Spoonbenders

“Well, damn,” Graciella said. “I don’t own a real estate company. I own a laundry.” She looked at Irene. “And you’re smiling.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just that—”

“Don’t apologize! You love it. Figuring it all out. How they’re fooling people.”

“I can’t help it,” Irene said. “I was raised by a cardshark.”

“When I first met Teddy, I was hoping for a miracle. But I think the real miracle is that I found your father at all. And you. It’s funny how these things work out, from one chance meeting. That wasn’t even a grocery store I go to. An envelope showed up in my mailbox full of coupons and cash gift certificates for that Dominick’s. Some little girl must have sent it—my address was written in pink crayon.”

“What?”

Graciella frowned at Irene’s extreme reaction. “You know something about pink crayons?”

“No, no,” Irene said. And thought, Buddy. “Go on.”

“There’s not much else. I decided to try out the store. Then I met your father, and it turned out that he knew my husband’s family. It’s kind of amazing.”

“That’s the word for it,” Irene said. She’d have to talk to Buddy and find out what the hell he was up to. She changed the subject. “I’ll be able to get more done on the financials after my trip.” She was going to fly out to Phoenix tomorrow morning. She’d been referring to it as “my trip.” Not “my trip to Arizona” or “my big job interview” or “my long weekend of hot sex.”

“Whenever you can,” Graciella said. “I’ll make sure you’re paid for your time.”

“You don’t have to do that. Dad asked me to help. It turns out I could be of use, so—”

“Your father, sweet as he is, doesn’t get to loan you out like a lawn mower. You have useful skills, Irene, and you’ll be compensated.”

With a shock, Irene realized that Graciella was not simply being nice. She believed she was telling the truth.

That was the great catch in her ability, the reason it hardly ever helped: she could only detect when people knew they were lying. If they believed what they were saying, she was powerless to determine the truth of it. The great lesson of her childhood was that most adults, but especially her father, believed much of the bullshit they generated. When she was ten, she went to him and said, “Something’s wrong with Mom.”

He was sitting on the couch in the basement, his headquarters since the car accident, watching the Cubs on channel nine, dressed in his uniform since the accident: undershirt, Bermuda shorts, black dress shoes. It was deep August, and that year they’d had nothing but the three Hs: Hot, Hazy, and Humid. The basement was slightly cooler than the rest of the house—but only slightly.

“Mom’s fine,” he said.

“She is?” Irene asked. Relieved, disbelieving, wanting to believe. Tears pooled hot behind her eyes.

“You’re blocking the TV,” he said.

Irene didn’t move. “She threw up in the bathroom.”

He finally looked at her.

“This morning,” she said. “And last night.” Mom had tried to keep it quiet, but the sounds were unmistakable.

“Huh,” her father said. His hand came up and scratched his jaw, four fingers held together. His hands had become shovels since the accident.

“Do you think she has the flu?” Irene asked.

“I’ll ask her about it.”

“She shouldn’t be working if she’s sick,” Irene said. “You should tell her to stay home.”

He almost smiled. If he’d let the smile come on, she would have screamed at him. “You don’t like Agent Smalls, do you?”

This was a month after Smalls had failed to lie to Irene. He was in love with her mother. The fact that she kept getting in the car with him every morning, kept working with him, was inexplicable to her. That her father let her mother do it infuriated her.

“What are you going to do about Mom?” Irene asked.

“I told you, I’ll ask her.” Irene thought, He believes that he’s really going to do this.

“But she’s okay?” Irene asked again.

“Madlock’s up to bat,” he said wearily.

Later, Irene started supper, with Buddy prompting her with the right ingredients from their mother’s recipe. It was chop suey, an ultra-bland dish as Chinese as meat loaf. When Mom came home, she didn’t try to take over as she usually did. She sat in the chair with Buddy on her lap, and told Irene that she was doing fine.

“How was work?” Irene asked. This seemed like an adult thing to say.

“Busy. And what did you do today, Mr. Buddy? Did you draw any pictures?”

They went on like that, talking about nothing as ground beef simmered in the skillet, until Irene called Frankie and her father to the dining room. Irene wasn’t about to ask her mother what was wrong. She was terrified that Mom would tell the truth.

Once they sat down, Frankie was there to distract them. At ten years old he was a motormouth, before teenagerdom turned him sullen, and aging desperation made him a yammerer again. This was the summer he found the Encyclopedia of Greek Gods and Heroes at the Bookmobile and kept asking Dad which ones the Telemachus family should worship. He was the only one who could get Dad to laugh since the accident.