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Neither boy seemed to notice that the game in which they were currently engaged had stalled.
“Mom? Can we go shoot—”
“No!” Valerie laughed. “It’s pitch black out there, guys. You have tomorrow’s practice and you’ll have time before dinner tomorrow, too.”
“Do you think we’ll have to do one-on-ones?” Blake asked his brother.
The die still lay, double sixes, on the Monopoly board. Valerie was quite proud of her six red hotels and twelve green houses.
Her boys, who were usually land magnates, owned the utilities and a few of the railroads.
“I’m sure,” Brian said, frowning. “You don’t have to worry, though. Just steal the ball and blow them away.”
Picking up the Community Chest and Chance Cards, she put them in their storage slot on top of the one-dollar bills. Then she cleared off the rest of the board and folded it to fit inside the box.
The real estate didn’t really mean that much. She’d had no competition.
The twins continued to discuss everything from shoes and socks to ways they could maintain control of the ball, completely oblivious to the game’s disappearance.
“Let’s go get some ice cream,” Valerie finally suggested.
In tandem, the boys looked at her. At the empty table. And then back at her.
“Sorry, Mom.” Brian spoke for both of them.
She grinned. “It’s okay, guys. I’m glad to see you so jazzed about something.”
And she was. Overjoyed, actually. Brian had been eating all weekend. She realized this was just a temporary fix, but it seemed pretty obvious that basketball could be the thing they’d been searching for to help her son with his flagging self-esteem.
Talk of basketball continued as all three ate their ice-cream cones, filled with the strangest concoctions of vanilla ice cream and mix-ins they could come up with, stopped by the store for the week’s groceries, and then tried to focus on the boys’ homework. Brian hauled out a disgusting-looking object he’d been hiding, unbeknownst to her, wrapped in a towel under his bed.
“It’s my science project, Mom!” he’d protested when she insisted he throw it away immediately.
“What is it?” Valerie wasn’t convinced.
“A piece of bread I dipped in fabric softener. There’s another one dipped in diet soda.”
“Yeah,” Blake piped up from his spot on the living-room floor. “His theory is that one will be preserved and the other will be eaten away by the acid. Cool, huh?”
Yeah. Cool. She should’ve had girls.
“Mom?” Pen in his mouth, Blake was frowning as he looked up at her. “Dad would be really happy if he knew we were trying out for the team, huh?”
Valerie straightened the cushions on the couch. “Of course he would.”
“And he’d come watch every single game, wouldn’t he?” Brian asked, stopping on the way back to his room to return the experiment.
Blake chuckled. “Yeah, he’d be one of those dads who know every kid’s name and stats and shout from the stands like a maniac.”
It was clear the boy meant that as a compliment.
Valerie agreed with only one part. The shouting. But it wouldn’t have been from the stands in a junior-high gym.
“He wouldn’t have missed a single one,” she told the boys, leaning over to pick up some lint from the off-white carpet.
She was saved from any further sojo
urns down fairy-tale lane when, apparently satisfied, they returned to more immediate concerns. Algebra problems that were due in the morning.
