Empire Falls

her mother would at least have stopped referring to him as “that little banty rooster.” Maybe if Bea had a good time at the football game, it would occur to her that Walt hadn’t spoiled it, and that would be a beginning. An afternoon in Bea’s company might do Walt some good, too. The Silver Fox didn’t have anything against her that Janine knew of, but he did seem to have trouble remembering Bea’s existence. Every time Janine mentioned her mother, Walt’s eyes narrowed and he regarded her suspiciously, as if she’d been keeping this person a secret from him. As if he hadn’t been keeping the biggest damn secret of all from her.
    But the real reason for hauling Bea along to the game was so that for once she could be the solution to a problem instead of its source. The plan was, she’d call her mother, say they were running late down at the club, and have her go over to Empire Field early and grab three spots, as close as possible to the fifty-yard line and all the way up at the top, so they’d have a good view. And also so everybody’d have a good view of Janine in her new white jeans and halter when she and Walt climbed up the bleachers filled with men who’d never once asked her out when they were boys, and with the women they’d asked instead. Most of these wide loads now took up the better part of two seats, so let them have a good look too. Janine had learned from all those hours on the Stairmaster that the only time a woman in the right getup is going to look more intoxicating than when she’s going up stairs is when she turns around and goes back down them.
    But of course everything had conspired to spoil her entrance, which only went to prove what Janine already knew: that no matter how well you planned something, God always planned better. If He was feeling stingy that day and didn’t want you to have some little thing you had your heart set on, then you weren’t going to get it and that was all there was to it. And today, for some reason, God didn’t want Janine Roby—soon-to-be-Comeau—to have the entrance they both knew she deserved. Bea had gone early, but she’d put the three cushions down on seats only a third of the way up the bleachers, because anymore her feet always hurt from standing all day, and so did her lower back from wrestling kegs, and she didn’t see any reason to be all the way up there in the nosebleed section anyway. Had Janine thought about it, she would’ve foreseen all this, but she’d been concentrating instead on the effect of her outfit.
    Still, it wasn’t really her mother’s refusal to follow simple instructions that spoiled the plan. The truth was, Janine was still reeling from this morning’s surprise. Sixty! Down at the county clerk’s office, Walt had produced a folded copy of his birth certificate, which he kept trying to smooth out with the palm of his hand, and when the woman at the window asked him to read the date of birth printed on it, he’d silently pushed the document across the counter toward her instead. Janine should’ve known right then and there that something was up. Actually, she should have been suspicious already, after all those weeks she’d been trying to get him down there to file for their marriage license so that when her divorce finally came through they wouldn’t have to waste any more time on paperwork. His first excuse was that he couldn’t find the damned certificate, and then twice last week he’d managed to futz around at the club until the clerk’s office was closed. Only today did she understand his reluctance. He’d almost gotten away with it, too. The woman had silently typed the date of Walt’s birth on the application, then slid his birth certificate back through the slot in the window. Had she folded it before doing so, Janine never would have spotted the faded date printed there: April 10, 1940.
    1940?
    “What the hell is that?” she said, pinning the document to the counter with the tip of her index finger to prevent the Silver Fox from folding and returning it to his pocket, a maneuver he seemed anxious to execute, and when their eyes met, his expression was the same one he used when he thought he’d pulled a fast one on Horace at gin. “Is that some kind of misprint?” she demanded. The funny part was, if he’d told her that it was a misprint, she probably would’ve believed him, because there was no way Walt Comeau looked any sixty.
    Janine located him now, down on the sideline. It was