Free The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo Page A

you but I—”
    “We have the room,” David said, running with it. “And we’re— I’m free a lot of the time, Viol; I’ve got—you know, odds and ends.” Her heart broke for this, for his odds and ends, which were not the official doctorly miscellany he made them out to be but projects that he imposed grudgingly upon himself. “But we can certainly care for him, in whatever ways he—”

    “He’s actually moving in with Wendy,” Violet said.
    David’s grip loosened and then tightened again. “What do you mean,” he said, “he’s moving in with—”
    “How can he move in with Wendy ?” she interrupted, heart up near her tonsils.
    “She’s got the room,” Violet said. “And the—you know, the time.”
    “Dad’s retired,” she said rudely, forgetting her husband’s pride. “Dad was dusting the picture frames when I got home today.”
    “I was not, ” David said. “I was reinforcing the plaster behind the painting of the—”
    “We have room and time. And we have considerably more experience than Wendy. ”
    “Kid, hey,” David whispered to her. She extracted her hand from his.
    “Wendy’s your first choice?” she said. “Over— For God’s sake, Violet, I—I was home with you girls until Gracie started kin dergarten, I— You don’t think that we’re—”
    “Just—courtesy,” Violet said, her face blooming red. “Just because I thought you guys were—you know, done. Relaxing. Enjoying your—”
    “I work full-time, you know,” she said, muddling her own argument. Was it possible that she’d always been such a terrific failure of a mother? Was it possible that the bonds she’d always felt with her children had been in her imagination all along? That these luminous, freestanding girls in fact had no idea who she really was, saw her as a woman who lived her life ignorant of all of their misgivings?
    “I thought it might be nice for him,” Violet said. “To spend some time in the city.”
    “Well, River North’s not exactly the city, is it?” David asked. She felt a surging of love for him. “He’ll not exactly be slumming it, will he, being taken by Wendy’s driver from the nicest part of the city to one of the most comfortable suburbs in the tristate—”
    “What he’s saying is why not have him living where school is within walking distance? With people who have actually—people who know how—people who under stand that—”

    “She offered,” Violet said helplessly, and Marilyn felt a momentary empathy for her daughter; she had been known to cave to Wendy similarly, to the particular slant in her eldest’s eyebrows, the specific downward bow of her mouth. “Mom, she’s really— Anyone can see that Wendy hasn’t been having the greatest time since…I think that if she had an extra person in her house she might start to look at the world differently.” Violet set her lips in a firm line like David sometimes did. “I think we can all agree that children change our perspective on life.”
    And what a smug little trump card it was— parent to parent from the girl who’d once complained that her lack of Gap jeans was inhibiting her social progress, from the baby she’d carried around in a sling on her chest while helping Wendy learn to walk.
    David forged ahead before Marilyn could emote. “Of course they do,” he said. His hand again on her thigh. “You really think that this is what’s best for him now?” David, so open and credulous and respectful. She could have killed him.
    “Honestly, I have no idea,” Violet said. “But she’s willing and he’s desperate and I— I’m desperate and I want to give her a chance, if she feels like this is something that she can—”
    “Why don’t we all calm down,” David said. He followed with the question Marilyn should have asked first, the question that had been so far from her mind, pushed aside by her indignation: “Can you tell us what he’s like?”
    She hadn’t even thought to ask