I looked at the door as if I could see Eddie in the living room. “Because he likes Hockney?”
Henry closed his eyes.
“I don’t know! Not Hockney. What makes you think he’s gay?”
Henry sighed, as if to say the elderly were blind. “I’m betting it’s not a secret. You should ask him.”
“I’m not going toaskhim.”
“No, sure, listen, I’m not trying to out the guy. He seems totally sweet. I’m just saying if you’re wondering what went wrong, that’s probably what went wrong.”
This information was followed by a light knock, then Leda stuck in her head. “Showtime,” she said. She looked at Henry and then at me. “Are you two having a conference?”
I nodded and gave my nephew a hug. “Fill your mother in.”
“You bet,” Henry said. “You’ll have a great time. You look pretty.”
We all said our good nights, and after one more meaningful stare at the Hockney, Eddie and I were in the car on the way to the Century Club.
“Oh, your sister,” he said, shaking his head. “What a marvel she is.”
“It’s true.”
“I have guilt where Leda’s concerned. She was a wonderful child but quiet, harder to know.”
“Leda was always taking things in. Even at seven, she was training to be a therapist.”
Eddie nodded. “You and I had such a natural affinity. We were easy. I never spent as much time with Leda and I should have. I always thought I’d get to know her better later on, but I should have tried harder when we had the time.”
It was almost seven o’clock and the light came slanting between the buildings. Everything it touched turned to gold. “Trust me, Leda remembers you as the highlight of her childhood, the same way I do.”
Eddie turned away from me and looked out the window. “Don’t make me cry,” he said. “If I start now, I’ll cry all night. I may cry all night anyway.”
Dude’s gay.No problem with that, unless he was your husband, unless you didn’t know. Eddie was not my husband. In the backseat of the black SUV I took his hand.
“Both of you married nice men,” he said. “Both of you seem happy.”
“We’re happy.”
“You were happy children. You didn’t have the best possiblecircumstances growing up, but you were little light bulbs, both of you. Life beats that out of so many people, but not the two of you.”
“Leda and I had each other. That was a huge help.” And we had you, I wanted to say, but was that me being sentimental? Could Eddie have made a difference in the short time we were together? I looked at him. “I don’t know if you had siblings,” I said. “I can’t remember where you grew up. I don’t think I knew you went to Yale.”
“An older brother, Martin. Younger sister, Amy. Altoona, Pennsylvania. And you knew I went to Yale,” he said. “I taught you both the Whiffenpoofs song.”
And then, of course, I did know. We sang it everywhere. We sang it on the way to the Century Club. “We are poor little lambs who have lost our way ...” Eddie shining on the lambs’ chorus: “Baa, baa, baa.”
He smiled. “It drove your mother to distraction, you and me and Leda, bleating.”
“Leda sang it in the first grade talent show,” I said. There was a memory that unpacked itself out of thin air.
Eddie nodded. “A cappella. She was terribly brave.”
When the car pulled up at the club, Eddie turned to me. “I want you to know that if you never do another kind thing in your life, this will have been enough.”
“Is the party going to be that bad?”
“No, it will be a beautiful party. I just didn’t want to go in there alone.”
