Spoonbenders

She and Joshua stood without speaking, and as the time to board approached she leaned into him. He put his arm around her.

There you are, she thought. The scent of him touched off something in her back brain that made her think of sunlight and wood and salt.

The PA blared. “That’s me,” he said.

“I know,” she said. She did not want to let go of his arm. But she did it. That was the Irene thing to do.

“Thank you for coming out here,” he said. “Taking time off.”

“I figured the grocery store could get along without me,” she said.

“I’m coming back through again on Thursday,” he said. “Maybe we could do this again? It’ll be in the afternoon, so maybe we could, I don’t know, have a drink. Go someplace nice?”

“I’m sorry this was so weird,” she said.

“It wasn’t weird at all.”

The PA called his section again. He looked over his shoulder, and when he turned back he saw the change in her. She couldn’t hide it.

“Oh, Irene.” He thought she was sorry to see him go. She was, but that wasn’t why she was holding back tears.

Then she saw him understand. “Fuck,” he said quietly.

The first lie hung in the air between them. It had been weird. Crazy weird. And he’d been too afraid to tell the crazy weird woman who’d driven out here to meet him.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”

He stopped himself in another lie. Because he did mean it, and he knew that she knew that he meant it. Both lies were too small to worry about. It was that they were the first in an unstoppable cascade of untruths and half-truths and polite lies and outright deceptions that would pile up around her until she couldn’t see him anymore. She’d been caught in this avalanche before. She didn’t think she could dig her way out a second time.

When she was young, she thought she’d gotten the best talent in the family. No one could take advantage of her. No one could pull the wool over her eyes. While everyone else meandered through life as prey for hucksters and con artists and cads, she was fully armed with x-ray specs and a shoulder-mounted bullshit detector. She was the girl who could not be fooled.

God, what a fool she was.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Irene, please, I don’t want to leave like this.”

“It’s okay,” she lied. “It’s okay. I just can’t—”

Can’t what? she asked herself. Can’t do this again. Can’t even start this.

“I just can’t.” And then she walked away before more words, his or hers, could trip her up.

—

She drove home slowly, for safety reasons. The state of her soul was not fit for Chicago traffic. When she finally pulled into the driveway, she sat for a long time, staring blankly over the steering wheel. Then Buddy stepped out of the front door wearing an apron and oven mitts. He waved for her to come in.

“Well, fuck,” she said.

Inside the house, the air was thick with the smell of warm cookies—white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. A dozen were already on the cooling rack, and Buddy was pulling another pan from the oven.

“I need all of these,” she said. He nodded.

Mom had directed her cooking lessons at Irene, but it was Buddy who’d memorized her recipes. He would make them, but only on his schedule. You couldn’t ask him to make Mom’s pepper steak, or the bean and bacon soup, or the macadamia nut cookies. You had to wait for the whim to strike, then hope you were around to reap the benefits.

Mail sat on the counter. She shuffled through the stack, dreading a bill addressed to her, but the only thing of interest was a fat envelope for Teddy, from ATI—Advanced Telemetry Inc. He’d gotten these envelopes for years, on a monthly basis. He never opened them in front of her, and she thought she knew the reason why.

Matty appeared in the kitchen door, still wearing the yellow Bumblebee shirt Frankie had gotten him. “What is that?” he asked.

Buddy shut off the oven, grabbed three semi-cooled cookies, and walked out the back door. That was the other thing about his impromptu cooking events: cleanup was on you.

On the table was a note in her father’s wobbly scrawl: “Irene—Dinner Wednesday Palmer’s. Dress nice.”

“What’s this about?” Irene asked. Matty shrugged, reached for a cookie. His hair was mussed, and a pair of zits decorated his chin, but his father’s bone structure hid beneath the baby fat. The kid had no idea how handsome he was going to be.

“These are pretty incredible,” Matty said finally.

“I was about to say, you shoulda tasted Grandma Mo’s, but Buddy’s may be better.”

“So was it a job interview?” he asked.

“What? Oh, the skirt.”

“And the makeup.”

“I wear makeup.”

“Not since Pittsburgh. And, uh, it’s all smeared.”

She dabbed at the corner of her eye. “It’s not been a good day,” she said. She put on a smile to reassure him. He didn’t look convinced. “So how was your day? Is Frankie behaving?”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

“Neither did you. How about this—we go one for one. You answer mine, I’ll answer yours.”

“Like you’re really going to answer my questions.”

She laughed. “I will!”