Kelley goes in search of his grandsons and finds all three now plopped in front of the TV with controllers in their hands. The stealing of cars has been replaced by something that looks even more nefarious.
“What is this game called?” Kelley asks.
“Assassin’s Creed,” Pierce says. “Wanna play, Grandpa?”
A video game about assassination: It’s the end of society, he thinks. Then he feels like a grandfather. His own grandfather had thought the Beatles were the end of society—and now Paul McCartney is a knight. He’s tempted to run for Coolest Grandpa of the Universe and just sit down and play, but with Patrick in jail what these boys need is a father figure, not a friend to sit down and join them in murder.
“Hey,” he says. “I’ve got some time. What do you say you turn this off and I teach you how to play cribbage?”
“No thanks,” Barrett says.
“Come on, guys. You just can’t waste the day playing video games.”
“We like video games, Grandpa,” Jaime says. “Besides, I’ve already had my non-screen time for the day. I went with Mom into town.”
“Pierce?” Kelley says. “Barrett? You two owe me some non-screen time.”
The older two boys do not respond. They don’t even blink. As Kelley is deciding how much of a hard-ass he wants to be, the phone rings at the inn. Kelley has to run down the hall to pick up the landline. He has a feeling it’s news about Bart.
“Mr. Quinn?” says a young, unfamiliar male voice.
Bart, Kelley thinks.
“Yes?” Kelley says.
“This is D-Day, the bartender at the Starlight? I have Mrs. Quinn here? She’s pretty drunk? I asked if someone could come pick her up and this was the number she gave us.”
“Mrs. Quinn?” Kelley says. “We’re talking about Mitzi, right?”
“Right.”
“And she gave you this number?”
“Actually, she gave me your cell number first, which I tried, but nobody answered. Then this number.”
“My cell phone?” Kelley says.
“Yes.”
Kelley pictures D-Day, the bartender at the Starlight. His real name is Dylan Day; Kelley and Mitzi have known him since he was a kid. Now, of course, he’s grown up; he has a beard, a full sleeve of tattoos, and he wears a fedora. He was a few years ahead of Bart at school, and the last time Kelley grabbed a beer at the movies, D-Day had asked about Bart.
“I’ll be right there,” Kelley says.
“Thanks, Mr. Quinn,” D-Day says, with audible relief.
Mitzi is standing on the curb in front of the Starlight bundled in her coat and scarf when Kelley pulls up. D-Day is standing next to her, even though his presence is probably required inside. Both Mitzi and D-Day are smoking.
Smoking? Kelley thinks. What has happened to his wife?
He rolls down the window of the used Pathfinder they bought after Bart crashed the LR3 a few years earlier.
“Mitzi,” he says.
She throws her cigarette to the ground and squashes it with the heel of her clog, then climbs in the car.
“Thank you, Dylan,” Kelley says.
“No prob,” D-Day says. “Thinking of you guys.”
Kelley bumbles over the cobblestones, takes a right in front of the library, then another right onto Water Street. There are people everywhere, crossing the road indiscriminately, swinging their shopping bags. On Main Street, the Victorian carolers are stationed in front of the Blue Beetle, so there’s a huge crowd. Kelley has to be careful or they’ll soon be singing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”
When he is safely on the other side of town—he will have to go out of his way—he says, “Mitzi, what’s going on?”
She lets her head fall against the window. “I’m having a hard time.”
“You’ve started smoking?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says. “It helps.”
Kelley has no idea how intentionally filling her lungs with tar can help, but he reserves judgment. He smoked himself back when he worked the futures desk at J.P. Morgan. He smoked a pack a day—only at work, Margaret would not have tolerated him smoking at home—and he remembers how nicotine granted him a few moments of what he now thinks of as fierce focused calm. Maybe it’s the same for Mitzi, or maybe she just likes acting out.
“And what’s with the middle-of-the-day drinking?” Kelley asks. “Drinking so much that Dylan Day had to call me. That’s humiliating, Mitzi, right? We’ve known Dylan since he was in braces. And why did you have him call me? Where’s George?”
“George met a woman last night on the Holiday House Tour,” Mitzi says. “He took her to lunch today.”
“What?” Kelley says, and he laughs. Is George really that much of a player?
“I’m sure it’s perfectly innocent,” Mitzi says. “But the point is, George needs normal interpersonal relations. He’s tired of my anxiety, he’s weary of my sadness. He doesn’t get it. Bart isn’t his son.”
“No,” Kelley says. “He’s not.”
“George barely knew Bart. Who was Bart to George but a pesky kid, the one always getting in trouble until you shipped him off.”
“Mitzi,” Kelley says. It has only taken them three minutes together to get sucked into their same old arguments. “I did not ship Bart off. He wanted to go.”
Mitzi says, “I know, sorry. That wasn’t my point. My point was that George can’t relate to my feelings. He’s out to lunch with another woman because he’s sick of me.”
Kelley says, “So you went out drinking?”
“Drinking helps,” Mitzi says.
“There has to be something else that helps other than poison,” Kelley says.
Mitzi gives him half a smile. “Being with you helps.”
She is only here for the weekend, Kelley tells himself. This isn’t permanent. This isn’t real.
Except she is only too real, sitting in the passenger seat next to him, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. She pulls down the visor to look at herself in the mirror, and she fruitlessly tries to tuck her curls under her hat. This tiny gesture pierces Kelley’s heart. He doesn’t want to love her; he doesn’t want to find her attractive—but he’s helpless. The entire car now smells like her.
He reaches out and puts his hand on her leg, thinking she’ll most definitely rebuff him. But instead, she covers his hand with her hand.
The next thing Kelley knows, he and Mitzi are sneaking in the back door of the inn and hurrying down the hall to Kelley’s bedroom—which, for nineteen years, was their bedroom. Once the door is closed, Kelley and Mitzi start madly kissing, kissing like they haven’t kissed in years and years. Kissing so intensely that they fall back on the bed, and then Mitzi takes off her shirt, and Kelley thinks, Are we really going to do this? It’s not a good idea, not in any respect, it will only confuse them both when things are so confusing anyway, but he can’t seem to tear himself away. He cannot take his hands or his mouth off her.
They make love, fast and furiously, like somehow their lovemaking might be the thing missing, the thing that will save Bart.
Afterward, they both lie on their backs, breathing heavily.
Does he feel better? Physically, yes, definitely! But emotionally? No, not really. He doesn’t want a weekend fling with Mitzi, or Margaret, or anyone else. He wants his wife back.
He reaches over and cups her chin. “Did the alcohol cloud your judgment?”
“I only had a few glasses of wine,” she says. “But it was on an empty stomach and I was upset about George, and then D-Day asked about Bart and I started to cry. Do you remember when D-Day and Bart were in Little League together and D-Day hit Bart with that pitch?”
“I do, actually, now that you mention it,” Kelley says. This is only half a lie. Kelley doesn’t remember D-Day throwing the pitch but he does remember Bart getting hit as a ten-year-old. He remembers Mitzi freaking out and running onto the diamond and shrieking for an ambulance. Not an ice pack, an ambulance. She has always been that kind of mother. Surely George realizes this? How can George reasonably expect Mitzi to accept that her son has been taken hostage by a force as allegedly brutal as the Bely?