All That's Left to Tell(44)

“He knows how much you like Diane. And he hasn’t even told her about this yet.”

“Is it because they can’t have kids?”

“Christ, no. Jesus. I don’t think they ever wanted any kids, anyway.”

In the ensuing silence, Tom slides the half meatball into his mouth and chews noiselessly. The fork makes no sound when he lays it on the tablecloth.

“This,” he says, “might be a good opportunity for me to check the Michigan game. Care to join me, Marc?”

Marc watches him stand and smile, and then Joline says, “No, you stay,” and he thinks she means Tom, but when he turns to her she’s looking directly in his eyes. “Tom can tell you the halftime score.”

*

Later, he wonders why she asked him to sit and listen as she and Kathleen talked it through. He’d contributed nothing to the conversation, had absorbed the occasional glances that Kathleen gave him, who seemed to search his face for understanding of her son. Joline was sure that her brother and his wife were heading for divorce.

When Kathleen asked her why, she said, “I don’t know, Ma. Once you walk down that path, I think it’s hard to walk it back. Some people can have affairs, and then just accept them as part of the long journey to the grave, maybe even a kind of protest against it, and forgive themselves. Not Jon. I feel sorry for him. And Diane. But I’m gonna support him. He’s not Dad. He’s not only like Dad. He’s like you, too.”

After that, the baby had woken, and before lifting her out of the bassinet, Joline had unabashedly unsnapped her blouse and her nursing bra and exposed her breast. With the baby latched on, Kathleen stood to clear the dishes, her face pale.

Now, Joline says, “Thanks for staying,” while Kathleen loads the dishwasher in the kitchen.

“Why’d you ask me to?” Marc says, though in truth she hadn’t asked.

“She needed you here, I think. She’s told you about my father?”

“Some.”

She nods. “You remind me of Jon a little.”

“Why?”

She pulls the baby off her breast, re-snaps her blouse, and then switches her to the other side. “There you go, little one,” she coos, and she closes her eyes and hums a few bars of a song. “Because you know what it’s like to hide a secret sadness.”

Then Tom comes in from the living room and says, “Indiana thirty-seven, Michigan thirty-four at the half.”

*

Toward evening, as he’d predicted, the wind dies down, and Tom wants to take a walk out onto the ice. The wind has formed a frozen crust over the top of the snow, and when they step across the yard toward the willow tree, Tom’s shoe catches the edge of one of his footsteps, and he stumbles, and Marc has to grab hold of him. He tweaks something in his shoulder breaking Tom’s fall, and while Tom brushes the snow from his knees, Marc works his arm to loosen the muscle. The pain lingers in his chest.

“You all right?” Tom asks.

“No problem. The old shoulder socket isn’t what it used to be.”

“Sorry about that. How the hell do people walk across this stuff, anyway?”

“Snowshoes. Cross-country skis. Or you get used to it. It’ll be easier out on the ice. The wind helps keep the snow levels low, and the lake has more exposure to the sun.”

Marc lets Tom lead the way. He walks well out toward the middle so they’re standing under the dark-blue dome of the sky, the clouds filtering the remaining light after sunset. Marc realizes he hasn’t come out this far all winter. Tom holds his arms out and spins in a circle, and it’s easy to see the kid in him.

“This is kind of amazing,” Tom says. “It’s like you’re at the bottom of a huge crater.”

“That’s true especially this time of the day.”

With the wind down, there’s a dampness in the air that smells like spring.

Tom asks, “So, uh, how was the table talk earlier?”

“Not particularly pleasant.”

“Yeah, I figured that was the way it would go. Sorry you missed the game.”

“I admit, I was surprised Joline asked me to stay.”

“She’s that way sometimes. I don’t understand it, and I don’t try to explain it. She probably thought you being there would soften the blow.”

“Probably.”

The air is damp enough that he can briefly see the mist from Tom’s mouth when he laughs.

“You know, even Kathleen will get nowhere with Joline if she sticks up for Diane at Jon’s expense. She takes no prisoners when it comes to shielding him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Don’t get me wrong. Diane’s a fine woman. You met her?”

“Just the one time in Pittsburgh.”

“That’s right. Then you know. She’s beautiful. Not hard at all to stand on the beach with her in her bikini during family vacations. Sorry, but true. Otherwise pleasantly, smartly suburban. Content, I think. This will rattle her, but I doubt it will tear her apart.”

“Yeah? Be best if it worked out that way. Wasn’t so lucky myself.”

“That right?” Tom looks up at the sky and spins in a circle again. “But you say a word against Jon in Joline’s earshot, that March wind you had wailing out here this afternoon? Be like a June breeze.”