Mornings, before Arlene and Margaret and the girls were up, while Emily made the boys their favorite soft-boiled eggs and toast, Kenny, Lisa and Jeff tugged on their running shoes, zeroed their sports watches and walked. Rain or shine, they got eight laps in—down to the marina, up past the fish hatchery, through the woods by the tennis courts and down Manor Drive again, chattering all the while. The mailbox was their finish line, and as Henry sat on the screen porch enjoying his coffee and the Jamestown paper, the lake flat as glass beyond the dock, he heard them count off the laps as they passed, their laughter and the slapping of their soles provoking a throaty warning from Rufus.
“You’re fine,” Henry said. “We know them.”
As to what they were laughing at, Henry could only guess. Lisa could be cutting, and had an opinion about everything, where Kenny was irreverent, eager to play the clown. They seemed a strange trio to him, Jeff even more of a third wheel now. It had to be awkward, Henry thought, though if Jeff was looking for a sympathetic ear, Kenny and Lisa knew Margaret’s problems better than anyone.
By the time they finished, the boys were done eating and Arlene and Margaret were up. Neither of them ate breakfast. They took their coffee out on the dock where their cigarettes wouldn’t bother people, using a tuna can as an ashtray. Henry watched them hail a fisherman drifting past, trolling the shallows. The light was golden, mist lifting from the water like steam. They sat like an old couple, smoking and gazing across the lake, bowing their heads to sip, every so often leaning toward each other to confer. In the stillness he could almost hear them over the plinking of the boys’ video games. These were the exchanges he wished he were privy to, the gist of which he hoped Arlene would share with them.
Emily, having made a second batch of eggs for the girls, joined him on the porch, wordlessly noting Arlene and Margaret before taking up the paper. He knew she resented Arlene usurping her role as confidante, and that she blamed them both. He sympathized, having been shut out of Margaret’s life for so long, yet secretly he thought this proxy arrangement was better. If it kept them in suspense, it was also less volatile. The goal, in the end, was peace, and he trusted Arlene with these delicate negotiations, her temper being closer to his own. In his helplessness, he was grateful. He wouldn’t know the first thing to say to Margaret, never had.
The bell tower sounded the quarter hour. Upstairs, the walkers were showering, emptying the hot water heater, a relic from the sixties he’d been meaning to replace. Kenny and Lisa came down together and occupied the glider, and Jeff, wet-haired, ducking out the side door to get a charger from their car. When Arlene returned from the dock with her mug, Henry watched him as if he might go to Margaret, but he was lost in his laptop. A few minutes later she came straggling across the lawn in a baggy sweatshirt and flip-flops, her hair in pigtails like Sarah’s. On her way inside, she touched Jeff’s shoulder, making him look up, but whether his expression was engaging or impatient, Henry couldn’t say.
Once Ella was done with the breakfast dishes, they reconvened for morning chores, the girls watering the garden, the boys helping him restock the firebox. The weather had been surprisingly good so far, and they’d taken care of most of the larger items on the list, and praising their efforts like a coach, he set them free. While Emily and Arlene headed off to Wegmans, everyone walked up the road to play tennis, leaving him alone again.
At his workbench, mending the ripped screen, he imagined Emily and Arlene in the car. The drive down to Lakewood took twenty minutes, and then twenty minutes back, time enough to cover a range of subjects, and he wished he’d gone with them, eavesdropping from the backseat. He wondered if they ever discussed him.
“Of course they do.” He frowned, embarrassed he’d said it out loud.
Rufus, flopped on the cool concrete, eyed him warily.
What did Margaret and Kenny say about him, or Jeff and Lisa? That he could be rigid and judgmental, that he held a grudge, that he cared too much what other people thought—faults he was well aware of. He liked to think he knew himself. Unfairly accused or not, he couldn’t worry about it.
“Too late now. Isn’t that right?”
Rufus stretched, spreading his paws.
“Exactly,” Henry said.
He needed to be patient. He’d have to wait till they were in bed to hear what Arlene said, and then it would be Emily’s drastically edited version. It was like playing an endless game of telephone, a satellite relaying a degraded signal. He wished he could sit down with Margaret and ask her directly, but that wasn’t a possibility, and rather than revisit their failures, he focused on the work at hand, cutting a patch with the tin snips and bending the edges, the wire pricking his fingertips as he fixed it to the mesh. She was her own woman. What did they say in Al-Anon—don’t make their problem your problem. “That’s right.” Worrying like this was pointless, and probably bad for his heart, yet he couldn’t stop, and all morning he knocked around the garage, talking to himself, waiting for them to return.