He waited, still chewing, watching her appraisingly.
Now Julia turned over in bed, gazing up at the plaster ceiling, with its deltas of fine hairline cracks. She'd have said anything, to anyone, to make Jack into Wendell's son. Partly out of loyalty to her marriage, partly for Jack's sake. It still mattered. She'd do anything to make Jack into Wendell's son. The force of her will would make it true.
Anyway, all Jack's problems might be unrelated to his parents (whoever they were), or to their own bad behavior, or their divorce. It was tempting to think you played a part in everything your child did, since, when he was small, you did. But your child grew into his own life, chose his own path. And you couldn't blame everything on divorce—look at Steven.
She might be overreacting, in any case. Maybe drugs were no longer a problem for Jack, maybe they had never really been. It seemed everyone took them now. Steven had, she knew. Julia had herself, in college. Taking drugs was a rite of passage, an initiation into an esoteric society, somewhere darker and cooler than childhood. The illicit thrill of the secret community, the coded phrases, the rituals.
Though her own druggie phase seemed unrelated to Jack's: whatever your children did was always a little too daring, a little too fast. How were you meant to deal with them and drugs? It was hard to tease out a line to follow among the tangle of illicit behavior, tacit consent, public obloquy. Was it a question of degree? Telling your children never to take any drugs seemed naïve, so should you say that it was all right to try marijuana but not cocaine? Both were illegal. Where did you draw the line?
By the time it was a problem you had no control, anyway. Your children had left home, or were spending so much time elsewhere that they might as well have. You might draw the line anywhere you wanted, your children could simply step over it. And fighting with your children was so horrible, all that shouting and misery.
Maybe they had been too lax. How did you know? And what did you do if you had been? She thought drugs must be in Jack's life. She was hoping for them to subside, as they had in Steven's, where they must also have been.
The cracks in the ceiling had always been there. Julia thought they showed merely the way the old house shifted and settled with the sea sons, the wood frame swelling and shrinking, the plaster dampening and drying. Wendell's view had been more ominous: he thought they mapped the fault lines where the plaster, some apocalyptic day, would give way. Wendell used to lie in bed, gazing upward and predicting ruin. Only a matter of time, he would say.
Julia's thoughts had become too boisterous for her to stay in bed with any longer, and she got up. She took off her nightgown, hanging it inside the tiny slanting closet under the eaves. The air was cool and fresh, and she felt her skin tighten against it. She shivered slightly, but she liked this brief moment of nudity, the sense of swimming in the morning's clear river. She dressed and padded downstairs, barefoot. The worn wooden steps were soft beneath her feet.
The kitchen looked abandoned and untidy, strands of corn silk on the floor, dirty pans soaking in the sink. The air was close and stale, and Julia opened the porch door wide and put on the kettle. She took the broom from the closet and began to sweep, enjoying the brisk abrasive passage of the broom, the deep virtuous satisfaction of cleaning. Next to godliness: there was a lofty claim. Certainly it was an instinctive impulse; animals did it, grooming themselves, licking and biting, keeping themselves clean. Dogs licking each other's face, horses biting languidly along each other's back. A healthy animal was clean, a dirty one was ill or wounded. And who was Hygeia, anyway? She washed out the last pans, rinsed out the sink, and made coffee.
She took her mug onto the porch and sat down on the steps, lifting her face. The air was quiet and fresh, and the sky clear. The grass in the meadow was heavy with dew. There was no wind; it would be hot later.
She wished Jackie were here, right now, to see the meadow, still shimmering with dew, the cove beyond showing a cross-hatched glitter. Right now, in this pale candid light, it seemed impossible to think of being troubled, impossible not to feel the certainty of some kind of clarity and grace.
The screen door behind her creaked, and she looked up, apprehensive that it was Edward. But it was Steven, tousled and barefoot, in wrinkled jeans and a T-shirt.
“Hi,” Julia half-whispered, smiling: the morning was still too quiet for talk. “You're up early. Want some coffee?”
“No, thanks.” Steven sat down in a chair above her. He stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles. “Yeah, I am up early. Don't know why.”
They sat in silence, looking out over the meadow.
“So,” Julia said. “You're back. Any thoughts on what you want to do next?”
“Yeah,” said Steven. “I'm thinking of law school.”
Julia took a sip of coffee. “What does your father say?”
“Haven't told him yet.”
“Why do you want to go?”
Listening to Steven's response, she thought, My responsible child. She felt a wave of helpless affection. She wanted to say yes to whatever he wanted. She wanted to make herself into a carpet, flatten the world beneath his foot.
“Of course we'll do what we can to help,” she told him. “I hope you'll end up in New York.”
“Thanks,” said Steven soberly. “I'll see where I get in.”
“You'll get in everywhere,” Julia told him. Steven grinned and rolled his eyes.
They fell silent, Steven squinting out across the field, Julia sipping from her mug. She was trying to prepare herself for the next, the difficult, subject.
“So, how's your brother?” Julia asked finally. “You saw him in New York?”
Steven shrugged, frowning. “Yeah, I saw him.”
Julia waited. “And? How's he doing?” Anxiety began to tick in her mind.
Steven shrugged again. “It's hard to say. I don't really know.”
Steven wouldn't tell, she could see that. She hated asking him to inform on his brother.
“He's not working,” Julia said tentatively, hoping to be corrected.
“He says he's getting a job.”
“That's great,” Julia said. “Doing what?”
“He said working at a video store,” Steven said.
“A video store?” Julia repeated, dismayed.
Jackie, with his quick bright mind, his sense of humor, his reach and grasp of life? In a video store, with its sluggish air, the bored and affectless adolescents behind the counter, the endless loop of action movies on the overhead screen? How had his gaze fallen so low?
But of course any job was better than none, better than sitting around in someone's apartment getting stoned. Anything was better than that awful glazed-eye apathy. Any job was better than those empty claims about rock bands and music production, those sad, noncredible schemes. Any job meant getting up each morning, clean clothes, punctuality. Responsibility. Those small-minded quotidian things. Her own gaze had fallen as well.
“Do you think he has a plan?” she asked. “I mean, long-term?”
“I don't know what he's doing,” Steven said again, not looking at her.
Julia watched him.
“What do you thinks going on?”
Steven shook his head.
“Do you think he's taking drugs?” she asked.
Steven hesitated, still not looking at her. There were certain things he did not want to say to his mother—or to anyone—about Jack. There was the question of loyalty. He and Jack were connected. He could not step across the family space