grave.
'God,' she said, 'I hope to hell I don't look that bad.'
Norm managed a wan smile after wiping his face with a palm, and quickly relieved her of one of the bags. Trailing after her into the kitchen, he asked about her day, helped her place cans and boxes in the cupboards, and finally wondered aloud what was eating their son.
'So ask him,' she said, snatching a saucepan from under the sink. 'You speak the language of the young, the last I heard.'
'Hey, touchy today, aren't you,' he said, but without his usual bitterness.
She watched him drop into a chair, light a cigarette, and stare at the smoke until it had vanished. 'My day was shitty, but yours must have been hell.'
'To put it mildly,' he said.
And as she prepared them a quick meal, something they could eat in five minutes and have no complaints about not feeling full, she listened while he told her about Hedley's bitching about a prank someone had pulled at his place over the weekend, about the coaches whining about the teachers who were in a conspiracy to hold back their best players and ruin the Big Game coming up Friday night against Ashford North, and about the teachers themselves and that sonofabitch Falcone and his threat to take the faculty out for a walk in only two days.
She said nothing because a single wrong word would set off his temper.
The signs were there. And she knew he had deliberately held back the news about Harry until he'd reached the end of his weary tirade. Maybe he'd thought to catch her off guard; maybe he thought she would fly to the man's defense and reveal herself as his not-so-secret lover.
And maybe he didn't think anything of the sort and was only rambling, hoping to get this day off his chest before he could relax and start thinking about tomorrow.
Three cigarettes later he was done, and the silence made her nervous.
She turned from the stove, and he was staring at her.
'Sorry about dinner,' she said, waving toward the soup and sandwiches.
'There's a-'
'Committee meeting tonight,' he finished for her. 'I know.'
'Well, there is,' she insisted without wanting to. 'My god, things start on Wednesday, you know.'
'I know.'
'And as long as you're here, I might as well tell you that that so-called bandmaster of yours is being a real prick, Norm. He acts like he's in charge of the New York Philharmonic, for Christ's sake. It's not like we're asking for his blood, for crying out loud. And he's even talking about extra pay!'
'I know.'
She slapped at the counter. 'Will you please stop saying that? If you know so damned much, why the hell don't you talk to him like I've asked you a hundred times already?'
'Three hundred, but who's counting,' he said.
'Jesus.'
She put her back to him and stirred the soup, her free hand pulling her ponytail over her shoulder to stroke it, to calm her, to figure out a way to get him to talk to Donald-right, Joyce, his name is Donald. She couldn't do it herself. When she'd looked in on him on Sunday and he had looked at her that way, she knew she couldn't have a decent conversation with him without running from the room.
It was horrible.
It was unnatural.
But after seeing him like that, not sick but something else, she was ashamed to admit that she was afraid of him.
'Did you talk to Don?' she asked at last, her voice sounding too small, making her clear her throat and ask the question again.
'No. I just walked in the door when you came.'
'Then will you?'
'When I'm ready.'
The spoon clanged against the side of the pot.
'If you want to know the truth,' he said, sounding less angry but no less tired, 'I think the kid needs a spanking, but he's too big for it.
If I tried it, he'd probably bash in my teeth.'
Last year, last month, last week, she would have turned on him furiously for even suggesting such a thing; tonight, however, she only nodded without letting him see her expression.
'Actually, I think he's in love.'
She lifted the spoon from the soup, tested for warmth, and returned to her stirring. 'You think so?'
'Yep. I think he has the hots for the Quintero girl. The cop's kid.'
'Norman, I wish you wouldn't talk like that.'
'Like what?' Perfectly innocent, and uncaring.
'Like saying Don has the hots for someone. If he's in love, he's in love, and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with having sex with the child.'
But he isn't in love, she thought, half-hoping he would read her mind.
He isn't. I know. I'm his mother, and I know.
'Well, maybe,' he conceded. 'And another thing.'
'What?'
'If you don't let up on that spoon, we're going to have butter for supper.'
It wasn't all that funny, but she laughed anyway as she went to the foyer and called up to her son, telling him supper was ready and he'd best get down here before it got cold. There was no response. She called again and wished he had turned out more like Sam, who had never had to be called twice, never got into trouble.
'Donald!'
She heard the door open, heard his footsteps in the hall, and smiled as well as she could when he appeared on the landing.
'I'm not really hungry, Mother,' he said.
'Well, you'd better come down and eat what you can. It can't hurt, and I don't want you sick for all the fun this week.'
'Yeah,' he said, looked back up toward his room, and started down.
Slowly. His hand dusting the banister until he was less than a foot from her. The smile held, but she could see his eyes now, could see the look in them, the dark look that made her feel as if she were an ant to be stepped on, or not, at the whim of a perfectly ordinary and inexplicably terrifying young man.
'Come on,' she said brusquely and walked away. He followed and she walked faster, and barely suppressed a relieved sigh when she saw Norm still at the table. Even a fight, now, would be better than nothing.
But Norm only nodded, and Don only nodded back, and during the meal they exchanged words so polite, so noncommittal, so infuriatingly inane that she wished for the first time that Harry were here. He would know what to do. He was, despite his dress and his manner with his students, an old-fashioned type when it came to dealing with children, and he would know how to handle this stranger who was her son.
And when the meal was over and she was piling the dishes in the sink, Don said, 'Are you two getting a divorce?'
She spun around, a bowl clattering to the floor unbroken. 'My god, Donald, what a thing to say!'
'Go to your room,' Norman ordered in a strained voice.
'Just asking,' Don said with a shrug. Then he rose, folded his paper napkin, and walked out.
'Jesus,' Norm said, pulling a beer from the refrigerator.
'Norm, what are we going to do?'
He looked at her, drank, and forced himself to belch. 'Seems to me,' he said as he headed for the TV room, 'that's your problem. You're the one who doesn't think I love you, remember?'
'But-'
And she was alone, hands tangled in a dishtowel, lips moving soundlessly, her dream of running away with Harry for some remote paradise suddenly more the dream of an old woman still a spinster.
