How odd it is for Gerald to be back on the East Coast. When the headmaster called, saying that they were looking for someone to head up the new counseling and tutoring center and that they couldn’t imagine a better person for the job, Gerald turned it down. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, though, and then Mother called, having heard all about it. Please, she said. Please come home. He couldn’t say no to her. The truth was that for the seven years he’d been out west—first graduate school and then working as a counselor—he’d felt as though something was missing. When he accepted the job, it was as though a weight had lifted. His friends at Berkeley couldn’t understand. He was almost thirty—everyone else was getting married, having children, starting lives of their own. He’d tried to explain it by saying Mother was alone, and William’s children—now eight and six—were growing up without him. That was part of it, but, mostly, he simply longed for the comfort of home.
William had been dismayed, calling as soon as Mother had told him. G, he said, don’t do this. You got out. Don’t come back. Once Gerald had made it clear that his mind was made up, though, William let it go. Although the school had graciously told Mother she could stay in the house as long as she wanted, given how long Father’s family had been associated with the school, Gerald didn’t want to live there. He moved into a shared faculty house, the other side of campus from Mother, but he spent June and July fixing things around the house, eating dinner most nights with her. Stopping by one morning in late August, he finds Mother in the kitchen, putting together a shopping list. The children are coming, she says, smiling up at him. William just called!
Gerald pours a cup of coffee and sits down. William is forever dumping the kids and disappearing. It does make Mother happy—it gives her something to do, something to plan, something that ignites that old excitement—but Gerald already resents it. He had no idea this was happening on such a regular basis. He loves the children, too, and enjoys spending time with them, but he hates the way that William assumes. What if Mother had plans? But she rarely does, and when she does, she’ll cancel or reschedule on a moment’s notice. William knows that all too well.
Mother opens the fridge and begins moving things about. I can never remember, she says, her back to him. Does Kathleen like raspberries and Jack blueberries? Or is it the other way around? Gerald sighs. It’s impossible not to get drawn in. How he loves those children. Jack will only eat raspberries if they’re whole, Gerald says. Raspberry pieces are not acceptable. That’s it, Mother says, I knew you would remember.
Later, after dinner, Gerald sits on Kathleen’s bed, with Kathleen on one side and Jack on the other, bathed and in their pajamas, reading Alice in Wonderland to them. Kathleen loves it. Oh, my, she says. Read that part again. Jack leans forward to look at the illustrations, Alice stretched out long and thin. It’s like she’s in a funhouse mirror, he says. Remember, Kat, when we went to the carnival with Daddy? I looked so thin and you looked so fat? Kathleen sticks out her tongue at him. Shut up, Jack, she says. Let Uncle Gerald read.
Kathleen has taken Bea’s room as her own. After Bea left, Mother didn’t change a thing. Gerald had found Mother in here quite often, early on, looking out the window or sitting in the desk chair. She’d always been flustered when he’d seen her, claiming to just be cleaning up, but he guessed that she was trying to stay close to Bea, too. On more than one occasion, especially after William left for Harvard, he’d snuck in here and slept in her bed, feeling her form in the mattress, wrapping his arms around a pillow as though it was Bea. Now Kathleen always takes this room, and Jack sleeps in William’s old room. They are thrilled to have their own rooms; at home they share a small room, their beds only two feet apart. And when they stay over, Gerald usually does as well, the two of them waking him up in the morning, their eyes bright.
It is funny, sitting here now on Bea’s bed, seeing what she saw when she went to sleep and when she woke. A beautiful view of the gardens, which are now in full late-summer glory. The walls are covered with a yellowing, peeling wallpaper dotted with tiny violets. Gerald has always loved this bed, so high off the floor it needs a footstool, and the children love it as well. As annoyed as he is with William, being here with Kathleen and Jack is a moment of pure bliss. This is why he came home. He can’t understand why William spends so much time trying to get away.