"The boy doesn't eat right since he moved out." Pleased to have both men
at her table, Marge filled the coffee cups. "You're skin and bones,
Michael. I've got the best part of a nice ham I cooked earlier in the
week. You take it home with you."
"Don't give this deadbeat my ham," Lou objected.
Michael lifted a brow, then doused the remaining pancakes with Aunt
Jemima. "Who you calling a deadbeat?"
"You lost the bet, but I don't see my grass getting mowed."
"I'll get to it," Michael grumbled and snatched another sausage. "I
think that game was fixed."
"The Orioles won, fair and square. And they won over a month ago. Pay
up."
Michael gestured with the sausage. It was a conversation they'd had
every weekend since the World Series, and one they would undoubtedly
continue to have until the first of the year when the bet would be paid
in full.
"As a police captain you should be aware that gambling's illegal."
"As a rookie, assigned to my precinct, you should have better sense than
to make a sucker bet. Mower's in the shed."
"I know where it is." He rose, swung an arm over his mother's shoulder.
"How do you live with this guy?"
"It isn't easy." Marge smiled and patted Michael's cheek. "Be sure to
be careful with that weed whacker around the rosebushes, dear."
She watched him go out, slamming the screen door as he had always done.
For a moment she wished he could be ten again, but that feeling passed
quickly, leaving a quiet pride. "We did a good job, Lou."
"Yeah." He took both his and Michael's dishes to the sink. He'd aged
well, putting on less than ten pounds over the last twenty years. His
hair was fully gray now, but he'd kept most of it. Though he
occasionally realized he was uncomfortably close to sixty, he felt
better than he had in his life. Due, he thought as he put his arm
around Marge, to his wife's diligent watch on things like cholesterol
and sugar.
As for herself, Marge had settled contentedly into middle age. She was
as trim as she'd been the day they'd been married. Nothing kept her
from her twice-weekly aerobic classes. Her hair was colored a
flattering ash-brown.
Five years before, she'd gotten what Lou had thought was a bee in her
bonnet about starting her own business. He'd considered himself
indulgent when he'd stood back and let his "little woman" open a small
bookstore. He'd been kind and considerate, like an adult patting a
child on the head. Then she had astonished him by showing a keen and
often ruthless head for business. Her little shop had expanded. Now she
had three doing brisk business in Hollywood, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills.
Life was full of surprises, he thought as he heard the mower gun. His
wife, who had seemed content for years dusting furniture and baking pies
was a businesswoman with her own accountant. His son, who had breezed
carelessly through college, then had spent nearly
eighteen months drifting, had enrolled in the police academy, without
saying a word. As for himself, Lou was giving serious thought to