Back home I took my daily Tezinex and munched a power bar as I watched another video on my laptop. Then into the shower. My body was already dry and I was into my robe when Mum knocked on the door.
“I’m going to church with Timmy. Want us to drive you?”
I stepped out and kept drying my hair. “No. I’ll catch a later mass.” Not. “What’s up?”
“I checked with Sean and he’ll be coming to dinner. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Super.”
“You’ll be here, of course.”
“Of course. Do I ever miss Sunday dinner?”
Am I ever allowed to miss?
“Well, there was that time just this past February when—”
“I was a thousand miles away, Mum. At the internal medicine update. Remember?”
I remembered. The fact that I’d chosen a course in Miami during the dead of winter hadn’t been a coincidence. Heavenly warmth. I’d come back refreshed. Wiser too.
“I know that, but still… we missed you.”
Guilt springs eternal.
“But you survived, right?”
“Of course, dear.”
“Tell me… is, um, Kevin coming?”
“Doesn’t he always?”
He does. You rarely see Sean without Kevin.
“Want me to whip up an appy while you’re out?”
“That won’t be necessary, dear, but thank you. Timmy and I will stop at the store after mass. We’ll keep it simple so that Sean can get back to the city.”
“Oh, right. Wouldn’t want Sean staying out too late.”
Big brother was coming.
Yippee.
Not that I’ve anything in the slightest against Sean. I love him. He’s a great guy. He can’t help that he’s the first-born son of an Irish mother, and therefore right up there with the saints.
Saint Sean… who turns water into wine and then walks on it… whose presence demotes the faithful daughter to scullery maid: “Norrie, hang up Sean’s coat”… “Norrie, fetch Sean a beer…”
To Sean’s credit he’ll always insist on hanging up his own coat and fetching his own beer.
As I said, it’s not his fault. Except maybe that he doesn’t visit as often as he could. If he were more of a regular, maybe his visits wouldn’t be state occasions.
But Sean has perfectly understandable reasons for maintaining a certain distance, and I sympathize with them.
Still, it rankles a bit.
Timmy honked out front and she hurried out to join him, leaving me alone in the living room… with the damn crooked landscape. I straightened it half a dozen times this way and that but it never looked right. I was getting ready to put a match to it.