Writing at The Pub

So, Carol Vulture said. How do you think everything is going?

No good conversation started out this way.

I’m happy. Gary jumped right in. I think he’s made great progress this year. He’s starting to do art, he’s loving the music lessons –

And he’s getting into fights.

Talk about a mic drop. Lennon getting into fights? Ruth couldn’t see it. Sure, he threw some fits in front of them, every so often batting at them with his little fists, but they always acted differently at home than at school.

Lennon getting into fights? No, she couldn’t see it.

With who? Her voice reminded her of when she was 12, on the school bus, tentative. Is it okay if I sit here? No one ever said no – she was far from popular, but she was invisible enough to make it all right – but if they had, she would rather ride on the tailpipe than get into a confrontation. Now, more than three decades gone, she had returned to that scared preadolescent, the one who just wanted to hunch her shoulders and blend into the wallpaper.

Everyone. Even Marlow.

Marlow? That was his buddy. They called her his girlfriend. Marlow, the three-year-old beauty queen with a 300-watt smile. Who could fight with Marlow?

Their son, apparently. That’s who.

That’s not possible.

Gary, I’m afraid it is. Now what we’ve got to do is figure out how to change this.

The words themselves weren’t the intimidation. They never are. It was the delivery, glassy and ringing, and for a moment it made Ruth remember the bars she and Gary frequented before the double lines, the doctor’s visits. Cling, Cheers. Chin-chin, for the pretentious. They were that every so often. She could feel those nights, smell them on her clothes. The sting of the tobacco; the sweet of the booze. She missed it. Missed it.