He stops the Volvo in the airport drop-off lane, as close to the Delta sign as possible.  Max and his mother have stayed two weeks, but it has felt like two months.  Lucinda wanted Mike to park the car and walk them in, but it doesn’t make sense in this day and age. He’s not allowed to pass through security, can’t accompany them to the gate.  Besides, that is what Max is for, Mike had wanted to say.  To escort you, Luce. And there was no reason to be stretching out final goodbyes in the Jacksonville International Airport food court.  To sit in those odd rocking chairs beside the Burger King and rehash what had already been hashed.  And hashed.

“Hijo, promise you’ll call me first thing!” Lucinda’s lips are pursed; she’s leaning into the car from the passenger side.

“Huh?” Usually, his mother calls him first thing, from her land line, the minutes she arrives back in Buena Vista.

“When she gets the results! Please!” The upper half of his mother’s body is in the car, her fingers have clawed their way to his wrist.  She’s got a grip on him.

Mike peels her nails away from his skin.  “Okay, okay.”

“Mike?”

It was odd to hear his mother use his Americanized name, as she calls it.  Though she herself is South Florida-born and bred, she clings to her maternal Cuban roots just as strongly as she had clutched his wrist.  “Yes, Mother?”

“I’m serious. Let me know, please?” Lucinda withdraws from the car, hunching her shoulders so she doesn’t hit her head on the window threshold.  Mike notices that she shuffles toward Max in this same slumped posture.

She’s finally showing her age, Mike realizes.  Lucinda had been a beauty, and her looks had carried her through the first stages of aging—well, looks, along with great personal style, at least according to his wife.  But beauty and style are no match for the septuagenarian years, which are fast approaching.  His mother’s face is grooved with wrinkles now, right above newly drooping jowls.  Staunch grey streaks sprout at her temples, where the hair has thinned from her thick thatch of youth.

Mike’s throat clogs with a sudden ache, and he feels like jumping out of the car, running to his mother, burying his face on her bony shoulder.  And crying.  Letting loose with sorrow.  Because he misses his father, still, dead nearly two decades now.  He misses his mother, the way she used to be, when he and Max were little boys and she walked them into church, holding both of them by the hand.  Visiting her father on his rundown ranch, a trio, sharing adventures.

Mike rubs his face.  No, this won’t do.  Get a grip on yourself, for God’s sake.  It’s going to be fine. Crying out for the past won’t get you through the present.

“Hey, bro!” Max has slammed the car door, is poking his face through the open window.  “I’ll get El Madre settled, then I’ll head back up here.” He looks behind him to make sure Lucinda isn’t listening. “I want to keep tabs on you know who.”

Mike raises his eyebrows, brother code for a question, and Max smiles sheepishly. “Fair, of course, but mainly Nancy,” he adds sotto voce. “I’ve finally got a shot there, you know.” He steps back from the car, slaps the roof with a hollow thud.  Mike watches his brother grab Luce’s suitcase by the handle and sling his backpack over a shoulder. He places their mother’s hand in the crook of an arm as they disappear into the airport through sliding glass doors.

Mike feels something settle into place, releasing a puff of relief:  Max, escorting Lucinda, being a good son.  But the feeling evaporates like street steam after rain. Max will deposit Lucinda at home and cycle right back to Jacksonville.  Some things never change.  Max will always be restless.

And he can’t seem to get over Nancy Plumb.  You have to admire his brother’s focus on that one.

And his craftiness.

Because Max has been eavesdropping on Nancy’s conversations with Fairfax.  From what Mike could tell, there have been at least two from which he got an earful. And then proceeded to share with Mike.

It’s such a wild story, Mike wonders if Max heard everything correctly.  I mean, how accurately can you hear something when you’re lurking behind a hedge or outside a closed door?

He laughs now, merging the car onto 95 South, and pictures his forty-five-year-old brother in a sweat-stained t-shirt and shorts straining forward, ears a-perk like antennae.

“The guy’s nuts, bro,” Max had told him, settling into the couch one evening last week. Fairfax was out of the house, at Nancy’s condo, Mike suspected.  “I heard Nancy say it herself.  He went off the deep end.”

Mike had groaned, swigged from his beer.  He crunched down on some low salt potato chips.  Maybe this snack would be dinner since it didn’t seem that Fairfax had prepared anything.  The kitchen was tidy and dark. No note on the fridge about a vegetable stir fry or bean casserole to reheat. Lucinda would surely make a meal if he asked, but Mike was sick of picadillo. Even hamburgers had lost their appeal.

He turned to his brother. “Max, you don’t know for sure what’s going on. You said yourself it was hard to hear them clearly.”

“I know, but I definitely heard some words several times.  I know I did! From Nancy. Because…well…” He slid down on the sofa, and his knees lodged against the coffee table. “She was upset.  Her voice was loud, especially when they were up in the bedroom.”  Max lifted his flip-flopped feet, propped them on the edge of the coffee table. “’Nuts’ is what she said.”

“Well, even so, you know, you shouldn’t call anyone ‘nuts’ these days.” Mike had worked on several mental health campaign teams for Florida Blue.  He was reminded of Luce’s old maxim: when they shook the trees, all the nuts rolled to Florida.

“Here’s the thing…I don’t care what you call it nowadays.  All I know is, if this Adam guy is, uh, impaired in some way, this is the ideal time for me to make a move.”

“That’s kind of mercenary, don’t you think?” Mike swigged more beer.

Max raised his eyebrows, and Mike paused a moment.  Maybe his brother didn’t get it.  How it breaks “guy code” to take advantage of this poor fellow’s illness. But that wasn’t even what Mike meant by “mercenary.”  It was more about Nancy. Really, was it fair to her to take advantage of her, er, fragile state in order to establish some kind of relationship with her?  Gain some ground in the game of love?

A pang hit his heart; Mike missed his wife.  This was her kind of conversation.  He wished she were there to advise him on how to talk to Max.  Better yet, to speak to Max herself.  Except this was Max’s secret, spying and listening, so Mike shouldn’t share it with her.  Max’s secret about Nancy’s secret.

And, come to think of it, Fairfax’s secret too.  Her secret from him. Mike. She had not shared this, any of it, with her husband. Whatever it was. The mental illness of a friend’s friend, or something else. In any case, an emotional time, a break-up, for their close neighbor.

Mike had sighed, scratched away the chip crumbs from his lips.  Max leaned in closer, gazed up at him, just as he did when they were little kids.  Ever hopeful, head in the clouds, following some hare-brained idea to a goofy end.  Never asking his big brother why the scheme hadn’t worked because there was always a new scheme in the works.

Max never planned his processes and never evaluated his failures.  He was the opposite of data-driven Mike.  Max just acted.  He did stuff without a thought. And it occurred to Mike then that he should say nothing to Max, let him try to win Nancy again.  Because he wouldn’t succeed this time either.  But his hope, his joy, his action in this goal, never mind the outcome, might just make the whole experience of failure worthwhile. As Fairfax has preached to their family many times, the journey was worth more than the destination.

“Never mind, Max,” he had said, patting his kid brother on the shoulder.  “If you want to get Nancy, go for it.”

Further down 95, the Volvo makes a pinging noise, and Mike sees the low air button light up.  That can’t be right—he put air in the tires, not too long ago.  Let’s see, thinking back, it’s been six months since he went to the tire place.

Forget it for now. Mike’s not going there today, though he should, he knows.  But he can’t. He needs to get home.

The pull to his wife is so strong now, Mike cannot, will not resist.  Fairfax, waiting by the phone, for Dr. Redmond to call her.  For Peter himself had promised to call.  And Fairfax had wanted him to call her on the landline, for some reason.  Or, at least that’s what she had told Lucinda—that she couldn’t ride to the airport because she was expecting a call.

The call. Even though she’d only just had the bone marrow aspiration and biopsy taken from her hipbone the day before.  Peter said he’d put a rush on the results, to get the news as soon as possible.  But even Mike knows that’s pushing it. It was an involved procedure, with both the siphoning of liquid and sampling of marrow.  Fairfax was not going to be hearing anything today, about possible myelodysplastic whatever, God help them, Mike was sure of it.

But still, to be alone with his wife, finally free of his family of origin.  That was the goal. To comfort her without anyone else around.  Maybe cook her a meal or two.  That’s what they needed.  They didn’t need the beach or the mountains or time away in a different place.  Mike’s lingering irritation over Fairfax cancelling their trip evaporates.  He sees his hurt now for what it really was—high expectations, selfishness, assumptions about how life should be.

When, if Mike has learned anything in his years on earth, in his marriage, it is this:  there is nowhere else he needs to be but with his wife.  The natural world might go to hell within and without their bodies, but, no mind.  Together, two can defend themselves.

Mike and Fairfax will be together tonight, alone, in their own home.  And that is a gift better than any vacation or weekend away.

Because home is the place where they know how to hunker down.