The Risk Pool

think that’s your father’s fault. Not entirely, anyway.”
    “I’m glad,” I said.
    When he asked me if I wanted to go along and help spread the good news, I said no, I was tired.
    “Mom worried about me?”
    He shook his head. “Not too bad. She can’t make up her mind whether you were out all night or whether you got up early. It wouldn’t hurt to spend some time with her today. You’re always gone. Talk to her a little.”
    “I’ll try.”
    “She loves you,” he said, then added sadly, “More than anybody.”
    “I know,” I admitted, suddenly feeling the terrible weight of her love, threatening to rip through the thin fabric of lies and deception that it rested on. “I wish to God she didn’t.”
    “No use,” F. William Peterson said. “She can’t help herself.”

37
    The telephone half woke me. My mother’s lowering her voice did the rest. With the shades drawn, it could have been night, but my watch said four-thirty and there was a ball game on TV in the living room. “Well, honestly,” I heard my mother say into the telephone, “that’s hardly my son’s fault.”
    Groggy, I sat up in bed, vaguely aware that I had been dreaming unpleasantly and that the dream’s interruption was likely to be even more unpleasant. I had fallen asleep thinking about the night before and Tria’s perfume, but sleep had turned it all bad. Now, groggy and in between worlds, I was convinced that it was Mrs. Ward on the phone, calling to report that I had violated the sanctity of her home and hospitality, gotten her daughter pregnant. I had nearly convinced myself that this was the only plausible scenario when my mother hung up the phone. “Honestly!” she said again.
    I listened to her pace, clearly trying to make up her mindwhether to wake me. We’d spent most of the morning together and I’d tried to take F. William Peterson’s advice about talking to her. Nothing came out but words though, and most of them were hers. After a while I just listened, nodding and muttering an occasional yes, until finally she took my hand and said wasn’t it amazing. All those years apart and we could still see into each other’s hearts. She could read me like an open book, she said. Like it or not, we were
simpatico
. She held up two intertwined fingers to show me what simpatico meant. I said I thought I’d take a nap. She said she knew I was exhausted. She could tell. We were simpatico.
    There was a knock and my mother poked her head in. I was still sitting on the bed, still groggy. “Who was on the phone?” I said.
    “Eileen somebody. A friend of your father’s. Apparently she thought that a recommendation.”
    “Silly her.”
    “What gets into people?” my mother said. I could see she really wanted to know. She’d upset herself trying to figure it out. “It’s as if it’s our responsibility to …” she let the thought trail off. “Your father has apparently had one too many. You are requested to go get him.”
    “Okay,” I said, getting to my feet.
    “I’d let them call a cab,” she said. “Why encourage such behavior?”
    “I’ll go get him.”
    “Sure,” she said, her upper lip curling with sarcasm. “And when you’re gone, guess who’ll be here to answer the calls? Guess who all the Eileens in Mohawk will call to report your father’s activities?”
    “If you don’t want to answer it, don’t answer it.”
    “This is
my
home.”
    Her hands were shaking now. “Take it easy,” I said. “This is not such a big deal.”
    “My health may not be a big deal to your father, but it is to me. I’ve fought too hard for it to let him destroy it. Too hard. Too too hard. I’ll not have my home invaded.”
    I made a dramatic gesture of looking around the room, even under the bed. “Is he here? Who has invaded your home? Me?”
    “How do you think it makes me feel to see you at his beck and call? As if he ever cared about you. Don’t you think I know why you came back to Mohawk? Do you imagine I’m a complete fool?Do you imagine I think you came back out of any concern for
me
or
my
welfare?”
    She was still frozen in the doorway, and there was nothing to do but wait for her to move so I could pass. I’d seen her swiftly unravel like this before, sudden, unexpected lucidity pushing her toward the brink, before she could pull herself back again. It was always awful to watch, and the worst part was that I never felt the slightest softening toward her. I knew from experience—mine