The Risk Pool

anxiety pills (valium now) and a six-pack of Rolaids from a downtown pharmacy.
    I knew what was in store for me once I located my father. In the space of an hour I’d have three or four sweating beers lined up on the bar awaiting my attention. I’d have left home with every intention of being home for dinner with my mother, and for the first hour or two I’d consult my watch dutifully and warn my father that I’d have to leave soon, to which he’d reply, sure, absolutely, why not? But when the actual time approached, he’d say what’s the hurry, and by then that would seem to me a valid question. I’d try to figure out what my hurry was and not be able to. What had been
my
idea, to go home and not disappoint my mother, would suddenly seem like
her
idea, and I would resent her attempts to control my life. As soon as I finished this one beer I was on, I’d call and tell her the score, and if she didn’t like it, tough. But by the time I thought of calling again, there wouldn’t be much point, because afternoon would have merged with evening, and she would not only have eaten, but cleared the dishes and stacked them in the small cupboard above the sink.
    By the time my father and I thought of eating it would be late, just about the time Irma would have the kitchen closed up in Mike’s Place. Probably she’d have her coat on and be ready to leave when we shambled in, my father demanding veal and peppers, the Saturday special. She’d tell my father to go screw himself, and my father would say, Irma, Irma, let’s sneak back in the kitchen, get away from your husband. When he emerged five or ten minutes later he’d have two steaming plates full of veal and peppers that we’d perhaps pay for, perhaps not, depending on whether anybody remembered to ask us to and whether we remembered ourselves. And then we’d be ready for the rest of the night.
    This was the inevitable scenario I was trying to postpone by doing errands for my mother when I ran into Mrs. Ward at the prescription window at the drugstore.
    “Forgive me,” she said, after our eyes had met and I had looked away, not wanting to force the issue of our having been just abouthalf acquainted so long ago. “But aren’t you my daughter Tria’s young friend?”
    The answer to that seemed more no than yes, but I decided to go along. “Mrs. Ward?” I smiled. “It’s nice to see you.”
    “I’m told you’re a graduate of the university,” she said, as if there were only one university in the country.
    I admitted it was true, adding that I was taking a break from graduate school and wondering vaguely how she would have heard any report concerning me.
    “And you are studying what?” she said, with the kind of forthright, almost insulting directness, you sometimes encounter in persons who are not merely curious but, for some reason, believe they have a right to know all about you. And, as is usually the case with such people, you gratify their curiosity and only regret doing so later. I told her I was studying anthropology.
    “Why, that’s practically the same thing, you know,” she said, looking up at me.
    I said I supposed it was, then asked what it was the same as.
    “Why history, of course,” she said.
    “Of course.” I blinked.
    “Why don’t you join us for brunch in the morning?” she said suddenly. “Say about one?”
    “One in the morning?”
    “In the afternoon, of course.”
    “Of course,” I said. One in the afternoon, tomorrow morning. I’d be there.
    “Say hello to Tria, won’t you?” Mrs. Ward said, when we’d both paid for our prescriptions.
    I looked around. Except for ourselves and the pharmacist and the young cashier, the store was empty. I didn’t know who the cashier was, but I knew she wasn’t Tria Ward. I wondered if Tria had become invisible, like Mrs. Agajanian’s son, the fish cleaner.
    “And she is …”
    “In the car, of course. Out front,” Mrs. Ward said. “I don’t drive, you see. The driving of automobiles has never been among my skills.”
    I had forgotten this, and I think I would have asked her, had I been the sort of person who believed I had a right to know, precisely what the tiny woman considered her skills to be. Instead, I followed her outside to where a canary-yellow Chevette sat in a tow zone right in front of the pharmacy. Mrs. Ward startedspeaking even before she had the door open, which meant that the first few words had to have been lost on her daughter. “
Look
who I