What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

crazy. He stared at his empty glass. I looked at my watch, stretched. I had a small headache behind my eyes.
    I said, "I guess I better be getting out there soon." I ran my hand over my chin and straightened my collar. "She still in Redding, that woman?"
    "You don't know anything, do you?" my father said. "You don't know anything at all. You don't know anything except how to sell books."
    It was almost time to go.
    "Ah, God, I'm sorry," he said. "The man went all to pieces, is what. He got down on the floor and cried. She stayed out in the kitchen. She did her crying out there. She got down on her knees and she prayed to God, good and loud so the man would hear."
    My father started to say something more. But instead he shook his head. Maybe he wanted me to say something.
    But then he said, "No, you got to catch a plane."
    I helped him into his coat and we started out, my hand guiding him by the elbow.
    "I'll put you in a cab," I said.
    He said, "I'll see you off."
    "That's all right," I said. "Next time maybe."
    We shook hands. That was the last I've seen of him. On the way to Chicago, I remembered how I'd left his sack of gifts on the bar. Just as well. Mary didn't need candy, Almond Roca or anything else.
    That was last year. She needs it now even less.
    The Bath
    SATURDAY afternoon the mother drove to the bakery in the shopping center. After looking through a loose-leaf binder with photographs of cakes taped onto the pages, she ordered chocolate, the child's favorite. The cake she chose was decorated with a spaceship and a launching pad under a sprinkling of white stars. The name scotty would be iced on in green as if it were the name of the spaceship.
    The baker listened thoughtfully when the mother told him Scotty would be eight years old. He was an older man, this baker, and he wore a curious apron, a heavy thing with loops that went under his arms and around his back and then crossed in front again where they were tied in a very
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    thick knot. He kept wiping his hands on the front of the apron as he listened to the woman, his wet eyes examining her lips as she studied the samples and talked.
    He let her take her time. He was in no hurry.
    The mother decided on the spaceship cake, and then she gave the baker her name and her telephone number. The cake would be ready Monday morning, in plenty of time for the party Monday afternoon. This was all the baker was willing to say. No pleasantries, just this small exchange, the barest information, nothing that was not necessary.
    MONDAY morning, the boy was walking to school. He was in the company of another boy, the two boys passing a bag of potato chips back and forth between them. The birthday boy was trying to trick the other boy into telling what he was going to give in the way of a present.
    At an intersection, without looking, the birthday boy stepped off the curb, and was promptly knocked down by a car. He fell on his side, his head in the gutter, his legs in the road moving as if he were climbing a wall.
    The other boy stood holding the potato chips. He was wondering if he should finish the rest or continue on to school.
    The birthday boy did not cry. But neither did he wish to talk anymore. He would not answer when the other boy asked what it felt like to be hit by a car. The birthday boy got up and turned back for home, at which time the other boy waved good-bye and headed off for school.
    The birthday boy told his mother what had happened. They sat together on the sofa. She held his hands in her lap.
    The Bath
    This is what she was doing when the boy pulled his hands away and lay down on his back.
    O F course, the birthday party never happened. The birthday boy was in the hospital instead. The mother sat by the bed. She was waiting for the boy to wake up. The father hurried over from his office. He sat next to the mother. So now the both of them waited for the boy to wake up. They waited for hours, and then the father went home to take a bath.
    The man drove home from the hospital. He drove the streets faster than he should. It had been a good life till now. There had been work, fatherhood, family. The man had been lucky and happy. But fear made him want a bath.
    He pulled into the driveway. He sat in the car trying to make his legs work. The child had been hit by a car and he was in the hospital, but he was going to be all right. The man got out of the car and went up to the door. The dog was barking and the