department, okay, but you weren’t clubbing anybody with a baseball bat.”
“Everybody grows up eventually,” Sam mutters darkly, eyes glued to the TV above my shoulder.
The quiet bitterness of this remark sets me back in my chair. I reach for my glass, but it’s empty.
And time seems to stop then, or even goes into reverse, as I look at the angry young man sitting across from me, unable, however I study him, to find evidence of the thin white scar that I know runs along the line of his left jaw: the scar made by my fist when, five years old, he jumped into the middle of a drunken fight I was having with Ruth on the night our marriage went bust. Every single second of that night was, for all of us, an accident of the worst kind. Just like that, because of me, his life—and mine—swerved off course. Though the still worse turns that were to follow didn’t immediately make themselves known—as, of course, they never do, until it’s too late.
I’ve heard it said, and am here to affirm it myself, that if you turn yourself in for a crime you will earn yourself a shot at redemption. But there’s a statute of limitations on that one, I believe, though it’s not much mentioned by the moral philosophers of the day. Wait too long to speak up and you might just miss your shot. You may do your time, but you will never really get out.
“You guys doing all right?”
Our blond waitress, half my age, with the surfer’s wide shoulders and the blazing California smile: a veritable fun house of sun and salt packed into tight chinos and a blue oxford. My jack-o’-lantern grin seems to startle her, leading her to rear back slightly.
“Doing great, thanks,” I answer, meaning possibly the opposite. It’s hard to tell anymore, so beset am I by memory, and now suddenly, incongruously wistful for all the waitresses I ever knew in the Northwest Corner, never as young as here but undiscovered stars every one of them, with their dark-polish nails and winter-colored hair and crow’s-feet around their eyes, and those lived-in smiles that draw you closer.
“Just let me know if I can get you anything else?” This directed meaningfully at my son, whose handsome slouched fury she can’t take her eyes from.
“Will do.” I grin tiredly at her again as she walks away. “Keep ignoring her like that,” I say to Sam, winking, “and she just might follow you home.”
“Whatever.”
We fall silent.
At the start of the evening—with the sun still lingering in the sky and the dinner still just an idea in the making—it had been my sincere intention to try to persuade my son to return to school. Get your diploma first , I’d been going to exhort him, just get the goddamn thing and stick it in your pocket and that, at least, no matter what else comes to pass, they’ll never be able to take from you .…
But the right time to have that pep talk somehow never seemed to arise; or maybe, rather, I just didn’t have the stomach to send him back East once he was finally here.
I follow Sam’s gaze to the wide-screen above the bar. The game is in the eighth inning and the Sox, with a runner on second, are trying to fight their way out of a two-run hole. The base runner is Coco Crisp, I see, and in the batter’s box Big Papi’s stamping around, bat handle propped against his crotch, spitting into his massive palms and clapping like a circus strongman let loose from his cage.
“Here we go!” cheers the Boston announcer, practically pissing himself with excitement. “All right, folks, here we go!”
I turn back to my son, who’s no longer watching the game, or anything. A muscle twitching in his jaw, biting down furiously on all the words he’ll never say.
I reach out and squeeze his arm. My voice thick and unfamiliar to us both. “Whatever the situation is, Sam, whatever happens with this, we’ll face it together.”
His expression then declares that he can’t, or won’t, believe me.
And in this, at least, we are the
“Everybody grows up eventually,” Sam mutters darkly, eyes glued to the TV above my shoulder.
The quiet bitterness of this remark sets me back in my chair. I reach for my glass, but it’s empty.
And time seems to stop then, or even goes into reverse, as I look at the angry young man sitting across from me, unable, however I study him, to find evidence of the thin white scar that I know runs along the line of his left jaw: the scar made by my fist when, five years old, he jumped into the middle of a drunken fight I was having with Ruth on the night our marriage went bust. Every single second of that night was, for all of us, an accident of the worst kind. Just like that, because of me, his life—and mine—swerved off course. Though the still worse turns that were to follow didn’t immediately make themselves known—as, of course, they never do, until it’s too late.
I’ve heard it said, and am here to affirm it myself, that if you turn yourself in for a crime you will earn yourself a shot at redemption. But there’s a statute of limitations on that one, I believe, though it’s not much mentioned by the moral philosophers of the day. Wait too long to speak up and you might just miss your shot. You may do your time, but you will never really get out.
“You guys doing all right?”
Our blond waitress, half my age, with the surfer’s wide shoulders and the blazing California smile: a veritable fun house of sun and salt packed into tight chinos and a blue oxford. My jack-o’-lantern grin seems to startle her, leading her to rear back slightly.
“Doing great, thanks,” I answer, meaning possibly the opposite. It’s hard to tell anymore, so beset am I by memory, and now suddenly, incongruously wistful for all the waitresses I ever knew in the Northwest Corner, never as young as here but undiscovered stars every one of them, with their dark-polish nails and winter-colored hair and crow’s-feet around their eyes, and those lived-in smiles that draw you closer.
“Just let me know if I can get you anything else?” This directed meaningfully at my son, whose handsome slouched fury she can’t take her eyes from.
“Will do.” I grin tiredly at her again as she walks away. “Keep ignoring her like that,” I say to Sam, winking, “and she just might follow you home.”
“Whatever.”
We fall silent.
At the start of the evening—with the sun still lingering in the sky and the dinner still just an idea in the making—it had been my sincere intention to try to persuade my son to return to school. Get your diploma first , I’d been going to exhort him, just get the goddamn thing and stick it in your pocket and that, at least, no matter what else comes to pass, they’ll never be able to take from you .…
But the right time to have that pep talk somehow never seemed to arise; or maybe, rather, I just didn’t have the stomach to send him back East once he was finally here.
I follow Sam’s gaze to the wide-screen above the bar. The game is in the eighth inning and the Sox, with a runner on second, are trying to fight their way out of a two-run hole. The base runner is Coco Crisp, I see, and in the batter’s box Big Papi’s stamping around, bat handle propped against his crotch, spitting into his massive palms and clapping like a circus strongman let loose from his cage.
“Here we go!” cheers the Boston announcer, practically pissing himself with excitement. “All right, folks, here we go!”
I turn back to my son, who’s no longer watching the game, or anything. A muscle twitching in his jaw, biting down furiously on all the words he’ll never say.
I reach out and squeeze his arm. My voice thick and unfamiliar to us both. “Whatever the situation is, Sam, whatever happens with this, we’ll face it together.”
His expression then declares that he can’t, or won’t, believe me.
And in this, at least, we are the
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