had dusted the hood of the Bonnie with snow. I turned off the car, brushed the snow off the hood with my sleeve, and closed up the garage.
As I pulled into Mom’s driveway, I saw her working in the kitchen of the little yellow house she and Dad had built when Starvation was not a vacation destination and a dry-waller and his wife could afford a hundred feet of lakefront property. She was making gravy when I walked in. I put my arm around her and pecked her on the cheek. The aroma of her perfume mixed with that of the pot roast simmering in onions. “Smells good,” I said.
She poked me in the ribs with her spoon handle. “Could you be sweet and get me a gravy boat? In the china cabinet, bottom shelf, back-left corner.”
She was talking too fast. “A what?”
“A gravy boat, dear. Gravy boat.”
In the living room I looked through the big glass sliding door at the still, white lake. I’d always thought the lake looked bigger and more dangerous in the winter. The china cabinet stood along a wall filled with photographs of Mom and Dad and me, and framed needlepoint designs Mom had made, including one of a goaltender in his ready crouch. I took the gravy boat into the kitchen. Mom hummed off-key as she worked. She was glad to have me home, despite the unpleasant circumstance of my return. She hadn’t asked much about it. But then she’d never wanted me to go to Detroit in the first place.
“You had a busy week,” she said as she ladled gravy from the steaming pan. “But, Gussy, how could you put that woman in your story? Here, let’s sit.” She set the gravy down on the kitchen table next to the platter heaped with beef and potatoes and carrots. She sat, as always, at the end near the kitchen and I sat to her right. Across from me a place was set, as always, for my father.
“What woman?” I said.
“Oh, you know, that whatshername, that nurse. Gloria. Gloria Lowinski.”
That was the nurse in Tillie’s Monica story. So somebody had actually read it. I speared a chunk of pot roast. “What about her?”
“Dear,” my mother said, as if it were obvious, “Gloria Lowinski is the biggest blabbermouth in town. She talks about her patients at Dr. Johnson’s office, for God’s sakes. She doesn’t need to be encouraged.”
“Who’s Dr. Johnson?”
Mom crooked an eyebrow at me as she spooned applesauce onto our plates. “A gynecologist, dear. Gloria is his nurse. I used to go there until, well, you don’t want to know, but suffice to say that Gloria’s lips were flapping and I finally had to switch to Dr. Schmidt in Kalkaska.”
“Oh.”
We ate quietly for a few minutes. I wanted to eat until I was too full and then go take a nap in the living room. I couldn’t, of course. I had a paper to get out. As I chewed I gazed across the table at my father’s setting. After Dad died, Coach Blackburn had sat there for Sunday dinners, until he stopped coming.
“So,” I said, “what do you think of the snowmobile thing?”
Either she didn’t hear me or she ignored me. “Are you still playing your season, honey?”
“It’s almost over.”
“You sound like you’re glad. It used to be I’d have to go out and drag you off the ice. Remember how your toes got frostbite? If you don’t like to play anymore, why do you play?”
“I do like to play, Mom.” Once I got myself to the rink and pulled my gear on and got on the ice, I usually did like to play, just like I once did. “I have a lot on my mind.”
“If you say so.”
“So what did you think about this snowmobile that washed up?”
“Not much, really.”
That wasn’t like my mother. “They say it’s Coach’s.”
“Well, I don’t see how that’s possible when Jack died right out there on the lake. I stood at that window and watched all those people gawking at the hole in the ice. Unless you believe those silly stories about tunnels under the lake.”
“Sometimes I wish I did.”
“How’s the roast? Good? I left it on too long.”
“It’s great. You know, I’ve had to deal with Dingus a bit. He’s kind of weird.”
“Oh, tell me about it. Dingus hasn’t been right for years. He never leaves that office. Does he have a bunk in there or something?”
“Didn’t notice. Has he always been this way?”
“You were still down in Detroit, son, but no, Dingus used to be out and about like anybody else when he was with Barbara. You’d see them at the Legion dances and at the Avalon, all over the place. Let’s face it, honey, Dingus isn’t the prettiest kitten in the litter, but he and Barbara made a very cute couple. He adored her.”
“I guess so. He still keeps her picture in his office.”
Mom shook her head. “Barbara. Now there’s another one. What that girl was thinking, I will never know. Don’t get me wrong, I love Barbara, I just-I never understood how she could just go off with somebody else.”
“Somebody else who?”
Mom stiffened a little; she knew she’d said too much.
“It doesn’t matter, dear.”
“Come on. Who’d she go off with?”
“She didn’t really-I mean she didn’t actually marry somebody else.”
“OK, but who?”
Mom started to get up. “I have cherry pie.”
“Sit down, Mom.”
She gave me one of those looks that said this was something I didn’t need to know. And then of course I knew.
“Whoa,” I said. “Coach?”
“Oh, my gosh, who cares? How did we get on this subject?”
“I knew Coach was the ladies’ man, all right, but I didn’t know about Barbara. Man, I missed all the fun when I was downstate. So Dingus divorced her?”
She sighed. “No, he didn’t divorce her. He wanted her back. She wanted Jack. But Jack wasn’t marrying anybody.”
“And where’s she now?”
“Last I heard, the IGA in Sandy Cove. Or maybe Kalkaska.”
“Wow. Just like that.” I scooped more potatoes onto my plate. “You dated Coach for a bit, Mom. What did you think?”
“No, I wouldn’t call it dating. We went to a show once or twice, dinner a couple of times. No big deal, really. Now, your friend Tillie, she actually dated dated him.”
I remembered seeing Tillie at a few of our games. She still had most of her beauty then. “Weren’t they just drinking buddies?” I said.
“Well, maybe so. Tillie is everyone’s drinking buddy, isn’t she?” Mom stood. “Would you like ice cream on your pie?”
“Sure.”
She went into the kitchen. I heard the microwave start, the freezer door open and shut, a fork clink. My mother was never this quiet. She came back and set the pie and a cup of coffee in front of me. “Thanks, Mom,” I said. I nodded at the chair across the table. “Remember when Coach used to come to dinner?”
“Of course. The man was a garbage disposal.”
“Do you remember how he always used to talk about coaching in Canada, how great the kids were up there?”
“Vaguely, dear. I never paid much attention to all that hockey stuff.”
Yes, she did, I thought. She was always asking whether the parents in Canada were as obnoxious as the ones in Michigan. “You don’t remember him saying anything about taking a year off from coaching, do you?”
“I remember him talking about all those championships he almost won.” Four fantastic years, I thought. “Your mother’s an old lady, Gussy. It’s all a blur now.”
I set my fork down. “Mom. I know we’ve never really talked about this.”
