The phone rattled on the table like a bug on its back. Robbie glanced, saw Gloria’s icon image, winced. He knew what she was calling about. Mum to Gloria, Gloria to me, me to dinner. He hesitated. Let her talk to voicemail. He burrowed back into the textbook opened on the table in front of him, its tightly reasoned analysis of critical thinking making about as much sense now as collapsed scaffolding. The phone buzzed again, then again. He sighed. Punched the answer button.
“What?” he demanded.
“That’s a nice way to greet your sister!” Gloria complained.
“The answer’s no.”
“Oh, come on, Robbie. Don’t be such a dick!”
He laughed. “That sort of redefines my status as a member of the Hope clan, doesn’t it?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny. I’m serious. Mum and Dad need us right now.”
“Glow, you’re stepping onto their turf,” he warned. “Don’t go there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s the Handyman; she’s the boss; you wanna get between them, Ms. Fix-it?”
“Stop with the kidding, okay! I’m serious.”
“Me too, Sis. You’re treading onto dangerous ground, and I don’t want to be there with you.”
“I’m asking you to ‘be there’ for Mum and Dad. Let them see we’re still family, huh? They need some support right now. Something that looks like normal.”
“They need to work things out between themselves, Gloria. Or get some counseling. They don’t need their son and daughter interfering.”
“Interfering!”
“I’m warning you, Glow, you’re going to be pressured to take sides if you try this role on. And you’ll be blamed by one, the other, or both if you don’t choose.”
“For fuck’s sake, Robbie, I’m just asking you to join us for dinner at Mum and Dad’s, okay? Not to psychoanalyze the situation. Is that such a big deal?”
No! he conceded. “Okay, already. I’ll see you there.”
“How ’bout I swing by and pick you up? We can go together.”
Oh yeah, so you can yak at me all the way about the dos and don’ts of dysfunctional family etiquette.
“I’ll ride my bike, Gloria. I need the exercise.”
“Thanks, Bro,” she said, ending the call.
For what? he groused, closing his textbook and scanning the cafeteria for recognizable faces. Or faces that might recognize me.
He would have been better off going to the library to study, but Robbie liked places where he could be anonymous in the herd. Libraries were too much like mausoleums, where unsanctified thoughts risked waking the solemn ghosts of ancient philosophy and a faint miasma of death. He needed the drone of conversation, the scrape of chairs, the clatter of cutlery and dishes in his background.
No point trying to study now, anyway. He stuffed Critical Thinking into his pannier and got up to go. Gloria had a way of turning conversations into arguments she could win. He marvelled at her skill. It reminded him of medieval thinking—no viable proofs needed, just a logical insistence on presumptions and assumptions that had everything to do with personal opinion or dogma; nothing to do with science or grounded reasoning.
She does get her way, though, he confessed. And maybe that’s what it all comes down to.
Next: Go Fish