I swallowed past the knot in my throat, cursing myself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“How could you forget that?”
“I remember,” I said, franticlike, hoping to keep him from recounting it. When it came to talk about using a coffin for a crib, once would do me.
Carl shook his head and turned silent for a long time—long enough for the angry furrows in his face to unfold back to misery. “He was a perfect baby boy, Duffy. Perfect nose. Perfect lips. Everything perfect except—”
“Don’t do this to yourself,” I pleaded.
“—except for he wasn’t breathing. But I still held him like he was. I kissed him like he was. I remember thinking everyone was wrong. I looked at him and thought, ‘No, they’re mistaken. They’ve lost their minds. He’s just quiet like his daddy is sometimes.’” His voice faltered. “But when the nurse took him and handed him to Jenny, and I saw her face . . .”
I wanted him so badly to shut up. “Carl, please—”
He balled his fist and dug it into the center of his chest. “It broke me, Duffy. I didn’t know what to do. I rushed home before they released her so I could drag the cradle to the curb and pack up all those little clothes for charity, because I thought it’d be easier if . . .” His reedy voice gave way to a sob, and he covered his face.
I put a hesitant hand on his back and patted, trying to calm him.
“I couldn’t fix it,” he bawled before coming up for air. “So you know what I did? I stopped trying. I stopped coming home from the pharmacy. I’d hide out in a corner booth at the Biddy Board Diner every single night.”
Somehow, I’d gotten to where I was hitting him too hard on the back, like I was trying to excise everything he was making me feel by beating the shit out of him. I had to consciously lighten my touch.
“You came around,” I offered.
His eyes met mine, but they seemed blank, like he was looking at something playing on the inside of his head. And he stayed like that, saying nothing, until it had me worried.
I stopped patting altogether. “Carl?”
“I came around,” he whispered to himself, “because I met Koko.”
He blinked a few times and then really looked at me, and somehow it felt like we’d just been introduced. I’d known him to be happily married fifty-two years. I had the number committed to heart, because people around here, they compared the longevity of their marriages like you would baseball stats. I always lost, since I had none of my own, but I’d tout his to compensate. It was a strange source of pride for me: my devoted roommate, my loyal friend. And, yes, I’d had all morning to get used to the idea that he’d cheated on Jenny, but hearing him admit it out loud was like a sucker punch. And even though I had no room to talk when it came to playing women fast and loose—God knows, I had my fun there—I suddenly wanted to send him up the river on account of it.
The thing is, Carl was like my brother—not because we’d grown up together but because we stayed old together—and ever since we’d met, there was one thing I had all sewn up about us: He was the better man. He was a God-fearing, good-natured, well-bred man. He was everything I wasn’t, and that’s why we made such a good pair. And now what? That bastard had gone and tilted our universe; he’d taken a dump on our enterprise. I wanted to beat the shit out of him for real. Yet I had enough sense to leave my hand on his back and shut up and nod like nothing more needed saying, because there was still Josie to contend with.
“It happened by accident,” Carl said, sensing my anger. “She waitressed at the Biddy Board, and I sat in her section because I knew she could use the tips.”
“You don’t have to explain,” I said flatly.
“I never stopped loving Jenny,” he said, his voice