Page 84 of Roadrunner

Nobody discussed it. Nobody proposed it formally or put it on a calendar. It simply happened the way things happened in that family, which was that Della decided something was going to occur and everyone adjusted their lives accordingly.

We showed up every Sunday at four.

Arthur looked forward to it with an enthusiasm he tried to moderate and mostly failed at. By the third Sunday he was setting the table without being asked. By the fourth he knew where everything was in Della’s kitchen and retrieved things on request without having to be shown twice.

Della watched all of it.

She didn’t say anything. Not directly. But I caught her watching him with that expression and I looked away each time and told myself the same thing I’d been telling myself since the first Sunday.

Riley and Arthur found their footing quietly.

It happened the way real things happen. Not in a single moment. In accumulation. A question asked in the truck on the way to Della’s that Riley answered without shortchanging it. A tool handed over in the driveway when Riley was working on his bike and Arthur materialized at his elbow without being invited and was neither sent away nor made a fuss of.

Just handed a tool and put to use.

I watched from the kitchen window.

Arthur asked something. Riley answered. Arthur asked something else. Riley answered that too. He handed the boy a wrench and pointed at something and Arthur leaned in and looked at it with the focused attention he brought to things that interested him.

I stood at the window for a long time.

Then I went back to what I was doing.

The motorcycle came up one evening in late November.

We were at Della’s. After dinner. The men were in the living room and Arthur had positioned himself at the edge of the group, present without imposing, the way he always was.

Lackey was telling a story about a ride he’d taken through New Mexico. Something about a highway and weather and a decision that turned out to be wrong in a specific and avoidable way. The story was long. It was worth it.

Arthur was listening.

Riley was watching Arthur listen.

When Lackey finished, Arthur looked at Riley. “Do you still ride?”

“Every chance I get,” Riley said.

“Mom said you have one that’s never been built,” Arthur said. “In boxes.”

The room went slightly quiet in the way rooms do when something has been said that lands with more weight than expected.

Riley glanced at me.

I looked at my coffee.

“I do,” Riley said.

“How come you never built it?” Arthur asked.

Riley was quiet for a moment. “Waiting for the right time.”

Arthur considered this. “Is it the right time now?”

Riley looked at him for a long moment. Long enough that I set my coffee down and watched him not answer right away.

“Not yet,” he said finally.

Arthur took that more easily than I expected. “How will you know when it is?”