He said the TV was on, and there was the background noise of game shows. Where once she’d loved I Dream of Jeannie, now it seemed to be this. He couldn’t tell which show it was, but they were introducing the contestants, one of whom was Steve, and Steve was a computer programmer, whose hobbies were paragliding and tennis. He loved the outdoors and reading.
When they all sat down, and Carey had settled down, they talked for a while of small things—of school and work and how Carey was an apprentice jockey, but it was Clay who did the talking. Abbey spoke of his father, and what a beautiful boy he’d been, and how he’d walked that dog through Featherton.
“Moon,” said Carey Novac, but quietly, almost to herself.
Both Clay and Abbey smiled.
When Carey did actually come to speak louder again, it was to ask a burning question.
“Did you ever get remarried?”
Abbey said, “That’s better,” and then, “Oh yes. I did.”
As Clay looked at Carey, thinking, Thank God you’re here, he also felt blind in the light. This place was so well lit! The sun came in so directly, and hit the modern couch, the mile-long oven, and even the coffee machine as if they were holy—but he could tell there wasn’t a piano. Again, she was all but nothing. He was staunch and would quietly fight it.
As for Abbey, she looked out, she nursed her cup of coffee.
“Oh yes, I got remarried—I did it twice,” and abruptly, like she couldn’t wait any longer, she said, “Come here, I want to show you something,” and “Come on, I won’t bite,” when he hesitated, for she was leading him into the bedroom. “Here—”
And yes, here all right—because there, across from the bed, on a snippet of a piece of wall, was something to beat his heart down, then lift it slowly out of him:
It was something so soft and simple, in a scratchy silver frame.
A picture of Abbey’s hands.
A sketch like sticks, but gentle.
Like sticks, but soft; you could lie in them.
She said, “He was seventeen, I’d say, when he drew that,” and Clay, for the first time, looked at her: beneath, to other beauty.
“Thank you for showing me,” he said, and Abbey would use the momentum. She could have no idea of Clay and Penny, and five brothers and noise and chaos, and fights about the piano; and dying. There was only the boy in front of her, and she intended to make it count.
She said, “How can I ever tell you, Clay?” She was between the boy and the girl. “I’d tell you how sorry I am, what a fool I was—but you’re here, and I can see it.” For a moment she looked at Carey. “Is this boy a beautiful boy?”
And Carey, of course, looked back at her, then kept her focus on Clay. The freckles no longer anxious. A smile recalling the sea. And of course, she’d said, “Of course.”
“I thought so,” said Abbey Hanley, and there was regret but no self-pity. “I guess my leaving your dad,” she explained, “was really my best mistake.”
* * *
—
After that, they did have tea, they couldn’t refuse, and Abbey had more coffee, and told them some of her history; she worked at one of the banks.
“It’s all as boring as bat shit,” she said, and Clay, he felt the pang.
He said, “That’s what two of my brothers say—they say it about Matthew’s movies.”
Her smokiness slightly widened.
“How many brothers do you have?”
“There are five of us,” he said to her, “and five animals, including Achilles.”
“Achilles?”
“The mule.”