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.He’d concluded, for better or worse, that he couldn’t stay away from it.He had no plans to be a bomb-throwing, deer-hunting anarchist.But if he had to be part of it, then he was going to witness the event up close and personal.When it was over, he would take a cab to LaGuardia and catch the 5:25 flight to Burlington.He hadn’t yet told Spencer he was going to be present, and he hadn’t decided whether he would call him at some point today or just show up tomorrow.Nan guessed that Catherine’s presence here tonight might force him to call Spencer first.But you never knew.Catherine was so angry with her husband that she might be comfortable with the idea of her brother launching what Spencer might construe as a sneak attack.“It sounded like Sis is coming home to Mother.True?”“True,” she murmured distractedly, her mind focused on the image that evening of John and Catherine and Charlotte and Tanya all here with her.And then she thought of Spencer alone on the West Side with his cats, and of Sara and Willow and Patrick in Vermont.How had it come to this? She’d thought when everyone had been together on Saturday that the cold war was thawing, but in reality all that had occurred was a shifting of alliances.She sat down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs, depression insinuating itself through the creases and trim of her nightgown—it was a dowdy piece of work, she decided—and coating her skin like a lotion.What would happen when she was gone? Really? Would anything like a family remain?“Can you give me the details?” her son was asking.She looked up at him.She didn’t feel well at all, and she honestly wasn’t sure she had the strength.CATHERINE WAS AWARE that the dog was sliding her water bowl along the trim that ran underneath the kitchen cabinets in the pantry, an idiosyncrasy that had struck everyone as cute on Friday and Saturday when the animal had initially shown the inclination but had begun to grow tiresome yesterday when first Spencer and then she had forgotten the bowl was there and accidentally stepped on the dish.Catherine didn’t make an effort now to suggest to Tanya that she should give this practice a rest, however, because the minor inconvenience posed by a dog’s overturned water bowl was absolutely inconsequential compared to the human meltdown she was trying (and failing) to halt.Charlotte was standing beside the refrigerator and screaming at her, yelling in a manner that Catherine hadn’t witnessed in a good long time, the child’s affected British refinement a mere memory, while Spencer was squatting beside their daughter, his forehead in his one functioning hand, looking as if he had given up completely any hope that he might be able to reason with her.“I am not leaving!” she was shrieking, her cheeks and her forehead so pink they looked sunburned, the tears descending down her face like twin waterfalls.“Tanya is not leaving! And you would be horrible if you left! Horrible! How could you even think—”“I will not be called horrible!” she snapped back.“You will not talk to me that way!” The words were out before she could stop them.She hated herself for sounding precisely like the angry mothers she saw snapping at their children in grocery stores, but she couldn’t help it.She couldn’t help herself.“You are! You don’t care about Dad, you don’t care about me! All you care about are your precious students and precious Eric—”“That is enough!”“Precious Eric, precious Gary, precious Hank—”She grabbed Charlotte by her upper arms and squeezed, trying physically to rein her in.She had a vague sense that if she didn’t have something in her hands—even her daughter’s shoulders, so small and frail underneath a thin cotton sweater and the blue blouse that she wore often with her Brearley skirt—she would slap the girl.Strike the child (strike anyone) for the first time in her life.“You’re hurting me!”“Charlotte, you must settle down!”“Just go, then! You—just go! Get out!”She felt the girl struggling, but she wouldn’t release her.It was, she realized, a test of wills, and her ability to reason was slipping away.She tried to think of what she wanted to say, but she couldn’t.She understood on some level that when Spencer and Charlotte had returned from walking Tanya, they both had been crying.But then they were quiet, very quiet, the two of them.And somehow—in the space of, what, sixty seconds?—a little moment of domestic sadness had been transmogrified into this cataclysm of accusations and rage, and the bubbling up from deep inside their daughter’s mind of all these.issues.that had nothing to do with her parents’ problems.At least in Catherine’s opinion, they didn’t.Dr.Warwick might view it all somewhat differently.“Get out! You want to leave, well, leave!”“Charlotte,” Spencer began, his voice muffled slightly because his fingers were still on his forehead and so he was speaking down into the tile floor.“Charlotte.”It was apparent he, too, wasn’t sure what to say, but still Catherine was grateful that at least now she had an ally.“Charlotte.” he murmured once more.“What!” It was a screech, not a question.“You need to calm down.To stop yelling.Your mother and I—”“Don’t you dare!” she said, and abruptly she wrestled free of Catherine’s grasp and whirled across the kitchen, one foot flipping the water dish—which, inevitably, had wound up precisely in the girl’s path—into the air like a giant tiddly-wink, sending the water into a spray that coated them all.“Don’t change your mind! You said outside I didn’t have to go.You said I could stay right here!”“Yes, Charlotte, you’re not going anywhere,” he said, and Catherine couldn’t believe what she was hearing.The notion of Charlotte staying here was inconceivable.Unthinkable.Spencer could barely care for himself.How in the name of God could he care for their thirteen-year-old daughter, too? What was he thinking telling the girl she could remain with him at this apartment? More important, how could she—the child’s mother—allow Charlotte to stay ensconced in the home of the man who was going to use her so shamelessly in a press conference tomorrow?“Spencer, did you just tell Charlotte she didn’t have to come with me across town?” The horrible shrillness in her voice disgusted her.“Yes, I did.”“Spencer—”“Mom, I’m staying! You can leave, if you want to—”“I don’t want to! I’m not leaving—we’re not leaving—because I want to!” she said, and some small part of her actually began to focus on how wet her stockings were.Thank God it was only water, because she’d never have time to change before school.“We’re leaving because your father and I have agreed that it’s best—”“Catherine, no: I don’t want you to go, either.”She turned from her daughter to her husband and saw there on his face an almost unrecognizable hangdog look of despair.“This isn’t something we agreed on,” he was saying.“It’s something I am enduring because I don’t know what else to do.But I don’t want you to leave.You don’t know.”She wondered what she didn’t know, and she was about to ask him if only to give herself time to think.To refocus on this—and as the words formed in her head and she felt the chilly dog water on her legs she almost nodded at their rightness—sloppy mess.“What don’t I know?” she murmured.“Tell me.”“Neither of you knows anything!” It was Charlotte this time, still crying, still angry, her face still that ugly pink mask of despair, but at least she hadn’t shrieked this accusation [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]