Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,55

fights. What started as “Stop turning up the heat” would result in her shouting, “You don’t care about me!” and would usually veer into crazy territory from there, about how I obviously didn’t care about her because I was having an affair.

The snow is wet and heavy, the kind that causes heart attacks when old folks try to clear their own driveways.

Early in my career we had a huge morning snowstorm, and some photographers went out to shoot a photo for the standard front-page weather story. One of them took an ordinary shot of “man shovels driveway,” with the snow flying dramatically off the shovel. Later in the morning, I fielded a strange call.

It was the man’s neighbor. Just minutes after that picture, the man had dropped to the ground with a heart attack and was not expected to live. The neighbor had seen the photographer taking the picture and had the presence of mind to call and beg us not to run it.

We replaced the picture, and the man died later that day, in the hospital.

I stop to lean on my shovel, panting with effort, and remember watching Dylan as he got swallowed up by the school doors.

“Mike!”

Mallory is on the porch, wearing one of my old heavy coats. As I look up, she picks her way down the slick steps. “Mike, I hate to bug you, but . . . would it be okay if you drove me home for a change of clothes? I can’t keep wearing your sweats, and I don’t think Casey wants me raiding her closet. Not that I could fit in her Gymboree pixie clothes anyway.”

“Mal.”

“Oh, come on, I’m kidding.”

I would like to have Casey drive her, or even Angel, with her learner’s permit, could technically do it. But the roads are terrible.

“C’mon, Mike. I just want to grab some clothes and a toothbrush. Is that so unreasonable?”

“Fine. Let me at least clear a path, here.”

I put the shovel back on the porch, and Mallory comes out the door with her purse.

“I’ve gotta tell Casey . . .”

“I told her,” Mallory says, brushing past me on the way to the car. “She’s fine.” Mallory plops herself in the passenger seat. “Didn’t this used to be your dad’s?”

“My mom’s, actually.”

“Oh, that’s right. I remember.”

My mom’s old Honda. She never wanted anything flashy, despite my dad’s love for his SUV, so she tended to drive a Honda until my father would deem it too old and buy her a new one.

Then he’d give it to me, so I’ve been driving my mother’s hand-me-down Hondas for years.

I hate this goddamn car and everything it means. But I don’t want to have to choose between paying for band camp or making a car payment.

“You’ll have your own car one day,” Mallory says, patting my knee as I crank up the cold engine.

This is a rare peek for me inside Mallory’s apartment. Usually I’m in the car, and the kids go in or out the front door guided by Mallory, when she’s home, when she’s not “ill.” No reason I don’t go up to the door, I just don’t, and everyone seems to like it that way. Never the twain shall meet.

The inside of Mallory’s apartment looks like Mallory’s dorm room circa 1993.

Cast-off clothing covers every surface. She’s peppered the walls with cheap posters depicting landscapes and sunsets. The ceiling of the living room is covered with greenish plastic stars, the kind that glow in the dark when you shut the lights off. There’s a bead curtain between her living room and hallway. It rattles as she pushes through it toward the back.

Strewn on the floor are some toys I’ve never seen, which must be Jewel’s. This rankles, to know that she has a life I’m not part of, even if it’s only some of the weekends.

“Sit down!” Mallory calls from within the apartment, presumably her bedroom, where she’s packing a bag. “Make yourself comfortable!”

I wander into the dining area, just a nook off the living room, really.

She’s got framed photos of the kids on the wall, their eight-by-ten school photos, and I notice that these are the photos from the year she moved out. I know she has the new ones, I always make sure she gets some at my own expense. Is it laziness that prevents her from putting the fresh pictures in the frame? Or is it nostalgia for a time when we were all together?

There are snapshots half spilling out of a photo-place envelope