Do I want Susan to get a job enough that I want somebody to die so she can? Bryce wondered. Put that way, the answer had to be no. But if someone who held a job that Susan could land did die, he wanted her to land it. She wasn’t one to put on a big show when things bothered her, but living here and living here and not getting a job and not getting a job was wearing on her. Had worn on her, in fact.
“Honey?” he said.
“What?”
“Do you want to move back to L.A. at the end of the academic year?” There. He’d said it.
She looked at him. “And do what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever. I’d find something, and so would you. You’d be a lot happier than you are here.”
“Don’t be dumb. Don’t be dumber than you can help, anyhow,” Susan said. “I’ll be okay. And you’re only a couple of years away from tenure. You want to throw that away because I’ve got a case of the blahs?”
At least she admitted she had them, which probably meant she had them bad. Most of the time, she denied everything. “No, I don’t want to do that,” Bryce answered. “But I don’t want to come back from campus one day and find a note on the kitchen table and you gone, either. That’s more important, as far as I’m concerned. Colin had that happen to him about the time Vanessa didn’t want me around any more.”
“Well, I’m damn glad she didn’t, because I like having you around,” Susan said. “And I’m not going anywhere, thank you very much. Except to the bathroom.” When she came back, she asked, “How’s Colin doing, anyway?”
“Last time I talked to him was about a week ago.” Bryce was willing to change the subject. If Susan said she wasn’t going anywhere, she wasn’t. It was when she didn’t say anything that you had to worry. He went on, “He says they’ll take the cast off pretty soon. He’s righteously ready for them to do that. He says he hasn’t been able to scratch where it itches since he got shot.”
“I believe that,” Susan said. “I broke my wrist when I was, I dunno, eight or nine. Fell off my bike—lucky I didn’t break my neck. It was summer, and it was hot. The itching and the sweating drove me nuts.” After a moment, she added, “I guess he doesn’t need to worry about sweating so much, even in L.A.”
“No kidding!” Bryce had learned about the shooting in a laconic note. He won’t shoot anybody else, Colin wrote. No thanks to me, but he won’t. That was very much his style. You knew police officers could find themselves in danger, but you didn’t think it would ever happen to anyone you knew. In all the time Bryce knew him, Colin had never fired his gun in anger. From what he said about this, he had now, but it hadn’t done him any good.
Then Susan said, “Tell you what—let’s see where we are at the end of the year. Maybe we’ll talk about it some more. Or maybe I’ll find something. Or—what’s that line you use?—maybe the horse will learn to sing. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“That’s it,” Bryce agreed. “Huzzah for old Herodotus!” So things weren’t even slightly good, then. He liked teaching at a college. He liked being married, too. If he had to choose one or the other… He figured he could find another job a lot easier than he could find another woman crazy enough to put up with him.
“I wish I didn’t think I was casting notes into the void when I sent out applications,” Susan said. “It’s like everybody and her granny is after every job there is. And with the Northeast all screwed up, half the profs there are looking for slots in places that still have power most of the time. That only makes things worse.”
Bryce started to say there might be jobs in places like that. He swallowed it. For one thing, those universities were getting the hindest of hind tit. For another, the towns they were in were a lot worse off than Wayne, Nebraska. That BBC commentator had got it much too right. All the USA’s bills, social and economic, were coming due, and no one had anything to pay them with.
Marshall heard the car pull into the driveway. He used to take that sound for granted. Now it was something out of the ordinary. He turned to Deborah, who was building something out of the ordinary—just what, only she knew—from Duplos. “Your mom and dad are home,” he said.
She nodded. “Daddy gets his arm back today.”
“Is that what he said?”
Deborah nodded again. “That’s what he said.” By the way she answered, if Daddy said it, that made it so. There had been a good many years when Marshall was convinced that, if his father said it, that made it BS. He didn’t automatically believe that any more. He did believe his dad had a particular way of saying things. This sounded like him, all right.
The key turned in the lock. Kelly opened the door. She came in, followed by Colin Ferguson. He was out of the armor plating he’d worn since he got shot. “Do you have your arm back, Daddy?” Deborah yelled.
“Sort of,” he answered. It was in a sling. He waggled his fingers and thumb, just to show he could.
“Way to go, Dad.” Marshall meant it. Even with a long sleeve covering his father’s left arm, it looked thinner than the right. Well, fair enough—it hadn’t done anything for a while.
“Power’s still working, right?” Dad asked. When Marshall nodded, his father went on, “Oh, good. First thing I need to do is scrub this poor hunk of dead meat with a wire brush. I’ve got all those weeks’ worth of dirt and sweat and dead skin under the cast. It’s grotty to the max. Past the max. So I’m heading for the shower.” He started upstairs, toward the bathroom off the master bedroom.
“Hang on to the banister,” Kelly said sternly.
Dad started to come back with something snarky. He started to, but he didn’t finish. Instead, he took a firm grip on the metal banister with his good hand. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and up he went. He would have sassed Marshall’s mother; Marshall was sure of it. How did Kelly get him to behave himself? However she managed, Marshall wondered whether they could bottle it. If they could, world peace would break out day after tomorrow.
The water in that upstairs bathroom started to run. When it stopped, Kelly said, “I’ll go up there and give him some help. He didn’t have an easy time putting on his shirt after they removed the cast. He can do things with his hand, but the arm isn’t much more than a deadweight. They said it would get better once he starts putting some strength in again.”
She hurried upstairs herself. By the way she talked, she was trying to convince herself along with Marshall. She wanted to believe everything would get back to the way it was before Dad got hurt.
People all over the country—hell, people all over the world—wanted to believe everything would get back to the way it was before the supervolcano erupted. And people in hell wanted mint juleps to drink. Satan wasn’t running the julep concession. The country and the world wouldn’t get back to normal for nobody knew how many years. Next to those two, the chances for Dad’s arm seemed pretty decent.
He and Kelly came down again. “Better?” Marshall asked.
“Better, yeah. Not good yet, but better,” Dad said. “It’s—a process. I scraped off the outer layers of crud, so the arm’s not as rank. Next time, I go after more of the onion.”
“You’ve got an onion on your arm, Daddy? Yuck!” Deborah said.
“I sure do, sweetie. I’ve got potatoes in my head, too,” Dad answered. That was what he called looking for a word but not being able to find it. He struck a pose, as well as he could with his bad arm back in the sling. “I’m a regular vegetable garden, I am.”