He’ll admit that Ave fooled him, though not deliberately, into thinking he could make good money by selling his trailer in Oleander Park and buying into the
Eddie will understand, and there’s probably a lot of it that Eddie will be able to explain away. And by the same token, there’s probably a lot in Eddie’s life that’s just as confusing to him, things that Bob will be able to explain for him. Bob will know what to say when Eddie tells him how he got himself into debt to people he never should have borrowed money from. He’ll know how to reassure his brother that he did everything a man could to make Sarah happy and that her desertion of him now is an act that should never be forgiven. Bob will tell him not to worry about losing his daughter, you never lose your children, no matter what. They eventually discover the truth about you, and they come back, he’ll say. Bob will tell Eddie he can start over. He’s only thirty-three years old, a young man, and he’s smart and energetic. His epilepsy will get better as soon as the pressure on his daily life has eased.
They’ll come up with a plan, two plans, one for Eddie and one for Bob, and by God, then they’ll crack open a bottle of Scotch or maybe Canadian Club, and they’ll drink the sonofabitch dry, talking about the old days, remembering their parents, growing up in Catamount, the house they were raised in, the winter days they skipped school together and played hockey with the American Legion guys down on the river, the way their father used to snore, the way their mother constantly nagged them to go to church early with her and then, when they did, told them to go to late mass on their own because they made her so nervous with their fooling around and whispering that she was too distracted to pray. They’ll remember everything together!
Parking the car before the closed garage door, Bob gets out and runs under the rain across the lawn to the front entrance and pushes the doorbell. A new pink Lincoln driven by a woman wearing a pink pillbox hat and veil sloshes past and turns into the driveway of the pink stucco house next door. The garage door lifts automatically, and the pale car slides into the darkness, and the door descends.
Bob pushes the brass button again. Maybe he’s asleep, Bob thinks, and he holds the button in until it sounds angry to him, or worried.
He pushes the doorbell a third time, with no response from beyond the thick oak door, and it occurs to Bob that Eddie may have driven into town or gone to his office early, though he’s not sure Eddie even has an office anymore, or a car. The liquor store is closed, the store in Lakeland never even opened, his birthday boat is gone, either sold or repossessed, and Eddie said that the house was about to go too.
Stepping from the doorway into the rain again, Bob jogs across the lawn and around his car to the garage. He tries the door, and discovering that it’s locked, hunches his shoulders against the downpour, steps to the side of the building and peers through the small, dark window there. The first bay, where Sarah used to park her Celica, is empty, but in the gloom beyond it, Bob sees Eddie’s white Eldorado, which looks unexpectedly huge and vulgar to him. He recalls the white Chrysler he thought Ted Williams owned. Eddie, he thinks, doesn’t really have much class. Then he sees his brother inside the car, his curly blond head laid back on the headrest as if he were sleeping. The windows are all up, the doors closed, and rags have been jammed along the bottom of the garage door. Putting his ear close to the pane of glass, blocking his other ear against the sound of the spattering rain, Bob hears the motor running, and only then does he see the hose that leads from the tailpipe over the fender and through the rear corner window, and the tape sealing the opening around it, and he knows that he’s come too late, his brother is dead.
