Empire Falls

assured her. “How was school?”
    She shrugged. “Okay.”
    There was precious little Miles would have changed about his daughter, but to his way of thinking far too many things in Tick’s life were “okay.” She was a smart kid, one who knew the difference between first-rate, mediocre and piss-poor, but like most kids her age she seemed bored by such distinctions. How was the movie? Okay. How were the french fries? Okay. How’s your sprained ankle feeling? Okay. Everything was pretty much okay, even when it wasn’t, even when in fact it was piss-poor. When the entire emotional spectrum, from despair to ecstasy, could be summed up by a single four-letter word, what was a parent to do? Even more troubling was his suspicion that “okay” was designed specifically as a conversation stopper, employed in hopes that the person who’d asked the question would simply go away.
    The trick, Miles had learned, was not to go away. You didn’t ask more probing questions, because they, too, would be met with this monosyllabic evasion. The trick was silence. If there was a trick.
    “I made a new friend,” Tick finally elaborated once the Hobart had shuddered to a halt and she’d raised the door to extract the tray of clean dishes.
    Miles rinsed his hands and went over to where Tick was stacking the warm plates. He took one down from the shelf and checked it, relieved to find it squeaky clean. The Hobart would live.
    “Candace Burke. She’s in my art class. She stole an Exacto knife today.”
    “What for?”
    Tick shrugged. “I guess she didn’t have one. She starts all her sentences with oh-my-God-oh-my-God. Like, Oh-my-God-oh-my-God my mascara’s running. Or, Oh-my-God-oh-my-God, you’re even skinnier than last year.”
    This last, Miles suspected, was not a theoretical example. Tick, always stick-thin, was often accused of being anorexic. Last year she’d even been called into the nurse’s office and questioned about her eating habits. In fact, Miles and Janine had been called in as well. This was before Janine herself lost so much weight, so she and Miles, sitting there in the school counselor’s tiny office, did seem to suggest that Tick couldn’t possibly have come by her reedlike body honestly.
    Miles tried to think if he knew this Candace Burke. There were several Burke families in town. “What’s she look like?”
    “Fat.”
    “A lot or a little?”
    “She’s fat like I’m skinny.”
    “In other words, not very?” Miles ventured. In mid-adolescence his daughter was hard to compliment. The truth was that he thought her a heartbreakingly beautiful girl, and often tried to explain that it was her intelligence, her wit, that was keeping her from being more popular with boys. “Which Burke is she, I wonder?”
    Tick shrugged. “She lives with her mother and her mother’s new boyfriend down on Water Street. She says we’ve got a lot in common. I think she’s in love with Zack. She keeps saying, ‘Oh-my-God-oh-my-God, he’s so good-looking. How can you stand it? I mean, like, he was yours, and now he’s not.’ ”
    “Did you tell her she’s not missing much?” Even now, months after their breakup, the mere mention of Zack Minty, Tick’s former boyfriend, was enough to make Miles grind his teeth. His fondest hope was that Donny, the boy Tick had met on the Vineyard, would free his daughter from any lingering attraction she might feel for a boy who, like his father and grandfather before him, bore more or less constant watching.
    His daughter’s pause did little to reassure him. “Here’s the thing,” she finally said. “Now that I’m not with Zack anymore, I don’t have a single friend.” Tick’s two best friends had moved away in the last six months.
    “Except Candace,” Miles pointed out.
    “Oh-my-God-oh-my-God!” she squealed in mock horror, “I forgot Candace!”
    “And you forgot me,” Miles pointed out.
    Tick shrugged, serious now. “I know.”
    “And your uncle David.”
    A frown, a shrug, an apologetic “I know.”
    “And your mother.”
    Just a hint of a frown. When he didn’t press further, she let him take her in his arms and surrendered limply to his awkward, overlarge embrace. Usually when Tick felt a bear hug coming, she’d position her body sideways, so one of her shoulders would dig under his breastbone. It was Janine who had explained what was going on, that their daughter’s late-developing breasts were probably sore; her explanation made it