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I double-chec
ked the caller ID—then triple-checked it—as if his voice hadn’t been enough to make me sure that it was, in fact, him. “How did your number get stored in my phone?”
“I put it there after you took off last night.”
“You put it there last night?”
“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”
I didn’t answer him, just waited for him to tell me what was going on. I couldn’t picture it: Berringer huddled by the corner living room table, entering number after number, trying to figure out how my antiquated phone even managed to function in the first place.
“I wanted to make sure that we were okay,” he said. “I hated that you got so mad at me last night.”
“I didn’t get so mad at you,” I said. “And anyway, if you were so worried I was mad, weren’t you worried I wouldn’t pick up after knowing that it was you on the other end?”
“Maybe, but I still wanted you to have a choice in it. In whether to pick up.”
“You’re a weirdo,” I said, but I was smiling as I said it, embarrassed, all of a sudden, as though he was going to catch me. As if he was going to be able to hear what was happening in my chest during this phone call, the speeding up of everything, the inner buzz, a little too much like happiness.
He cleared his throat. “So your brother was saying it turned out to be a long night for you.”
I cleared mine back, which sounded more like a hiccup. I just didn’t know how to answer him. I didn’t want to talk about Matt. Not with Berringer. “So you and Josh actually did go running then?” I said. “I thought it was a cover and he’d taken off again. That he went back to Rhode Island or something.”
“I don’t think he’s taking off again, Em,” he said. “I think he’s done taking off.”
I tried to picture Elizabeth and Grace having breakfast at their kitchen table. I couldn’t really. I pictured them driving somewhere in that pickup truck, not talking to each other maybe yet, but listening to something on the radio: Grace singing along to it, Elizabeth watching her, making herself relax. However anyone wanted to look at this, Josh was taking off.
“Anyway, that’s really not what I was calling to talk to you about,” he said. “I want to know why you got so mad at me. And don’t tell me you’re not. Because you were, and I think I know why.”
I took a deep breath in, not sure what Berringer thought he knew, but very certain I didn’t want to hear it myself. Especially if it began and ended with him thinking I felt a certain way. I wasn’t ready to think about that totally—whether or not he was there to watch me do it.
“Berringer, you know what? Whatever you think you know, I’m sure you’re not right.”
“That’s a fairly broad statement,” he said.
“Well, I’m on the highway,” I said. “And driving someone else’s overstuffed station wagon rather questionably. And running late. So less broad statements are going to have to wait. Unless you have an idea of something for me to say to Meryl, whom I can’t so much manage to be around right now.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. And from the way he said it, I knew he was. I knew he was sorry, and I also knew he wanted to fix it for me, even if he couldn’t. “Will it make you feel better to know it will pass? The weirdness you’re feeling?”
It made me feel worse, actually, because I knew it was true. As much as I was living in these days now, it was because I was living in them. But soon other days would bank up, other things would come to my mind, and they would trump these private truths I had seen, for a minute, about how my brother wanted to live.
“You know what? We can talk about this all later,” he said. “Are you driving safely?”
“Trying to,” I said.
But there was something about the question that stopped me for a second. It made me think of Matt. With everything that had been said, Matt hadn’t asked me a thing about what I was up to in Rhode Island. I hadn’t really wanted him to, but still. I knew about his son and about France and even about his hockey team. But he had absolutely no idea about the documentary or the tackle shop or the 107 wives. He had no idea about the sum total of what my life had become. And I knew he would say I didn’t volunteer the information, which wasn’t untrue. Still, shouldn’t it have mattered enough to him to ask what was going on with me? Even if it didn’t exactly have to do with him?
“Well. I’m sorry I made you feel bad,” Berringer said. “For the record. I’d never want to do that.”
I wasn’t used to that—someone being honest with me, so naturally. It made me feel a little uncomfortable, mostly because I was so lousy at doing it myself. But it also made me feel something else, which I was starting to like.
“That’s okay,” I said. “For the record.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then the rest can wait.”
