Harry & Ruth by Howard Owen Page A

being like this, although she’s gotten a little worse. She seems, even to Hank, like one large exposed nerve.
    â€œSorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
    She’s dropped some of her cigarettes out of the package. The brand advertises on billboards all around Saraw and Newport: A young woman, carefree, perky and athletic, cavorts above large green letters that say “Slim and cool.”
    Naomi is slim, and she is cool. With her dark hair pulled back and the makeup and arched eyebrows, she looks as if frost might form on her forehead. To Hank, no rock himself, she seems to fluctuate between flustered and frozen.
    â€œThat’s OK. It’s been a long day,” she says as he tries to help her pick up the rest of the cigarettes but mainly succeeds in bumping her head with his. “Any day that involves changing planes in the Atlanta airport is a long day. And that thing we’ve got in Denver—don’t get me started.”
    But she does get started, talking at great length and with great heat about the foibles of a distant airport into which Hank will never fly. He shakes his head sympathetically.
    She stops to take another drag. She’s leaning against the deck railing. Behind her, the Gulf is whispering in the dark, sending up waves too short to matter. There is barely enough wind for them to smell the salt.
    Hank asks about Thomas and Grace and Gary. They’re fine, she says. Thomas Ferrell III is raking it in. Grace is doing well in law school. Gary’s trying to find himself.
    Naomi and Tom met when she was the semi-famous Naomi Crowder and he was in law school. She went all the way across the country to UCLA to fall in love with another North Carolinian, Ruth said at the time. Although Naomi would graduate from law school, too, Thomas Ferrell’s skills as a corporate lawyer created a world in which she didn’t have to practice for long, and she didn’t.
    Hank and Naomi talk for a while, catching up.
    Finally, he can’t help himself.
    â€œSo,” he says, “are you and Momma going to play well together?”
    She gives out a short burst of laughter; such mirth as there is doesn’t come anywhere near her eyes. Smoke floats out of her mouth.
    â€œHell, Hank. You know her better than I do. Do you think we can play well together?”
    â€œYou know she loves you, Naomi. You know she’d rather cut her tongue out than upset you.”
    Naomi stubs the butt out on the deck’s bourbon rail and flips it into the sand below.
    â€œHer tongue, huh? Then why does it always work out that way, Hank? Huh?”
    She turns away from him, toward the Gulf.
    â€œWant to go for a walk?” he asks. He’s tired, but he’s been cooped up in a car all day and would like to take big, long steps along the beach, stretch out and talk with his sister.
    â€œUh, no. I don’t think so, Hank. I’m really tired. Maybe later. I think I’m going to turn in.” She walks toward the door, then turns, as an afterthought, and says, “It was nice talking with you, though. And don’t worry, we’ll be fine. We’ll play well together.”
    And she graces him with a smile, the first one he’s seen from his sister in some time.
    Ruth has been watching from inside, half engaged in conversation with Paul and Tran as she wonders what her other two children are talking about. Me, probably, she’s thinking. She hopes that, if nothing else comes of this visit, she will at some point be alone on a quiet deck with Naomi Crowder Ferrell, just the two of them.
    Back inside, Naomi moves toward her mother, who has turned momentarily to the table. She reaches to put her arm around Ruth’s shoulder, amazed at what an awkward, unnatural thing this seems to be. At that moment, Ruth leans over to pick up a deviled egg. Upon being touched, she looks up and reaches, too quickly, to put her arm around her daughter’s waist. They wind