Page 50 of We All Live Here
Jensen is watching her, his mouth pressed into a thin line of sympathy. “I think I caught the gist of that,” he says. “C’mon. I’ll drive you back.”
Chapter Seventeen
The young doctor in Triage recognizes Gene immediately. “I know you!” he says, looking up from his paperwork in the small curtained-off cubicle. With one hand he holds a sandwich, from which he takes an oversized bite as he sits down. Lila tries not to look at the little blob of mayonnaise on his chin.
Gene’s face lights up, as it always does, and he immediately pushes his way up so that he is a little taller in the metal hospital bed and salutes. “Captain Strang, reporting for intergalactic—”
“No…” The doctor takes another mouthful and chews. “Dog bite, wasn’t it? A few weeks ago? How are you getting on?”
Because of his age, Gene is attended to relatively quickly. Or within three hours, which, Jensen observes, is pretty much record time for Accident and Emergency. It is not a break, apparently, even though Gene has to be helped in, supported by Jensen, while grimacing wildly and letting out periodic moans of pain. But it is a bad sprain and will need to be rested and iced for at least a week. When they are discharged, withwhat Gene clearly regards as disappointingly mild painkillers, he thanks the medical staff with the slightly too emphatic gratitude of someone who relishes being the focus of attention. For the twenty-minute drive home, he talks endlessly of their niceness and how great it is not to need insurance for everything.
Lila does not speak for any of it, leaving all conversation to Jensen and Gene, using her time to text the girls to make sure they have done their homework, to reassure them that everything is fine, and finally, as it grows late, to ask them to go to bed. Even when she is not texting, she remains silent, her brain humming with a quiet fury that drowns out the casual conversation around her.
Bill is cleaning the kitchen. He has cleaned it relentlessly since Gene’s arrival, with the pointed determination of a dog spraying his scent. When she opens the door, he looks up with an expression that is half embarrassment and half resentment that Gene has somehow arrived back in the house again. The two old men look at each other, and then Bill turns pointedly away. “He’s alive, then,” he says, with mock surprise.
“You nearly broke my leg, you asshole.”
“I did nothing. You wouldn’t have tripped on the rubble if you hadn’t spent half the afternoon at the public house.”
“I wouldn’t have tripped if you hadn’t come after me with a carving knife.”
“It was a metal spatula! If you ever did anything in this house other than cause chaos and steal people’s socks you’d have been aware of that!”
“Shutup!”
Lila drops her bag loudly on the floor. There is a sudden silence. She looks at Bill, then at Gene, who is being eased into the chair by Jensen. “So when does it stop?”
All three men are staring at her.
“This isinsane. This is allinsane. You are both headed toward eighty. My mother is six feet underground. You haven’t even seen each other for decades.When does it stop?”
“I’mnot about to be eighty,” Gene mutters.
She’s shouting now, unable to stop herself. “I’ve had it. I’ve honestly had it. I cannot live with you two behaving like a pair of toddlers over something that happened—what?—thirty-five years ago? My life is in crisis, my children are struggling, and I cannot do one more day of trying to mediate between two ridiculous old men who refuse to let go of the past.”
She takes a deep breath. “So this is what we are going to do. If you both want to stay here, in my house, you are going to work out how to live peacefully together, and if you can’t, you can both leave, because it’s not fair to force me—your daughter—to make the adult decision as to who should go. Do you understand?”
“But, Lila—” Bill begins.
“No. I’m not interested. You are both adults, even if you seem to have forgotten that. You sort it out between you, or you find somewhere else to live. Oh, and you can make yourselves useful and babysit while you start your negotiations, because I’m going for a drink. Or tofinishthe drink that was so rudely interrupted. Jensen?”
Jensen, who is clearly stunned, glances at his watch and raises his eyebrows. “Uh—okay.”
Before anyone can say anything else, Lila picks up her bag, walks back out of the house, and heads toward Jensen’s pickup truck.
•••
“We could tryto go back to the pub but it’s gone closing time.” Jensen is driving along the road, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the gear stick. “Great tirade, by the way. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Bill actually lookcowedbefore.”
Lila barely hears him. Her ears are still ringing from her shouting, her brain still humming with the image of the two old men, silenced in front of her. But mostly she is thinking. She checks her reflection in the passenger mirror and rummages in her bag for an old mascara. She finds a dog treat, a pen from a hotel she had stayed in sometime in 2017, and a tampon that has escaped its wrapping and is lightly dusted with crumbs. She wipes under her eyes instead, hoping she doesn’t look too awful. “Do you have alcohol?” she asks.
“Do I have alcohol?”
“At your flat.”
“Probably a couple of beers. But you don’t drin—”
“I do tonight,” she says. “Stop at the nearest shop.”
