Robert

By JBMulligan

Evelyn polished the dining room table, wondering how many times she had done that in her life?  How many hours had been spent, that might have been better spent ("gainfully spent," her husband Victor would have said) doing almost anything else?  She shrugged and kept polishing.  This new wax was so much better than her old one.  It didn't leave a streak at all.  Stupid commercial, but the polish was good.  She giggled.  Still, the kid in the commercial was cute.

She straightened and stepped back, and moved around the table looking for streaks or spots she had missed.  Nope.  This was perfect.  Still, she looked one more time.

Her reflection looked up at her, tilted its head one final time as she leaned over the blur of a round face under a helmet of blond hair, and the square shoulders and opulent breasts of a small woman prone to plumpness.  She thought to herself, "If this table were any cleaner, it would be new."

The phone rang.  She let it ring twice, to be polite, as her mother had always done.  "Hello?  Oh, hi, Gwen."  She tried to sound enthusiastic.  Gwen was her best friend in the neighborhood, but such a chatterbox.  By the time Evelyn had told her about the meal she was making for tonight, and the lovely new car Victor had brought, twenty minutes had passed, and the potatoes were going on late.

She was at the kitchen sink, scrubbing the potatoes, when she looked out the window and saw the 6:22 bus pull to a stop across the street.  She looked at the clock:  only two minutes late today.  When the bus started up again, she saw old Mr. Paxton go down the street toward his house, as well as s young man who stood and - seemed to be looking at their house.  And for a very, very long time.  He had black hair that, when he turned to look down the street, she could see was gathered in a pony tail.  He wore blue jeans and a white shirt, and a dark blue jacket.  He had a suitcase, which he picked up and he came across the street and walked down past the garage and out of her sight, and she was unaccountably very frightened.  She scrubbed and scrubbed the potatoes under the ice-cold running water, and when the doorbell rang, she gasped.

Evelyn turned the water off and put the potatoes beside the sink.  She heard the voice call out, "Mom?"  She was about to answer when she realized that the voice came from inside the house.  She could have sworn she had locked the front door.  Maybe it was her imagination.  Victor said she was always imagining things.

"Hello?"  It was a deep voice.  Young and strong.  And definitely inside the house.

She almost called out, "Chip?"  But her son's voice was pitched much higher than - whoever was in the house.  She wanted to pick the phone back up and call the police.  But that was just ridiculous.  She imagined Victor's response, and knew she couldn't call.  Fine.  She would just go see who it was, and if it was some homicidal maniac and he raped her and killed her, that would show Victor.

In the living room, the TV came on loudly, and lowered a moment later.

"Oh, my God," she whispered.  "Oh, my God."  She realized how strange it was for a thief or rapist to turn on the television, but she wasn't sure if this made her more or less afraid.  Perhaps this one didn’t know how strange that was.

She inhaled deeply and held her breath for a long moment, then exhaled and walked rapidly through the door to the living room, clinging to a fading resolve.  This was her house, and that was that.  She knew that, and knew how little that would matter to an intruder.

It was the man she had seen walking by outside.  He was sitting on the sofa, watching the TV.  A sports show, she noticed.  The suitcase was on the floor next to the sofa.  He turned to face her and said, absurdly, "Oh, there you are."  He smiled, and rose, and moved toward her.  He had perfect teeth, white and even, the way her mother's had been.

Evelyn backed away from him until she thudded into the wall and gasped.  The young man stopped, and tilted his head, looking at her with affectionate curiosity.  The door to the kitchen was two steps to her left.

"Who are you?"

He smiled.  "Mom."

She took a brave step forward.  "I'm serious, young man.  Who are you?"

The look of confusion on his face slid into frustration.  "I guessed Dad was still pissed - mad at me.  I didn't think he'd have...."

"I'll... call the police if I have to."

The young man sighed, then snapped, "Fine.  Call them.  Tell them you don't know who I am.  Say hello to Captain Finnerty for me."  He turned and went back to the sofa.  "I'll just catch the highlights until they get here."  Then he did the strangest, most terrible thing:  he sat down and went back to watching the TV.  Evelyn shook her head several times, then forced herself to stop doing that.  And how did he know Jack Finnerty?  That's it, he must be a criminal.  She whimpered at the thought, and saw that he had heard her, and he didn't turn around, and she was suddenly terrified, she wanted to run through the kitchen and out of the house, but her feet wouldn't move, so she said something, anything, just to talk.

"Would you like something to drink?"

Her mind froze as she realized what she had said, and she barely noticed him turn and smile briefly, until he noticed her expression.  He looked puzzled, then sad.  "Coffee, thanks.  If there's any left."

"Sure.  Sure.  There's...."  She went into the kitchen.  He was guessing about the coffee.  He could have looked into the kitchen.  No he couldn't have, she'd seen him get off the bus, had she seen him?  Her mind raced around her, almost like something just outside of her, so fast that the blur of it never quite left her eyes.  She staggered and shook her head.  This was ridiculous.  She strode to the door, opened it, and said, "How do you take your coffee?"

"Still black," the young man said after a moment.  He didn't turn around.

She looked down and the cup of coffee was in her hand, black and steaming.  That could have been coincidence.  It bothered her that she didn't even remember pouring it.  She turned halfway around to go back into the kitchen, but she couldn't think of anything else to do, so she brought him his coffee.

"Thanks," he said, and patted the sofa next to him.  "Sit.  Sit."  He looked at her expression and gestured to the chair behind her.  Evelyn backed toward it.  "Tell me what's been happening while I've been... gone."

She screamed and rushed into the kitchen.  She was still there a few minutes later, bent over the sink, hyperventilating, her fists clenching the faucets, the water rushing loudly into the sink, filling it slowly, tatters of steam rising around her, blessedly blurring the impossible world at least a little bit, she couldn't scream, couldn't move, when he came in and reached slowly across her right arm and gently turned the water off.  His appearance didn't startle her as much as the silence following.

"I know it's been," and he stepped away from her as she stiffened.  "I don't know what to say," he told her.  He was almost in tears.

"Please don't be upset," she said softly.  He was looking down, and did not see her slight shiver as the thought registered that she had spoken to him as one would speak to a child.

"I'm sorry.  I know it's... tough."  He looked up and smiled, and she smiled in spite of herself.  She saw his smile dissipate as she felt hers do the same, and they both laughed, apparently at the same thought.  He really did have a very charming smile.

"Please," she said.  "Go inside.  Sit down.  Drink your coffee."

"You're okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine.  My back is bothering me, but...."  What was she doing?

"Well if you're still going to Doctor Marcotti," he said, smiling and walking toward the door to the living room.  "You know what I think of him.  A total quack.”  He turned and smiled at her. "Hell, he almost has feathers."

Evelyn kept smiling until the door closed.  She hadn't gone to Marcotti in... two years?  Three?  Time went rushing by, you grow old so quickly.  If he knew about Marcotti, but didn't know she had stopped seeing him, then that meant... absolutely nothing, this was madness, she looked down at her hand, it was shaking, the rest of her was absolutely still, she couldn't will it stop.  Stop.  She opened the silverware drawer and put her hand in it and closed the drawer until it gently squeezed her hand - but the hand wouldn't stop.  She was afraid the shaking of the hand would rattle the drawer and bring him back into the kitchen.  She was afraid she would begin to slam the drawer hard on her hand, slam it, slam it, slam it.  She took a deep breath, and her hand stopped shaking then shivered again for a brief, horrible moment, then stopped.

She was still watching the hand a few moments later, when she heard the front door open, and Victor's booming voice.  "Hey, sweetheart."  The customary "How was your day?" didn't follow, and she knew he had seen -

What was his name?

She scurried through the door to the living room and stopped abruptly, as if somebody had installed a second door there without warning.  Victor was closing the front door, and the young man was just rising from the sofa.  Victor walked over to Evelyn and put a proprietary arm around her shoulder, and kissed her cheek.  "Good evening, darling," he said.  "The meeting got out a bit early, so I get an early start on the weekend."  He looked over at the young man, leaning slightly toward and in front of her as he did so.

"This...."  Evelyn didn't know what to say, what to do.  There were no words or thoughts anywhere in her at this point.  What was happening wasn't happening.

"Hi, Dad," the young man said.

"That's a bit casual."

"Sorry, Father."  The young man sighed and put his hands in his pocket, then took them back out.

Victor sighed in response and looked back at her, and she thought for a horrified second that her husband actually recognized the young man, but then she saw that he was puzzled as well, though he was careful to conceal it.  Certainly the young man seemed unaware as he watched Victor walk over to the closet by the front door and put his attache case on the top shelf.  Then he walked over to the young man and Evelyn trembled as she saw his face harden - and the young man's face hardened in a manner which was disturbingly familiar - and stopped before him and said, "What's this about?"

The young man refused to move his face back, but angled it in opposition to Victor's, which gave the disturbing impression that perhaps they were about to kiss one another.  "What do you think this is about?"

"I haven't the slightest idea.  And what's your name?"

That caused the young man to blink and glance upward, and he moved away from Victor, who followed him.  The young man noticed this and stepped toward her husband in a way that made Evelyn think they were going to bump chests.  "Fine," he said loudly, "let's play it that way.  I'm Robert."

"Fine," Victor said.

"Robert," Evelyn thought.  "Of course."  She shook her head.  "Now why did I think that?"  Aloud, she told him, "That's a very nice name."

Robert laughed harshly and said, "So is Evelyn.  So is Victor."  He walked over to the fireplace and stared into it as if he expected to see flames there.  Evelyn was so intent upon him that at first she didn't notice that her husband was trying to get her attention.  She looked at Victor's quizzical expression and shrugged and raised her hands slightly.  He nodded, and glared at the young man's back.  "He's back," she thought.  “No, he’s not.”  She kept waiting for the room to go black, but it refused to do so.

Victor said, "I suppose you want to stay."

The young man turned around, hands on his hip.  "Good God," he muttered.  "Yeah, I thought I might."

"One fifty a week, and you cook your own meals.  And clean up."

Robert rolled his eyes.  "Fine."

"Fine," Victor said.  And that was it.  She knew better than to argue with either of them.  With Victor.  My God, what had he done?  What had Robert done?

"Ev?"

She looked at him.  He was her husband.  "Yes?"

He shook his head, annoyed for a moment, then smiled.  She was already moving as he said, "Have you seen a bourbon?..."

"With my name on it?"  Robert finished the question.

As Evelyn made her husband's drink up at the wet bar at the far end of the room, she kept shaking her head.  This could not be allowed to continue.  It was intolerable.  "People just don't..." she muttered as she chopped at the ice cubes with the little brass hammer to loosen them.  She finished in silence, "walk into somebody's house and say you're their mother and pretend and know things they shouldn't, and then your husband goes ahead and rents them a room."  And she went over to Victor's chair and handed him his drink and he squeezed her hand in thanks, and it was almost normal for a tiny piece of a second, too small to notice until it was lost.

She made herself a gin and tonic, and turned around and watched the two men.  There was, she was horrified to notice, some resemblance, the noses were quite similar, and the ears.  Victor seemed a little shorter than the other, although just as slim.  He took very good care of himself, was in a way even more vain than she was about appearance.  And now that she looked, she could see that the young man also dressed stylishly, though far more casually.  She wanted to scream, and sipped her drink.

Then Victor nodded at the same time the young man, Robert, said, "Nice play."  And she did scream.

"Ev?"

"Yes?"

"When's dinner?"

So apparently she hadn't screamed.  "I'll go check."

"Check?"

"And see how the potatoes are coming."  She rushed into the kitchen and turned on the oven and tossed the potatoes in, and went to scrub one more.  "If he's our guest, he's our fucking guest," she thought, and punched holes in the potato with a fork, and put it in the oven with the others.  She washed the fork and went back to the oven and punched holes in the other potatoes, and looked down and one potato, the largest, was poked and torn and the fork kept going in and in.

She threw the potato out and replaced it.  Then she went back inside.

"You're eating with us tonight," she told Robert, and glared at her husband and picked up her drink and took a long swallow, head thrown back like a gluttonous newborn bird.

"Very well, dear," Victor said, and shrugged, and looked at Robert.  Robert smiled.

There was nothing else that she could do, so she sat next to her husband.  The three of them watched some game on television, Evelyn wasn't even sure which sport it was.  She hated sports, they were too competitive.  After a few minutes, Victor reached over absently and squeezed her knee gently; she wasn't sure how she felt about that, normally she would be grateful but he had invited this... perfectly pleasant young man to stay with them.  At a perfectly reasonable rent, as far as she knew.

Every so often, Evelyn noticed that when she argued with herself, the other voice sounded more like her husband's than hers.

A stumble on the stairs to the upper floor startled them both.  "Hey, buddy," Victor said, smiling, "how was your day?"

"Pretty good," their son Chip said, shaking his foot and smiling awkwardly as he came down.  Evelyn wondered if her son had been listening to them from the stairs.

"When did you get in?", she asked him.

"You were on the phone.  I didn't want to interrupt."

Had she been on the phone?  "I didn't know you were here."

Then Robert said, "How's it going?"

Chip paused at the bottom of the stairs.  "Okay," he said, in a tone as much question as answer.

Robert nodded.  "Okay," he said to nobody in particular.

Victor coughed and said, "Robert is staying with us."

"Yes," Evelyn added weakly.

Chip nodded as if the information confirmed a suspicion he had held for a long time, but simply said, "Okay."  He took a few steps away from the stairs, then stopped and said, "Where?"

Victor sighed.  "Here.  What did I just say?"

"I meant what room."  Chip's cheeks puffed and reddened, accentuating the roundness of his face, and nearly matching the redness of his hair.

"Maybe yours," Victor snapped.

"The spare room next to the bathroom," Evelyn said.  "There are some things in there now," she added apologetically to Robert, "but we can move them."

"The spare room next to the bathroom," Robert said softly, with his eyes closed.  After a moment, he opened them, and looked at Evelyn in a way that almost brought her to tears.  "The room with the blue walls.  Unless you've repainted."

"No, we haven't," she said - then flinched.

"Why don't you bring your things up there now?," Victor said jovially.  Evelyn and Robert both stared at him, and Robert nodded at last and took his bag upstairs, pausing at the bottom step to tell them, "I'm going to shower up, too, if that's all right.  Long time on the road."

"Sure," Victor said, still smiling.  "Perfectly understandable." 

Chip watched his parents watching Robert ascend and sucked in his lower lip.  His right hand kept clenching and unclenching until he shoved it into his pocket.

"I don't like how he knows things about us," Victor whispered as soon as Robert has disappeared upstairs.

Evelyn shook her head.  "Then why did you invite him to stay?"

"To find out what he's up to.  Let's see when he comes down, if he's willing to back his game with cold cash... whatever that game is.  That'll prove something."

"Yeah," Chip said.

Evelyn said, "What?"

Victor looked at her.

"What will that prove?"

"Sh.  Chip and I are going to watch TV, you take care of dinner.  I want us to be normal."

"Yeah."

Evelyn nodded, and went into the kitchen.  "Normal," she repeated to the steak as she took it from the marinade bag and placed it in the pan.  In spite of herself, she closed her eyes and inhaled the wonderfully pungent aroma of the marinade.  "Somebody we've never even seen before comes here...."  She looked around and saw that, amazingly, she had remembered to set the timer.  The steak could go on in another five minutes or so.  Good habits were so important.  "He just strolls right in, and my husband rents him a room, and he wants it to be normal."  She looked at her glass, and was astonished to see it was empty.

She took some broccoli spears from the freezer and got them ready and put on the meat, and went back into the living room to refill her glass.  Victor was still watching the game, and Chip was pretending to.  Her son had never had any gift for sports, but he had always watched with his father.  Victor had been an athlete.

When she came back from putting the broccoli on, Robert was just coming down the stairs.  He'd changed his clothes, and looked far more relaxed than he had before.

"My God," Evelyn thought, "what if he actually believes he's?..."  That was more frightening than any plot or scheme.

"So you said you were a long time on the road," Victor said, once Robert had settled.  "Where from?"

"Boston," Robert said, and reached into his pocket.  "Oh, and here you go.  First month's rent."

Victor took the money and nodded his thanks, and tucked it away.  Evelyn just looked into her drink.  Month.  First.  This wasn't happening.  She wasn't here.

Victor laughed, and pocketed the money.  "I guess whatever you did in Boston was lucrative"

Chip nodded, wide-eyed.  "Yeah."

Victor glanced at Chip briefly.

"Dinner will be ready shortly,"  Evelyn said, and went inside to check on the meal as Victor asked Robert if he'd quit his job.  Robert's answer was non-committal, and Evelyn stopped just inside the kitchen door, sure that Victor would pursue the matter.  Amazingly, he did not.  The food was on schedule -she wasn't sure she could have taken that not going properly, sometimes the smallest things could set you off - and so she looked around, there was nothing to do, and she went back inside and sat as the men ignored the news and discussed the game, which had just ended.

Chip was a big fan of one of the players, and Victor teased him about the mistake the player had made.  Robert sided with Chip, but admitted it had been a poorly chosen shot.  So it was probably basketball they'd been watching.  Victor allowed that the player was pretty good, and then it was time to eat.  Evelyn watched the face of each man as he spoke, and found out nothing.

The eerie ordinariness of that post-game conversation didn't hit her until she was bringing the steak to the table.  It seemed to her that the steak nearly slid off the plate, and yet the thin red "jus" barely shivered.

"If that tastes as good as it smells and looks..." Victor said, smiling at her, then slicing the steak.  Chip nodded. Robert said nothing, and she didn't look at him.

They ate in silence, as they always did.  Robert went along with that naturally, as far as Evelyn could tell.  Something bothered her - something more than the situation.  Something in the air.  After a long while, she figured out what it was:  Chip chewed with a constant but very small sucking sound.  She glanced over at him, and saw that one corner of his mouth was open as he chewed.  It was more a splashy kind of sound than a sucking.  It was very irritating, she couldn't believe she had never noticed it before.  Then she thought perhaps she had noticed it long ago, but had just gotten used to it.  She couldn’t deal with it now.

After dinner, they went back into the living room.  Evelyn refreshed everybody's drink, including hers.  She normally just had one drink and nursed it scrupulously.  The hell with it, she decided.  If Vic was that happy with the new tenant, then she might as well celebrate.

They watched the TV, and Victor made small talk, more with Robert than anybody else.  It was far more attention than he normally paid to her.  The topics varied:  the shows they were watching, stories in the news, idle chatter.  But every so often, Victor would lead the conversation around to Boston or money or what Robert intended to do here.  It was very subtle, and he never pressed it when Robert declined to answer or changed the subject.  She could see that the young man knew what her husband was doing, and it was amusing to listen to them.  It was kind of like a dance.  She and Victor had loved dancing years ago, when they were younger.  Much younger.

Of course, it was considerably less graceful on those few occasions when Chip tried to draw Robert out.  Robert smiled and evaded him, and Victor looked annoyed.  Chip just looked baffled, as if he thought Robert were breaking a rule, but he couldn't quite prove it.  At one point, Evelyn watched, out of the corner of her eye, Chip staring at Robert for several minutes.  She wasn't sure what the expression on his face signified, but it made her uncomfortable.

A number of times, Robert looked at her as if inviting her into the conversation.  She smiled at him to be civil, but said nothing.  Slowly her anger at him grew.

"How dare he think I could be his mother - and forget him.  Does he think that little of me?"

She could see the puzzlement on his face when she didn't respond.  As the night wore on, he stopped trying to include her, which wounded her and made her simultaneously all the more furious with him.  And all the time, Victor was probing and Chip was watching, and it seemed to her that none of them had ever been here before, they were all strangers.  And that didn't seem to matter to any of them.  Not even her.  The only one who seemed remotely concerned about it was Robert.  She wanted to laugh at that, but knew that if she started, the laughter wouldn't stop.

When it came time to go to bed, and they made their way up the stairs, Evelyn kept waiting for somebody to say this could stop, had to stop, it was a joke, it had gone too far, something.  But all anybody said was, "Good night."

"I can't believe you invited him to stay," she told Victor after the light had been turned out.

"He's up to something.  And we won't find out what if we throw him out.  He'll just try something else.  Only then, we won't be able to keep an eye on him."  She hated Victor's calm, logical approach to a crisis.  Her husband was very good in a crisis, but this was different.  It was even more infuriating that she had no answer to him.

"What if he tries to kill us in our sleep?"

Victor laughed.  "No, that's way too simple.  And why the show of money?  It's got to be some kind of con."

"Then call the police.  Let them handle it."

"And miss our chance when he offers us money?  No, thank you."

"Victor, we have plenty of money."

"No," he snapped at her.  "We can never have enough money.  Everything's more expensive every day.  And we have to show everybody else how much we have."  He laughed bitterly.

"But we have... plenty," she said, shocked.  He spent far more conspicuously than she did, he loved to show off how well off they were.

"Oh, we have plenty," he agreed, and patted her arm.  "But it's never enough.  Nobody ever has enough."

"How do you know he’s going to offer us money?"

"Sweetheart."  Victor was quiet for a long time.  "It's a con.  He'll offer us money.  And we'll take it.  We just won't give him a chance to steal it back."

“So this is stealing?”  He glanced at her and she looked down.  "This isn't a good idea," she said softly.

"Everything will be fine," he reassured her.  "Just don't give him any money, OK?”

“Of course not.  Why would I give him any money?”

He shook her arm, “Just don’t… feel sorry for him.”

“Sorry for?-”

“Just don’t give him any money.”

“Fine.  I wasn’t going to give him any money.”

“Good.”

Why would she give the young man money?  Why on earth would she feel sorry for him?  He’d come into this house and….  This was about more than money.  Somehow, she was sure of that.  Whether it was a test, or punishment, or some obscure joke on God’s part, she wasn’t sure.  But it wasn’t just about money.  And she believed that Robert believed - it wasn’t possible, it was so ridiculous and horrible, but he believed he was… their son.  It had been in his eyes all night, a gleam like fresh blood.  And she hadn’t….  But what could she have done?

She couldn’t get to sleep, and took small comfort in the fact that Victor, who normally dropped off in minutes, also had trouble.  After fifteen or twenty minutes, his breathing became regular, and she was afraid to even move, in case she woke him up.  Which was absurd, she wanted him awake.  But she moved slowly and gradually, and only when she was so uncomfortable that she had to move.  And Chip was probably asleep already too.  That child could fall asleep in a thunderstorm.  Waking him up was something else entirely.  These were her two protectors against… she wasn’t sure what.  She was convinced that Robert meant no harm, even though he was tearing her heart into rags every second he remained in this house.

How could he believe she could ever forget him?  If he were hers?

She must have finally drifted off, because she started as she heard the footsteps proceeding softly past their door.  Who was it?  It had to be Robert, Chip walked about like an irritated elephant.  And Victor was still asleep here - she patted softly beside her, and felt the reassuring solidity of his hip.  What was he up to out there?  She heard the door to the bathroom close softly, and smiled.

A few minutes later, he woke her up again as he tiptoed back past the door, and she was up for the rest of the night, staring at the parallelogram of streetlight that the window cast upon the ceiling, at the familiar shapes of the furnishings of the bedroom, grounding her solidly in an actual life.  She began to try and remember when and how each thing had been acquired.  And not once did Robert enter into what she remembered.  That meant so much.

She watched and waited and thought her small, safe thoughts desperately, until slowly the stubborn sky began to lighten at last.  Then she fell asleep one final time, and didn’t awake until 7:30.

She was scrambling eggs when all three men came into the kitchen within five minutes of each other, Victor first, followed by Robert, then finally Chip.  The coffee was almost ready, and Victor simply sat and waited for it without complaining.

Victor smiled at the plates of eggs, and glanced up at Robert.  “So, how did you sleep?”

“Like a rock.”

“Good sleeping weather,” Chip said, and Robert nodded.

“As opposed to weather where you can’t sleep,” Victor said, and smiled at Robert.

“It’s cool for this time of year,” Evelyn added.

“Right,” Chip said.

As Evelyn gathered the plates ten minutes later, Victor asked Robert, “So, when are you going to be looking for a job?”

“In a while.”  Robert laughed.  “I’m pretty well off for now, I can do with a little vacation.”

Chip giggled.  Victor glared at him and asked him, “When’s your next vacation?”

Chip shrugged.  “I’ll probably take a week next month.”

“You do that.”

“Yeah.  I will.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Evelyn saw Robert shake his head, and knew that somehow he understood the relationship Her son and husband had.  It was impossible, but he did.  Maybe con men were unusually perceptive regarding people’s feelings.  If so, it was a horrible waste of a wonderful talent.

Robert asked her, “Do you need help with the dishes?” 

“Good idea,” Victor said, before she could decline.  He hopped up and went over to her - she was standing by the sink - and gave her a smile and a quick kiss, whispering as he did so, “Don’t forget he’s not actually our son.”

She turned and began to wash the dishes, afraid that if she looked her husband in the eye she would scream or stab him.  Don’t forget?  She hadn’t been the one to invite the stranger into their home.  How dare he?  How dare he?  She banged a plate down in the drain-board so hard she thought she might break it, and looked into the window over the sink to see the reflection of her husband going through the kitchen door, followed closely by Chip.

“Like a puppy,” she whispered.

“Huh?”  Robert looked at her.  “Are you OK?”

“No I am not.  I am not OK.  Why would I be OK?”

“Mom.”

“Stop saying that.  Do you think for a moment?…”  She lowered her head and sobbed, and let him lead her to the kitchen table and sit her down.  It didn’t matter, let him do what he wished.  She already felt as if her family were shattered, scattered in different direction like shards of a dropped coffee cup.

“Maybe I should go.” Robert said.

“Yes.  Yes.  Please go.”  She stared into his eyes, watching the pain inflate in them, and then the dullness and deadening, all the while willing the thought through her eyes into him that yes, he must go.

“OK then,” he said softly.

“Thank you,” she said.  “Robert.”

He left the kitchen and she followed him a few minutes later, realizing that he couldn’t go, he was a con man, he had to spring - whatever it was he was going to spring on them.  Except he was coming down the stairs with his bag just as Victor and Chip came in from the garage, both of them smiling, and the smiles dropping as soon as they saw Robert.

“You’re leaving,” Victor said.

Robert nodded.  “I think  it’s best.”

“Well….  You’re probably right.  I guess you’ll want your money back.”

Robert laughed.  “Keep it.”

“You’re sure.”

“Keep it.”  Robert nodded to each of them in turn, Evelyn last, and opened his mouth to say something, and then he turned and walked out.

“I wonder how long it’ll take,” Chip said.

Victor nodded.  “Just hope he gets on the bus before he notices.  It’ll be a lot easier.”

Evelyn looked at them.  “What’s going on?  What is going on?”  She could feel a pain in the side of her head, as if something had grabbed a portion of her mind and was pinching it between thumb and forefinger.

“Oh, nothing,” Chip said, looking proud and ashamed, then looking down, then at his father.  Victor sighed and his son blushed.

“The money,” Evelyn said.

Victor laughed.  “What money?”

Chip giggled.

“You can’t do that.  He’ll be back.  It’s… robbery.  It’s theft.”

Victor shrugged.  “Of course he’ll be back, but he can’t prove anything, can he?”

Evelyn looked at her husband and son, and turned to go back into the kitchen.  She turned again to her husband, startling him.  “Can’t he?”

“No, dear, he can’t.  But he’ll be back.”

Chip nodded.  “Yeah.”

Evelyn went back into the kitchen.  “No he won’t,” she wanted to say.  “For my sake, he won’t.”  But she said nothing.

Outside, Robert waited for the bus back to the city.  His back was to the house, but Evelyn couldn’t shake the thought that he knew she was watching him.  There were no dishes left to do, so she began to wash the clean dishes and silverware, and waited for the bus to come and take him away forever.

*

JBMulligan has published more than 1100 poems and stories in various magazines over the past 45 years, and has had two chapbooks: The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, as well as 2 e-books: The City of Now and Then, and A Book of Psalms (a loose translation). He has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies. 

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