Empire Falls

loud they might build a camp one of these days, when the time was right, then Harold DuFresne down at Empire Fidelity didn’t know a damn thing about it—and he would, too, since everything else the Silver Fox “owned” was held by Harold as collateral on the health club. Walt had even borrowed money for the ring and the half-assed weekend honeymoon on the coast, during which it should’ve occurred to her, if she’d had a brain in her head, why Walt liked sex so much. It was free.
    How in the world, she wanted to know, had she managed to put herself into a situation where the person she most wanted to unburden her soul to was the man she couldn’t wait to leave so she’d be free to create the mess? These were all ironies, no doubt about it, and she hated every one of the fuckers, even before she turned onto Empire Avenue and saw the Silver Fox’s van parked in front of the restaurant. Which meant she couldn’t very well have her talk with Miles, not with her husband sitting there at the counter. Life was secrets, as the horrible Mrs. Neuman said, and for better or worse—stupid words she’d said not once but twice—she was wed to both the Silver Fox and secrets she had to keep. He’d known all along, of course, that when Janine found out she’d just have to swallow everything whole. Worse, she knew the time to begin was right now. Just park next to her husband’s van, go inside and pretend that “getting it regular” agreed with her. Stand next to Walt and watch him lose their pennies to Horace at gin, then slip her hand in his trouser pocket and reassure herself of the one thing the dumb son of a bitch did have to offer.
    Maybe tomorrow she’d be able to. In fact, she’d have to. But not right this minute, she decided. No, she knew where the steak knives were kept, and if she went in there right now, she might race around the counter, pull one out and cut off her nose to spite her face. Janine drove on past the restaurant.
    Since the town’s only unmarked police car wasn’t in its usual spot in the alley next to the closed Firestone shop, Janine did a squealing U-turn and headed back up Empire the way she’d come. She’d gone about four blocks when she noticed the tall, skinny figure of her daughter making her solitary way up the street, leaning forward as usual under the weight of her backpack. When Janine tooted and pulled over to the curb, her daughter regarded the Jeep suspiciously, as if the Silver Fox might be scrunched down in the backseat somewhere. She came up to the car reluctantly.
    “Where you headed?” Janine said when she’d rolled down the window and her daughter tentatively bent forward to peer inside.
    “Grandma’s.”
    “Climb in.” Janine leaned across to open the door, ignoring her daughter’s expression, which suggested that she’d just been ordered to push the vehicle up the street. Opening the rear door, Tick turned and backed into the opening, resting the bottom of her backpack on the seat and then walking out from under it, a maneuver so graceful and practiced that Janine’s eyes filled with tears. At that age, she hadn’t simply been overweight, but also clumsy, always tripping and bumping into things. Tick had the kind of grace you were born with, that you couldn’t starve or Stairmaster yourself into, that you probably didn’t even recognize unless you lacked it. “What’s at Grandma’s?” Janine asked.
    Well, sure, the kid also had a knack for looking at her mother in a way that inspired violence. Grandma, her daughter’s expression now seemed to convey, was at Grandma’s. “It’s quiet there, okay? I can do my homework,” Tick finally explained when it became clear that Janine wasn’t going to pull away from the curb until she got a straight answer. “Nobody bothers me,” she added.
    Nobody like Walt, was what she was saying. Nobody like Janine herself, probably. And no sooner did this thought occur to her than she was visited by a horrible mental picture of her daughter walking down the roadside at night, weighed down as usual, but not by her backpack. This time the load was Janine herself, and her daughter was headed for the dump. Every day this week she’d been meaning to talk with Tick about the Voss boy, who was all over the news and all anybody could seem to talk about, but somehow she’d managed not to. She knew Tick worked with the kid at the grill and they were in the same art class, where they had both been picked for some