Midterm Until the very moment the wagon has risen too high above Sonora for Joe to see details of the Labyrinth distinctly, Joe hadn’t really believed the situation he was in would ever arise. This was why he spent almost the entire trip between Arizona and Montana, where he could cross the border into Canada, struggling silently with himself over what on earth he was to do when he saw his mother.
Lying would be easier for Joe, certainly. If he told Mom he had done his best to persuade John to come home, everyone would be angry with John and no-one would be angry with Joe. This was, in Joe’s opinion, the best available set of circumstances, considering. Unfortunately, he had no idea how Mom would take it. Mom might get angry with John, write him off and get on with it – or she might actually have the full-blown nervous breakdown that Julian said Joe’s confirmation that John was still alive enough to hit had helped stave off in the autumn. And plus, she might get angry with John, write him off and get on with it, which was not something Joe actually wanted her to do even as he considered it better than the nervous breakdown option. He wanted Mom to be angry with John, yes, but – not like that. He wanted everyone to be angry for a while, as he was, but then he did, at some point, want his family to be put back together.
This led him to another option: telling the truth, which was that he had not even attempted to persuade John to come home. This option came with two sub-options: either presenting this as deliberate callousness on his own part or telling a little more truth – that he had not even considered the possibility that John wouldn’t do so. Either way, Mom would be furious with him for not caring enough about his brother, and he didn’t know what everyone else would think. It would go further toward eventually putting the family back together, of course, and they weren’t going to disown Joe over it, but it would make the next two weeks distinctly unpleasant….
He still had not decided what to do when the wagon, and he exited it with trepidation. His father was the only familiar face waiting for him.
“Joe,” he called, not seeming to realize that Joe had already seen him, and they hugged briefly.
“How much trouble am I still in?” he asked directly.
Dad shook his head. “You did a stupid thing,” he remarked.
“Yeah. I – I didn’t mean to.”
“Hm.”
Dad, of course, didn’t Know what Joe knew – or at least Joe didn’t think he did. Finally, at last, all the lying and secret-keeping had caught up with the family to the point that he was pretty sure Mom had been forced to choose between protecting John and protecting her marriage, and that she had protected the former over the latter. Or maybe she saw it as protecting Dad from the fallout that would result if too many people ever did know. Or maybe Dad did know, or knew enough, and just wasn’t telling Joe what he knew. Maybe he didn’t even know Joe knew. Who could say?
“John’s not here,” blurted Joe, deciding to get that part of it over with. To his surprise, Dad just nodded.
“He wrote to your mother a few weeks ago,” said Dad.
Joe noticed Dad’s specificity, but filed it away as something to think about later, when he had a chance.
He got his chance after dinner, when he and Julian were doing dishes together. His sister had lost weight and was wearing lipstick in the house, he noticed. “Dad told me John finally wrote,” said Joe tentatively, using a plate with something stuck to it as a good excuse not to look at his sister as he spoke. Julian, of course, was drying, not washing – scrubbing plates was not good for her hands, which had to be in perfect condition for her wedding, and never mind that said wedding wasn’t for another six months.
“He did,” said Julian, clipping the words off sharply with disapproval. “He told Mom that he was very busy on a project he hoped would get him into university.”
Joe continued rubbing the sponge against the plate even though the spot had come off. “He has been working a lot,” he offered, but Julian didn’t reply and so he moved on to the next point of interest. “How did Mom take it?”
Julian shrugged. “She wrote back that she understood but that she loves him very much and wants him to come home at Easter and to make sure he finds some way to go to Phoenix for confession and the Christmas masses,” said Julian. “Really, Joe. What did you think she wrote? Something any sane person would?”
“Mom’s not crazy,” said Joe.
Julian tossed her hair irritably. “I know,” she said. “It’s just – oh!” She closed the door of the cabinet she’d just finished putting the cups away in hard, clearly taking out some of her frustrations on it. “I’m so tired of it – her acting like a martyr all the time – “
“I haven’t noticed her smiling at any lions and getting decapitated when they refused to eat her,” said Joe.
“John’s not here, so you take up his worst habits. Fabulous. The one thing I…” Julian stopped. “You know, that’s not true. I actually do miss that.” She dried a plate very slowly. “Sometimes, I think – “
Joe interrupted her before she could venture any further into the territory he knew she planned to use him as a test subject for. He refused to be part of this, or at least any more than he could help. When John and Julian had started their parts of this, he had still thought Beatrix Potter was the height of good literature. He couldn’t be the person Julian tried out new thoughts, thoughts their mother would consider far worse than anything she or John had done previously, on.
“We all think too much,” said Joe. “That’s what got us all into this mess.”
“Mom thinking too much is what got us into this mess,” said Julian under her breath.
Joe put the last plate in the dish drainer for her. “There,” he said, pretending he hadn’t caught that last remark of his sister’s. “That’s done.”