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“You want to talk about it?” Bill asked.
“I don’t think so.”
Bill nodded as though that was the answer he’d expected, or wanted. “I only asked because you seem like you’re not having your best day, and I know Nancy’s kind of fretting about you and Rosemary. She liked meeting your mom. Told me all about it after. Told me about you, too, what she’d gathered from Bea and research on the Internet.”
Kal hefted a box of formula cans onto the table, lifted them out and stacked them one by one.
“I got thinking about what would bring someone like you to my house, and what would happen that meant you were having the kind of day looks like you’re having, so I just thought. You know. If you wanted to talk.”
He handed Kal a can of formula to complete his box.
“Thanks.”
Then the only noise in the garage was the sound of supplies going into cardboard boxes, the tape gun zipping, one box hefted on top of the next.
“It’s your anniversary,” Kal said.
“Last fall. We’re only just now getting around to having the party because things blew up kind of spectacularly right around the day itself.” Bill glanced at him. “In a good way. Eventually.”
“I think my life is blowing up in the regular way.”
“The bad way.”
“Well, with Rosemary. We just met. In Nepal, after the avalanche on Everest. You know about that from Bea.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“We’ve been hanging out all week and got pretty close, but it doesn’t look like
it’s going to work out. We’re on different trajectories, you know? She’s got her book, her whole life in England. I’ve got…stuff I need to get back to. Some projects in Nepal. It’s too hard.”
“Sure.”
Kal waited for Bill to say something else, maybe some kind of sage advice, but he just said, “You don’t want to stack them more than four high.”
“Over here?”
“Yeah, that’s perfect.”
Kal moved the boxes where Bill told him to. He started to wish he hadn’t said anything.
He remembered getting boxes like this as a kid. Not formula and diapers, but the equivalent. Powdered milk. Food pantry cheese and peanut butter.
They kept working. It was a relief to have work to do, even if it was the kind of Samaritan work that didn’t make a difference.
“Feels sometimes like I’m packing up a bunch of garbage, you know?” Bill said.
The old white man could read his mind. Creepy. “Diapers and formula makes a difference, though, for people who need them.”
“I stick with the lists from the NGOs of what they need the most. Even so. Castoff clothes and canned formula, when I see pictures online of those kids in Aleppo. Hospitals attacked with chemical weapons. Hospitals.” Bill shook his head. “I have this way I think about it, though, like a philosophy. You have a philosophy?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I’ve got one.” Bill taped a box shut and handed it to Kal. “It’s from years ago, before Allie was born. Allie’s not my kid. Biologically. Her mom, she worked with this artist for years. You heard about that, the movie Bea’s making?”
“Some.” Kal was starting to feel uncomfortable about being the audience for whatever Bill was about to tell him.
“Yeah, so she worked with this artist, Justice, who was in love with her. Is still in love with her, probably—at least he thinks he is. One time she went off to New York and came back pregnant with Allie. We were married. May was a baby.” Bill made eye contact. “Tell me if this is getting too weird.”
