"No."
"Sorry," Susan said.
The squirrel lingered until it was clear we were a waste of time. Then he darted off.
"So it wasn't all about being tough guys," Susan said to me.
"It was never all about being tough guys," I said. "It was more about knowing what to do. They were big on knowing how to do what you needed to do. Read, fish, hunt, fight, carpenter, cook."
"Better to know than not know," Susan said.
I grinned. "They taught me about sex, quite early too."
"And well," Susan said.
Chapter 6
They'd read to me after supper.
Before supper, every other day, one of them boxed with me. They would put on the mitts and let me hammer away with one of them, my father or one of my uncles, calling out the punches.
"Left jab, jab, right cross, left jab. Jab. Jab. Left hook to the head . . . left hook to the body . . . right uppercut . . . hammer punch off the uppercut . . . right back fist."
The workout was exhausting, but it got me in shape pretty quick.
"Too many bullies in the world," Patrick used to say. "It's good to know what you're doing."
I liked the boxing. I was an energetic kid and they were all careful not to hurt me. And I liked the feeling that I might win a fight if I had one.
"This has got nothing to do with pushing people around," my father used to say. "This is all about a sound mind in a strong body. It's about being as complete as you can be, you know?"
I sort of knew.
Chapter 7
"And were you able to make use of your sex education?" Susan said.
"Nowhere near as soon as I wanted to," I said.
"But you had girlfriends," Susan said.
"I guess," I said. "Once I asked my father why he never got married again. âYour mother was the one,' he told me. âI met her early and lost her early. But I was with her for a while. I never met anyone else who was the one.' "
"But he dated a lot," Susan said.
"Sure," I said. "He liked women. He just never loved another one."
"So while you're growing up out west someplace and Susan Silverman nee Hirsch is growing up in Swampscott, Massachusetts, you're waiting to meet her?"
"Something like that."
"That's crazy," Susan said.
"I know," I said.
"But you believe it still," Susan said.
"Can't not," I said.
"Given my first marriage," Susan said, "I'd have been better off to wait for you."
Some pigeons came by to see if we were feeding anyone. We weren't and they waddled off. They should have checked with the squirrel.
"Your uncles feel deeply about her?"
"My mother? Yeah. In a different way they loved her as much as my father had."
"And you were her legacy."
"Yep."
"But you had girlfriends, before me," Susan said.
"Hell," I said. "I had to keep looking. I didn't even know your name."
Chapter 8
Jeannie Haden wasn't my girlfriend. She was a girl who was my friend. We spent a lot of time together. Things were bad at home for her. Her mother and father were getting divorced, and they fought all the time. Jeannie was scared of her father. She only went home when she had to.
"He's so mean," she used to say. "So mean."
She told me once her father had a bunch of places, "hideouts," she called them, scattered along the river, on islands. He didn't own the land. He just patched together some shacks here and there that he could go to and drink or whatever.
"He'd go there and get drunk and sometimes bring women there," Jeannie said. "I heard my mother and him fighting about it. So I snuck out and looked once. I was scared all the time. If he caught me, I don't know what he woulda done. But I had to see."
"Mighta depended on how drunk he was," I said.
"He's pretty drunk a lot," Jeannie said.
"I know," I said.
"Everybody in town knows," she said.
"I guess they do," I said.
"But they don't know about the hideouts," she said. "The one I saw was a filthy, stinky place. I don't know what kind of woman would go there."
"The kind that would go out with your pop, I guess."
"Ick," she said.
"Your mother liked him," I said. "She married him."
"She was pregnant with me," Jeannie said. "I think he was kind of handsome then."
"She must have liked him some, you know, to get pregnant," I said.
"Well, sure," Jeannie said.
"She his girlfriend at the time?" I said.
"Well, she wasn't a one-night stand, if that's what you're thinking," Jeannie said.
"I'm not thinking anything."
"My mother tries very hard," Jeannie said.
"I know she does," I said. "I didn't mean to say anything bad."
Jeannie nodded.
"I know," she said. "Poor Momma."
"She ever talk to you about it?"
"No."
"Then how do you know?" I said.
"I know when they were married," Jeannie said. "And I know when I was born."
I nodded.
"And it was him?"
Jeannie was outraged.
"You think my mother was a slut?"
"Just asking," I said. "Patrick says you don't ask questions, you don't get answers."
"The hell with him," Jeannie said.
I shrugged.
"Well, my mother wasn't sexing around, if that's what you're thinking."
"I wasn't thinking," I said. "I was just wondering. I mean, wouldn't you be glad to find out he wasn't your father?"
She started to cry.
Chapter 9
"Not what you had hoped for," Susan said.
"In those days," I said, "I knew less about why women cried."
"And now?"
"I understand why men and women cry," I said.
"The advantage of maturity," Susan said.
"Being young is hard," I said.
"Being grown is not so easy either," Susan said.
"But it's easier," I said.
She nodded. We were quiet for a moment.
Then Susan said, "You hunted."
"Sure," I said. "We all did."
"You don't hunt now," Susan said.
"No," I said.
"Because you disapprove?"
I shrugged.
"When we hunted, we hunted for meat," I said. "It was a way to feed ourselves. Had a vegetable garden too, and in the fall we'd preserve stuff for the winter. We were pretty self-sufficient."
Susan smiled.
"How surprising," she said.
"I liked self-sufficient," I said.
Susan smiled again, wider.
"I've always suspected that," she said.
"Are you making sport of me?" I said.
"Yes."
"I figured that right out," I said.
"I know," Susan said. "You're a detective . . . So the hunting wasn't just for fun."
"Not so much," I said. "Although it often was fun. Especially bird hunting. I liked working in the woods with the dog."
"Did you train her to hunt?" Susan said.
"No. It's probably genetic. They range like that and come back, without any training. And they'll point birds without training. But they have to be taught to hold the point. Otherwise they'll just rush in on the bird and flush it before you're ready. Before she was trained, Pearl would occasionally get one and kill it."
"Why not just let her do that? Kill them for you instead of shooting them?"
"It's harder on the bird, for one thing, and by the time you get there, the dog's got it half eaten."
Susan nodded.
"Was it ever scary?" she said.