Page 11 of Pucking My Biggest Fan

“Weekends aren’t my kitchen,” she says, every time, and eats the burnt one off the top of the stack like it’s the one she wanted.

She could cook them better. She lets them stay mine. I don’t have words for what that’s worth, so I top up her coffee instead.

For a couple of days after that second weekend, June went somewhere quiet — flawless with the kids, elsewhere in the eyes, a lot of wiped counters. I re-ran everything I’d said and came up empty. By Tuesday she was back. I didn’t ask.

When Carol collected the kids that week, she asked, buckling Teddy into her car, “How’s the new girl working out?”

“Good. They’re eating vegetables, and Margot hasn’t fired her yet.”

Carol looked at me over the roof of the car, a beat longer than the joke deserved. “She’s young,” she said.

“She’s good at the job, Carol.”

“I said young. I didn’t say anything else.” She got in and rolled the window down halfway. “Tell her the children come to me with sunscreen on. It’s still light out.” Which is Carol for: I’m watching, and I love them, and those are the same thing.

I stood in the driveway deciding all of it meant nothing.

* * *

Tonight the Cascades had a sponsor dinner downtown — season’s three weeks out, so everybody wants an hour of me — and I get home late. The kids are back from Carol’s and asleep. One lamp on in the kitchen, and June in it, writing tomorrow on the fridge schedule. Hair loose, sleeves pushed up, and I notice — the way I’ve been noticing for two weeks now and refusing to call it anything. She’s lovely in a lamplit kitchen. She also works for me. So I stop the thought there, where I’ve stopped it every night for two weeks.

“How was it?” she asks.

“Fine. I gave the eight answers.” It comes out flat — the truth, not the bright version I give in public. That keeps happening around her. I’ve decided not to look at why.

“Which eight?”

“Best game I ever played, best player I ever faced, do I miss it. How are the kids, what’s the secret, would I coach. How’s the knee. And whether the Cascades are going to be any good.”

“Are they?”

“That one gets the longest answer and the least honest one.” I hang my jacket on the chair. “You want the honest one, they’re young and it’ll hurt all winter.”

“See, that was interesting,” she says. “You should lead with that.”

“Nobody pays for that.”

Something crosses her face, there and gone, and she squares the markers on the counter into a straight row. Then she looks at me the way she reads Teddy when he says he’s not hungry. “Have you eaten?”

The question hits me harder than a question about dinner should.

“Not really. There was food going around on trays, but people kept me talking all night.”

“So, no.” She’s already at the fridge. She takes down one of the containers, mine, Tuesday’s, and puts it in the microwave like this is a system we agreed on. Maybe it is now. The plate she sets in front of me is my own cooking, which should be a sad thing for a man to feel grateful about, and isn’t, tonight.

“What did I miss here?” I ask, eating my Tuesday chicken at eleven at night while she fills in the little boxes.

“Margot finished her book and started the next one without a library trip, so she’s getting them from somebody she’s not naming. Teddy said he wasn’t hungry and then ate a full dinner. And the garage light’s out. I’ll get the ladder tomorrow and change it.”

“I can do the light.”

“You’re at a breakfast tomorrow. I’ll do the light.” She caps her marker. “Carol brought the kids back around six. She stayed a few minutes.”

“How was that?”

“Fine. She looked through the fridge while we talked.”

“She’s protective,” I say.