Michael lifts his empty glass, and Richard can’t say whether it’s a surrender or a toast. It’s no apology. Then Michael burps. The burp is loud and long, with more than one octave in it. It’s meant to break the tension, but tonight no one’s laughing.
Michael shuts his eyes. When he opens them, he’s focused. An old trick, Richard’s noticed, how his boy blinks to sober himself up.
“What say we drop all this and get some ’scream?” Michael says.
Lisa moves to her son and stands behind his chair.
“That sounds lovely,” she says.
She rubs his shoulders and kisses the top of his head. She doesn’t mention his thinning hair. She doesn’t give his shoulders an I’m still your mother, and you will respect me shake. Already she’s forgiven him, unasked.
And can Richard be blamed for wondering if there’s grace enough for him? But Richard’s not the son. The son you love no matter what.
He rises, and his family follows. Tumblers are rinsed, pretzels bagged, cards put away.
They will go to Highlands, and they’ll get ice cream.
It’s not too late. The ice cream will save them. All will be well.
He thinks this, and it’s such a simple idea that, for a minute, he almost believes it’s true.
10.
In Thad’s memory, Nico’s stands a turreted wonder on a hill, a citadel rising from the roadside, gabled, rococoed, daffodilled. In memory, Nico’s towers proudly, a beacon in the dark announcing ice cream, waffles curled to cones before your very eyes. Nico’s and the river below Nico’s crowded with trout—rainbows, browns, brook trout—fish thick as bodybuilders’ arms. On the porch of Nico’s, domes perch on the deck rails, waiting for your quarter, waiting to drop food into your small hand, fish waiting for the pellets to be flung. Then into the river the sand-tan pellets go, and this is what you’ve come for, this more than ice cream, this cacophony of food inhaled in pops and smacks, of gills like bellows, echolalia of fin and scale, and you have done this, with your quarter, with the cast of your hand, you’ve brought the river, writhing, into life. In memory—
But Nico’s, like the lake house, is merely what Nico’s has become. Paint-faded, chestnut-pocked, the building on the hill appears to be deflating. The domes on the deck rails are gone, the railing replaced by mismatched two-by-fours. A mistake, Nico leaving his empire to Teddy. Teddy is the dead man’s perpetually stoned only son who, since inheriting Nico’s two years ago, has used the storefront to push merchandise that probably hasn’t hurt his ice cream sales.
Yes, if you’re looking to get high in Highlands, Nico’s is the place to go. Ask for the tubby guy, the one who can work up a sweat just tugging the lid off a canister of rocky road, the one with the twin cobra tattoos (one for each forearm). That’s Teddy. And Teddy doesn’t just sell weed. He sells weed. Indica, sativa, hybrids, crossbreeds, loose leaf, pre-rolls, edibles. Anything Thad can get in Brooklyn, he can get cheaper and better from Teddy’s mahogany chest.
Evenings, Nico’s is usually packed. But it’s late. The after-dinner crowd has come and gone. Probably the rain’s kept customers away. Everything is wet: the staircase, the mildew-slicked front stoop, the pink-stenciled Nico’s logo peeling from the windowpane beside the pink front door. Thad holds the door for everyone but Michael, who won’t have doors held for him, who always nods and waves the holder in.
Inside, the ice cream parlor’s empty. The man behind the counter is not behind the counter, which has Thad quietly freaking out. What if Teddy was arrested? What if he’s dead? Thad’s not sure he’ll sleep tonight without a hit.
Then, there descends over the parlor, a smell. It’s a smell Thad’s smelled before, a body odor composed of perspiration, weed, and chicken soup. The smell is trailed by a clatter, beyond the counter, of white, saloon-style doors. A stomach passes through the doors, and the rest of Teddy follows it.
“Thaddeus!” he booms. Teddy’s been peddling to Thad since they were teenagers, when he sold dime bags from the heavily bumper-stickered trunk of his beat-up Corolla. They’re friends, as much as you can be friends with the dealer you see twice a year.
Teddy approaches the counter, but he’s stopped short by the prodigiousness of his own gut. Thad sympathizes. What Thad can’t relate to, though, is Teddy’s general dishevelment. Gone are Nico’s pink-and-white-striped shirt and paper hat. Instead, Teddy wears a turned-back Boston Bruins cap and tea-colored Mossimo tee that Thad remembers being white once upon a time. The shirt is snug as a singlet, Teddy’s nipples like jacket fasteners showing through the front. From his collar, a tuft of hair uncurls, pubic and obscene. Saddam just after capture, is the look Teddy seems to be going for. Saddam in a hockey hat.
Teddy extends a beefy hand, which Thad shakes. Only Michael and Jake know this man is Thad’s dealer. The rest, let them assume whatever they’d like.
Teddy moves to the sink behind the counter, washes his hands, and pulls on plastic gloves.
Jake’s first, and he starts in, a complicated order not on the menu. To hear Jake order food, you’d never know he grew up on milk and cornbread, on hens whose heads and feathers he removed himself. At least, that’s how Thad imagines Jake’s childhood from what he’s been given, which isn’t much. “Tell me a story,” Thad will say, and Jake will say, “Once, there was a boy whose parents loved God more than they loved him.”
If only he’d known Jacob the boy, but, when Thad met Jake, Frank had already traded Jacob the boy for a New York story the rich pay five figures a canvas to hear. Assuming Jake’s popularity keeps up, it’s only a matter of time before some enterprising journalist makes a Memphis pilgrimage, knocking on doors and taking quotes from neighbors, family, friends. Even then, Frank will find a way to spin it: Country Mouse Makes Good in Big City!
Jake’s order goes on longer than the longest order Thad’s heard in a Starbucks line. Teddy pulls on the brim of his cap. He appears to have stopped listening some time ago.
“Hold up,” Teddy says, cutting Jake off. “Cup or cone?”
Thad doesn’t have to look to see the expression of anger and dismay that now crowds his boyfriend’s face.
Jake isn’t a bad guy. Thad’s seen him offer his seat on crowded subway cars, seen him break his stride to drop a twenty into a homeless person’s cup. Turn on a Sarah McLachlan animal adoption ad, and watch Jake sob. Jake’s never met a stranger or an animal he didn’t like. But people he gets to know get on his nerves. Take Thad’s family. He’s pretty sure Jake dislikes all but Thad’s dad. If this is true, poor Teddy doesn’t stand a chance.
“Cup,” Jake says, then repeats his order, word for word. There’s a please at the end, though the please feels more like an I dare you to get this wrong.
Teddy frowns, wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, then makes Jake’s order so quickly and precisely, Thad’s sure he was fucking with him all along. Teddy serves the rest of them, then rings up Thad’s father, who never lets anyone else pay.
Once everyone’s outside, seated in yellow patio chairs or peering past the railing, riverward, for fish, Thad skirts the counter and follows Teddy through the saloon doors. In back sit two upturned buckets, the white, five-gallon tubs ice cream comes in. Between the buckets, a sheet of particle board serves as a makeshift table, cinderblocks for legs. Teddy’s mahogany box rests on top, and Thad sets his dish of ice cream next to it.