"You . . ." Nina stares at him, then sinks onto a stool. "Oh, Patrick, no."
Anguish pushes on his shoulders, makes him sit down too. "I tried, Nina. But he wouldn't cave in. Not even when I told him about the semen, and Nathaniel's disclosure."
"So!" Caleb's voice interrupts firmly, brightly. "You finished with your ice cream, buddy?" He throws a warning like a knife between his wife and Patrick; tilts his head meaningfully toward Nathaniel. Patrick has not even noticed the boy sitting at the table, having a bedtime snack. He took one look at Nina, and forgot there might be anyone else in the room.
"Weed," he says. "You're up late."
"It's not bedtime yet."
Patrick has forgotten about Nathaniel's voice. Still rough, it sounds better suited to a grizzled cowboy than a small child, but it is a symphony all the same. Nathaniel hops off his seat to run to Patrick, extends a skinny arm. "Wanna feel my muscle?"
Caleb laughs. "Nathaniel was watching the Ironman competition on ESPN."
Patrick squeezes the tiny biceps. "Gosh, you could deck me with an arm like that," he says soberly, then turns toward Nina. "He's strong. Have you seen how strong this guy is?"
He is trying to convince her of a different sort of strength, and she knows it. Nina crosses her arms. "He could be Hercules, Patrick, and he'd still be my little boy."
"Mom," Nathaniel wails.
Over his head, Nina mouths, "Did you arrest him?"
Caleb puts his hands on Nathaniel's shoulders, steering him back toward his bowl of melting ice cream.
"Look, you two need to talk-and
clearly, here isn't the best place to do it. Why don't you just go out? You can fill me in after Nathaniel's gone to sleep."
"But don't you want to-"
"Nina," Caleb sighs, "you're going to understand what Patrick says, and I'm going to need to have it explained. You might as well be the translator." He watches Nathaniel take the last bite of ice cream into his mouth. "Come on, buddy. Let's see if that guy from Romania popped a vein in his neck yet."
At the threshold of the kitchen door, Nathaniel lets go of his father's hand. He runs toward Nina, catching her at the knees, a near tackle. "Bye, Mom," he says, smiling, his dimples deep. "Sweep tight."
It's an uncanny malapropism, Patrick thinks. If Nina could, she'd whisk away this whole mess for Nathaniel. He watches her kiss her son good night. As Nathaniel hurries back toward Caleb, she ducks her head and blinks, until the tears aren't quite as bright in her eyes. "So," she says, "let's go."
In an effort to improve the revenues on slow Sunday nights, Tequila Mockingbird has established the Jimmy Buffet Key Largo Karaoke Night, an all-you-can-eat burgerfest paired with singing. When Patrick and I walk into the bar, our senses are assaulted: A string of lights in the shape of palm trees adorn the bar; a crepe-paper parrot hangs from the ceiling; a girl with too much makeup and too little skirt is butchering "The Wind Beneath My Wings." Stuyvesant sees us come in and grins. "You two never come in on a Sunday."
Patrick looks at some poor waitress, shivering in a bikini as she serves a table. "And now we know why."
Stuyv sets two napkins down in front of us. "The first margarita is on the house," he offers.
"Thanks, but we need something a little less ..."
"Festive," I finish.
Stuyvesant shrugs. "Suit yourself."
After he turns away to get our drinks and burgers, I feel Patrick's eyes on me. He is ready to talk, but I'm not, not just yet. Once the words are hanging there in the open air, there is no taking back what is going to happen.
I look at the singer, clutching the mike like a magic wand. She has absolutely no voice to speak of, but here she is, belting out her off-key rendition of a song that's crappy to begin with. "What makes people do things like that?" I say absently.
"What makes people do any of the things they do?" Patrick lifts his drink, bares his teeth after he takes a sip. There is a smattering of applause as the woman gets down from the makeshift stage, probably because she's done. "I hear that karaoke's some kind of self-discovery deal. Like yoga, you know? You go up there and you muster the courage to do something you never in a million years thought you could do, and when it's over, you're a better person because of it."
"Yeah, and the rest of the audience needs Excedrin. Give me hot coals to walk over, any day. Oh, that's right, I've already done that." To my embarrassment, tears come to my eyes; to hide this, I take a great gulp of my whiskey. "Do you know when I talked to him, he told me to think about forgiveness? Can you believe he had the nerve to say that to me, Patrick?"
"He wouldn't admit anything," Patrick answers softly. "He looked at me like he didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Like when I told him about the underwear, and the semen stain, it was a shock."
"Patrick," I say, lifting my gaze to his, "what am I going to do?"
