By the time my daughter-in-law lifted one manicured hand and said, “We’ll need separate checks,” every fork around our table had gone quiet. The waiter looked from her to my wife, then to my son. Amber smiled the same way people smile before they shut a door in your face.
“We’ll cover our order,” she said. “They can cover theirs. We’re not paying for her.”
Her.
Not Catherine. Not Mom. Not Jason’s mother.
Just her, like my wife was a purse left on the floor. My son heard it. He had a chance, right then, under the chandelier light of a Scottsdale seafood restaurant on Mother’s Day, to be the man we had raised.
He nodded. I kept eating my salad. Because I had already paid the bill.
And because the real bill was still coming. —
Earlier that afternoon, when the Arizona sun was sitting white and hard over our apartment complex and the parking lot smelled like hot asphalt and tired brakes, Kathy stood in front of our bedroom mirror trying to fasten the tiny pearl button at her left wrist. Her fingers would not cooperate.
I watched from the doorway with my tie half-done and my hand braced against the frame. There had been a time when I could cross a room without thinking about my knees, my ribs, my breath. There had been a time when Kathy could dress for dinner without pausing every few seconds to hide a wince.
Those days had gone quietly. They had not slammed a door on the way out. They had just packed a suitcase and left while we were paying medical bills.
“Here,” I said. “I’ve got it.”
“You’ve been saying that for five minutes.”
She gave me the look. Forty-seven years of marriage can turn a look into a whole paragraph.
I stepped in anyway and took her wrist. Her skin was cool. Too cool for a woman who had just showered in May in Scottsdale.
The sleeve of her pale blue dress slid back a little, and I saw how thin she had gotten. Not weak exactly. Kathy had never been weak.
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