The Joyce Maynard Collection by Joyce Maynard Page A

how she’d slept. Like a baby, she said, then laughed.
    I don’t know why they say that, actually, she said. Considering how often babies get up in the night.
    She asked if he had any children.
    One, he said. He’d be nineteen now if he was living. Francis Junior.
    Some people, like my stepmother, Marjorie, would have made some kind of sympathetic remark here, about how sorry they were. They would have asked what happened, or if they were religious, said something about how Frank’s son was no doubt in a better place now anyway. Or told about someone they knew who had lost a kid. I had been noticing lately, how often people did that: take whatever anybody else mentioned in the way of a problem, and turn it around to them, and their own sorry situation.
    My mother, hearing about Frank’s son who died, said nothing, but the look on her face changed in such a way that no more was needed for the moment. It was a moment like the one the night before, when he was feeding her the chili, and holding the wineglass up for her to sip from, and I got the feeling they had gotten past normal words and moved on to a whole other language. He knew she felt bad for him. She knew he understood this. Same as when she sat down in the chair at the place he’d set for her—her same chair from the night before—she held her wrists out for him to put the scarves back on. They had an understanding now, the two of them. What I did mostly was watch.
    I don’t think we’ll be needing these, Adele, he said, folding the scarves carefully and setting them on top of a stack of canned tuna. Like how the pope might handle some kind of special garment popes wear, when he puts them away.
    I don’t plan on using these again, Frank said. But if the day ever comes when you have to say I tied you up, you’ll pass the lie detector.
    I wanted to ask When was that day? Who would be giving her that test? Where would he be, when she took it? What would they ask me?
    My mother nodded. Who taught you to make biscuits like this? she said.
    My grandma, he said. After my parents died, she was the one that raised me.
    There’d been a car wreck, he told us. It happened when he was seven. Late at night, driving back from a visit with the relatives in Pennsylvania, they hit a patch of ice. The Chevy slammed into a tree. His mother and his father in the front seat dead—though his mother had lived long enough that he could remember the sound of her, groaning, while the men worked to get her out, the body of his father, dead across the front seat of the car, his head in her lap. Frank, in the back—his only injury a broken wrist—had seen it all. There had been a baby sister too. In those days, people just held their babies on their laps when they rode in cars. She was dead also.
    We sat there for a minute, saying nothing. Maybe my mother was just reaching for her napkin, but her hand grazed Frank’s and lingered there a second.
    These are the best biscuits I ever had, my mother told him. Maybe you’ll tell me the secret.
    I’d probably tell you everything, Adele, he said. If I get to stick around long enough.
    H E ASKED IF I PLAYED BASEBALL . What he asked, actually, was which position I favored. The idea of none, unfathomable.
    I played one season of Little League but I was terrible, I said. I didn’t catch one ball the whole time I played left field. They were all glad when I quit.
    I bet your problem was not having someone to coach you right, he said. Your mother looks to be a woman of many talents, but I’m guessing baseball may not be one of them.
    My dad’s big on sports, I said. He plays on a softball team.
    Precisely, Frank said. Softball. What do you expect?
    His new wife’s kid is a pitcher, I told him. My dad works with him all the time. He used to take me out on the field with them to practice with a bucket of balls, but I was hopeless.
    I think we should throw a ball around a