“Six plates? Is that boy eating with us?”

   I grabbed a fistful of forks and knives from the drawer, took a deep breath, and handed them to my mother. “Yes. Brian is eating with us.”

   Kim hopped up out of her chair. “I’ll go tell the guys everything is ready.”

   What she meant was:

   Fourth of July. It’s normally a safe time for a Bellow’s Family Day. Throw everyone outside with a plateful of food, give ‘em each a couple of beers, set up a horseshoe pit, and everyone has something to keep them occupied. Very little opportunity for conversation, and that’s important. This year it was more important than ever. Which is exactly why, this year, it was raining. It was coming down in buckets. And that meant we were trapped indoors with nothing to occupy us. Except for conversation.

   So far so good. Brian, Dave and my dad were all outside, standing underneath my dad’s umbrella, peering under the hood of Brian’s truck. Dave’s idea. He’d said:

   “Let’s go take a peek at that alternator. Maybe we can figure out what’s wrong with it.”

   What he’d meant, of course was:

   But he hadn’t left me completely unprotected. He never did. He’d left me Kim which meant my mother had played nice. But now Kim was leaving and Matthew was too young to do me any good.

   The door closed quietly. I clenched my toes, my stomach, my heart…

   “Just when it looks like you can’t screw your life up any worse than you already have,” she began, “you manage to top yourself.”

   I grabbed my mitts, opened the oven door and pulled out the chicken.

   “Just how old is he? Twenty?”

   Set it on the counter. On a hot pad.

   “It’s all well and good for you to go back to playing your little games, but this one lives right downstairs.”

   I pulled the aluminum foil off the pan and inhaled deeply. The smell of barbeque sauce made my mouth water. I opened the oven again and shoved the chicken back inside to brown.

   “You couldn’t manage to stay in the same town as Jason when you were done with him.”

   I grabbed the potato salad from the fridge and set it on the counter.

   “So why do you think you can live upstairs from this boy when he’s through with you?”

   Then the coleslaw.

   “Does he know what you did to Jason?”

   I took the lid off the steaming stockpot and looked inside at the corn. The great debate: Transfer it to a platter now, and risk letting it getting cold? Or let it stay inside the hot water and get soggy?

   “Does he know that he can’t trust you around his friends?”

   Because if they didn’t hurry up and come inside soon then it would. Get soggy. Soggy and gross instead of crisp and tender and sweet. It would be ruined. Ruined and, goddamn it, what the fucking hell was taking them so long?

   “At least the boy is self-employed. He doesn’t have a boss he’ll need to keep an eagle eye on whenever you walk into the room. Or to worry about whenever he leaves the room. Too bad I wasn’t so lucky.”

   Bullseye. I could actually hear my nerves snap. I spun on my heel, lid in hand, mouth open, ready to let her have it; but that’s when the cavalry arrived. Dave came through the door first. He checked my face, then my mother’s, and then mine again for a damage report. I gave him a brief smile that said, I’m okay. Even though I wasn’t. He was followed by Kim, who headed directly for her still sleeping baby, then my dad, who avoided eye contact with both my mother and me. And finally Brian.

   He strolled right over, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and asked, “What can I do? And don’t say ‘nothing.’”

   I took in a shaky breath, then did a quick inventory. Something was missing and I couldn’t think of what it was. I rubbed my left temple. It had been throbbing for three days, in spite of the all the Tylenol I’d taken. Brian had finally taken the bottle away from me because, he’d said, taking too much was bad for my liver.

   Liver…

   “Beer.”

   He nodded and went to work. He emptied two bags of ice into a huge metal bucket, then filled that with the beer bottles. I watched him, still rubbing my temple, pressed down on the spot that hurt the worst. My mother noticed, sauntered over and put a hand on my forehead. I pulled away.

   “I’m fine.”

   She backed up and gave me a small smile.

   Everybody grabbed a plate, filled it and settled around the table. For a few minutes the only sounds were those made by clinking silverware and sloshing beer. I snuck a glance at my mother. She was sneaking glances at Brian in between mouthfuls. He was sitting beside me, happily stuffing his face with potato salad. It had been a few weeks since he’d eaten a carbohydrate that wasn’t high in fiber. I looked over at Dave, who was already looking at me. Waiting for his signal. I gave him a brief nod and he cleared his throat.

   “Brian, what’s the fishing like down here?”

   He wiped a glob of dressing off his mouth with his napkin before he answered. “They stock the lake real good every year. Trouble is you can’t get on it anymore unless you got a house down there, and those are all bought up.”

   Dave nodded sympathetically. It was getting that way all over the state. Then he told Brian about the place where he and my dad frequently fished, about an hour west of New Mills. It was too far into the woods for tourists to know about it, but easy to get to with a truck. Then he asked Brian if he’d like to join them for their annual Labor Day fishing weekend. He accepted the invitation, surprised but happy.

   After a minute or so of silence Brian picked up the slack with the safest of all possible topics. He nodded towards Matthew and said:

   “You guys have got a great looking baby there.”

   It wasn’t safe enough. My mother had been waiting for an opportunity to strike.

   “How many children do you have, young man?”

   I glared at her, but she ignored me and fixed Brian with an icy stare. He gave her an eyebrow of his own.

   “I don’t have any children, Mrs. Bellows.”

   “Has Theresa told you that she doesn’t like children?”

   “No. She didn’t. She told me she doesn’t want any kids of her own. But from what I’ve seen she likes ‘em just fine.”

   My mother was undeterred. “Don’t you want children of your own someday?”

   He gave her a sweet smile. “Only an idiot would get involved with a woman who doesn’t want kids if he does. I’m not an idiot.”

   Dave’s ears turned red, my dad choked on his cole slaw, and Kim snickered, then covered it over with a cough. My mother gave Brian a dirty look while she prepared her troops for the second wave of the assault. He was a formidable opponent, true, but she wasn’t in the habit of retreating. I cast a frantic glance at Dave. He swallowed whatever it was he was chewing, washed it down with some beer and came to the rescue.

   “Uh...Tess. How is--business going?”

   Normally, of course, the subject of work was off limits. But I had called him earlier in the week and told him my good news. My business clients were all still behind but paying steadily and my housecleaning jobs were all up to date. For the first time in my life I was more than just self sufficient. I was caught up on the bills and building a savings. Because I knew, of course, that once fall came and the summer people left my pay would be cut in half. It didn’t matter, though, because I was planning ahead. Calamity foreseen and dealt with. For once.

   And it felt good.

   So I gave my mother a brief rundown of my weekly schedule. Busy, busy, busy. Out there working hard. Making Money. And when I finished speaking I fixed her with what I hoped was a pair of cold, blue eyes.

   She pretended not to notice.

   “Hey, that’s great.” Dave said. “It didn’t take you long to get back on track.”

   It didn’t take my mother long, either. She ran through the list of what the rest of the family did from eight till five.

   “David is a well-respected lawyer in Brookfield--”

   Brian knew that and, of course, my mother knew that he did. But she never missed the chance to savor the way the words rolled off her tongue. My son, the lawyer. So much better than, Tess. She cleans toilets.

   “--John is an accountant--”

   My dad despised his work and his boss.

   “--I work as an office manager for Mike Poulin.”

   Here she paused for effect. Brian didn’t know who Mike Poulin was and just nodded politely. I polished off my second beer and reached for a third. Finally she finished with:

   “And Kimberly is a registered nurse in the cardiac intensive care unit.”

   Brian turned to Kim with obvious interest. “Really?”

   My mother added, “She’ll be going back to work in the fall.”

   Kim glanced at Matthew and said, “We’ll see.”

   Brian plunged ahead. “When my mother was sick we hardly ever saw the doctor, but the nurses were always there. They took real good care of her. Me and my sister, too. They knew just as much about what was going on as the doctors did, and they were a lot nicer. If you ask me, nurses are way underpaid.”

   Kim smiled at him. Score one for Brian.

   “Tess didn’t go to college,” my mother started.

   “Neither did I,” Brian returned.

   “She wanted to go to school for her painting, but I told her that I wasn’t about to pay for her to play with her paints. Not when she could fool around with them at home for free.” She narrowed her gaze at me. “If you were really serious about it I’m sure you could have found…some way to pay for it on your own.”

   I finished my beer. Two thirds of a bottle in one long, noisy gulp. I plunked it down on the table and looked towards the big, beautiful bucket, sitting prettily on the floor next to the kitchen counter. And I wondered if a fourth would do me more harm than good…

   “She’s much better off cleaning, anyway,” my mother added. “She’s good at that.”

   She’d finally managed to shock Brian. He sat silently for longer than I thought possible. Just staring at her. She held his gaze. Just waiting. And he said:

   “Tess sold a painting last month. Obviously someone thinks she’s good at that, too.”

   She only shrugged.

   He set his fork down, rested his arms on the table, and leaned forward. “Don’t you think she’s a good painter, Mrs. Bellows?”

   He thought he had her cornered. That he knew what she’d say, what she’d have to say. But he was wrong. He’d done it. And he didn’t even know it.

   He didn’t know her.

   She looked at me. At me, with those hard eyes. And I wanted to look away from them but I couldn’t. So I sat there, staring back at her. Just waiting.

   “No, I don’t. And I think she’s wasting her time and her energy and her money when she should be using them for--”

   But she didn’t get any farther. At the words, No, I don’t, Brian grabbed my hand. I looked away from my mother and over at him. His eyes were filled with remorse. Because now he knew.