Page 25 of The Things We Never Say

“Sit down, come sit down again, Dad,” Rob said, and Artie went back to the easy chair, keeping his coat on, and his son talked with excitement about the concept of free will. “I think we have it, but not nearly as much as we think we do. Google it, Dad. See what people have said. And look up Carl Jung. He might be your man on this.”

Artie waved a hand. “You know I can’t read philosophers.”

“He’s a psychology guy, Dad.”

But Rob was so happy—Artie saw this—to have his father asking him about this.

“One other thing,” Artie said, holding out his finger. “Precognition. Do you know about that? I had a dream a week before I fell in the water about falling into the water, and it came absolutely true.”

“You did?” Both Francesca and Rob spoke this together.

“Yup.”

“Dad, you’ve got talents,” Rob said. “You’re moving between the universes. You know there’s a theory that everything is happening at the same time, that there is no time in the way we think there is.”

Artie let his son talk on about this, and then he looked down at his white socks sticking up from his old man black sneakers and said, “What about my white socks, you think they should go?”

Francesca said “No, Artie!” at the very same time that Rob said, “Don’t you ever stop wearing your white socks.”

Artie stood and said, “I gotta get going.”

And they all stood, and Rob said, “Dad, great talk.”

—

As Artie drove home, he kept thinking: It just isn’t true, it can’t possibly be true. He knew this. It was not true. But the sight of Reginald’s arrogant handwriting stayed with him. And then he thought: The boy never looked like me. And as he considered this, he slowly came to understand that what he had just learned was true. The boy had never looked like Artie. Tall and thin, he had his mother’s eyes, but not one thing did he seem to have from Artie. What came to Artie then was that Rob did not look like Reginald either, but he carried himself like Reginald. As Artie recalled watching Rob walking down the sidewalk just this afternoon, he could (now) see Reginald in the way the kid walked.

And yet Artie almost made a laughing sound a few times as he drove. It could not be true. True, not true. True, not true. He—on a certain level—did understand that it was true. That it could be true. But what a talk he had had with both of them! Also, it could not be true. This is what his mind was doing as he drove home.

As he held the steering wheel, he saw the car in front of him with its blinker on, and then the car turned and went down the exit. The blinker was like a gentle touch on Artie’s shoulder. Then it was gone.

—

At home, Artie brought out the plate that Evie had left for him in the refrigerator. He took the foil off and looked at two pieces of chicken, a plop of mashed potatoes, and some broccoli. He just kept looking at it. What do I do now? He thought this. And remembered Maria’s last words in the hospital: What are we going to do now, Mama?

He microwaved the plate of food and then sat at the kitchen table eating the meal slowly. He did not really taste the food, nor did he really want it.

When his wife came through the door—she shook her coat off and hung it up, all the while talking to him: “Honestly, that woman drives me crazy, the things she is doing to that family!”—Artie rose and went to meet her. When he looked at her, and he would never forget this, he saw, at the same time, a face more familiar to him than his own and the eyes of a stranger. He turned and walked away, sitting down in the big chair by the window. He thought then of Danny Marino’s father, that poor plumber.

“How was your day?” Evie asked, coming into the living room and sitting herself down in the old dark brown velvet chair. She fluffed her hair with her hand and crossed her legs.

Artie stayed silent for a moment. And then he said, “Fine. Not much new.”

“Classes were okay?”

“Yep. Oh yes.”

“Want to come in the kitchen and eat with me?” she asked then, and so Artie got up and went with her while she microwaved her own food, and he sat down across from her at the kitchen table. “Was this okay?” she asked, poking at a piece of broccoli.

“Was what okay?” He did not look at her.

“The food.”

“Oh yeah, yeah. It was great. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

Evie told Artie that he should make an appointment with the gardener to get their bushes wrapped for the winter, and Artie said, “Right, I’ll try and remember.”