Empire Falls

Because last week he was arrested as a public nuisance, that’s why. Not for the first time, either. He becomes a public nuisance every now and then when he tires of being a private one. And I’ll tell you something else, too. You think Max Roby would care if you told him about Charlie Mayne? Think again. Your father cares only about your father. I wish that weren’t so, but it is, and you’re old enough to know it. The sooner you understand it, the better off you’ll be.”
    Finished with applying the ointment, she stood facing him. “And I’ll tell you one more thing while I’m at it. When we get back home, things are going to be very different, so you can prepare yourself for that too.”
    To punish her, when Grace went to change into the white dress, Miles, instead of getting into the shower as instructed, slipped out the back and returned to the now deserted beach beneath the bluff, where he threw towering pop flies as high as he could until an errant, angry throw sent the ball into the waves. Then he just sat down in the sand, pounding the palm of his glove and wishing they’d never come to Martha’s Vineyard. Suddenly he was no longer afraid of ground balls, no matter how sharply struck. If he got hit by one, so what? He understood now what Mr. LaSalle had been trying to teach him all summer. It didn’t matter if you got hit. It didn’t matter if it hurt .
    After a while he heard someone coming down the footpath behind him. When he turned around, he thought it would be his mother, furious, coming to fetch him, but it was Charlie Mayne walking across the sand in a pair of shiny black shoes. He had on a pair of nice pants, and Miles didn’t expect him to sit down, but he did .
    “What happened to the ball?”
    Miles pointed at the waves .
    Charlie Mayne nodded. “You and your mother had an argument?”
    Miles didn’t say anything .
    “She’s an awfully nice person, you know,” Charlie finally said .
    “I know she’s nice,” Miles said angrily, not wanting to be told something he already knew, not by somebody who’d only known his mother for two days .
    “She loves you.”
    “I know,” Miles said .
    “She said for me to tell you she’s sorry about the things she said about your dad. That wasn’t such a good thing to do.”
    Miles shrugged .
    “The thing is,” the man went on, “everyone deserves a chance to be happy, you know?”
    “She is happy.”
    “And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don’t take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.”
    “She is happy,” Miles insisted .
    “Actually,” he said, “I was talking about me. Your mother is the kind of woman who—well, she’s like the sun suddenly coming out from behind a cloud.”
    Miles didn’t say anything to this, but it did remind him of how she’d looked that morning when she’d thrown open the kitchen curtains .
    “She makes everything look new, sort of.” When Miles didn’t say anything to this either, Charlie added, “Anyway, it’d make me happy if I might join the two of you for dinner this evening, but it’s up to you.”
    Miles shrugged .
    Charlie Mayne nodded and waited. Finally he said, “What’s that mean? That shrug?”
    Another shrug .
    “Well,” he said, “I guess it could mean that it’s okay for me to come to dinner. Or it could mean you’d prefer I didn’t. Or it could mean you wish the whole world were different from the way it is, right?”
    Shrug .
    Charlie Mayne nodded again. “Right,” he said. “Gotcha.”
    T HEY ATE IN A RESTAURANT called Cock of the Walk, and like the evening before, the man paid more attention to Miles than to his mother. Though steamer clams were not on the menu, Charlie suggested Miles order them anyway, and then winked at the waiter. When they came, it was a mound of clams that no three grown people could’ve eaten, though Charlie seemed to enjoy watching Miles try. “Look at him go,” he said to Grace, who was trying not to be mad at Miles anymore. When she smiled and told him not to eat himself sick, he said not to worry and besides, he wasn’t the one getting sick every morning. Charlie blanched when he said this, and for a few minutes there was only the sound of empty clamshells rattling into the bowl the restaurant had provided for this purpose .
    A couple of times Miles considered that they were enjoying themselves in an expensive restaurant with a man who drove a fancy sports car while