The Misconception by Darlene Gardner Page B

remembered you when I asked if he knew you. He even gave me some pointers on how to take you down. Let me try it, Jax.”
    Jax rolled his eyes. “We’ve already been over this, Drew. I was a heavyweight, remember, and I weigh even more now than I did then. I’m too big for you to take down. And I’m, what, fourteen years older than you.”
    “Manny says size and strength aren’t nearly as important as speed and technique. Come to think of it, old man, youth is also an advantage.”
“Thirty-two isn’t old.”
“Then prove it,” Drew said, still bouncing. “Let me try.”
“Cash? Is that you, Cash?”
    The stairway leading to the second floor was off the foyer, and Jax turned at the sound of his mother’s voice, smiling at the way she persisted on calling him by the name she’d given him at birth.
    He temporarily forgot about his bouncing brother until Drew shot forward and down, hooking an arm under Jax’s right knee. He pivoted, driving his shoulder into the back of Jax’s leg.
    “Hey, stop that,” Jax protested, but it was too late. His leg buckled. Aided by the water his other brother had doused him with, it slid out from under him. He fell to the floor in a landing so hard a crystal vase bounced off the foyer table and shattered, spraying water and flowers.
    In defeat, Jax lay flat on the floor and closed his eyes. When he opened them, both his mother and Drew were staring down at him.
    “I knew I could do it,” Drew said. “I knew I could take you down!”
    “Really, Cash. If you miss wrestling this much, why did you ever leave it?” His mother had her hands on her ample hips. She was shaking her head in a way that, for just a moment, reminded Jax of that bewildering woman in Washington D.C. who had paid him for sex. “Surely there’s a high school somewhere that needs an experienced coach.”
    Jax anchored himself on an elbow and made a face at his brother. He rubbed his smarting hip. “What are a wrestler’s favorite colors?”
    “Oh, no,” Drew moaned, putting a hand on their mother’s arm. “I sense one of his jokes coming. Please, Mom, make him stop.”
    “Black and blue.” Jax threw back his head and laughed. He was the only one of the three who did. His unsmiling mother patted the top of his head consolingly.
    Drew extended a hand and helped him to his feet, and their mother came forward to enfold him in a soft embrace. The top of her head came to the middle of his chest, reminding Jax he must have inherited his size from the son of a bitch who’d fathered him and split as though nothing momentous had happened. In Jax’s estimation, that was the lowest thing a man could do.
    “I’m not even going to ask why you’re wet,” his mother said when she drew back from the embrace. She wasn’t yet fifty, but her face was deeply lined. “Come into the kitchen with me, and I’ll get you a towel and something to eat. Drew, since you attacked your brother, you can clean up this mess.”
    Jax wasn’t really hungry, but he knew better than to argue with his mother when the subject was food. She’d fed him a lot of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese while he was growing up, and she seemed intent on making up for it now.
    The kitchen was a cook’s dream with wall-to-wall maple cabinets, marble counter tops, a floating island and an attached sun room that was the perfect setting for leisurely meals. Jax’s mother had chosen wallpaper shot through with yellow and orange, a choice that shoved aside the memory of the dark little kitchen in the dingy apartment where they had lived for so many years.
    Jax pulled up a stool to a counter where his mother was assembling sandwich fixings. Although he could handle himself in the kitchen, his mother wouldn’t hear of him making his own sandwich. Years ago, he’d made plenty of meals for Billy and Drew while she’d labored to bring home a paycheck.
    “I’ll replace the vase, Mom,” Jax said as he dried himself with the towel his mother handed