You Only Call When You're in Trouble by Stephen McCauley

Author:Stephen McCauley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Chapter Nineteen

Tom was unable to sleep. The moonlight in his room, the lack of curtains, the news about Oliver, his own stupidity at not having guessed—all nagged at him. He wanted to call Alan, but of course, he couldn’t. He had to mull it over on his own. Cecily could have a done a lot worse in the lottery of parentage: Oliver Fuchs had money, brains, and a sturdiness that suggested he’d live into his nineties, and that might balance out the Kemp family’s tendency to die young. The similar features Dorothy had mentioned were unmistakable now that they’d been pointed out.

Dorothy had announced her pregnancy at one of the dinners she loved to throw in her sprawling, poorly tended house in Medford, back when none of them wore sunscreen and only Oliver and Charlotte had real incomes. Throw was the best verb to describe how she put together these events four or five nights out of seven. She would invite a random collection of people, give wide latitude as to the start time—“I never lock my doors, so show up when you want”—and then sweep in carrying bags of food from her restaurant. She claimed she loved to entertain, which was certainly true, at least in the sense that she hated being alone. It was one of the defining characteristics of her life and a trait Tom found irritating but touching.

Charlotte and Oliver were at that dinner. They’d been dating for several volatile on-again, off-again years and had recently reunited after six months apart. During that separation, Charlotte had had a brief affair with a chef from Dorothy’s restaurant, an unattractive but sexually profligate man who, Dorothy claimed, had slept with almost everyone who worked there. How did she account for his success? “He started sleeping with the prettiest waitress we ever hired. No one could believe it. The only possible explanation was that he must be an incredible lover. After the beauty quit, the rest of the staff had to find out. It’s why men want beautiful women: the endorsement.” The staff at Dorothy’s restaurant had been prolific in terms of drug use and sexual activity.

Tom attended that dinner with the man he was dating at the time, a skinny kindergarten teacher named Daniel Korbel whom everyone called Danny K. Tom often brought his dates to these events, partly because he knew that his sister’s loopy behavior and gossipy dinners balanced out his own rigidity. It was as if he were trying to prove he wasn’t as stodgy as he seemed by connecting himself to this good-humored chaos.

Danny K was short and spoke in a high singsong voice, almost as if permanently reading aloud from a picture book. He was extremely bright and unusually perceptive, but most people found it easy to dismiss what he said because of his height and voice. In social situations, he loved playing the enfant terrible and making outrageous statements or asking invasive questions in his infantile tones. He got away with it because no one took him seriously, but the price he paid was that no one took him seriously.

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