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“No.”

My mother watched me for a moment.

“Do you want to talk about what happened?”

The question was so unexpected I almost answered honestly. Then I remembered there were things I couldn’t say.

“No.”

She nodded. “All right.”

That worried me, her letting things go. She moved toward the door, then paused with her hand on the frame.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think he looked well last night when he came by the main house.”

I set my glass down on the table. “He came to the main house first?”

“He asked where you were.”

“And you sent him here. Why?”

My mother gave me a look, one perfect brow arched.

“Because he wanted to speak to you, and despite what you seem to believe, I do not need to sit in the room for every conversation involving your future.”

The statement should have been funny. Instead, it hurt.

“Thanks,” I said.

She studied me a moment longer as she shrugged on her raincoat, then lifted the umbrella.

“Come over if you want breakfast.”

“I will.”

She crossed the wet grass, careful with her shoes, and I watched her go through the gray blur of rain.

The house waited beyond her, bright with kitchen light.

Side A waited downtown, with Dean and Otis and the life that had started to take shape so easily I could almost see it if I tilted my head the right way.

My children were fading from my memory.

I stood in the middle of the pool house while rain ran down the windows and finally admitted to myself that what I wanted was no longer simple enough to blame on one mistake I’d made at twenty-three.

19

Dean

Wednesday — August 22, 1984

It was hot inside Side A, hot enough that I decided to go over my numbers again to see if I could upgrade the HVAC system in the building.

In the meantime, the front door was propped open with the brass duck, although all it did was let in bus exhaust, cigarette smoke, warm air, and the sound of somebody down the block trying to parallel park while his girlfriend shouted instructions from the sidewalk. One box fan rattled near the new releases. The other sat behind the counter, moving warm air across my face.

Otis lay in the middle of the aisle between rock and new wave in the shade with his stiff back leg stretched out behind him.

“You could move,” I told him.