they’re at LeBron James’s favorite place for burritos, like anybody cares.”
“I’d love to try LeBron’s favorite burrito place,” Andy said, raising one hand.
“Not helpful,” Dean told him, pointing one finger. Andy smiled and sat back in his chair. “Anyway. It starts out like, ‘Dean Tenney is stuffing big fat pieces of industrial fried chicken into his maw while a sports reporter tries to get him to talk about how much he hates sports reporting.’ ”
“That’s what they asked you about?” Evvie asked.
“They didn’t have to,” Angie said. “The TV in the bar was showing his favorite commentator.”
“Pete Danziger,” Stuart said darkly.
Evvie’s father gave a dismissive snort. “Oh, that idiot.”
“Thank you, Frank,” Dean said. “See? Frank agrees with me. Danziger’s a cable sports anchor. And an asshole.”
“Dean!” his mother protested, but with a smile. “Kell, I apologize for my son.” Kell waved her hand and took another sip of wine.
Dean went on. “It was maybe three years ago, and they were talking about this whole thing where Domenico Garza, who plays for the Mets, hit a home run, and he celebrated by doing this chest-bump with Florido Marquez. All these old guys got all bent out of shape, they said he was trying to show up the pitcher or whatever. And Danziger was talking about how players should be respectful, and I told the reporter nobody would have freaked out about it if Garza and Marquez were white.”
“I’d believe that,” Evvie said.
Dean sat up a little, like his body remembered the annoyance of it. “If Domenico Garza is named James Leo Francis Patrick Houlihan, you can bet your ass nobody decides he’s being disrespectful. Then he just loves the game. That’s what I told the guy, and they printed it.”
“Danziger didn’t love it,” Dean’s dad said.
“Yeah, well.” Dean smiled thinly. “He got to report later that I threw four wild pitches in one game, so I think that made up for it.”
Silence whooshed in under the doors and through the cracks around the windows. “I was proud of you,” Angie finally said. “You were saying what you thought was right. That’s why people love interviewing you. You tell the truth.”
“Like about the environment,” Stuart said.
“Oh, the environment!” Dean’s mom put her hand over her heart.
Evvie leaned forward. “Really.”
Dean leaned back, groaning like he was nursing a hernia, but Angie nodded. “He was on the red carpet for a movie that Melanie was in—she was his girlfriend at the time, very nice. And they asked what he wanted to say to his fans. And he said, ‘Climate-change denial is flat-earth idiocy for people who want us all to drown.’ ”
“ ‘Hardheaded dolts,’ ” Stuart corrected. “ ‘For hardheaded dolts who want us all to drown.’ ”
“That’s right,” Dean’s mom said fondly. “Hardheaded dolts.”
“I didn’t know you’d gotten so political,” Kell said to Dean.
“Hell with politics. I just don’t want to die in a war over the last gallon of water in Mad Max’s kiddie pool.”
Evvie caught the eye of Dean’s mother, and they decided together not to laugh. “Dean is happy we’re all here to celebrate our considerable blessings,” Angie said, raising her glass in the general direction of her son.
“You’re all a bunch of jerks,” Dean said, smiling as they toasted him.
* * *
—
Frank eventually put the football game on TV, and conversations rose and fell in the living room and the kitchen. At one point, Frank got so riled up over a touchdown that he knocked a whole dish of guacamole onto the floor. Evvie swooped in from the kitchen with paper towels almost before he could ask.
In the kitchen, Evvie stood beside Kell and peeled potatoes. Kell was a feeder, a pourer, a hugger, and Evvie had watched during the last several years as her chic short hair got grayer and her chowder got better. She’d lost her husband very young, when Andy was only a baby, and once Andy and Lori had Rose and Lilly, she’d decided it was worth giving up her friends in Colorado—Stuart and Angie among them—to be in Maine with family. And so she’d moved to Thomaston and bought this great little house. It had a permanent bedroom for her granddaughters, for whom fruit was mandatory at Grandma’s but vegetables were not.
Kell peppered Evvie with questions about Dean, no matter how many times she explained that it was purely a landlord-tenant relationship. This felt not exactly true now, but the last thing she needed was to pique the curiosity of a woman whom it had been so hard