taught me,” Tommy said in a low voice. “He taught me how, Breda.” His shoulder started to tremble, and Breda touched it.
Grandpa Pat was a New Yorker and passed his last years in a Midtown residential hotel. After his death they found his room filled with pepper shakers and salt shakers taken from the diners and bars in which he’d whiled away his days. Tommy displayed the shakers on a shelf at home. “Some families inherit sterling silver, others stolen restaurant utensils,” he said. Later he asked Breda to box away the shakers because they made him think of the sands of time and depressed the hell out of him.
After Tommy disappeared to Costa Rica, Breda stayed put in the matrimonial home in Santa Barbara, unclear about where things stood. When it became apparent that her husband wasn’t returning, she sold up and moved into an apartment in Atherton to be near Siobhan. Siobhan had urged the move. But within a year, Siobhan and her family headed east to Alexandria, Virginia. “Well, that’s how it goes, I guess,” Breda said when her daughter broke the news. “If you have to go, you have to go.” Breda stayed in Atherton, working as an administrator for a medical practice. She took a weekly (and straightforward and pleasant) call from her son, and a biweekly (and difficult and tetchy) call from her daughter. Inevitably the latter put her through to the grandchildren. She called their names down the line and listened for a response. “Talk to Grandma,” an adult instructed in the background. Then a child’s voice, small and stubborn and distinct: “Don’t want to.”
From time to time, her children brought back news from the Switzerland of Central America, as Costa Rica was apparently known. It was so humid down there, Breda learned, that a paperback would practically rot overnight. It was also amazing. There were monkeys and colored birds and sloths and waterfalls and rocky beaches. Tommy, who had never been interested in the Californian ocean, allegedly took up surfing. There was a story that he’d saved a woman from being drowned, which Breda found hard to believe. More plausibly, he became a nature guide. He led groups into the forest and pointed out birds and termite hills. He had one trick, Patrick said, where he swung his machete into the bark of a tree, and sap—was it rubber?—came oozing out. When the hike was over, he took the surfers and ecotourists and movie stars (apparently Tommy had rubbed shoulders with Woody Harrelson) for a bite to eat at the Crazy Toucan, which was the restaurant owned by the German woman. Patrick showed his mother snapshots of a wooden house with colored lights strung across the front porch. “See? That’s where the bar is, right there. That outbuilding, that’s the kitchen.” “Nice,” Breda said. “And there’s Ute, with the blonde hair. She’s a great cook. Fusion food.” He pronounced the woman’s name Ootah, as if he were an expert on Germany.
“Fusion food,” Breda said. “Sounds good.”
Breda and Tommy did not divorce. For a time, Breda was unsure which was worse: the mortification of divorce or the mortification of being so forgotten about that one’s husband could not even bother to place one’s breakup on a proper legal footing. Then Breda came to think, What difference does it really make, in the end? This question, she discovered, was increasingly applicable to a lot of things. It was true, as her mother had once remarked, that the consequentiality of things became clearer as you grew older, so that actions and especially omissions assumed an importance they never used to have; and so one grew more hesitant. But on the other hand it seemed to matter so much less whether you wound up with outcome A or outcome B.
Four years into their marriage, Patrick and Judith bought a house in the Bronx, not far from where Tommy had grown up. They held a housewarming party and Patrick made a big deal of it, insisting Breda fly over. “Bring your boyfriend, Mom,” he joked. His father also turned up, with the German woman. When Breda offered to help out with the refreshments, Patrick said, “Just relax, Mom. Enjoy yourself. Leave the cooking to Ute. It’s what she does for a living.”
For an hour Breda mingled with the young people and played an agonizing game of hide-and-seek with the Costa Ricans. But a conversation with Tommy was inevitable. Emerging from the kitchen, he said jovially, “Hello, Breda.” It was their first conversation since their separation, which also was four years old. He looked quite different. There was a beard and a ponytail, and his hands were cracked and brown. He was heavier, in spite of the surfing and the fusion food. “Good of you to come, Breda,” he said, making her feel like an interloper. They made small talk. Breda noticed that Tommy made repeated use of a new expression. “The roads are kinda funky down there,” he said of Costa Rica; and, “It’s kinda funky meeting up again like this, isn’t it?” No doubt this was beach talk or bar talk or surf talk. He had lost that exact, scientific air she’d once found attractive. A memory suddenly seized her: Tommy’s liking for sniffing and snouting her ass while she took up a position on all fours; even, once, when she was menstruating and blood trickled down her inner thigh. “It’s passion, honey,” he mumbled. “This is passion.”
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