Then there was nothing beneath his feet, all at once, and water was filling his nose and he was sputtering and choking. And he couldn’t call for help because that would mean opening his mouth, so he hoped his father would just guess he needed help; but no, it was Bentley who guessed. “Looks like your boy could use a hand,” he told Robin, and Robin glanced down at David from the dock, and he was wearing the oddest…he was wearing the most peculiar expression.
Nicholas said, “Could this next one be a picture of Uncle Kevin? He looks so young!”
“I couldn’t tell you,” David said, and he turned and walked out of the room.
* * *
—
By August, things in New York were getting better. Juana was returning to her own department, and the nanny was coming back to work, and Nicholas and Benny were going home. David was glad for their sakes, of course, but also he felt sad, and he could tell that Greta did too.
On Nicholas and Benny’s last afternoon, Nicholas made an extra-big grocery-store run for his parents while David and Greta took Benny and the dog for a final walk. They started up Kane Street as usual, but when they reached Noble Road, where David was accustomed to turning right, Benny and John continued straight ahead. Evidently they followed a whole different route when they walked in the afternoons. Benny slowed in front of a house David had never noticed before, and an older woman cutting hydrangeas called, “Hello there, Benny!”
“Hi,” Benny said. “Me and my dad are going home to see my mom tomorrow.”
“You are! Well, isn’t that nice!” She turned to David and Greta. “I know you’ll miss them.”
“We certainly will,” Greta said, but by then Benny was on his way again, flinging a “Bye!” over his shoulder, so David and Greta gave the woman an apologetic wave and turned to follow him.
Approaching the next corner, Benny stopped short, and John stopped too and settled on his haunches. When David and Greta caught up, they found Benny fixated on a bumblebee that was hovering in front of his face. “Just keep walking,” David advised him. “He’s not going to sting you.”
“I think he is,” Benny said.
“No, he’s only warning you off. See those other bees, on the rosebush? He’s protecting them.”
Benny didn’t seem persuaded.
“Want to hear something interesting?” David asked him. “You notice how he’s hanging there right in front of your eyes, right? Well, think about it. That means he knows your eyes are the part of you that will see him. He’s figured out where humans’ true selves are, you might say.”
Benny went on standing where he was, though, and John gave a soft moan and lay down on the sidewalk.
“I did not know that!” Greta told David, clearly just making small talk.
“Oh, yes,” David said, “there’s a lot about insects that might surprise you.” And then, gathering inspiration, “For instance, you know how sometimes you see a beetle in the middle of the sidewalk and you step around it so as not to smush it. Well, I bet you didn’t realize that the beetle rushes home then to tell its friends that it’s finally met up with a kindhearted human being.”
Greta gave a hiss of a laugh and said, “Oh, you!” but Benny turned to ask, “It does?”
“He’s joking,” Greta told him.
At which Benny laughed too. “Grappa, you are crazy,” he said.
And then he resumed walking, the bumblebee forgotten, and the dog picked himself up and shambled after him.
When they were far enough behind so that Benny was out of earshot, Greta told David, “And here you were feeling so anxious before he got here! Remember? But you see how things turned out.”
“It’s been fun,” David admitted.
“Did I not tell you? I said this. It was exactly this way after Nicholas was born.”
“Still, though,” David said, “you can never take it for granted that family members will like each other.”
“Oh, David. Families love each other!”
“？‘Love,’ well, sure. I’m talking about ‘like,’？” he said.
He hesitated a moment. He saw that old snapshot again in his mind: his seven-year-old self in his beach robe on the shore of Deep Creek Lake.
He said, “My father didn’t like me, for instance.”
“Excuse me?”
“Children know these things,” he said. “It’s a matter of survival. They have to be able to gauge their parents’ minutest reactions, decode the least change in their voices.”