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Nothing.
"The doctor makes me play every day," he said as he kicked a few fallen leaves out of his way. I looked up hopefully. He shrugged. "Says it's therapeutic. I don't know about that. I sound like shit. But he says an hour, or as long as my hand don't hurt. Makes the gorilla over there watch."
He nodded backward toward the hulking bodyguard standing just outside the center.
"Is Kyle really that bad?" I wondered.
"Nah," Dad said. "I'm bein' a baby. Besides, I'm sounding better all the time. Who knows, maybe one day I'll actually be able to play for real again. Even if it's just for you, Pips."
I smiled. If that wasn't progress, I didn't know what was. Dad gave a bashful shrug.
"And you?" he asked. "What's next for you, kid? You got that job? How about you and Brandon?"
I grimaced, and Dad laughed outright, hard enough that he started to cough.
"That good, huh?" he asked.
"I tried to make him eggplant Parmesan."
Dad burst out laughing, hard enough that he had to clutch his bad hand to his stomach while he bowled over. "You're kidding. You? You cooked?"
I folded my arms and scowled. "I can cook."
"Pop Tarts ain't cookin', Pips." Dad nudged me in the shoulder, still chuckling. "You tell Ma about it?"
"No, and don't you dare," I replied stubbornly. "She'll never let me hear the end of it. Bubbe was mad enough when I kicked her out of the kitchen."
I proceeded to recount the disaster of an evening. I left out the dirty sex over the back of the couch while keeping the part where Brandon left angry. Dad snickered a bit in the beginning, but soon just listened quietly, still stroking his mustache meditatively as we walked.
"I just...I don't know what to do," I ended. "He's so angry, Dad. I want to make things better, but I don't know how. I honestly think he'll come back after this trip and realize he's done for good."
"Well, I can't speak for Brandon, Pips." Dad kicked another cluster of early fallen leaves away, and they burst through the air in an array of red, orange, and yellow. "But it's hard for us guys. We're already so separated from the action when it comes to kids, right from the beginning. But we want to be a part of it. I know how it feels to have that choice taken from you."
I cast a curious look at him, wondering if he was talking about me. Had he wanted Janette to get rid of me when she was pregnant? Had she, headstrong, impetuous Janette, forced my birth on Dad?
Dad just squeezed my hand for a second as we walked, his way of telling me to stop thinking so hard. The gesture worked. My dad might be a weak person, but I had always known he loved me. That was never in doubt.
In rehab," he kept going, "they talk a lot about communication. And there ain't nothin' to do here but read the books they got in the study. I read this one last week about, what're they called...love languages. You ever heard of them, Pips?"
I couldn't hold back my snort. "The Five Love Languages? Really, Dad?"
"Hey, hey, hey, isn't that what you stuck me in here for? To learn about how to deal with my family and all?"
He was joking, but only a little bit. His head ducked down, and immediately I chided myself for teasing him. Who was I to be stuck-up about a book? If it helped him stay clean and healthy, it was doing a better job than I could anyway.
"You're right," I said. "I sound like a snob."
Dad shrugged, but smiled in acknowledgment. "Yeah, well. You come by it honest, so I can't blame you too much for it."
"So what does it say, the love language book?"
He shrugged as we stopped at the top of the next hill and looked down over the center and the rest of Natick at the bottom of the valley.
"Sure ain't like New York," Dad murmured as he took a final pull of his cigarette, then stubbed it out on a tree trunk.
I didn't answer, just waited for him to speak. He sat down on the grass with a thud, and I took a seat beside him, laying crutches beside me.
Because he was my dad, it was easy to think of him as old, but he wasn't. Despite the threads of early gray that had streaked his floppy hair since I could remember, he was still a relatively young man, only with a face weathered by stress and hardship. He rested his thin arms onto his knees and observed his hands.
