“I don’t even do Facebook,” Bobby says, to justify something to himself, to his son, who he knows is disappointed, who has seen this exchange between his parents and has noted the imbalance in interest. Bobby can feel the world move through space. It might be time for another scotch.
“I just wonder where it’s going,” Mimi says, but she’s saying this in the manner of a viewer, dispassionate, curious. She’s not worried for her son. It’s never occurred to her to worry about his photography. He’s young. He’s smart. He makes her laugh. He brings out a kind of maternal something inside of her that Dee has never managed. Mimi doesn’t try and analyze.
“I do too,” Abbie says. “But I think I might know. I got something today. Saul helped me. Saul.” His cutlery filets the piece of chicken with a surgeon’s precision. Abbie has never liked animal fat to enter his mouth. He thinks he gets this from his mother. He has grown up watching her eat and she eats her food with the delicacy of an origami bird.
Bobby shoves more bread into his mouth. He can hear Leopard Lady laugh at him. He can hear Mimi laugh at him. He can feel Abbie’s ultimate indifference; he fears his ignorance will be taken as something worse than it really is. He’s planted a seed. He mustn’t let it grow within his son. “I need a drink,” he sighs. He stands and heads to the liquor cabinet. Mimi watches her husband walk away from the invisible mess he’s created. She blames herself; she’s been far too consumed by her own work, by her own incipient success, to notice this. To notice that something is changing in her husband. That he is bearing some kind of weight at work and that he’s bringing it home. Or perhaps she hasn’t missed anything. Perhaps he hasn’t been like this. Perhaps he’s simply had a bad day. She can’t tell the difference. Because she hasn’t been paying attention.
The rest of the excerpt is here.
