“And you are?”
Jesse smiled at her.
“Yes, ma’am. I am.”
The boy straightened and whispered in his mother’s ear.
“Okay,” Carole said.
“I’ll take you.”
She stood.
“Excuse us a minute,” she said to
Jesse and went out of the kitchen with her son.
For a drunk, Jesse thought as he sat in the quiet kitchen, I’m pretty tough for a boozer.
The television blatted in the family room. The kitchen faucet had a slow drip. He wondered if it needed a washer or if she just hadn’t shut it off tightly. Jenn had rarely shut the faucet off tightly. He always had to firm it up when he had walked through the kitchen. She never closed the cabinet doors all the way either. When she had stopped coming home everything had been much more buttoned up.
Carole came back into the kitchen. She got a Fudgsicle from the refrigerator freezer and removed the wrapper and gave the Fudgsicle to the boy.
“More coffee?” she said.
Jesse held the cup out and Carole poured from the round glass pot.
“When does he start school?”
Jesse said, nodding at the boy.
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“Kindergarten next year,” Carole
said.
The boy showed no sign that he knew they were talking about him. He sat on his mother’s lap, working on the Fudgsicle.
“Can you get a job then?” Jesse
said.
Shrug.
“What did you do before you got
married?”
“High school,” Carole said.
“Jo Jo knocked me up senior year. I never graduated.”
“Maybe you could get some
training,” Jesse said.
“Sure.”
“What does Jo Jo do for a
living?” Jesse asked.
Carole shrugged. “He does some bodybuilder contests, I know.”
“Can you make a living doing
that?”
Shrug.
“What was he doing for a living when he bought this house for cash?”
“I don’t know,” Carole
said.
Jesse allowed himself to look puzzled.
“I’m not very smart,”
Carole said. “I never learned anything in school. I didn’t ven graduate. Taking care of me was his job.”
Jesse drank some of the coffee. It had gotten stronger sitting in the pot.
“I think it would be good if you
didn’t have to depend on Jo Jo.”
“Sure,” Carole said.
“It’s what my old man is always telling me. From Florida. So who’s going to marry a woman with three small kids and an ex-husband like I got?” .
“Maybe you don’t need a husband
