Early Warning

Straight A’s were such a habit with Debbie that Arthur considered them almost a character flaw. When she brought home her report cards, Arthur would lower his brows and growl, “How much extra credit did you do, missy?” Debbie’s job was to grin and say, “Hardly any, Daddy!” He didn’t mind 800s on her SAT Aptitude tests, but 800s on the Achievements were a sign of a misspent youth. Tim had scored in the low 600s on his SATs, and when those scores came in the same week he crumpled the bumper of the Comet, Arthur was a little relieved. A boy had to be a boy had to be a boy.

But he didn’t have to flunk out of college. Lillian parked in a space in front of a drugstore and went in. The soda fountain was all the way in the back, and the girl working there was blond. Lillian perched on a stool and put her elbows on the counter, vowing not to tell the girl that she had worked a soda counter once herself. The few college students perched on the other stools did not remind her of the ones she’d seen protesting the war at the Capitol in April. Eloise had called her from California and said she had to go to the protest — with a hat and dark glasses so no one would recognize her, so that her picture would not cross Arthur’s desk. So she did. Eloise had participated in the Oakland protest in February, bringing along Rosa, the baby, and even the strange gambler husband, who was otherwise “apolitical” according to Rosa. Lillian didn’t believe there were twenty-five thousand protesters, as Eloise insisted from her vantage point in Berkeley — maybe half that number. But the D.C. protest had been exhilarating. If Arthur, Debbie, Dean, or Tina suspected she had gone, none of them had said a word.

The sandwich was good. She ate it slowly, because once she was done, had eaten every crumb, had drunk her soda, had wiped her mouth and gone into the ladies’ room to comb her hair, she would have to find Tim and figure that boy out.

She had been to his room twice before, and knew the number—215. She knocked on the door, at first lightly, and then more sharply. There was a groan, a pause, then Tim’s voice, irritable, “Who is it?”

Lillian said, “It’s me.” She looked at her watch. It was a quarter after one.

“What!”

A little louder. “It’s me. It’s your mother.”

Then, “Oh jeez!” Footsteps. Then the door opened. Tim was leaning on it. He was dressed in a white undershirt and dirty jeans. He stared at her and said, “Oh God.” He left the door open and went over and fell on the bed. Lillian followed him.

She said, “Are you hung over?”

“Oh God.”

The evidence was under the bed — empty beer bottles.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming.” He groaned again.

“It was a last-minute thing, and I thought you’d be at work, so how would I reach you?” She looked around, glad to see at least some evidence of a party in the general mess — records lying around, a girl’s shoe, two glasses and two plates, a sweater she didn’t recognize that maybe someone left behind. She said, “Did you have a party?”

“In a way.”

Lillian opened her bag and pulled out the letter. When she handed it to him, he glanced at it and said, “I know that.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Take the courses over.”

“You aren’t worried?”

He shook his head, then groaned.

“Are you okay? Is everything okay?” He looked like himself, tall and supple, unshaven, his hair a ragged mess, but handsome anyway. She realized that this was a question he could not answer, at least to her. If everything was not okay, then had she and Arthur failed? If everything was okay, would her concern push Tim into everything’s not being okay? And maybe everything that she was seeing now was just the way Tim had been for years, on his own, doing what he wanted, and letting them think that everything was okay. Lillian began to feel dizzy. She said, “You want lunch or something?”

“Can’t eat.”

“Tell me this is a hangover.”

“This is a hangover.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“Stop asking, Mom.”

She stopped asking. She got up and walked around the room, picking up this shirt and that sweater, folding them, setting them on the dresser. Tim rolled over onto his stomach. She stood regarding him for a minute or two, and then walked out. By the time she got to the car, she was too dizzy to drive, so she sat in the front seat of the Mustang for a long time, and only pulled away when a man in a uniform peered at her through the window. She drove back, as she had thought she would, seeing nothing but Tim in her mind, sacked out and empty in his messy room, and got home before Arthur did. When he came in, he barely said a word. She fed Dean and Tina hamburgers and baked potatoes; Debbie was going out for the evening, and Lillian was too sad to eat. Arthur stayed in his office.

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