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Doubled over now, hands on knees, Ransom gasped and tears streamed down his cheeks.
Claire slapped the countertop and stamped her bare brown foot. “Ransom! Look at me!”
Looking at the quiver in her pretty thigh instead, he swallowed hard and straightened up. A look of less-than-convincing penance filmed his eyes.
“Marcel Jones is my oldest friend. I’ve known him almost thirty years. For eighteen of them, I didn’t call him because of you and your various wounds and sensitivities, but when I was desperate and about to sell this place to pay the taxes, I picked up the phone and asked him for this job. I didn’t even know what a fucking CV was, Ran, and he hired me, no questions asked, and I love him for it, I’m grateful to him, and I need this thing to work for Hope and Charlie, I need it for myself, and I’m not going to have you fuck it up over old bullshit and hurt feelings.”
“That’s fairly clear,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Actually, yes. There’s a cocktail party at the college tomorrow afternoon, and if you really mean it when you say you want to be supportive, I’d like your skinny ass in situ. Correction, excuse me: I’d like it very much if you would come. In my dream, you will arrive in your white hat; you will walk across the floor; you will look him in the eye; you’ll say ‘Marcel’—not ‘Cell,’ not ‘Cell Phone’—‘Marcel, it’s good to see you’; you will shake his hand; there will be peace in the valley. Do you read me, Ransom? Sir?”
“If Cell Phone wants peace, why can’t he come see me?”
Her frown turned terminal. “You don’t read me. Ransom, I’m not asking this for Marcel, I’m asking this for me.”
He let a beat elapse. “I guess this is what they call a Mexican standoff.”
“I guess it is.”
“That’s a hard one, Claire. You know it is.”
“Suck it up,” she said.
“Can I sleep on it at least?”
“Please do. And sweet dreams to both of you.” She turned away, dismissing him, but Ransom didn’t go.
“So what is this Scar business, anyway?”
She doused another cotton ball. “It’s 101, Ran. He scares her. If she makes him her father and pretends he’s good, then he won’t hurt her, see?”
“So it’s about me….”
Claire laughed a short, bitter laugh. “Why not? Isn’t everything?”
Ran held up his hands, surrendering, and turned around.
“I’m sorry,” she called after him. “Ran?”
He turned.
“That was a cheap shot.”
“Okay.”
“And thank you for the check. It’ll help with that repair.”
“It should do more than that.”
“Great,” she said. “Because I still owe seven thousand in back taxes, and this year’s are coming due.”
“There’ll be more.”
Her face turned sober and attentive.
“Want to know how much?”
“You know I do. Don’t make me jump through hoops.”
“Come on, guess,” he said in a tone of sportive wheedling.
“Fifty?”
He pressed his lips and shook his head.
“More?”
He pointed toward the roof.
“A hundred?”
He shook his head again, trying not to smile.
“Oh, shit, Ran, just tell me, would you! What?” Her excitement had an edge of childlike terror.
He shot her a V.
“Two?” she said. “Two hundred?”
He let the grin come now, and Claire’s eyes filmed. She leaned back against the counter, staring blankly into the white void of the clawfoot tub, and then she covered her face and her shoulders shook.
Ransom hadn’t seen this coming and took it like a hard punch to the gut. He put his arms around her. “It’s been a bad patch, Claire.”
She looked up with streaming eyes. “It has for you, too, Ran. I know it has, and I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to.”
The happy news led them down the alley, around the corner to revisit the dark place they’d escaped. For years they’d lived like gypsies and never cared for money—or thought they hadn’t, when there was enough—and then they’d found out what it was to be without it and have children. They’d found that what they took to be their basic and inalienable rights—to have a decent place to stay, to feed and clothe themselves, to take care of their children—weren’t rights at all, were nowhere guaranteed. The moment the spigot of their cash flow had shut down, the moment Ran had ceased to be able to meet his obligations, their inclusion in the human family, in fellowship of people of goodwill, had become tenuous in the extreme, and they had looked as near as their own families—Claire’s, that is—and far through the wide world and failed to find a single other person who would go to bat for them or stand up for Hope and Charlie’s right to eat and breathe and occupy a space on earth and serve out their allotted term of years. Ran had understood this growing up with Mel, who would have let him starve and advanced starvation as a character-building exercise before he would have forked out for an unearned Happy Meal; Claire had learned the news for the first time. The experience had been stinging and transformative for both.
“Listen, Claire, you don’t have to do this Harlow thing.”
She sniffed and gathered. “No, it’s done, Ran. They’re counting on me. I promised, and I want to.”
“That’s okay, too.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
He drew the inference, and her look, more sad than confrontational, confirmed the inference he drew. There had been a fundamental shift, and in the resounding childless stillness of the house, they contemplated each other, uncertain what came next.
“You know,” she said, “despite your God-given talent for driving me insane, I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you every day.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Ran said, “but more at night.”
She smiled at this, her lips did, but her eyes were grave. “You know what my therapist said when I told her you were coming?”
“Unless it’s complimentary, I encourage you to keep it confidential.”
“She looked at me and said, ‘Do you know what the definition of insanity is, Claire? Repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome.’”
“Hey, therapists don’t know everything,” he said. “Doesn’t the exception