Chapter 4 #2
"It. Finding you a boyfriend. They have candidates."
"Cal, I just moved back."
"You've been home four weeks."
"Yes."
"Long enough."
"Cal." Hanna sets her fork down. "I'm going to stab you with this fork."
"I'm looking out for you."
"You're looking out for me to my active detriment."
I chew. I don't speak. I don't speak because if I speak I'll say something I'm not allowed to say, and I have three phrases available to me at any Sunday dinner, and those are yes, ma'am, good pot roast, and sure, Cal. I'm in the sure, Cal position currently, so I wait.
"Okay, well, fine," Cal says, through his roll. "But I'm just saying. The crew has been making suggestions. Some of them are actually okay. There's this guy from Station 3, a paramedic, he's — "
"I don't want to hear about him."
" — tall. You like tall."
"Calvin — "
"He's employed — "
"Calvin, my god — "
" — stable — she likes stable, right, Mom — "
"Don't bring me into this," Mom Larsen says, without looking up.
" — she needs somebody stable, is what I'm saying, not somebody — " Cal waves a hand. " — flighty, like those guys she dated in Portland. Remember the guy with the bicycle?"
"I dated a man who owned a bicycle, Cal. That isn't a personality trait."
"He had six bicycles."
"He was an avid cyclist."
"He was a lunatic."
"He was a mechanical engineer."
"He was a lunatic mechanical engineer who owned six bicycles."
I put down my fork. I pick it up again. I put a piece of pot roast in my mouth because it's socially necessary to put a piece of pot roast in my mouth. I chew. I swallow. I look at the wall clock. The clock says six thirty-nine.
"She needs someone," Cal announces, to the room, with the authority of a man who's given this considerable thought, "who's stable. Who's — you know. Solid. Like a firefighter. Not a firefighter, but like — you know — "
"Calvin — "
" — the type. A guy who shows up. A guy who makes her coffee in the morning, doesn't make her ask for it. Somebody who's — quiet. She needs a quiet one. She's loud. She needs a counterweight. That's the word. She needs a counterweight."
Across the table, Hanna has gone very, very still.
"Tell me what you think, Ty." Cal turns to me with his whole face. "Your opinion matters. You're a man."
I lift my gaze. Hanna is looking at her plate. Her mother is looking at me.
Mom Larsen is looking at me the way she looked at me that one time in 2018 when Cal broke a lamp and was trying to blame it on the cat — the expression of a woman who knows.
"She can pick her own guy."
"That's — that's not the question. The question is what kind of guy."
"Whatever kind she wants."
"Give me, like, an archetype."
"Not my place, Cal."
"You've been at this table every month for a decade. You're the most qualified outside observer in her life. Give me an archetype."
I look at him. He's grinning at me. He's grinning the slow, easy, lethal grin of a man who's walked me cheerfully to the edge of a cliff and doesn't know it.
"Calvin," Mom Larsen says, "leave Tyler alone."
"I want his opinion."
"Leave Tyler alone. You're embarrassing your sister."
"She can handle it."
"She's handling it," Hanna says, without looking up, "by not participating."
Hanna's eyes cut to me. "Ty."
I look at Cal. "Cal."
"Archetype," Cal says, and he means it.
I put down my fork.
"Nice guy." I look at Cal, keeping my face flat. "Quiet. Works hard. Good to his mother. Doesn't cheat. Makes her coffee. That's probably — that's a — it's an archetype."
"Yeah." Cal nods, thinking. "Yeah, that's right. That's actually — yeah."
"There you go," Hanna says.
"You know what, you've described, like, a solid seventy percent of the guys on my crew."
"Have I."
"Derek. Derek fits that."
"Derek doesn't fit that," Hanna says.
"Rivera. Rivera fits it. Aiden fits it but he's engaged."
"Aiden is engaged," Hanna says.
"Ty fits it," Cal says.
"Calvin," Mom Larsen says, "pass the rolls."
"No, I'm saying — "
"The rolls, Calvin."
"Mom. I'm — I'm just noting the shape of the — "
"The rolls," she says.
Cal passes the rolls.
Across the table, Hanna has finally looked up. She's looking at her mother. Her mother is looking at the rolls.
I eat another piece of pot roast. It's, as pot roast goes, excellent. I chew it with the methodical thoroughness of a man who's trying to make a piece of pot roast last several minutes.
Mom Larsen clears her throat. "How's the chemo, you asked. It's fine. The doctors say the scans are clean. They'll keep scanning. That's what they do. You don't need to worry."
"I'll worry."
"You aren't allowed," Hanna says.
"I'll worry anyway."
"Tyler." Mom Larsen puts her hand over mine, on the table, and squeezes. "You're a good boy. Calvin, stop matchmaking my daughter at my table. Hanna, eat your rolls, you got thin. Everyone will mind their business, or I'll take back the pot roast."
"Yes, ma'am," the three of us answer, in unison.
Cal looks pleased. Cal is always pleased when his mother pretends to threaten us.
Under the table, my foot is a quarter inch from Hanna's.
Neither of us moves. Both of us know. Mom Larsen, next to me, takes her hand off mine, picks up the salt, and passes it to her daughter without asking, because Hanna takes too little salt, and Mom Larsen has been salting Hanna's food from across tables for years.
I finish my pot roast.
I help clean up. I dry the dishes Hanna washes. We don't speak. We've never washed dishes in this kitchen before. I don't know how I know where the dishtowels are, but I do.
When I leave, Mom Larsen walks me to the porch. She hugs me the small hug. She pats me the fourth pat of the evening, which is a rule break, and she looks up at me in the porch light.
"Tyler."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Drive safe."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And honey." She tilts her head.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Next time she does the dishes," Mom Larsen says slowly, like she's laying down a card, "let her do them herself."
I don't say anything.
She pats my face one more time — the fifth — and she goes back inside and closes the door, and I stand on her porch for a full minute in the yellow bird wreath's shadow, and it lands on me, the way things do when you've been avoiding them long enough — I'm already caught, and at least one person in this house knows it, and I don't know yet whether she's going to save me or let me burn.