Early Warning

Debbie shook her head. “I don’t think anyone will ever know.” And then she must have looked sad, because Richie — Richie! — actually reached across the table and patted her on the shoulder, then said, “Uncle Arthur is the most fun of any grown-up that ever lived.” After that, he said, “I thought Tim was our family’s version of Superman.”

Back at her apartment, she still could not reach Aunt Andy, and so she made up her mind. “Okay. Richie, I am going to give you train fare back to New York, and then you get yourself to Englewood and just walk in the door. Do you have a key?”

He nodded.

“The best thing to do is show up, and see what they say. Answer their questions honestly, but don’t offer any extra information. My bet is, they’ll be so glad to see you that they’ll lay off after a day or so. Also, give your mom a hug every so often, and tell her you missed her, and leave it at that. Did you give the army your home address?”

“Yes. There were cards and stuff.”

“Well, my boyfriend says that the Yippies are really successful here because there are so many kids who can be drafted. If you give them trouble, they just cross you off the list and go on to someone else.”

“I don’t want to be crossed off the list.”

“Yes, you do; at least finish high school.”

He nodded. She got him off early the next morning, dragging his suitcase, which he had left in a locker at the station the morning he went for the physical. She made him take a shower, so only his clothes stank, but, really, it was amazing what seventeen-year-old boys did not notice. Of course he didn’t write, but a week later she got a letter from her mother:

Dear Debbie—

It’s been terribly hot here. I hope you are getting some sea breezes! When you come home for Labor Day Weekend, you can revive us, if you feel like it. Listen to this! Richie was gone for six days! He showed up Wednesday evening, and he said NOTHING. Well, your aunt Andy was very upset, so she went into his room and got all over him, and he said, didn’t she get his note? And, of course not. Apparently, a friend of his from school had come East for a week, and they had decided to drive around and look at colleges, since the boy had never been in the East before. They went to Annapolis and West Point and Penn, just to have a look. I guess Richie had money from his job. Then he showed her the note he’d left for her, taped it to the BAR in their family room, but now she’s stopped drinking, so she never even opened the bar and never saw it. Frank thought it was a sign of manly independence that they did this, so he isn’t mad. Wonders never cease (and I’m talking about the fact that she didn’t look into the bar for six days). She’s a very mysterious person, and your dad wonders if, now that she is no longer pickled, she will start to age like the rest of us.

Too hot to go on any longer,

We love you!

Mom

—

ANDY LOOKED AROUND the table. Twenty-four people, all smiling. She had been here twenty times now, and she had never once stood up and said, “Hi, I’m Andy, and I am an alcoholic.” She had the book, and she had read most of it. She left it on the coffee table, and sometimes she saw that Frank or Nedra had opened it, or at least moved it. Already this evening, Bob had stood up and related how he went off the wagon on Thanksgiving, and fell down in the kitchen and hit his head. Roman had related how he was supposed to go to his mother’s house, and he knew there would be liquor there. So Roman had turned it over to his Higher Power and tried to forget about it. When he went out to get into his car Thursday, his battery was dead, and at the very moment he was wondering which restaurant, his neighbor two doors down came out onto his porch and asked him what he was doing, because there were only the four of them, and so Roman contributed the pecan pie he’d been planning to take to his mother’s, and it turned out that the neighbor needed new kitchen counters and had the money to pay, and wanted this new surface that was coming out called Corian, God knew what that was, but expensive, so Roman was smiling. And then Mary said that she had gotten through Thanksgiving fine, but yesterday, the 29th, was the fifth anniversary of the death of her daughter from falling out of the window of their old apartment on Ninety-first Street, and even though they now lived in the Village, she had had to go up there and stand on the very spot where her daughter landed, she had had to, but she didn’t drink anything, though she came close. A shocking story, but you were not supposed to make drama, which was maybe why Andy never said a word.