Spoonbenders

“Deep,” she said. “It was so beautiful.” She dried her hands with a cotton towel. “I need to talk to you about something.”

He braced himself. He knew he’d been failing her. But he didn’t have the words ready to apologize. Or to tell her what he was going to do different. He had no plan, no scheme. What he had was two useless hands, a couch, and a TV.

She sat down next to him. “It’s about the children,” she said. Immediately he felt relieved. “I want you to promise that you’ll never let them do what I do. Never let them work for the government.”

“That’s an easy promise,” Teddy said. Buddy had stopped being able to predict anything. Frankie couldn’t bend a paper clip. And Irene was too honest to work for the government.

“This includes the grandchildren,” she said.

“What grandchildren?”

“Someday our children will have children.”

“Sure, but—”

“Don’t argue with me!” Mo shouted. The anger seemed to erupt from nowhere. Her body looked too worn out to make such a noise, and it had left her even emptier. Her eyes welled with tears.

“I promise,” he said. He was good at promises. They came easily to him. “You can depend on me,” he said.

He was touched when Graciella fell asleep in the hammock. Even after he finished his drink he did not get up to refill it, for fear that he’d awaken her. He watched her for a while, and then pushed back the Borsalino to gaze up at the leaves moving in the breeze. Two squirrels scampered across high limbs. The hat began to slide off his head, and something about touching the crown of the hat reminded him of the letter.

He took it from his jacket pocket and looked again at his name in Maureen’s sharp cursive. Then he held the envelope, unopened, to the crown of the hat in the traditional manner, just in case Graciella happened to peek. Then he opened the envelope, the glue so old the flap almost popped free on its own. Inside was a single page of coarse drawing paper. He unfolded it, then grunted in surprise.

Graciella stirred, but did not awaken.

He picked up the envelope and thought, God damn you, Mo. God damn you and Buddy.

The crayon drawing was as crude as you’d expect from a six-year-old. On a field of green, two stick figures lay inside a rectangle. One of the figures wore a triangle on its head.

At the top right, Maureen had written him a message:

My Love. Buddy says that the one with the hat is you, and the one beside you is “Daddy’s girlfriend.” He doesn’t know why you’re in a grave, if it is a grave. Be careful, Teddy.

I’m glad you found someone. No, that’s not quite true. I want to be glad. I will be glad. As I write this I’m so sad, but I’m trying to take the long view. Buddy’s view.

Speaking of our boy, I ask you again—please don’t get in his way. Give him his space.

Love,

Maureen

13 Irene

“Not exactly Barbie’s Dream House,” she said to Graciella. The two women stood on the street outside a 1967 ranch home with foot-high weeds in the yard, a cracked driveway, and a garage buckling under the weight of gravity. The FOR SALE sign leaned against the front door, even though the house had sold two months ago. No one had moved in, and no one probably ever would.

“You’re saying NG Group sold this?” Graciella said.

“Yep. Ask me for how much.”

Graciella looked at her over the top of her sunglasses.

Irene said, “One point two million.”

Graciella looked again at the house. “Is it on top of an oil well?”

Irene laughed. “Nope. Strictly a fixer-upper.”

“Then my husband’s a real estate genius. Who bought it?”

“That’s the interesting part,” Irene said. “You did.”

“NG Group?”

“Not immediately. But eventually, yeah. It’s now back in your portfolio.”

“And you’re dying to tell me why.”

“I am.”

“Go on, go on. Don’t let me stop you.”

“Say you have a million in cash you don’t want to explain,” Irene said. “You can’t just deposit it in the bank—banks have to report big deposits. So you go to a friendly real estate agency and buy a little starter home for a million. But a week or a month later you decide you don’t want that crappy house. So you sell it back to the company for the same price, they take their realtor’s cut, and they deposit the rest in your bank account.”

“And banks don’t raise an eyebrow for house sales,” Graciella said.

“In practice, you don’t buy and sell to the same company,” Irene said. “There’s a handful of real estate companies that NG works with, and they’re all passing cash and properties around to each other like chips in a poker game—it’s not real money till someone cashes out.”

“You mean when the cash is all clean.”

“You got it.”