kissed me back on the lips, and as we hugged, a sideways sitting hug, the hostility of our encounter in the front hall evaporated. “If you leave the company, what do you think you might like to do instead?” I asked.
“Play first base for the Brewers.” He grinned.
“I know I’ve told you this before, but I’ve always thought you’d be a wonderful high school baseball coach. You’re so knowledgeable, you’d get to be outside, and I’ll bet anything the kids would find your enthusiasm infectious.”
His grin faded.
“Seriously,” I said. “High school positions are competitive, obviously, but if you started at the junior high level —we could even see if any spots are open at Biddle—and then you worked your way up, in a few years, you—”
“Alice, Jesus! Is that really what you think I’m worth?” I glanced down, and he said, “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, but why don’t you try not to hurt mine? Christ almighty, a high school coach—”
I said, “Well, I found working in schools very gratifying.”
“Alice, I went to
I went to
I ran for
”
I remained quiet.
“It’s not that I don’t have plenty of options. That isn’t the problem,” he said. “Dad would be thrilled to have me join him at the RNC, Ed would love it if I came on board as a policy adviser either here or in Washington. The question is, what would be meaningful to me? What would I find most rewarding?”
I thought, and he said, “What’s the work I can do now that will create the kind of legacy I’ll be proud of?”
“I’ll fully support you working in Ed’s district office, but you know how I feel about moving to Washington.”
“Are you saying you won’t?”
I sighed. “I won’t do it happily. Washington’s a long way from Riley, and I just think, in this day and age, Ella’s so lucky to have her great-grandmother in her life.”
“But she’d get to see Maj and Dad all the time—six of one, half dozen of another, right?”
This was not at all how I saw it, but I said simply, “Your parents are able to travel a lot more easily than my grandmother.” My grandmother no longer left the house on Amity Lane, and my mother had had a stair lift installed so that my grandmother didn’t need to climb to the second floor. Its seat and back were beige Naugahyde, and sometimes while riding it, my grandmother would wave regally as she ascended, as if she were the queen of England. I had actually lobbied to name Ella after my grandmother, while Charlie had wanted to name her after his mother; we compromised by blending their names and, not for the first time, my mother was more or less ignored.
Charlie took a swallow of whiskey. “I thought my path would be clearer by now, you know? My destiny.” Oh, how I hated this talk—who besides seniors in high school reflected unironically on their destiny?
“Honey, I don’t know if such a thing as destiny exists, but I’m pretty sure that if it does, you won’t find yours in there.” I pointed to the whiskey bottle.
Charlie grinned. “How can we be sure before I’ve gotten to the bottom?”
I didn’t pursue the topic. Instead, I said, “If you want to stay at the company, we’ll figure out a way to make it better, and if you want to move on, I know you’ll find a position you enjoy. You have a good life, and we have a good life together—we have each other and Ella. Will you try to remember that?”
He was still grinning. “I’m only becoming a high school coach if you become the head cheerleader and you show me your pom-poms.”
I leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Don’t hold your breath.”
I WAS IDLING
in the after-school pickup line of cars at Biddle, waiting to get Ella, when a woman knocked on the half-open passenger-side window of my Volvo. The woman was crouching down, and I realized it was Ella’s third-grade teacher, Ida Turnau. “Alice, can I talk to you for a sec?” she asked.
Mrs. Turnau was a petite, pink-skinned woman about my age who had a very kind face. (Although I called her Ida when I spoke to her, I always thought of her, and we referred to her at home, as Mrs. Turnau.) I’d gotten to know her because I’d chaperoned a bunch of the class field trips: At a pizza parlor in Menomonee Falls, the children were allowed in the kitchen to make their own individual pizzas; at Old World Wisconsin, they attended a faux temperance rally and watched a demonstration on flax processing, and I’m afraid to say I seemed to find both events considerably more interesting than Ella and her classmates did.
Mrs. Turnau said, “This is awkward, but I saw on the news last night about the beef recall, and I’m wondering, would it be all right if we avoid serving Blackwell hamburgers at the end-of-the-year party? I hate to do this, and I’m sure the problem will be all taken care of by then, but I just know I’ll have parents asking.” The third-grade party would be held at our house in two weeks.
“Oh, of course,” I said. I was tempted to repeat what Charlie had told me—it was unlikely that the contamination had been Blackwell Meats’ fault—but there probably wasn’t a point. “Absolutely.”
“Just so the other parents won’t worry,” Mrs. Turnau said. The line of cars moved forward a few feet, and she
