“You’re eating,” he says, which is accurate but not the point anymore. “I can come back later.”
But I am alarmed he is here, and I cannot eat while I am worried about why, and I can make an assumption that that is true for Mama and Mab and Mirabel too so he might as well come in now. Mama opens a new bottle of water and pours him a glass of it. He thanks her, and he sits down, but he does not drink the water or say anything. Mama looks tired and afraid but patient. She will just wait to hear what he will say. I am afraid too, but I am not patient.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Monday,” Mama warns with her warning voice.
But Nathan looks relieved I asked, probably because he wants to say why he is here but did not know how.
“Listen,” he says, and then he does not say anything else, and then he says, “I know you know about the dam.”
It feels in my stomach like I swallowed something very hot without waiting for it to cool first. I look at my sisters, and they look like they feel the same way. Mab’s face is the color of a marshmallow. Mirabel’s eyes look like they might try to exit her head.
“How do you know?” I ask because no one else does even though it can be assumed that everyone wants to.
“Doesn’t matter.” Nathan looks down at his water glass. Mab stands up and leaves the table, and even though I cannot see where she goes, I know it is into our bedroom because I hear our bedroom door slam. I look at Mirabel, but her stretched-out eyes are stretching toward Nathan. “I wanted to come here as a…” He trails off.
“Friend?” my mother asks. Her question is not, Is that the word you were going to say before you stopped talking. Her question is, Do you think you are my friend.
“Yeah, I guess.” He laughs a little bit of a laugh. “I felt I owed you I suppose. You helped me, my family. You’ve put up with … Well, over the years, you’ve put up with a lot from us.” He breathes in a big breath. “It’s true my father didn’t want anyone to realize the dam was yours rather than ours. And it’s true he’s not been taking the, uh, highest of roads. But first of all, the idea that this is going to stop him? There’s no way.” He holds his hands up and out like he will balance a pizza on each one. “So there’ll be a slight delay. So he’ll be angry and annoyed, and there’ll be a lot more to finagle than he anticipated. Fine. But then he’ll build his own dam. Or he’ll get someone at the state level to override your rights. Or he’ll pay someone enough money to ignore your injunction. He hasn’t worked it out yet, but trust me, he will.”
“And second?” Mama’s voice sounds like she does not care about the answer, but her face shows that her voice is lying.
“Secondly, more importantly, as I think you know, I haven’t always agreed with my father’s approach. Personally, I was never in favor of hiding your rights to the dam or trying to sneak anything by the citizens of this town. Myself, I’ve had a different plan all along. A better plan.”
He stops talking and looks at Mama, and I can guess he wants her to ask about his plan, but she does not, so he starts talking some more. “As you know, the fate of that dam is up to this town.”
“As we now know.” Mama’s voice means correcting. “As we discovered ourselves, despite your best efforts.”
“As you discovered”—Nathan bows his head and hinges the palms of his hands open from a prayer shape to a book shape—“what happens with that dam is up to this town. Without a dam, Belsum would have to shutter the plant and leave.” I think he will look sad about this but he looks happy. “And the people of this town want Belsum to stay. We’ve done so much hiring, Nora. Everyone’s on board. Everyone’s excited.”
“Not everyone.” Mama means she is not excited.
But Nathan does not mind that she is not excited. “I got the final write-up of the R&D. That’s why I came tonight. I thought you’d want to see.” I think back to that day we met him in my library and how he looked so smooth. He still looks smooth but not as smooth because his hair looks like he has touched it with his hands a lot, and his pants look like regular pants instead of expensive smooth pants, and his shirt looks like a fancy shirt but a fancy shirt he slept in. He has his same smooth smile, but he does not look like he believes it anymore. “The QA numbers are high as they go. We commissioned the most rigorous testing we could find. I insisted on it. Harburon Analytical is the most exacting, state-of-the-art independent testing and chemical analysis company in the world. They’re famous for shutting down all sorts of would-be products that passed every other set of testing they were subjected to with flying colors. And they gave us their highest rating. They were absolutely reservation-free.”
He holds out to Mama a binder, and she takes it, but she does not look inside.
Nathan breathes another deep breath. “I know last time was terrible, Nora. I’m sorrier than you can know. But chemists far more experienced and talented and well funded than I was have been working on GL606 for two decades now. I was a student. These are world-class scientists. A team of them. They’ve overhauled the whole thing. It’s safe. I’ve been over and over those results myself.” He points to the binder on her lap. “I give you my word.”
“I will take that for what it’s worth,” Mama says.
Nathan nods like she asked him a yes-or-no question, which she did not. Then he says, “You don’t have to. I’m going to Omar.”
“For what?” Mama looks surprised but happy but mad. It is confusing.
“For the mayoral go-ahead. For official permission to repair the dam.”
“He’ll never give it,” our surprised happy mad mother says.
“He will”—Nathan also looks like more than one feeling—“because that’s what the people of his town want.”
“Omar’s on our side.” Our mother crosses her arms over her chest.
“Omar’s on Bourne’s side,” Nathan Templeton says.
“Me too,” says Mama.
“Me too,” says Nathan.
But this cannot be accurate. Nathan’s side and Mama’s side are opposites.
Three
I go to the bar with Nora, mostly so I don’t have to look at Mab, don’t have to think about what happened to bring Nathan Templeton to our door, don’t have to consider the hard-won, blown-glass-delicate, slight-as-corn-silk victory which has been squandered here and how and why. If she hadn’t gotten up and left the table when she did, I would have had to, and it was good she couldn’t raise her gaze from the floor because I could not have met my sister’s eyes.
But the other reason I go is to take care of our mother, who is pretending unconvincingly not to be rattled by Nathan’s visit, by Nathan’s confidence, by Nathan’s conviction that he’s a better man than his father, when what he wants and what he’ll do to get it have come straight down the bloodline.
It’s a perfectly ordinary night at the bar. Even though the cat’s so far out of the bag as to render the very notion of bags immaterial, she doesn’t tell the guys about the dam. She’s sorry, of course she is, about their jobs and their plans. She wants to let them be hopeful a little while longer. She’s not worried—she’s certain as sunrise Omar will pick her over Nathan Templeton a thousand times in a thousand—but she’s maybe a little bit worried. For their part, the guys are just happy to be back in her good graces. It’s a quiet evening.