Keep Quiet(8)

“Well, we were driving home from the movie, and I was trying to have a conversation with him, but he was texting the whole time.”

“I don’t let him do that in the car.” Pam’s lips pursed. “It’s the same rule as at mealtimes. The principle is the same, whatever the location. He doesn’t get to ignore his parents or people around him. It’s just plain rude.”

“Right, I think so, too, but I didn’t want to lower the hammer—”

“Oh, be honest.”

She knows. Jake reddened, stricken. “What do you mean? Honest about what?”

“You wanted to be Fun Dad.” Pam snorted. “That’s why you didn’t lower the hammer.”

Jake tried to recover, but she was right. That was exactly what had happened. He never should have let Ryan drive. He’d made the classic mistake. He’d acted like a friend, not a parent. Pam would never have made such a terrible decision. He sighed heavily, feeling the weight of his conscience. “I know, you’re right. I know, I know, I know.”

“Honey, enough. Don’t beat yourself up.”

Jake couldn’t help it. If she only knew. He tried to return to the story, to spit it out. “So anyway, I didn’t tell him to stop texting. My plan was to win him over, to see if I could engage him on my own. Make it volitional, not a rule.”

“I hear you.” Pam regarded him impatiently behind her glasses. “And so…”

“And then, well, to go back a minute, when I picked him up at the movie, I noticed that there were two girls they were talking to.”

“Girls?” Pam lifted an eyebrow.

“Yeah, so while he was texting, I started to ask him about them, who they were and how they came to be at the movie. I was trying to make conversation, to get something going.” Jake was making it up as he went along, but Pam’s manner had changed from impatient to intrigued.

“So what did he say? I didn’t know there were girls going to the movie, or that they were meeting girls there.”

“I didn’t get an answer. But wait”—Jake caught himself—“if I tell you what happened, you can’t talk to him about it.”

“Why not?”

“If you say anything, he’ll never confide in me again, and that would defeat the purpose of my going to pick him up in the first place.” Jake realized suddenly that if he could get Pam not to bring up the subject with Ryan, then the boy wouldn’t have to lie to her. “Let us work it out, him and me. I think we did by the end, so let me keep at it.”

“Okay, Coach.” Pam rolled her eyes, amused. Her hands went to her ears, fingering the diamond studs he had given her, checking the backs to make sure they stayed on, a nervous habit. “So, as you were saying…”

“Well, all he would tell me about the girls was that they were from school and…” Jake stopped short, not wanting to tell her about the girl from Texas that Ryan had asked out. “Anyway, when I asked him another question, he kept texting, and I heard him mutter under his breath, ‘It’s none of your business.’”

“That is so disrespectful!” Pam’s mouth dropped open. “He gets that from Caleb, you know. I hate that kid. He’s a bad influence.”

Jake bit his tongue. Pam was more right than she knew. “Ryan says he didn’t say it, but I swear he did, and we got in a fight. I told him I thought he was being fresh and entitled—”

“Hoo boy.” Pam’s eyes flared.

“—and he told me that he was too old to be reporting his personal life to his father, and he shouldn’t have to account for everything he did, and we yelled at each other.”

“And he cried? He never cries.”

Jake told himself to remain calm. Pam may have been a Ryan expert, but she didn’t know he smoked marijuana and she would disapprove heartily. He had tried pot in college, and she hadn’t even tried it. His wife took seriously the fact that she was a judge and had sworn an oath to uphold the law. Plus she believed marijuana turned kids into underachievers, which in her mind, was practically criminal. Jake reminded himself to get back on track with the story. “He cried from the stress, I guess. I shouted at him. I lost my temper.”

“You?” Pam blinked. “You never lose your temper.”

“I do sometimes.”

“Okay, whatever.” Pam shrugged, but Jake didn’t want to remind her of the night he’d lost his job, when he’d thrown his laptop across the kitchen and cracked the screen. It wasn’t even under warranty.

“Anyway, he pushed my buttons.”

“Did you call him names? Remember, you’re not supposed to call names.”

“Of course not, I don’t call names.” Jake knew from therapy that name-calling was against the rules, like the Geneva Convention of marriage.

“I don’t understand something. Was this in the car or the diner?”

“Was what?” Jake lost his train of thought again. He kept thinking of the woman, how horrible she had looked, lying there.

“The fight,” Pam was saying. “Did you have it in the car or the diner?”

What diner? “In the car.”

“After a fight like this, you went to the diner?”

Jake realized it sounded implausible. “Yes,” he answered anyway.