Last week, Benny had started coughing and then said, when he had recovered, “I swallowed down the wrong throat”—a Garrett phrase. And he wouldn’t eat hard candies because, like David himself, he hated how they roughened his teeth. Also he called club soda “prickle water,” the way Nicholas used to do, and cut-up orange wedges were “boats,” and pocketbooks were “ladybags.”
“What is the name of that braid that starts high up on little girls’ heads?” David asked Greta one night when they were getting ready for bed.
“High up on their heads?”
“Emily used to have them. They would start with two skeins of hair high up near her temples, very skinny and tight, and then join in with two thicker braids lower down.”
“Oh, a French braid,” Greta said.
“That’s it. And then when she undid them, her hair would still be in ripples, little leftover squiggles, for hours and hours afterward.”
“Yes…”
“Well,” David said, “that’s how families work, too. You think you’re free of them, but you’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.”
Greta started laughing. “You are finding this out just now?” she asked.
He said, “I’m a slow learner, I guess.”
* * *
—
His sister Alice phoned from Florida one evening during supper. Greta was the one who picked up, but after checking the caller ID she passed the receiver to David without speaking. He was surprised to see Alice’s name. （The family wasn’t much for casual phone conversations.） “Alice?” he said. “Everything okay?”
“More or less,” she told him. “How about you?”
“We’re all fine. Got Nicholas and Benny staying with us at the moment.”
“Oh?” she said. “Where’s, um…？”
“Juana’s working on the front lines.”
“Ah,” she said. “But none of you have been sick, right?”
“Not so far, knock on wood.”
“Same down here,” she said. “Which I consider a miracle, since Kevin still insists on playing golf every day with his buddies.”
David clucked, and then waited.
“But why I called,” she said, “I thought you’d like to hear what your other sister’s been up to.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, so there she was, living on her own for the moment because Serena and Jeff have taken Petey to their mountain place for the duration and not even Lily is dumb enough to think she and Serena could stay in a tiny log cabin together without one of them strangling the other…” Alice took a fresh breath. “And,” she said, “this morning Serena gives Lily a call because she’s been feeling so guilty about leaving her to fend for herself, and she asks how things are going in Asheville and Lily says, ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘I guess I might as well tell you: I don’t know how things are going in Asheville, because I happen to have gotten married a while back and moved to Winston-Salem.’？”
“What?” David said. Across the table, Greta raised her eyebrows inquiringly, and Nicholas looked up from slicing Benny’s meat for him.
“I know: right?” Alice said.
“Who’d she marry?” David asked.
“Someone named Henry something who’s a retired history professor. Nobody’d heard a word about him, up till then. Serena says he was certainly not in the picture when they left, and that was only two months ago.”
“Huh,” David said.
“I really thought Lily had settled down some,” Alice said. “I honestly thought she was past such behavior.”
“Well, look at it this way,” David told her. “Now Serena can quit feeling guilty about leaving her to fend for herself.”
“Yes, I guess there is that,” Alice said with a sigh. “And I have to admit Lily’s coming up in the world. From motorcycle mechanic to real-estate agent to history professor; what next?”
“I forgot about the motorcycle mechanic,” David said. “Husband number one, right?”
“Well, he was only around for about a nanosecond,” Alice said.
“I did like Morris, though.”
“Yes, Morris was a sweetheart,” she said, and she sighed again. “Anyhow, I just thought you’d like to know,” she said.
“Everyone else okay? Your kids?”
“They’re fine. Robby’s having to work from home, but who doesn’t, nowadays. Candle’s been laid off for months but Mac’s got his job, so they’re not starving, and Eddie and Claude are still hunkered down in Hampden.”