At the hotel, Alan rose early the next morning to get in a phone call to Candace, who gave specialist information about the Wellbutrin—an antidepressant, commonly prescribed to treat anxiety, insomnia, mood swings, and so on.
“But why is she depressed?” cried Alan, in childish frustration.
“Is that really a helpful approach, love?”
Was there another, more serious drug, Candy asked, that she might be taking? She thought that Vanessa was almost certainly on at least two forms of medication. If she were your daughter, he thought to himself, you wouldn’t want to confirm the existence of a second drug; you would have to look away from the subject; your gaze would turn to ashes. Instead he told her—it was true—that he felt he’d been away “forever.” It was the snow that locked him into this icy white kingdom; or the intensity of his emotions, which made him frail, despite the brave face he turned to the world. Time seemed to trudge by slowly here in heavy snow boots. Candy gave him news and gossip from home, to cheer him up: their neighbor the Baronet (a word she found movingly hard to pronounce) was going to build an indoor swimming pool, because of Lady Compton’s terrible arthritis—the swimming might help. Alan loved these stories, was easily soothed by them. Right now, the Baronet’s life seemed ideal, an existence of perfect, unreflective Englishness. But he didn’t have time to listen to more, he had to speak to his mother, too. And Mam had stories also—one involved an old lady at the Home who’d been working for years on a sacred tapestry for her church and had finally finished it, only to discover that the diocese was now closing and decommissioning the little church—which predictably did the opposite of soothing him. Mam wanted to hear everything about Josh. Did he look like the photograph Van had sent her? Was he “a nice young man”? Couldn’t Vanessa marry him and move back home? Van was old but not so old that she couldn’t have at least one child. Nowadays women in their forties were having children all the time, “in the newspapers.” She had not the faintest idea about Vanessa’s life in Saratoga, but still she was like Mr. Bridger in The Italian Job, running Italian operations from his English prison cell, thought Alan wearily as he put the phone down. Yet when he heard his mother’s voice, he wanted to be sitting next to her as she sat in the old chintz chair. Long, long ago, when she came upstairs to kiss him goodnight, he would ask her: “Have you brought your knitting?” And when she said yes, he was pleased, because it meant that Mam would stay and tell him a story.
* * *
They all had breakfast together at Vanessa’s. Helen, who was leaving in an hour for New York, and then for London, was powerful, straight-backed, almost embarrassingly vital. She praised her elder sister for rather slight accomplishments: “Fabulous coffee, Van, thanks so much! Whose jam is this? Local, aha. Well done on finding it.” Alan knew what was up: she was atoning for her excitement at leaving. Van was subdued, anxious, otherworldly, slouching. She was teaching her first class of the term, at twelve o’clock, on ethics and action, and didn’t feel prepared; she had brought a book to the table. She made a wan joke about having to lecture “to the lucky kids at Lucy Skidmore Scribner’s Young Women’s Industrial Club” (the college’s original name, it turned out).
Alan had forgotten that Vanessa would have to go out and earn a living, just like everyone else. And Josh—he stood near the toaster, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet and sneezing. He had some kind of morning allergy. And there was a new T-shirt: CHILMARK F.D. KEEP BACK 300 FEET. Alan was happy to follow that particular order. “How many do you have?” he asked, pointing toward Josh’s chest. “Oh, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Josh replied cheerfully.
Helen’s car arrived early, of course—a gigantic black Chevy Suburban, menacing and funereal, the thick exhaust gurgling like a boat’s. A smartly dressed Latino driver, small alongside his glossed black barge, held the rear door open. Inside, cream leather seats, and dashboard fans raging with hot air. American abundance: Helen loved it. She’d paid for a driver to take her the three and a half hours to New York. Farewells were brief and intense. Alan hugged Helen fiercely, gratefully kissing her Cathy-like neck, inhaling her Cathy-like scent—he wanted her to know, by this gesture, that he had no anger. In his line of work, there were two types of builders: the shouters, the big bullies; and the patient, quiet ones. The ones who rode out the storms. He knew which type he was. Helen promised to call when she was back in London. She and Vanessa embraced, and Helen appeared to whisper something in her sister’s ear. The slab-cheeked Chevy crunched down the drive, the brake lights appeared brightly, and she was gone.
Some sort of embarrassment overcame them as they sat down again in the kitchen—the embarrassment of nudity, of revelation: they had lost their covering. Without Helen, what on earth would they say to each other? Salvation: the weekend was over, it was Monday morning and time to work. Josh said he had to go into town to scan something, and to print something else out in color. Vanessa would leave shortly for the campus, where she was meeting with students, and then had her noon lecture. Was Dad interested in lunch, after that? Back at the house? What would he do until then? Alan thought he would stay put for a while, have some more coffee, read The New York Times. And then, since Van and Josh were bound to be busy over the next few days, perhaps he would see about hiring a car. He wanted to drive around a bit, explore the surrounding area—the famous “upstate New York.” It would keep him occupied. Vanessa said he should take her car, the Toyota. Because of the arm, she couldn’t use it anyway. Alan had been secretly looking forward to driving a lordly American boat with a flabby V8, but he accepted Van’s generous—and economical—offer. Rising, Josh said he would walk with Vanessa over to the college. She started clearing up the plates. “Leave that to me,” said Alan, “I’m on the personal equivalent of island time. You go and get ready for class.” He enjoyed hearing her run upstairs, the exasperated sighs, the banging of the bathroom door. Like old days, with the girls preparing for school …