Object lessons by Anna Quindlen Read Free Book Online Page A

We’re plenty busy with city work.”
    “Come to the house on Sunday,” said Mark. “What’s the harm? The kids can play outside. Maybe he’s just trying to be sociable.”
    “Get real.”
    “We don’t see you enough, anyhow. Gail never sees Connie. She asked her over for bridge last Thursday but she said she couldn’t come.”
    “Connie’s not feeling too well.”
    Mark’s mouth narrowed into a bitter line, making him look as if he was trying to hold his teeth in. “What, again?” he finally said.
    “Maybe, maybe not. It’s too soon to tell.”
    Below them the cement mixer was still circling the lot. John Scanlan narrowly missed taking the passenger side off his own freshly waxed car as a mechanic backed the Lincoln out of one of the bays. The old man laid on the horn, which gave off a deep throaty honk, like some big water bird.
    “I have to go,” Mark said. “I’ll see you Sunday.”
    Tommy did not reply. He watched his father climb down from the cement mixer. The old man stopped to talk for a moment to the mechanic, and Tommy saw the man begin to grin and bob his head.
    So many people were drawn to John Scanlan—drawn by his power, and by his personality, too; by the big voice, the vigor, the gift he had for colorful language, the sheer force of the man. On the wall behind his desk at Scanlan & Co., he had hung a framed copy of a quotation about Teddy Roosevelt: “The baby at every christening, the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral.” No one who knew John Scanlan had to ask what it meant. Anyone who had ever been to a christening, a wedding, a funeral he attended knew he outshone the baby, the bride, the corpse. He could inspire love in an instant from anyone who happened to be in his good graces. It was just that so few people ever were.
    Tommy could not remember a time when he had ever been in his father’s good graces. As he watched, Mark loped across the parking lot and got into his father’s car.
    Tommy turned the radio back on. Sinatra was singing “A Foggy Day in London Town,” Tommy’s favorite song. He closed his office door and sat down at his desk. From his file drawer he took out the photograph of his wife and placed it on one corner of the desk. Another baby. More saddle shoes. Another place at the table to be filled. His stomach had turned sour and his head hurt.
    In a half hour, he would go over to Sal’s for lunch. He could think things over. Not whether he would go to his father’s or not; he’d be there, and he’d have Connie with him, even if it meant another argument. It was a question of what he’d do when he got there. He looked at the photograph, at those beautiful eyes. Another baby. He could only push his father so far. The last time he’d taken him on had been the now unimaginable night when he’d won his wife. Tommy would always think of that as his greatest triumph.
    “Shit, what can it be now?” he said, as the strings swelled and Sinatra finished singing.

4
    N AME THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS ,” JOHN Scanlan said absently as he stood in the kitchen of his house mixing martinis.
    “Sloth,” Maggie said. “Gluttony, envy.” She stuck her finger into a jar of olives, trying to coax out the three remaining in the bottom. “Avarice,” she added. “Lust.”
    “The twelve apostles.”
    “John,” Maggie began, as she always did.
    Her grandfather had something on his mind. She had known it as soon as she’d seen him that morning, his blue eyes dim, as though turned within. For just a moment, when he saw Connie and Tommy enter the house together, Maggie’s father’s hand held protectively at the small of Connie’s back, John’s eyes had brightened, blazed, danced. Now he seemed preoccupied.
    Maggie had been able to recite the deadly sins since first grade. The apostles were a throwaway question. Most recently her grandfather had asked her to recite from memory the Passion According to St. Mark, and Maggie had been amazed when she had