Joel folded his hands over his chest. He was wearing a silk tie over a dark green shirt Seth had bought for him. He chewed his bottom lip.
“I still don’t think it’s appropriate for you to walk out in the middle of a family dinner.”
“And I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to make me the third wheel on a first date. Which is what this is. So stop being chicken. You’re chicken aren’t you?”
Joel’s mouth opened and shut.
Seth leaned forward, kissed his father on the cheek and said, “Later, Dad.”
Joel stood in the hall, in the wake of his son and then realized that Shelley was still in the dining room. He ran out into it, looking so comic she burst out laughing.
“I didn’t mean to leave you out her. That was rude.”
“You know what?” Shelley told him. “I actually managed not to rust or anything. So it’s fine.”
“I, ah,” Joel’s mouth was opened. He laughed nervously and blinked. “I should have worn my glasses.”
“You wear glasses?”
“Everyone over forty wears glasses. Actually, I’ve always worn them I just... I’m vain about them and all. These contacts…”
He blew out his cheeks: “This is not romantic.”
“I tell you what?” Shelley said. “Glasses are very, very romantic. I think you should change into them and then we’ll talk or something. Since Seth got rid of himself.”
Using his thumb to take out a contact, Joel said, from his awkward position, “Seth didn’t get rid of himself.”
“Blind men should never lie,” she told Joel. He could half see because he’d only taken one out. He grinned sidelong, took out the other contact and, in a moment returned in brass rimmed spectacles.
“I look like a goober.”
“Glasses make you look educated.”
“No, they make my friends look educated. Like Mark. Because he is educated. They make me took like a goober.”
“I think they make you look cute. I don’t want you arguing with me about that.”
Joel gave a smile bordering on a grimace and ran his finger across his lips to zip them.
“That’s better,” Shelley said reaching into his hand to take away the invisible key and stick it in her pocket.
“You and this Mark. I know who Sidney Darrow is. Artist. The library bought something from him. And Darrow Gas, Darrow Groceries. But Mark... he must be a monster or something.”
“No,” Joel said, horrified. “He’s my best friend. He... I’m the monster. And you don’t want to hear all this. This is supposed to be a date.” He caught her wrist in his hands. “Let’s sit down and talk about something else.”
“We can sit down and talk about Mark—”
Joel opened his mouth, but Shelley continued.
“Because if we don’t get that out once and for all, you’re always going to be bringing him up. Him and his perfect kids and—”
“Do I really talk like that?”
“Yes.”
“But... he is my best friend you see. Since we were little kids. We have the exact same background. Both went to Saint Mary’s, K-8, both Irish Catholic, both in Boy Scouts. Except his family was a little better off than mine. And...”
“Maybe that’s what it is,” Shelley said. “You all are so much alike. I mean, you’re never jealous of someone who isn’t like you at all. You and Mark are just enough alike for you to see yourself in him.”
“You’re a psychiatrist now?”
“Stop that, Joe. I’m being serious.”
“Well, then yes. That’s what it is. We’re just enough alike. And not alike. And then Sidney came into the picture later, and even when Mark and I didn’t talk, Sidney sort of held us together. You know? He’s the glue.”
“Sort of like a reverse Oreo cookie.”
“What? Oh, oh,” he laughed now. “I get it. Sid might not think that was too funny. Actually, Mark probably wouldn’t either.” Joel still chuckled to himself.
“They’re just... I really need to stop talking about my friends.”
“No,” Shelley said, sitting back. “I mean most people don’t even have friends to talk about, and here you are with this same best friend for what? Almost forty years.”
“I guess so,” Joel said in a tone of discovery. “But I just wish I could be more loyal and less jealous. Or… that he could be less perfect.” Suddenly Joel put up a hand. “Now, it really is time for a subject switch.”
“Agreed,” Shelley said.
“So,” Joel said, pulling his knees to his chest, and looking at her gravely, “What should we talk about?”
She burst out laughing and clapping her hands so that Joel turned red and sat up waiting to figure out the joke.
“What should we walk about?” Shelley said, at last. “Um, I think... Anything that segues into you kissing me.”
Mark Powers was not like his best friend, Sidney. Joel and Mark had inherited Sidney when they were both in fourth grade. At Saint Mary’s two things happened when you reached Fourth Grade. You returned to school to realize you no longer had a Big Brother, the boy or boys appointed to look out for you and meet with you once a week. Since kindergarten you’d had these big brothers you looked up to more than your real ones, often in place of having real ones. And then when you came back from summer vacation after third grade they were gone. Mark and Joel had met on the first day of school though they already sort of knew each other because they went to the same church. Now they were best friends. There had been a scarcity of Big Brothers that year and they’d gotten the same one.
Sidney Darrow, at five, was incredibly adorable and Mark, Joel and Luis Hernandez had set to babying him, or brothering him as much as possible.
Sidney made them laugh, because he was funny. That was his first talent, and he was always saying what was on his mind, more than most five year olds. They really thought they’d lucked out and all the other fourth graders had losers, glue eaters, nose pickers. When Mrs. Naper, the fourth grade teacher had brought lunch to class so that the fourth grade and their little brothers could share a meal, Sidney had frowned at the sauerkraut she’d made.
“But it’s good for you, little boy,” she told Sidney.
“My name is Sidney,” the little boy told her, folding his arms over his chest. “And if it’s so good why don’t you eat it yourself.”
So that was how it had all begun. Since Joel and Mark were already best friends, it made sense that they shared joint custody of Sidney. Neither one of them wanted to bother with their real siblings, but Sidney was a different matter altogether. They dressed him, tried and failed to teach him sports, and then sat back when it turned out that he was probably going to be an artist, and a good one, even by seven.
And slowly, the three of them began to grow up.
Joel and Mark didn’t see him all the time, or even each other, but the link was still there and very strong. Mark’s mother came by and got all of them for church on Sunday.
Joel and Mark would be sitting in Mark’s room, tossing a tennis ball back and forth, their shirt tails hanging out, talking about who they wanted to fuck at Saint Anne’s or ogling over a porno when they’d look over and see Sidney. Who was too young. Who was still a kid.
What could you do with him? He wasn’t a toy anymore. He was their friend. But... he was a kid. He wasn’t really their brother at all.
But... he felt something like it. They were both altar boys, both moderately virtuous and didn’t even really have girlfriends at sixteen. They wanted sex. They talked about it all the time. But it was in the abstract. Basically they masturbated a lot, smoked cigarettes and occasionally nipped the Communion wine or snuck into Joel’s dad’s liquor cabinet. And they were careful about how much Sid was allowed to see.
“He’s twelve,” Joel reasoned. “He’s got to know some things. I mean He’s not stupid.”
“I’m not getting Sidney plied with booze,” Mark said. “And that’s final.”
Mark always had a slightly serious side to him, but he wasn’t perfect when he was sixteen. He was messy with lots of messy dark hair, and intense eyes that had stopped blinking from behind the old, owlish spectacles because he wore contacts now. He was in brown cut offs in the summer, snug bellbottoms most of the year and mood rings at all times. He wore mood rings and those glow in the dark necklaces until they were dead, and after they were dead. He was weird and a straight A student.
“I’m just saying,” Joel said, “that every time we talk about sex we don’t have to shut up when Sidney walks into the room. Or... I mean, he’s not a little kid.”
And Mark insisted, “Yes he is.”
But, they were boys, smoking, drinking, belching—Mark was very clear that farting was crossing the line and not cool at all—gazing in wide eyed amazement over porn, and jacking off. So, in the end, regardless if they wanted to or not, they were teaching Sidney all about sexuality and all about becoming a man.
They were so intent on teaching him the right way, that they were both promptly surprised when Sidney Darrow became an adult, and began to teach them.
“Okay, so the weirdest thing is I thought I would have one heck of a time finding someone who knew as much about Irish artifacts as I did,” Rick Howard said, screwing up his face and then adding. “Even as I say that phrase I realize that it is unlikely that I would know as much about Irish artifacts as I do.”
Mark leaned forward and took the stone out of Rick Howard’s hand. “Now that, what you have with you… That is ninth century.”
“How you figure?”
“It’s Viking. I can tell that. And it comes from around the Dublin area. Dublin was a Viking settlement. That would have been around the ninth century.”
“You’re good.”
Mark smiled at him. “I know.”
Rick leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest and demanded, “How did you get so good at this?”
“Well, I am Irish.”
“And of course that naturally makes you an artifacts specialist.”
“Just like it makes me a great dancer.” Mark cut a move with his hands and Rick chuckled. “You oughtta see my Riverdance.”
“I am betting,” Rick Howard said, “that you can’t dance.”
“An Irish Catholic from industrial Ohio? Not dance?” Mark cracked him a smile. “imagine that. No. I began to get interested after my wife died, and I... needed to sort of settle down. It was interesting. It was my heritage. It let me focus on one thing and so... I started with my family.”
“The Powers?”
“No. The Healeys actually. Healy, O’Healy, Haley. All that. The same clan. We come from the Southeast. So, anyway, one thing led to another and I just sort of got obsessed.” Mark made a face. “I’m the kind of person who needs obsessions.”
“See, that’s not what I would have thought,” Rick said. “You strike me as the sort of person who’s always kind of contained. The strong silent type. Even back in school.”
“I was a freak back in school. I’m not strong and silent. I’m just... silent.
“You were about to say something.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Rick said.
“You can’t lie to the psychiatrist. I’ve made a life work out of studying my fellow man.”
“It’s just,” Rick said. “I would think you’d have to be strong. To lose your wife, and then move on and take care of Chris and.… You’re very together.”
Mark folded his hands together and made a sort of funny frown.
“Together,” he murmured. “Why do people always say that when they mention my name? Mark Powers is so… together, reasoned, balanced. Like Fox News.
“You know what?” Mark said. “I’m going to tell you how together I am.”
“Truth or dare?” Rick steepled his fingers.
“Truth, at least. Sir,” Mark called the waiter over. “Another round of drinks.”
“I’m paying,” said Rick.
“Darn straight you are,” Mark flashed him a grin and then he said, “Margot was, really, the love of my life. I mean, she really taught me how to...love,” Mark shrugged. “I thought that we would have forever. Well, if not that, a long time, and I was so angry when she died. I was angry the whole time she had cancer. I kept it in, but when she was dead it came back up.
“I—there had been someone else in my life. Vanessa. The first love.”
“The one who got away?”
“The one who walked away,” Mark clarified. “And I went to visit her and one thing led to another and it was probably something between affection and really wanting to be with my wife again, just wanting to be with someone—I spent the night with her. That once. But then she told me she was married.”
“Oh,” Rick said, and the drinks came to the table, he nodded to the waiter and pushed one across to Mark. “But you didn’t know.”
Mark lifted a finger. “I didn’t know then,” he said. “But I knew the other times. See, I couldn’t remember the last time I had been with someone healthy. I couldn’t remember the last time it had been like it was that night with Vanessa, and I thought, well, God took my wife, so it’s okay if I take someone else’s. So for a while I was engaged in this whole thing with a married woman and I didn’t even care. That’s how together I am Rick. This is something that not a lot of people know.
“I mean my best friends know. I told them. Joel didn’t say anything. But Sidney did because he always says something. He told me how stupid I was being and—keep in mind, I’d been widowed with a child and this was all less than two months in the past, I was sort of on a collapse here, right? And I just shouted at him to get the hell out of my house. I told him he didn’t know anything about loyalty. I said that. While I was having an affair with another man’s wife. So see, the moral of the story is you never know how together someone is. No matter how together they look on the outside.”
Rick had forgotten his drink. He wanted to know, “What happened then? I mean. It ended, eventually. How did it end?”
“Being a psychiatrist, I eventually had the presence of mind to realize my days pretty much consisted of waking up thinking about my next orgasm and the thrill of hopping into bed with a married woman who had dumped me back in college. I thought about how I’d told my own best friend to get the hell out of my house, how my son had lost his mom and now he didn’t even have much of a father... Cause I wasn’t even paying attention to Chris. And then I thought about how even right there and then the only thing I could think about was the next time I would... fuck... this woman. And I just thought how far I’d fallen. And that was about it. After that I couldn’t go back to it.”
Mark smiled sadly, shrugged and then said, “And then I took up Irish antiquing.”
Rick burst out laughing. He laughed so long that Mark shrugged and smiled at him.
“That’s my story,” he said.
“It’s not that unique of a story,” Rick told him taking a swig and shaking his head.
Mark looked at him.
“If we’re going to tell truths and stuff like that then I know what it’s like to need to be with someone so badly you... make a stupid decision. I’ve made them too.”
Mark sighed.
“Why?” he started, stopped, and then started again. “Why does God make us so that we want to be good... And then make us so lonely and desperate that the easiest thing is to be bad? Why?”
The van pulled up to the house on Owens Street. The porch lights were on. The lights in the living room and the kitchen were on. It seemed that people were there, but it was supposed to, that’s just what you did to keep the robbers away.
Becky opened her mouth to say something but Addison, in the passenger’s seat leaned forward and gave her a wet kiss. He kissed her deep for about half a minute and then parted from her, reaching into one pocket for the house key and another pocket for the condoms.
Becky locked the van and they walked up the driveway and then past the garage to the door. Addison put his ear there just in case someone might be home. Whenever his family went out of town they’d even leave the stereo or the T.V. on but for the Darrows apparently the light was enough. He heard nothing. Addison opened the door and then went in taking Becky by the hand and closing the door behind her.