The Second Coming

Her voice sounded strange.)
    Kelso laughed. I know why you don’t talk. You so scared, you can’t talk. I’m so scared I eat all the time. Now that’s something. I’m so scared I get stiff so they’ll buzz me. You’re so scared you play dumb so they’ll buzz you. Maybe we’re crazy ha ha. But you’re crazy like a fox. Come here, babe, I’ll give you a hug.
    Kelso gave her a hug.
    You think I’m pretty, Allie?
    She nodded and smiled.
    You’re pretty too, honey. You’re going to make it.
    She smiled and gave Kelso a hug.
    Kelso, you are right about my parents. They were going somewhere. To a party evidently. Her mother was aglow in the drab little parlor next to Dr. Duk’s office, tan skin glowing (and unbranny) against creamy linen, real old-fashioned linen with irregular weave, gold streak in her hair swept straight across her forehead, giving as always the effect of dash and motion even when she was still, gold aglow at her ears and wrists. Even sitting still she shimmered. Gold glinted. Her father in his candy-striped seersucker smiled and nodded, crouched in his chair, feet drawn under the chair and springing slightly. The two of them blew in like tropical birds. Dr. Duk in his tacky double knits and me in my T-shirt and jeans look like inmates and, she fancied, smell slightly sour.
    They were going to a party but they came mainly to see her, they said. They had plans for her. They argued about the plans. There was this pleasant sense of plans being made for her, like her mother putting her on a plane for summer camp: now here’s your money and here’s your schedule and here’s what you do during the three-hour layover in Atlanta . . .
    Then there was this disagreeable feeling when they changed the subject from her to the party. They talked about Will Barrett. Talk about me. Make plans.
    One thing I must do: get past the point where I need other people to make plans for me.
    I’ll tell you whose party it is, Alistair, said her mother.
    Somehow her mother had managed in three visits to get on a first-name basis with Dr. Duk. They were buddies. She too was a bird-watcher and had enlisted him in her Christmas bird count. Dr. Duk: nodding and smiling, straining every nerve, blood rushing forward to his face, to keep up with this dashing exotic person—his buddy?
    It’s a very dear and old friend, said her mother.
    An old boyfriend, said her father absently, grinning his eye-tooth grin, feet springing under him.
    It’s Will Barrett, said her mother. You know the Barretts of Linwood-Asheville?
    She could tell by the way her mother hung fire ever so slightly, eyes flicking, that she was waiting for Dr. Duk’s reaction.
    You mean—! said Dr. Duk, straining forward another inch.
    Yes, Will married a Peabody. They own the joint. She died. Now he owns the joint.
    The joint? said Dr. Duk. All the grass, eh?
    (Jesus, don’t try to make jokes, Docky Duck. You’re much better in your listening-doctor position, legs crossed, thigh hiked up as a kind of barricade, gazing down at your unlit Marlboro as if it were a Dead Sea scroll.)
    Yeah, all the grass, Alistair. They own the whole joint, half the country, the mills, the hotel. And that rascal Will! Not only did he marry a Peabody, he also made it on his own, from editor of the Law Review, straight into the top Wall Street firm, one of the Ten Most Promising Young Attorneys, early retirement, man-of-the-year here—I mean, he did it all! I should have known better—but he was always out of it when I knew him—little did I realize what was going on behind that absentminded expression. Just wait till I get my hands on that rascal! So who do I end up with? Old blue-eyes here. But he’s cute. Aintcha, hon?
    Her mother leaned over and poked her father under the ribs.
    There was Dr. Duk straining every English-Pakistani nerve to catch on to the peculiar American—or were they Southern?—ways of this dashing woman, her odd abusive banter about her old boyfriend (!) in the presence of her husband (!), who sat there grinning and not paying attention, getting her hands on that rascal (!). It’s a long way from Dukhipoor, Doc. But he laughed and kept up as best he could, looking only slightly beleaguered.
    Knock knock, Doc.
    The party is for Will’s daughter, who is getting married to a wonderful boy, said her mother, an architect from Stanford, who happens