Well into week two, I learn that Evan has a car, a Volkswagen Scirocco that won’t run. I get the feeling he only rolls it out of the garage when John is away. I suppose, without his mother here, it’s not Evan’s driveway to litter with parts or stain with drops of oil.
“Got the crossword here if you want it,” I say, folding back the puzzle page the way he does.
“Any easy ones?”
“Well, three across is Authority’s home.”
“Canberra.”
“Oh, right. Two R’s?” I ask, even though I know. He nods, the manual open at his feet. Maybe crosswording could be Our Thing. “So, what’s wrong with your car?”
“Oh, a lot. But the biggest problem is the transmission.”
“You’re fixing your own transmission?” I’ve never known someone who could fix his own transmission.
“I’m trying. I think it’s some kind of torque thing.” I love the way torque sounds coming out of his mouth, part James Bond, part MacGyver. “Anyway, it’s worth a try. The shop wants to charge me two hundred and forty quid.” Quid.
“Wow,” I say, wishing I knew something about transmissions, like for instance their function. “So—two across is Favourite suds show, which has to be a soap opera, and I thought Santa Barbara, but it’s only nine letters.”
“Neighbors.” His head is back down under the hood.
“Man, you’re good.” Transmissions and daytime dramas.
“My sister’s obsessed with that show.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister. Other than Milly.”
“Yeah, she’s at uni. About an hour out.”
A hundred questions come to mind, toppling out over one another like beach balls falling from a display tower. What’s your sister’s name? Do she and John get along? Why isn’t she here helping out? While we’re at it, I’d also like to know how old Evan was when his parents divorced, whether his father remarried, and how far away they live, but before I can ask him anything, he squats down to look closely at the engine diagram, and anyone can read that cue.
“Well, thanks for the Neighbors thing. Never would have gotten it.”
He looks up. “Okay if I join you all for dinner?”
“Great, I was thinking spaghetti.”
I’ve wondered what Evan does for dinner. I imagined him back in his room, sitting on a milk crate, warming a can of beans on a Bunsen burner. There’s something so modest about him. His pastimes and low expectations, the unassuming position he takes with me, the kids, John. He’s like a poor kid who belongs to no one, an orphan who doesn’t want to make trouble lest he be sent back out on the streets.
My mother would like Evan for his humility and autonomy. Personally, I aim for more conspicuous targets, guys my dad would get a bang out of, guys who tell jokes or have a signature dance move. But there’s something about Evan, something that pulls at me. I like him. I know because, just now when he asked to have dinner with us, I calculated how long I’d have to wait to see him again.
Six and a half hours later, Evan shows up in the kitchen with wet hair, wearing a fresh shirt. The kids run to him, crashing into his side.
“You smell like soap!” Martin says.
“I cleaned up for supper. Now, let’s help Kelly,” he says.
“But we already helped you in your room this afternoon!” Martin reminds Evan.
“Ah, yes! Big help, that’s right. Go play, then.” The kids peel away. “We cleaned out my camping stuff,” he explains to me.
“Fair enough,” I say, and hand him a box of pasta. He pours the shells into the boiling water, and I add the last of a bag of macaroni.
“So how easy is it to get to Centennial Park from here?” I float.
“Not hard. You can take the train and then walk.”
While I shred carrots onto lettuce that the kids will pick at, Evan grates cheese into a bowl. He moves more freely when John is away, making me wonder why he still lives here. If it’s so hard for them to coexist, couldn’t Evan move in with his father?
“Going this weekend?” he asks.
“No, next, I think.” I could ask him to come, but Tracy says it’s better to keep it friendly, Things could get pretty weird pretty fast, and I’m sure she’s right.
“I’m out of town next weekend,” he says. “Not that—”
Pop shuffles by, out of his room at an unusual time.
“You want some noodles?” Evan calls to him.
“Eh?”
Evan holds up the box as a visual aid. “PASTA?”
“No, no, thank you. You go ahead. I’m good.” Pop moves on.
“He’s something else,” I say. “How long has he lived here?”
“A couple years now,” Evan says, and I tell him I lived with my grandmother and her bachelor brother for a while. He wants to know about Great-uncle Slug, so I explain that he’s tall and bony and wears the same white button-down and blue wool crew-neck sweater every day, even at the height of summer, except Sundays, when he changes to a jacket and tie. He has huge, soft ears sprouting hair and a big nose with cavernous nostrils. He talks, pretty much interchangeably, about his morning bowel movement, the Orioles’ damn fine shortstop, and the Japs, who, he is quick to point out, are going to mop the floor with America. He’s been taking the same woman—May—out to dinner at the same place—Johnny Unitas’ Golden Arm—every Thursday night at five P.M. for twenty-seven years. Half the time May pays, and half the time Slugger does, though of course he always drives. He loves his Caddy, identifiable around town by a bumper sticker that would have you believe BALD IS BEAUTIFUL! This is where my mom comes from. These people. How could she not be stingy … dogmatic … screwy?
“So how’s Pop?” I ask.
“Doesn’t need much looking after yet.”
I guess that’s partly why Evan is still here, to watch Pop, who is his blood, not John’s.
Dinner is ready. We sit down with the kids, and it feels so close to playing house that I rush us through the meal in about seven minutes.
After dinner, Evan does the dishes, and I watch his shoulders move under his T-shirt. His back is brawny, like the man on the dish-soap label. I have to start exercising. I wonder if they sell Lean Cuisine in Australia.
“I have a brother, too,” Evan says as he closes the dishwasher. “Called Andy. He lives with my dad. He used to live here. We all did.” Thus come the installments of his family story: sudden and short.
“Older or younger?” I wipe the counter next to him.
“Younger. I’m the oldest.” We stay busy when we talk, finding every way not to look at each other.
“I’m the youngest. Two older brothers.”
I tell him about GT and Booker. They love sports and parties, they’re really funny, they never write. They’d eat you alive, I think. They don’t do introverts.
“Ev! It’s ocean time!” Martin calls from his room.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Martin likes to talk about the oceans.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know, just all the stats. How deep they are, the temperatures and stuff.”
“How deep are they?”
“In the deepest parts, about thirty-two thousand feet.”
“Wow.”
“And eighty-two percent of the ocean is abyssal in depth.” I don’t know that word, abyssal. It seems right that I should learn it here.
“Ev!” Martin calls again.
“I’ve got this,” I say.
“Ta. And thanks for dinner.”
Off he goes, on command, to talk with Martin about the deepest, coldest, darkest parts of the ocean. Which is another reason he’s still here.