Page 12 of Pucking My Biggest Fan

“She should be,” June says. “So am I. It’ll be fine.”

I want to ask which of us she thinks she’s protecting. I don’t. It’s late, she’s staff, and I have a breakfast to be charming at in the morning.

“Teddy needs a dinosaur that starts with R by Friday,” she says, not looking up. “For sharing time. He’s been briefing me on the candidates, and he told me to prepare you ahead of time — his words — so Dad doesn’t panic.”

“How bad is it?”

“The current favorite is Rugops. The backup is one that’s technically not a dinosaur, and if you call it a dinosaur there will be a scene. I’m quoting again.”

“I never panic.”

“He says you’ll panic.”

“It’s pronounced ‘coaching,’” I say, and she laughs — the quick one that escapes before she can stop it — and pins the schedule flat with one hand.

She stops in the kitchen doorway on her way out, half in, half out, one hand on the frame. “Goodnight, Gus. Eat the broccoli too.”

She’s up the stairs before I answer. And I’m standing in my kitchen with a fork in my hand, forty-nine years old, stuck on something.

Have you eaten? Somebody used to ask me that.

Not Nora — in our marriage the cooking was mine, so she never needed to ask if I’d eaten. Not my mother, who’s been gone eleven years. Somebody. The answer sits just out of reach, the way a name does at three in the morning. The harder I look, the further it moves.

I rinse the plate and check the doors. At the top of the stairs I stop a second — her light off, Margot’s off, Teddy’s night-light steady. Full house.

Somebody used to ask me that. I let it go the way you let a song title go, trusting it to come back on its own.

The laptop stays closed that night. It doesn’t even occur to me until morning.

June

Dinner is Teddy explaining the rules of wall-ball as they were explained to him, wrongly, by a first-grader named Wyatt.

“—and if it hits your head, that’s a headshot, and you’re out forever. Not just the game. The whole recess.”

“That’s not how wall-ball works,” Margot says to her plate.

“It is at my school.”

“I went to your school.”

“Wyatt says the rules changed.”

“Wyatt,” says Margot, “is not in charge of wall-ball.” Teddy looks so betrayed that Gus has to turn a laugh into a cough, and I get up for the water pitcher so nobody sees my face. This is dinner now. A month ago I ate standing at a counter in Greenwood. Now there’s a five-year-old pointing his fork at me because he wants my opinion on recess rules.

“June. Is Wyatt in charge of wall-ball?”

“Nobody’s in charge of wall-ball,” I say. “That’s the whole point of wall-ball.”

He accepts this. Margot doesn’t argue with it, which from her is a lot. She finishes, asks to be excused, and takes her book upstairs. Gus catches my eye over Teddy’s head and grins like we’ve gotten away with something.

That’s the moment I’d point to, if anyone ever asked when I should have seen the whole thing coming.

Gus waits until the kids have left the table to bring up the real question.

“The Foundation dinner’s in two weeks,” he says, stacking plates. “It’s the big one — Nora’s foundation, the whole organization comes. The kids make an appearance at the start. They shake some hands, Teddy charms a table, and somebody takes them home before the speeches.” He sets the stack down. “That somebody has been three different people in three years. I’d like it to be you, if you’re willing. It’s a work night, you’d be paid for it, and I know Saturdays are already—”

“I can do it.”