Early Warning

Debbie set her bowl, which had greasy unpopped popcorn kernels in the bottom, in the kitchen sink, then turned on the water, elaborately washed and dried it, and wiped down the sink. Tim knew she was doing this to him, showing off. She often informed Mom that things were out of control, and Mom always said, “Goodness, you are just like your grandmother, right down to the ground.”

Tim said, “Hey, Dad. Did you hear the one about the two morons who were building a house?”

His dad smiled.

Tim said, “So — the one moron, he would take a nail out of his pocket and look at it, then sometimes he would nail it to the house, and sometimes he would throw it away. So the other moron says, ‘Hey, you moron! Why are you throwing away all those nails?’

“ ‘Because, you moron, they point the wrong direction!’

“And the second moron starts laughing and laughing, and says, ‘What a moron you are! The ones that point the wrong direction go on the other side of the house!’ ”

His dad laughed and ruffled his hair. They walked toward the TV room, and his dad said, “Stay in at night, Tim, okay?”

But Tim knew that he didn’t really mean it.

—

LILLIAN FELT THAT she had the place pretty well organized. What had it taken, two months? The living room, which was off limits for the kids, had beige wall-to-wall, pale-green armchairs, a pinkish sofa, and their Chinese prints from the old house. The family room had sturdy rattan furniture, and sort of an oceanic air — it faced right onto the swimming pool; since it was May and hot, the sliding glass door was always open, and towels and face masks and snorkels dribbled in, along with trails of pool water. Tina had spent three months — from the first day they knew they would be moving here — learning to swim at the Y. Lillian had been so nervous that she checked the gates to the pool area twenty times a day, but now Tina was swimming — well, dog-paddling — all the way across the width of the pool, and Lillian was no longer waking up nightly (in their own pale-gold bedroom with pale-olive drapes) listening for tiny splashes.

The new kitchen was big; Lillian bought a range and a new refrigerator. There were two windows in the kitchen that looked out onto the pool, so she could cook, talk on the phone, wash up, and still see everything. She had given up on supervising Timmy — he was out of the house and gone before breakfast. Debbie had a sixth sense of what trouble he was into and always reported, so she let herself rely on that. Deanie, for all his size and hockey ability, was just as happy reading a book (so like Arthur!) — she didn’t worry about him. And Tina was a cautious child; the kindergarten teacher reported that she watched the other children and did what they did, which was not surprising in a fourth-born.

If there was someone to be worried about, Lillian knew that it wasn’t herself — she was as pleased with the new house and the new neighborhood as she had thought she would be the first time they went through the place. But the new house was closer to Arthur’s office, and no matter how secretive he had been at first about the address, colleagues from the office had begun to stop by for a drink on their way home and keep on talking about business. Five acres in the country and a child-free overstuffed living room were perfect for quietly deploring this and that subversion, coup, mistake, and then falling silent if anyone (like Lillian herself) came into the room.

There were five of them, most of the time — Arthur, Larry, Burt, Jack, and Finn. They entered through the front door and went to the liquor cabinet and helped themselves. Lillian, who was the one who stocked the liquor cabinet, noted they they liked Grant’s Stand Fast the best, though the levels of the Gilbey’s and the Noilly Prat steadily diminished also. Arthur’s business was full of partiers; for one thing, most of them knew each other from Yale or St. Paul’s. Lillian had been to her share of parties, given her share of parties, and she got along with the Vassar girls well enough (though, while she was navigating this world, the ups and downs of North Usherton High School were never far from her mind). But these get-togethers were not parties. All through Spring Training they talked about baseball, and Arthur pretended to be a Braves fan, but when they were talking about the office, there were a lot of long faces and meditative sips. Lillian came to understand that the days they gathered in her living room were bad days. Arthur told her almost nothing about why they were bad days.