Page 26 of Charm City Rocks
The real answer is that Billy has been down. The Margot Hammer Incident, which is what he now calls it, was ten days ago, and he’s having trouble forgetting about it. He wonders if this is what people who survive semiserious accidents experience: a mild sort of trauma. Because that’s what meeting Margot Hammer was: mild trauma. “Yeah, you know,” he says. “I’m good.”
“So, what are you gonna do?”
He isn’t sure exactly what she’s referring to.
“Billy, where are you gonna live?”
“Oh, that? No big deal. I’ll figure it out. It’s a renter’s market, or…something.”
Robyn looks out at the parking lot, which has almost entirely emptied. The van and her SUV a few rows away are among the only vehicles left. A school security guard watches them from a golf cart a hundred yards away. “Hear me out on something, okay?” she says. “I have a proposition for you.”
Billy waits, nervous suddenly.
“What would you think about staying with us for a while?”
“With you and Aaron?” He laughs. “Are you kidding?”
“Notwithus,” she says. “You know the little apartment above our garage? It’s perfectly nice. We’re not using it. And there’s plenty of space for the Steinway.”
“I get that we don’t chat about money a lot, Rob, but I’m not destitute. I have a job. I can affo—”
“I know,” she says. “It’s not that. It’s…”
“What?”
“It’s Caleb’s idea.”
“Caleb wants me to move in above your garage?”
“Just until he starts college—whereverthat ends up being. He didn’t say this, but I don’t know, maybe he wants us to be something like a normal family for once. For a little while. He never had that. And, well, this is the end of his childhood, right?”
“Goddammit,” says Billy to no one in particular, and he and Robyn lean on the van some more.
“When he was little,” she says, “when I’d drop him off at your place, he’d be like, ‘Why can’t you just stayhere,Mommy?’ ”
“He told me once if I just moved the piano there’d be plenty of room for you,” says Billy. “Like us not living together was about square footage.”
They look at the ground, and Billy thinks of the Twizzlers Robyn used to cut into cigarette-size pieces after she quit smoking, just before they broke up. He’d snap his fingers sometimes, pretending to light them for her.
“You don’t think we fucked up our kid, do you?” she asks.
“I wonder sometimes,” he says. “I think that’s just part of being a parent, though. In our defense, the money we’ve spent on his sneakers alone should be worth something.”
Robyn doesn’t laugh this time; she just shakes her head.
“Oh, shit, I almost forgot,” says Billy. “I brought you something.” He opens the van door and grabs a paper bag from the passenger seat that contains one jumbo Hot Twist pretzel.
“Oh my God, you didn’t,” says Robyn.
“I did. Sorry, it’s not warm anymore, but—”
“Who cares,” says Robyn. “I haven’t eaten since lunch.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
Robyn digs in, rolls her eyes with pleasure. She tears off a piece for him, and for a moment they eat in silence as the security guard frowns from a distance.
“He’s gonna drive over here and shoot us, isn’t he?” she asks.
