The Paris Review - Fall 2016

Mandy a whole set of graduated Pyrex dishes, they wouldn’t always have to
be handwashing the one Pyrex they had, though who wanted something like
that for Christmas? Months before, Dick had asked if an engagement ring
was absolutely necessary if the couple intended to wear wedding bands, and
she’d been stupid enough to answer honestly. “But it would be nice,” she’d
said. She wanted him to at least experience some conflict.
MANDY HAD A DRINK from a kiosk at a café with Little Edgar’s
teacher, Jake Mahoney. This man, too, was named Jake, as was Mandy’s
cousin she’d grown up with in North Carolina. It was confusing to talk to any
individual Jake, because there were so many of them in her life. Sometimes
it seemed like she should discuss Little Edgar’s dyslexia with her cousin and
warn the teacher that Cousin Bee’s emphysema was worse and she had to go
everywhere with an oxygen tank, which meant that nobody, but nobody,
could light up in front of her.
It was not true, Jake said, that Rose Rodriguez lived on a houseboat
with her grandmother and the houseboat had a leak they could not afford
to fix. She and the grandmother slept in bunk beds in the second bedroom
of the Rodriguez home on Stock Island. There were a lot of boats on Stock
Island, both moored and in boatyards. But no: he was entirely sure that
all four members of the Rodriguez family lived together in what had once
been public housing that had disappeared off the grid. There were squatters
there now, as well as the parrot hoarder who had a beaded curtain instead
of a front door.
“Then why would he come up with that?” Mandy asked. “Maybe their
situation changed.”
“We could make ourselves crazy by wondering whether other people’s
lives are different than we thought,” was his answer.
“He doesn’t lie.”
“He may have misunderstood. Or he might be worried about people
who live on houseboats.”
“Could you ask Rose? Maybe Rose is the one who made up the story.”
“Now you’re cookin’,” he said. “Yes, it would seem more likely she was
trying to get his sympathy.”
“But if she feels that way—like she’s on a sinking ship? That’s very disturbing,
isn’t it?”
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