Chapter 111: Conflict Resolved
The chapter that Connie had prevented was, in the revised version, considerably shorter.
Mary apologized to Brenda at the counter with the composed, genuine directness she brought to things she'd decided to do correctly. Brenda accepted it with the practical grace of someone who had also been about to say something she'd have regretted and was relieved the situation had been defused before it happened. They shook hands. Brenda said she'd talk to Cecily again. Mary said she'd talk to Sheldon.
They were not warm when they left the bowling alley. They were civil, which was the appropriate outcome.
Connie drove them home.
The car was quiet for most of the drive.
"Thank you," Mary said, near Meadowlark Lane.
"You would have done the same for me," Connie said.
"I'd like to think so," Mary said.
"You would have," Connie said. "You've done it before."
Mary looked out the window.
"I had tomato juice in my purse," she said.
"I know," Connie said.
"I'm going to put it back in the pantry and never speak of this again," Mary said.
"Good plan," Connie said.
She parked.
George was at the stove when they came in, the dinner smells already filling the house. He looked at his wife — at her expression, which had the specific quality of someone who had been wound up very tight and had been unwound — and made the rapid assessment that the afternoon had resolved itself in some direction he hadn't been briefed on yet.
"Everything okay?" he said.
"Fine," Mary said.
"The Pattersons?"
"I spoke to Brenda," Mary said. "We understand each other."
George looked at Connie.
Connie shrugged once, mildly, the gesture of someone confirming that a crisis had been managed.
George turned back to the stove without pushing further, because fifteen years of marriage had given him an accurate read on when the full debrief would come and when it wouldn't.
Tonight it wouldn't.
"Dinner in twenty," he said.
The table that evening had the relaxed, slightly over-corrected warmth of a family that had been through some tension and was glad to be on the other side of it. George had made his pot roast — the proper version, Connie's recipe, which he was now executing with the focused satisfaction of someone who had been given a gift they intended to use correctly.
Mary ate with the quiet, contained quality of someone who had used up a significant amount of emotional energy that afternoon and had been refilled by food and family.
Sheldon appeared to have registered, through the household's ambient information system, that events of consequence had occurred involving his mother, a bowling alley, and the Patterson family. He asked no questions about it, which was his version of discretion.
Missy ate her pot roast and told everyone about a butterfly she had seen that afternoon that she was fairly certain had been trying to communicate with her.
After dinner, George pulled on his jacket.
Mary looked up from the dishes.
"I said I'd go talk to Jeff Patterson," he said. "I'm going."
Mary looked at him.
"Tonight?" she said.
"I told you Thursday, then Friday," he said. "It's Friday. I'm going."
She turned back to the dishes.
"Be reasonable," she said. "Don't make it bigger than it is."
"I know how to talk to a man," George said.
"I know," she said. "That's why I'm sending you."
George knocked on the Patterson front door.
Jeff answered in the same flannel shirt from the previous evening, which suggested it had been a consistent-flannel-shirt kind of week.
He looked at George.
George looked at him.
Both of them had the specific expression of men who had been sent out by their wives to address a situation and had arrived at the other man's door and were now doing the quiet assessment of what kind of conversation this was actually going to be.
"George," Jeff said.
"Jeff," George said.
A beat.
"Beer?" Jeff said.
"Yeah," George said.
The Patterson yard was larger than the Cooper yard, with a section near the back that Jeff had converted into a small chicken operation — twelve hens, a modest coop, and a haystack arrangement that had clearly become a seating area over time. He had an old Bluetooth speaker on a crate that was currently playing Waylon Jennings at a volume that suggested he came out here regularly and knew exactly what he was doing out here.
He handed George a Lone Star, which said something about Jeff Patterson's judgment as a host.
They sat on opposite ends of the haystack.
"Cecily and Sheldon," Jeff said.
"Cecily and Sheldon," George confirmed.
"My wife got a visit from your wife today," Jeff said.
"My wife visited your wife," George said.
"Brenda said it went fine," Jeff said. "In the end."
"My wife said the same thing," George said. "In the end."
They drank their beers.
The music played. The chickens made the sounds chickens made in the evening, which were the specific, low sounds of birds that had finished having opinions about the day and were settling in.
"Cecily likes your kid," Jeff said, after a while. "That's the whole thing. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body, but she's six and she found something that got a reaction and she kept doing it."
"Sheldon's a complicated kid," George said.
"All kids are," Jeff said.
"Sheldon's a specific kind of complicated," George said.
Jeff drank his beer. "He know a lot about frogs?"
"He knows a lot about everything," George said. "That's most of it."
"Cecily's really into animals," Jeff said. "Real ones. She's been asking for a dog for two years."
"Sheldon knows the biology of basically every animal that exists," George said.
Jeff looked at his beer.
"Huh," he said.
They sat with this for a moment.
"My kid's going to end up in Sheldon's living room looking at trains," Jeff said.
"Probably," George said.
"Brenda's going to think that's wonderful," Jeff said.
"Mary's going to have feelings about it," George said.
"But it'll be fine," Jeff said.
"It'll be fine," George agreed.
They drank their beers.
Waylon Jennings gave way to something George didn't recognize but liked. The chickens settled down entirely.
"You working?" Jeff said.
"Between things," George said, with the honest dignity of a man who had stopped calling it looking for work to everyone who asked and had started calling it between things, which felt more accurate.
"What kind of things?" Jeff said.
"Coaching, mostly," George said. "Fifteen years of it. Football."
"Yeah, I saw your team this season," Jeff said. "That game against Austin."
"Hell of a game," George said.
"Hell of a game," Jeff agreed.
"Lost it," George said.
"Lost it," Jeff agreed. "Still hell of a game."
George looked at the haystack.
"There's a job at Dale's Sporting Goods," George said. "Part time, which I wouldn't normally consider, but Dale knows the sport and knows equipment and I figure it keeps me connected while I figure out the next thing."
Jeff nodded. "Dale's a good man."
"Known him for years," George said.
"When are you going in?"
"Monday morning," George said.
Jeff looked at him. "You already applied?"
"Called him this afternoon," George said. "He said come in Monday."
Jeff absorbed this. "So you've already got something lined up."
"Part time," George said. "It's a start."
Jeff raised his beer.
George raised his.
They clinked them together without making a thing of it, the way men clinked beers when they were acknowledging something real and had decided the acknowledgment didn't need to be elaborate.
Georgie appeared at the gate to the yard approximately twenty minutes after George had left the house.
He stood at the gate and looked at the two men on the haystack.
George Sr. looked at his eldest.
"Is your mother sending you to check if I'm in a fight?" he said.
"She was worried about your heart condition," Georgie said.
"My heart's fine," George said.
Georgie looked at the beers. Looked at Jeff. Looked at the chickens.
"Is everything — did it go okay?" he said.
"Sit down," Jeff said, waving at the haystack. "There's room."
Georgie came in and sat.
Jeff handed him a Lone Star.
George Sr. looked at the beer in his son's hand.
He looked at Jeff.
He looked at the beer.
He made the decision that this was a Friday evening on a haystack and he was choosing not to fight about the beer.
"Where were we," Jeff said.
"Chicken farm," George said.
"Right," Jeff said. "The thing is, Brenda's not wrong that it's risky, she's just wrong that it's impossible—"
They talked.
Georgie sat on the haystack and listened and drank his beer with the specific, comfortable awareness of someone who had been included in something real and was appreciating it.
Back in the house, Mike was at the kitchen table when his phone buzzed.
George.
He picked up. "Yeah."
"Everything's fine over here," George said, in the low voice of someone talking away from a conversation. "Tell Mary."
"Got it," Mike said.
He went to find Mary, who was in the living room with her knitting and the specific, alert quality of someone who had been pretending to read and was actually tracking the sounds outside.
"George says everything's fine," Mike said.
Mary looked at him.
"He sounded fine?" she said.
"He sounded fine," Mike said.
She went back to her knitting.
She worked for a minute.
"Mike," she said.
"Yeah," Mike said.
"Did Connie tell you what I almost did at the bowling alley today?"
"She didn't have to," Mike said. "The tomato juice was in your purse when you left."
Mary looked at him.
"It's back in the pantry," she said.
"Good," he said.
She went back to her knitting.
He went back to the kitchen table.
Through the window, the sounds of the Patterson yard were audible — music, voices, the specific comfortable noise of an evening that had found its level.
(End of Chapter 111)
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