“Why would I have been lonely?”
“Because you were an only child living at any given time with only one parent, one of whom sounds like he was, at best, putting a lot of outsize expectations on a kid, the other with whom he didn’t have a lot in common.”
He shrugged. “It was normal for me.”
Maybe it was time to quit while she was ahead. Jack had told hera lot of stuff, but it felt like he was about to revert to form and clam up. And she was still relaxed, which was a miracle given the first half of the day. She stood up. It had been strange to have this conversation from so far away, one of them on either side of the pool. But as before, the distance felt like part of the reason theycouldhave this conversation.
“The funny thing about my parents,” Jack said, and Blair, already at her patio doors, turned, “is that my mom is the one who encouraged me to write. I used to write these silly little stories when I was young. I used to write them on whatever paper I could find—the backs of receipts or junk-mail envelopes. One day, she came home from work with a notebook for me. It was hardback, and it seemed very formal. I remember being impressed with myself. I carried it around with me pretty much everywhere. Then, later, when I was sixteen, she pushed me to do a summer school creative writing course instead of getting a job—a job that would have helped with the household finances. She caught me looking at this catalog and saw that I’d bookmarked a certain class, and before I knew it, she’d enrolled me.”
“Aww, she sounds great.” She sounded like the kind of mother that Blair strove to be, a mother who saw her kids for what they were and tried to help them be more of that.
“Right. But instead of being thankful, being decent, I spent the majority of my high school years holed up in my room, interacting with her as little as possible.”
“Isn’t that just teenagers, though?”
“Is it?”
“Cal was like that. Not Esme.”
“I went to private school, which my dad paid for. My school was full of rich kids. They all either had mothers who stayed home or who had big careers. One extreme or the other. The mother of one of my friends was a state senator. Other kids had mothers who werelawyers or professors or doctors. But then I had this friend whose mom didn’t work, and she picked him up every day even though he lived a ten-minute walk from school. And every time I went over there after school, there were homemade cookies waiting for us.
“I never invited anyone to our place. I know my mom thought it was because I was embarrassed that we lived in an apartment. She wasn’t wrong, exactly, but it was more that I didn’t want my friends and my mother to overlap. The steak house she works at is a local institution. It opened in the 1920s. It has wood paneling, white tablecloths, servers in dress shirts and ties—all those classic high-end signifiers. I was irrationally afraid that my friends’ families might go there and she’d end up being their server. But if they never met her, it wouldn’t matter.”
Blair winced. She wanted to tell him that being embarrassed by your parents was a teenage rite of passage, but she suspected this went deeper than that. She didn’t have the power to absolve him of this.
“My dad was always saying that an education was the most important thing in life. He said it so often around my mom, and so vehemently, that you couldn’t take it as anything other than a tacit criticism of her. He looked down on her, and he didn’t really try to hide it. Or maybe he didn’t look down on her. Maybe he was just that…”
“Emotionally unintelligent?”
“I hate that phrase, that concept, but yes. Have you read any of my dad’s books?”
“Most of them, yes.”
“Then you know what a master of characterization he is. It’s hard for me to accept that someone so, to use the dreaded term, emotionally unintelligent could write such nuanced characters. Not just that, but write about them sympathetically, from their own points of view.”
“But if it’s not that, then he’s just an asshole. An asshole to the mother of his child.”
“So, yes.” He cleared his throat. “She was a good mother. She just wasn’t the mother I thought I wanted.”
“But was she the mother you needed?”
“I think she was.”
“You should tell her that.”
They got into a pattern of watching an episode ofThe Last of Usevery night. Blair was enjoying the bookending of her days: walks and TV with Jack.
In the mornings, Jack would feed the crow at the lookout point. He’d even gotten it to follow them partway home one day. She wasn’t sure why Jack Branksome of all people was interested in feeding wildlife, but it was hard not to find it charming.
In the evenings, she and Jack would settle in with dinner and TV, which Blair now knew was a huge departure for him. The wildlife theme continued in the evenings, too: in a surprise twist, Morticia took to Jack like he was her long-lost Gomez. Blair and Jack had continued to accommodate her by sitting side by side on one wing of the sectional, but after they ate and Jack made himself comfy, Morticia, historically about as cuddly as her namesake, would plop herself on his lap.
Blair understood. There was something strangely relaxing about hanging out with Jack. He was still grumpy, though less so, and he was still judgmental. But he was profoundly nonhypocritical; he didn’t do false niceties. When he paid a compliment, he meant it. She kept the few he’d issued close to her heart.
They talked, too. Really talked. When Jack asked a question, he was interested in the answer. That, in turn, made herwantto answerhis questions, made her content to open herself up—most of herself, anyway—like a book. All of which meant that being in his company was, somehow, buoying.
The cyclone felt further away when he was around, and it was such a blessed relief.
TheLast of Usseasons were short, so it was only a week and a bit later when they were sitting down for the last episode of season one. Blair had made the tomato cheddar pie to mark the occasion.
