“Remy wants to wear a dress?”
“Not last I checked my closet.”
“But he finds being a man a terrible cross to bear.”
“No, I think he’s worn the weight of his sex quite lightly. But he does find the current climate of damned if you do, damned if you don’t, unfair. Go soft, and you’re a sissy. Keep holding up the side for the team, and you’re not only a bully, but a relic.”
“I put in a long day’s work supporting my family, and I didn’t see that as a choice. I didn’t feel sorry for myself, either.”
“Neither does Remington. Underneath all that calm and placidity, he’s homicidal. And he’d like to kill someone in particular.”
“But he ain’t murdering anybody. He’s jogging for twenty miles. What’s that prove?”
“Twenty-six point two miles,” she corrected. “Oh, and you must have noticed that he’s dropped a couple of pounds.”
“Big whoop.” Griff had dropped fifty by accident. “I’d think better of his figure if he slimmed down by bringing me in some firewood. Down to sticks last week, till Tommy stopped by.”
“She must’ve leaped at the job.”
“How’d you know?”
“More steps,” Serenata said enigmatically. “But now that you mention it . . .”
She brought in two wheelbarrow loads from the back, mindful to remember kindling as well. Stacking the logs by the fireplace, she asked diffidently, “Should you still be having open fires? With flying sparks . . . What if you fall asleep?”
“I built more fires than you fixed hot dinners. Only decent thing about winter. I pull that mesh curtain round. I’m old, not a dummy.”
“Would you like me to build you one? It’s getting dark.”
“Wish you wouldn’t. Have my own way of laying the logs, and you’d pile ’em different—”
“And you’d bite my head off.”
“I don’t got that much to do. Nice point in the day, laying the night’s fire. Guess I enjoy it.”
She focused on her hands as she spanked off the grime. “You know, given that Remington was never very athletic . . . Might you ever consider venturing some appreciative comment, like, I don’t know, ‘You’ve really surprised me, my boy!’ or ‘Good show, kid!’ or even—”
“No, and I don’t plan to.” He’d cut her off with a forcefulness that took her aback. “You’re a mother, so you should know this yourself. It’s a right pain in the rear to have children always expecting you to pat them on the head for whatever they’ve a notion you ought to admire. You always got to bear in mind if you say the wrong thing—and ask Remy, I guess I said the wrong thing plenty—they’ll end up bawling in the corner and you’ll be sorry. So when they’re small, you indulge them. You magnet their crummy drawings to the fridge. But once they’re grown, they can’t expect to be treated like adults, and at the same time expect the empty compliments you chucked them when they were kids. Remy got to live with my real opinions, and suck it up. I was right impressed when that boy drew a line in the sand at the DOT. That respect’s freely given. But at my age, I should be past the point where just ’cause I’m his father I got to play pretend in case I hurt his feelings. No grown man over sixty should still be holding out for his daddy’s damned approval. Tell me, lamb chop, that you don’t also find this whole marathon malarkey tiresome as all get-out.”
She took a breath, and chose her words with care. “If it’s important to my husband, then I wish him the best. But as an answer to what to do with the next tranche of his life, I do find endurance sport a little . . . thin.” She was about to add more, and pulled up short.
“It’s vain,” Griff announced.
“The race at least gives him a goal.” This qualified as a brave stab at sticking up for her husband, surely. “I’ll speak for myself, but one’s sixties do seem difficult. I guess all ages are difficult. And maybe being your age is even harder. But for Remington and me, there’s just not that much to look forward to.”
“Anticipation’s overrated. For years I was looking forward to the days I’d get to sleep in. I been at liberty to sleep till noon since 1994, and still get up at five.”
“But our generation is likely to live into our nineties, if not past a hundred. Facing all those decades of decline—well, the future seems sort of horrible. Some days I walk around in a state of apprehension, start to finish—wondering what disease is lurking around the corner, and fretting about what I’m supposed to be doing with the tiny amount of time left before it hits. Remington might be going through a variation on the same thing.”
“He reckons he can stop the clock.”
“If not turn it backward. But leaving him to his delusions doesn’t cost us much.”
“A lie always costs something.”
“Well, we’ve only got three more months to go.” Serenata rose and fetched her coat. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She rustled through her bag. “I brought you a set of CDs. Though you’ll need to upgrade your technology soon, because this format is being phased out. It’s my most recent audiobook. A thriller, but you never seem too picky.”
“Can’t follow what’s happening most of the time, but you know I’ll finish it.” Griff had never been much of a reader, but most of his friends were dead. He enjoyed listening to her recordings for company, and to bask in the sound of her voice.
“People make a to-do about how unnatural it is to lose a child,” she reflected as he insisted on seeing her to the door. “But it must feel almost as unnatural to watch your own kids get old.”
“Oh, to me, you and Remy still look like new lovebirds, fresh as peaches.”
She raised a forefinger. “You watch that! A lie always costs something.”
On the stoop, she leaned down a bit so that he could kiss her goodbye on the cheek. “Um—one last thing,” she added. “In April, Valeria and her family are piling into their van, and then we’ll drive up and watch the marathon in Saratoga Springs together. If you’d like to come, too . . .”
“Why in God’s name would I want to travel all the way upstate to watch a bunch of fools jog past with numbers on their shirts and clutching little bottles of water?”
“Because one of the fools is your son. I’m sure your coming to applaud him at the finish line would mean a lot to him.” There. She’d done her duty.
Four
She should have been able to predict it. He was a serious, methodical person, and not long ago accustomed to shouldering significant responsibility for the physical functionality of a medium-sized American capital. She couldn’t even call the gravity with which he attacked the project disproportionate, when thanks to having responsibility for the physical functionality of a medium-sized American capital yanked out from under him, this ever-loving marathon was the biggest thing in his life.
Still, she’d been surprised by his slavish adherence to an online schedule that some ignorant chump could have just made up. Previous to that sadly seminal evening in July when her knees swelled big as grapefruits, she’d usually slipped off for her regular ten miles with so little ceremony that Remington wouldn’t even have noticed she was gone by her return. The trot alongside Normans Kill was a routine to be wedged into her day, after a recording session, scheduled with an eye to the weather, and the solitude it provided was primarily precious for the opportunity to think about other things (like, if she’d been a very different kind of mother, would matters with Valeria have turned out otherwise?). For her husband since October, whatever run or strength-building arose on the chart was his day, into which distractions like grocery shopping and visiting his father were required to fit—and strangely enough, so terribly often there wasn’t time. To her amazement, when she asked him once what he thought about when hitting the pavement, he’d responded without hesitation, “Well, running, of course.”