Spoonbenders

These days he was lucky he could still button his shirt. His hands had turned to claws. There’d been a few good years after the accident when he thought he was getting it all back, full recovery of motion, but then the arthritis kicked in, and his fingers developed a stutter that made him afraid to sit down at a poker table. Started popping Advil to keep the pain and swelling down. One morning a couple of years ago, he woke up and his right hand was frozen, as if it didn’t belong to him at all. He massaged it back to life before breakfast, but the freeze-outs became more common, then started creeping into the other hand. Post-traumatic arthritis, the doctor called it. Someday, maybe soon, he’d wake up with both hands turned to sticks like a God damn snowman.

And yet, and yet, the day might still become a runner-up. Because at this moment, the woman he was waiting for stepped out of her Mercedes E-Class wagon. Her youngest son had already jumped out of the backseat and was running for the field. She called him back (Adrian, that was his name), put a water bottle in his hand, and sent him off again.

Teddy took a breath, feeling as nervous as the first time he’d asked Maureen for a date. Then he rose from the picnic table and removed his hat. The motion, as he anticipated, was enough to get her to glance at him.

She looked away, then turned toward him again, squinting.

“Hello, Graciella,” he said.

She didn’t answer. It wasn’t possible that she didn’t remember him, was it? He started toward her, and was relieved when she didn’t jump into her car and floor it.

“Do you have a grandchild playing?” she finally asked.

“I have to come clean, my dear. I came here only to see you. I thought we should talk.”

“How did you—have you followed me here?”

“When you say it like that, it doesn’t sound entirely respectable,” he said.

“I’m going to watch the game,” she said. She opened the back of the wagon and reached in for something. “You have a good day, Teddy.” Clearly dismissing him, but all he could think was: She remembered my name!

“It’s about Nick,” Teddy said.

She went still, like a woman who’d drawn a spade that sabotaged her diamond flush, but was determined to play it out. He felt terrible for disappointing her. If there was any doubt that he knew about Nick Junior and his murder trial, he’d just removed it.

She straightened. “I’m not talking about my husband. Not to you, not—”

“Nick Senior,” Teddy said.

“What?”

“There are some things about your father-in-law you should know.”

Several emotions moved across her face, fast as wind whipping across wave tops. Just as quickly she mastered herself, looked at him down that strong Roman nose.

“Such as?” she asked.

“I can explain. You mind if I watch the game with you?” he asked.

She studied his face for a long moment. Then she shook her head, not so much agreeing to his request as resigning herself to it.

—

Eight-year-olds playing soccer, Teddy decided, was a lot like a pack of border collies chasing a single sheep, except that the dogs would’ve used more teamwork. Graciella’s son was somewhere in the red-shirted faction of the mob. All the boy-tykes looked alike, however, and all the ponytailed girl-tykes looked alike, so the best he could do was sort the mass into subsets of indistinguishables.

“Good job, Adrian!” Graciella yelled. Teddy couldn’t tell what that job might have been. But he did notice that none of the other parents had come over to talk to her. They formed their own clumps, talking among themselves, or else exhibiting a laser-like focus on the game that prevented them from even making eye contact with Graciella and, by extension, him.

“So you’ve got a lot of friends here,” Teddy said.

Graciella spared him a glance. “These people aren’t my friends.”

“Afraid of the mobster’s wife, eh?”

“As far as they’re concerned, Nick’s already convicted.”

“But you’ve got hope.”

If she’d been a pale woman she would have blushed, he was certain of it. “I shouldn’t have written that down,” she said. Meaning her third wish: NOT GUILTY. “I don’t know what I was thinking, talking about that stuff with strangers.”

“Strangers? I’m a harmless old man.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” she said. “The harmless ones don’t try so hard to pick up women at the grocery store.”

He laughed. “True enough, true enough.”

“You knew who I was, didn’t you? Before you even walked up.”

“No! Hand to God, I had no idea. It wasn’t until I saw a story about the trial that I put two and two together.”

She wasn’t ready to believe him. He started to explain, and then several nearby parents shouted at once; exciting things were happening on the field, evidently. Graciella stood up and he sat back, content to watch her watch the kids. He used to do the same thing with Maureen. When the act was on the road, they’d be at some hotel pool, and she’d be on alert, keeping them (well, Buddy mostly) from drowning, and he’d be watching her. God she’d been beautiful.

“So how do you know Nick Senior?” Graciella said finally.