Fall Guy

I'll show you which one's Timothy.“
    I took out the album I'd brought along and placed it on the redwood table in front of us, moving my glass of iced tea off to the side, flipping the album open to the middle.
    „That's Tim“—her finger pointing to one of the grinning redheaded boys. „This one's Dennis.“
    „The Lexus salesman.“
    „Yes. And here's our Joey.“
    „Joseph Patrick.“
    „Yes. Bless his soul. And this one's me, of course.“
    „The only girl.“
    She looked up, her mouth open, as if she were about to speak, perhaps to tell me what that meant. But I already knew. It meant being the one stuck at home, taking care of your mother.
    „Have you always lived at home?“ I asked.
    „I have,“ she said. „And this is Liam. He was my first cousin. And this one's Francis. I had a terrible crush on him when I was eleven. Oh, I thought the sun rose and set on Francis Connor, I was that smitten.“
    „Tim had some newspaper articles among his things,“ I said. „One about Joseph. One about your father.“
    „Dennis once said we were like the Kennedys,
    only without the money or the fame.“
    „Do you believe in curses?“ she asked.
    „I don't know. I've never thought about it.“
    „Oh, you'd think about it a lot if you were in this family.“
    I looked back at the pictures of the smiling kids, then back at Mary Margaret.
    „No one knows why it happened to them either,“ she said.
    „To the Kennedys?“
    „Yes, and it goes on and on. Like ours. It didn't stop with Jack or Robert or that terrible incident with Teddy. There was that rape trial, and the Skakel nightmare. On through the generations. I don't expect our troubles are over either.“
    „You mean the accidents in your family?“
    „My father used to say, 'We're not here for fun. We're here for sorrow.'” She was looking straight ahead, watching Dashiell racing back and forth at the river's edge. „'That's our lot here on earth,' he said before his accident. 'Our reward comes later.'”
    „Sounds as if you were raised to be a very responsible person.“
    „I was, not like the kids coming up today, so self-involved—just me, me, me. Even the young nurses, fresh out of school. It's a service profession. Some of them, they're in it for the social life. They're in it to find a doctor to marry. You do what's right,“ she said. „That's what I grew up with, what we all grew up with.“
    „Were you and Tim close?“ I felt as if I was treading on thin ice, expecting Maggie to break down and cry at any moment. But her eyes were dry. She was in control.
    „Oh, I worshiped Timothy. We all did.“ Smiling now.
    „He was the oldest, wasn't he?“ To keep it going.
    „Yes, the firstborn. We all looked up to him. We all wanted to be just like him, to do everything he could do.“
    She hadn't answered me at all, so I asked again. „So you were close? As grown-ups, too?“
    Her back straight, her head high, she sat perfectly still, the sibling who'd stayed at home and nursed her mother, working full-time, keeping the house immaculate, taking care of the old lady as she slipped from one world to the next.
    „So you saw each other often?“ I asked.
    „I loved him,“ she said without looking at me. „We were family. Family's everything. But he was so busy with work.“
    „And you were working long hours at the hospital and taking care of your mother.“
    Do you see Dennis much? I wanted to ask. But I didn't. I thought I'd said too much already. I thought about the letter, the short note that had arrived after Tim had died. I didn't mention that either.
    I gave Maggie the keys to the car, leaving the folder on the table. While she changed for work, I went to check the car, to see if there was anything in it I needed to take. There was the usual stuff in the glove compartment: empty and half-empty packs of cigarettes, the repair manual, a flashlight, a greasy rag, a package of Kleenex, an unopened roll of red Lifesavers and a plastic cup. The trunk was empty except for the spare, which looked brand-new, and the tool kit, the jack, flares, a few wrenches. I checked the floor in the back and came away with dirty hands, sand, cigarette butts, empty soda cans. I checked under the passenger seat and found more tissues, Scott this time, the box crushed on one side as if someone had stepped on it. And then I sat in the driver's seat and reached under it as far as I could, pulling out the notebook. It was one of those the kids used to