Deborah tugged at the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Read more, Daddy!” Colin started to. Deborah let out an indignant squawk: “You already read that!” He had, too. He noticed once she reminded him. He straightened up and tried to fly right.
Marshall didn’t get home till a quarter to four. Deborah had long since had as much of Mole and Ratty and even Mr. Toad as she wanted at one dose. Marshall settled his bike on an old towel and started wiping the water he’d brought in off the foyer tiles. “Long lunch,” Colin remarked.
“Uh-huh.” Marshall didn’t look up from what he was doing.
“Have a nice time?”
“Yeah.”
Colin sighed. “Am I wrong or am I right—she is married to that Paul fellow, isn’t she?”
“Yeah—for now.” Marshall still didn’t look up.
Colin sighed again. “Look, son, I’m not gonna tell you how to run your life. You’re a grownup. You’re entitled to make your own mistakes. Lord knows I did. But I am gonna tell you this: anybody who’ll cheat with you will cheat on you, too. That’s how those things work.”
“Not always.” Marshall kept doling out words as if they cost as much as gasoline.
“No, not always,” Colin agreed, which did make his son look at him—in surprise, if he was any judge (and he was). He went on, “Not always, but that’s the way to bet.”
Marshall squeezed the old dish towel they used to dry the tiles. By his expression, he would sooner have had his hands around his father’s neck. In a voice colder than the Siberian Express, he answered, “It’s my life. You said it—I didn’t. So let me deal with it, okay?”
“Okay.” Colin sighed one more time. Then, stubborn cop that he was, he also tried one more time, choosing what he said with care: “Cheating was what shot my marriage with your mother behind the ear, you know.”
“Nah.” Marshall shook his head. “That just shoveled dirt over it, Dad. Mom wouldn’t’ve done it if she didn’t think you guys were already dead. Besides, Janine hasn’t got any kids.”
“She’s got a husband.” Colin had to struggle to force out the words. Marshall might well have been right—from Louise’s point of view, anyhow. But Colin wasn’t used to looking at things from that perspective.
Marshall let out a dismissive snort. “Not hardly. Paul won’t care. He only notices she’s around when he gets horny.”
“That’s how Janine tells it,” Colin said. “It might sound different if you were to listen to Paul.” People who wanted to do something always told stories that showed doing whatever it was was the best, the most natural, thing in the world. They told those stories to other people, and they told them to themselves. They believed them, too. As a cop, Colin had seen that more times than he could count. You didn’t need to be a cop, though. You just had to keep your eyes open.
Which Marshall wasn’t doing right this minute. Janine, no doubt, was keeping her legs open, so he had the oldest excuse in the world. The best excuse, plenty of folks would have said. And it was… for a while.
“Dad—” Marshall wasn’t going to listen to Paul. He wasn’t going to listen to his old man, either. He’d listen to Janine, and to his stiff dick.
And Colin couldn’t do thing one about it. He’d said as much to Marshall. His younger son wasn’t so very young any more. If all this ended up without a happy ending, Colin could be there to pat Marshall on the back. That was about as far as it went.
It might have a happy ending. They might discover They’d Been Meant For Each Other All Along. Colin heard the caps in his own mind, as if he were listening to a movie trailer’s voiceover. He never believed movie-trailer voiceovers. He didn’t believe this would have a happy ending, either.
“Good luck,” he said, and he meant it. “You’ll get plenty of new stuff to write about, any which way.”
Marshall rolled his eyes, as if to say What am I supposed to do with such Philistines? He went upstairs without another word. He was in love, or at least getting laid more often than he had been any time lately. No, he wouldn’t listen to anybody who didn’t see the world through similar hot-pink-colored glasses.
“Shit,” Colin muttered. “I sure wish he would.”
“Nothing we can do about it,” Kelly said later, when Colin grumbled to her. “As soon as his old teacher told him Janine was gonna be there, you could watch the brains dribbling out of his ears.”
“You know what the worst of it is?” Colin said.
“Tell me,” Kelly answered, since that was what he plainly wanted to do.
“It’s embarrassing, that’s what it is,” he said. “Far as I know, we’ve never had anybody in the family who broke up someone else’s marriage. There’s a name for people like that, and it’s not a nice name.”
“If she wasn’t already hot to trot, he wouldn’t have got anywhere with her,” Kelly said. “And if he hadn’t come along, she would have found somebody else.”
“He said pretty much the same thing,” Colin answered. “It’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. So Janine dumps Paul and grabs hold of Marshall. So yippee. But what happens when she gets itchy again six months from now, or three years, or five years? You know what happens as well as I do. But Marshall? Marshall hasn’t got a clue.”
“Or maybe he just doesn’t care. It isn’t quite the same thing.”
“He may not care now. Why should he? Things are great now. He’ll care when he’s wearing egg on his face, though.”
“Yeah, probably.” Kelly sighed. “When that happens, try not to go ‘I told you so’ too loud, okay?”
“Who, me?” Colin did his best to seem perfectly innocent. Since he was anything but, the effort fell flat. He poked his wife in the ribs. “Okay, I’ll try. Won’t be easy—I’ll tell you that.”
“Try,” she said again. “Anyway, it may blow over. Once she’s had her fling, Janine may decide she likes Paul better after all. CPAs make a lot more money than writers.”
“Huh! If it wasn’t for that Playboy sale, I’d say the stupid cat made more money than Marshall.” Colin knew he wasn’t being fair. He also knew he was being less unfair than he wished he were. Marshall wasn’t the most practical person ever hatched, but maybe Janine was. A paralegal married—for the moment—to an accountant? She didn’t sound like a love-struck waif.
No matter what she sounded like, a couple of weeks later Marshall reported, “Paul’s moved out of their house.”
“Oh, boy,” Colin said—not quite the cheer his son might have been looking for. He went on, “And when do you move in?”
“Umm… Haven’t worked that out yet,” Marshall answered. “Probably won’t be too long.”
“Well, good luck and all that,” Colin said. “We won’t rent your room out to refugees—not right away, anyhow.”
“That’s nice,” Marshall said. He wasn’t usually as dry as his father, but every once in a while… .
Colin chuckled, acknowledging the zing. Then he said, “I hope this works out for you, son. Honest to God, I do.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” Marshall returned. So many reasons sprang into Colin’s head, all of them clamoring to go first in line, that he couldn’t get any of them out. Which was bound to be just as well; Marshall knew what a rhetorical question was. The younger Ferguson added, “Who knows? You may get grandchildren who aren’t a whole country and a glacier or two away.”
“Have you talked about children with Janine?” Colin hoped his voice didn’t show his alarm. A breakup without children in the middle of it was bad. A breakup with college-age kids in it, like his, was worse. A breakup with little kids stuck in the middle was worst of all. Gabe Sanchez could sing more verses to that song than Marshall would ever want to hear.