Page 34 of The Things We Never Say

“What a story!” Evie said, cutting a piece of turkey.

“I know,” Francesca said.

When they were done eating, they placed their napkins on the table and Evie said “Don’t clean up a thing!” as they all pushed back their chairs. They moved into the living room with coffee. And the two kids (as Artie thought of them) lingered for a long while; it began to get dark, and Evie turned on a lamp. Francesca recalled the Thanksgivings of her youth that she had spent only with her mother and an aunt who would come over; she spoke of how little money they had had, and yet her mother had managed to buy a used piano after Francesca sat down one day at the age of four and played in someone else’s house, and then her mother had seen to it that she had lessons, and Francesca’s teacher, a retired music professor at the local college, had seen to it she got into Juilliard—

“I had no real idea of any of that,” Evie said.

Rob recalled Thanksgivings here in the house; he had never, till he went off to college, lived anywhere else. He remembered his mother’s parents, but Artie’s parents had died before Rob was born. “Dad, what was your father really like?” He asked this now, turning toward Artie. “I mean, tell me more about him.”

“Nice man,” Evie said.

And Rob’s expression stayed on his father as if to say, You tell me more what he was like. And so Artie recalled to Rob that his father had been hardworking (Rob nodded, he knew that), that he had had his hands full with Artie’s mother, and that he was a kind man, and Artie told of the woman in the hospital who had been smoking with her half a tongue, how nice his father had been to her.

“Oh, man,” said Francesca. “That poor woman!”

“She sounds like an idiot to me,” Evie said. “Smoking with half her tongue gone?”

And then Rob said to Francesca, “You know why our name is Dam with one m and not Damm with two m’s, don’t you?”

Francesca shook her head. “You never told me.”

Taking turns, Artie and Rob told Francesca how Artie’s grandfather, when he arrived from northern Germany right after World War I, dropped one of the m’s from the name. “He didn’t want to sound German,” Artie explained. “Even though he had an accent,” Rob added. On they talked.

Evie got up and went around turning on more lights and then sat back down.

Artie told Rob and Francesca about his sister, Maria, who had (also) died before Rob was born; he had told Rob about her before, but he felt now, as Rob was listening, that his son had a hunger for what was being said. Artie spoke of finding his sister in the cellar, eating the confectionary sugar, when they were young. “A sweet girl, just looking for sweetness,” Artie said. Rob reached over and squeezed Artie’s hand.

—

After Francesca and Rob left, Evie said, “Why are they splitting up? They seem like such a couple these days, much more than they used to.”

“I know. I agree,” Artie said.

For Artie, it had been a very special day; he knew he would never forget it. The privacy of his secret with these kids felt like a warm cocoon around him, and yet it was easy to wear the cocoon, not stifling at all; a strange sense of—of what? almost safety?—seemed to envelop him.

“She told me that they’ve decided that Rob will stay in the apartment and she’s the one who is going to look for a new place before she goes to Europe,” Evie said. “She says she thinks it’s important that Rob stays, that he has always liked the apartment, and she doesn’t care. She told me that in the kitchen.”

“She did? I don’t believe that. They’re a couple.”

“I’m just telling you what she said, Artie.”

Yet Artie could not—or would not—believe it. He whistled quietly as he helped his wife clean the kitchen.

Rachel showed up again with Rob the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was a cloudy day and windy, and as the two of them walked into the house the smell of autumn was on them. Evie had placed her collection of little boxes on the tabletop in a particular way. Rachel stayed seated in her chair by the window near Rob. She spoke of her family in Oklahoma, saying that she had had a wonderful Thanksgiving. To hear her, you would have thought that her perfect family was something out of a children’s book. Rob sat back and watched her.

“My mom’s great. You know, like, she’s just a real mom.” Rachel stuck her head slightly forward as she said this, her hands clasped in her lap.

Evie was sitting with her legs crossed. She uncrossed them and crossed them again the other way. “How nice,” she said.

Rachel nodded. “Yeah, it’s, like, so cool. You know.”

And this went on; it got slightly better as Rob talked more, but the girl—the young woman, Rachel—was an enigma to Artie. Today she wore a long-sleeved white jersey and black leggings over her very thin long legs. At some point Rob mentioned that his father had been Teacher of the Year five years ago, and Rachel said, “You already told me that.” But she turned to Artie then and said, with apparent interest, “Why did you become a teacher?”

Artie was happy to answer that. “Because of Mr. Stepinac.” He sat back in his chair and told them about his junior high school social studies teacher, who had been a wonderful man. Artie tried to think of what precisely had made the man wonderful, and he could only say, “He kept me after school one day and asked if I was going to college and I told him probably not, and he looked at me, really looked at me, and said, ‘Why not?’ And I shrugged. And he said, ‘Artie, I wish you would take yourself seriously. You have gifts.’ And I said, ‘Me? Gifts? What in the world kind of gifts do I have?’ And he said, ‘That’s for you to find out.’ ”

Artie could have gone on about Mr. Stepinac—how the man had befriended him and given him books to read, how he had taken an interest in Artie and encouraged him. “He was the gift,” Artie said. But he could tell that the others were not interested anymore—Rachel looked at Rob, and then around the room—and so he stopped talking about this man who had changed the course of his life.

After Rachel and Rob left, Evie went to the tabletop and looked over the little boxes. “I can’t believe it. How did she do that?”