Empire Falls

showed it to Grace, and then tossed it to Miles, who fielded it with his mitt .
    Grace clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, Charlie, you’re a lifesaver!”
    “That’s me,” he agreed .
    “They told me up at the main house that they were all out,” she said, motioning for Miles to bring her the tube of ointment .
    “I drove in to Edgartown this morning,” Charlie explained while Grace applied the poison ivy cream to Miles’s legs and stomach, then to her own forearms and a patch Miles hadn’t noticed before, on her upper thigh. “In fact, I got the last tube at the drugstore. Apparently this is a banner year for poison ivy all over the island.”
    Charlie Mayne watched her massage the cream into her thigh until he noticed Miles, who had yet to say hello, staring intently at him, and then turned his attention to the picnic basket. When he found the inky-looking jar, he held it up for Miles’s inspection. “Ever tasted caviar, big guy?”
    Miles shook his head, still feeling tricked on the subject of specialty foods by last night’s snail. He made a mental note to refuse the caviar when it was offered, not because it wouldn’t be good, probably, but because Charlie Mayne would be doing the offering. Last night he’d been pleased to be recognized as a person who appreciated the finer things. This morning, everything had changed. In fact, he now wished he’d refused the ointment, because he could already feel it cooling the patches of infected skin, and stubbornly pretended that he preferred the itching .
    “I also found us a great place for dinner,” Charlie was saying to his mother. “But you have to promise to wear that white dress again.”
    His mother had put on sunglasses and rolled onto her back. “It’s the only one I have.” She laughed, and Miles could feel his anger returning. Without even discussing it with him, she was letting Charlie Mayne come to dinner with them .
    “I want to eat at the Thirsty Whale tonight,” Miles said, nudging her foot with his. “I want steamer clams.”
    His mother sighed contentedly. “Just feel that sun,” she purred .
    Miles nudged her foot again. “Did you hear me?” He could tell, even through the sunglasses, that her eyes were closed .
    She didn’t open them when she spoke. “No, I didn’t hear you,” she said. “And if you continue to be rude, I won’t hear you then, either.”
    Charlie Mayne didn’t seem to understand they were having an argument. “So, it’s steamer clams you want?” he said cheerfully, stretching out on his stomach. His back also sported random curly black hairs. About a dozen of them. Ridiculous. “Look at his back,” Miles would’ve liked to tell his mother. Her problem, he was certain, was that she wasn’t paying attention .
    “Then it’s steamer clams you’ll get,” Charlie finished .
    L ATE THAT AFTERNOON , when Grace came out of the bathroom freshly showered and dressed in her robe, Miles told her he didn’t want to go out to dinner with Charlie. He wanted for it to be just the two of them. They’d been having fun, he told her, before Charlie Mayne showed up .
    “Yeah?” Grace said, angry so instantly that it scared Miles, as if she’d been just waiting for him to say something like this. “Well, I’ve been having fun since he showed up. What do you think about that?”
    Miles didn’t answer immediately. “Dad wouldn’t like it,” he said, looking right at her .
    “Tough.”
    “I’ll tell.”
    “Fine,” she said, surprising him again, increasing the sensation he’d been feeling all day that everything was adrift. She’d taken out the ointment and was applying cream to her skin. “Then tell.”
    “I will,” he said, knowing it was the wrong thing but saying it anyway .
    “You’ll have to wait till he gets out of jail, though,” she said, her eyes suddenly harder than he’d ever seen them. She hadn’t so much spoken the words as let them out of their cages, and she watched him now as if purely curious as to the effect they’d have. If necessary, she had more of them to turn loose. “You didn’t know that, did you? That your father was in jail.”
    She’d propped one foot up on the kitchen chair to apply the ointment, and when she put that one down and the other one up, her robe gaped and Miles caught a dark glimpse of what he knew he was not supposed to see, what he didn’t see, not really, because his eyes were already filling with tears .
    “You want to know why, Miles?