were concerned.
    “These things take time.”
    “I won’t give up.” He put the photos back into his wallet carefully, as if they were of his loved ones. The sun was going down and the room was getting dark. She wondered where Roger was. “I took a camping trip to Yosemite last month,” Grady said. “It’s very beautiful there.”
    “By yourself?”
    His eyes glittered. “I always find someone to amuse me.” He smiled. “I met this young guy and we were hanging out, and we went to the bar to drink. We ordered drinks and all of a sudden it turns out he’s under twenty-one, which is drinking age in California, and they wouldn’t serve him. It had never occurred to me. So I had to keep ordering the drinks and sneaking them to him. It was pretty funny.”
    What’s so funny about it? Olivia thought. Why are you telling me this story?
    “So we finally had to go back to my tent to drink.”
    Oh sure, back to your tent to drink. Is this a drinking story or a gay story, she wondered, but she was