that we never discuss business at home, but while we’re on a case, we break the agreement pretty much every night. Tonight is no exception, and during dinner she tells me about her initial efforts to investigate the life of Troy Preston.
Mostly working with her own contacts, the picture she’s getting of Preston is not a positive one. Word has it that he failed an NFL drug test last season. NFL policy is to put the failed player on probation and mandate counseling. The infraction remains secret until the second offense, at which point there is a four-week suspension. The prosecution’s postmortem blood test on Preston indicated that he would have failed another test had one been scheduled any time soon. That’s not something he needs to worry about now.
The Jets, according to Laurie’s sources, were very worried about Preston and felt that drug use was responsible for his mediocre performance last season. He was never more than an adequate reserve anyway, and with his knee injury he was in danger of being cut from the squad this year.
After dinner we go into the living room, put on an Eagles CD, open a bottle of chardonnay, and read. I had run a Lexis-Nexis search on Kenny, which through the miracle of computers allows me to access pretty much everything that has been written about him. Edna has pared it down to everything not related to game performances, leaving me with a thick book of material to go through.
Laurie reads a mystery, one of probably a hundred she reads every year. It surprises me, because solving mysteries is what she does for a living. I’m a lawyer, and trust me, when I have spare time, you won’t catch me reading The Alan Dershowitz Story.
Tara takes her spot on the couch between us. Music seems to put her in a mellow mood, which Laurie and I augment by simultaneously petting her. My assigned zone is the top of her head, while Laurie focuses on scratching Tara’s stomach.
Laurie and I haven’t discussed her possible move back to Findlay since the night of that stupid eclipse. I keep forming sentences to address it, but none of them sound right while taking the route to my mouth, so I don’t let them out.
“This is so nice,” Laurie says with total accuracy.
I need to let her feel how nice this is without saying anything about the possibility of her leaving and ruining it. I have to let her deal with this on her own; my advocating a position is not going to help. “It is nice,” I agree. “Completely nice. Totally nice. As long as you and I and Tara live here in New Jersey, we will have this permanent niceness.” In case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m an idiot.
“Andy…,” she says in a gentle admonishment. Then, “I do love you, you know.”
“I know,” I lie, since that is no longer something I know. I’ve pretty much broken it down to a simple proposition: If she stays, she loves me; if she leaves, she doesn’t.
Usually, we have CNN on as background noise, but lately, we’re unable to do that because their policy seems to be “all Kenny Schilling, all the time.” Nobody on these shows has any knowledge whatsoever about the case, but that doesn’t stop them from predicting a conviction.
I get up and walk around the house, bringing my wineglass with me. I grew up in this house, then lived in two apartments and two houses before coming back here. I could barely describe anything about those other places, yet I know every square inch of this house. Even when I wasn’t living here, it was completely vivid in my mind.
No matter what I look at, the memories come flooding back. Wiffle ball games, playing gin with my father, stoopball, trying a puff of a cigarette in the basement, eating my mother’s cinnamon cake, having the Silvers, our next-door neighbors, over to watch baseball games on TV… my history was played out here. I left it behind me once, and I won’t do so again.
I am painfully aware that Laurie’s history is in Findlay. Not in a house, maybe, and I’m sure that her memories aren’t as relentlessly pleasant as are mine. But it is where she became who she is, and she’s being drawn back to it. I understand it all too well.
I need to stop thinking about it. She will make her decision, one way or the other, and that will be