The Corrections

“Did you drop a hint?” she said. “Because somebody did. Somebody put that idea in her head. And it occurs to me that I said one little thing to you, once, which you might have misinterpreted and passed on to her. And, Gary, she and I have enough problems without your giving her ideas.”

“You know, if you weren’t so mysterious—”

“I’m not ‘mysterious.’ ”

“If you weren’t so secretive,” Gary said, “maybe you wouldn’t have this problem. It’s almost like you want people whispering about you.”

“It’s pretty interesting that you’re not answering my question.”

He exhaled slowly through his teeth. “I have no idea where Mom got that idea. I didn’t tell her anything.”

“All right,” Denise said, standing up. “So I’ll do that ‘legwork.’ You think about Christmas. And we’ll get together when Mom and Dad are in town. I’ll see you later.”

With breathtaking decision she headed toward the nearest exit, not moving so fast as to betray anger but fast enough that Gary couldn’t have caught up with her without running. He waited for a minute to see if she would return. When she didn’t, he left the courtyard and bent his steps toward his office.

Gary had been flattered when his little sister had chosen a college in the very city where he and Caroline had lately bought their dream house. He’d looked forward to introducing Denise (showing her off, really) to all his friends and colleagues. He’d imagined that she would come to Seminole Street for dinner every month and that she and Caroline would be like sisters. He’d imagined that his whole family, even Chip, would eventually settle in Philadelphia. He’d imagined nieces and nephews, house parties and parlor games, long snowy Christmases on Seminole Street. And now he and Denise had lived in the same city for fifteen years, and he felt as if he hardly knew her. She never asked him for anything. No matter how tired she was, she never came to Seminole Street without flowers or dessert for Caroline, sharks’ teeth or comic books for the boys, a lawyer joke or a lightbulb joke for Gary. There was no way around her properness, no way to convey to her the depth of his disappointment that, of the rich family-filled future that he’d imagined, almost nothing had come to pass.

A year ago, over lunch, Gary had told her about a married “friend” of his (actually a colleague, Jay Pascoe) who was having an affair with his daughters’ piano teacher. Gary said that he could understand his friend’s recreational interest in the affair (Pascoe had no intention of leaving his wife) but that he didn’t see why the piano teacher was bothering.

“So you can’t imagine,” Denise said, “why a woman would want to have an affair with you?”

“I’m not talking about me,” Gary said.

“But you’re married and you have kids.”

“I’m saying I don’t understand what the woman sees in a guy she knows to be a liar and a sneak.”

“Probably she disapproves of liars and sneaks in general,” Denise said. “But she makes an exception for the guy she’s in love with.”

“So it’s a kind of self-deception.”

“No, Gary, it’s the way love works.”

“Well, and I guess there’s always a chance she’ll get lucky and marry into instant money.”

This puncturing of Denise’s liberal innocence with a sharp economic truth seemed to sadden her.

“You see a person with kids,” she said, “and you see how happy they are to be a parent, and you’re attracted to their happiness. Impossibility is attractive. You know, the safety of dead-ended things.”

“You sound like you know something about it,” Gary said.

“Emile is the only man I’ve ever been attracted to who didn’t have kids.”

This interested Gary. Under cover of fraternal obtuseness, he risked asking: “So, and who are you seeing now?”

“Nobody.”

“You’re not into some married guy,” he joked.

Denise’s face went a shade paler and two shades redder as she reached for her water glass. “I’m seeing nobody,” she said. “I’m working very hard.”

“Well, just remember,” Gary said, “there’s more to life than cooking. You’re at a stage now where you need to start thinking about what you really want and how you’re going to get it.”

Denise twisted in her seat and signaled to the waiter for the check. “Maybe I’ll marry into instant money,” she said.