Frank Keane opened a box on the night he turned seventy and found the only gift his son would give him that year: a life with the lights on.
Margaret Keane refused the song.
That refusal is the last true toast of the marriage.
Frank’s sister from Akron called Margaret three days after the party.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
Margaret believed her. The sister was a talker. Talkers do not keep Dayton.
“I keep thinking about the balloons,” the sister said.
“Don’t think about the balloons.”
“What should I think about.”
“Nothing that needs me to comfort you.”
The sister said she understood. She did not, fully. She sent a casserole through a cousin. Margaret put it in the freezer beside Louise’s soup.
Patrick took his own children, later that fall, to a park and watched them on a slide and thought about Matthew at the grocery lot. His daughter asked why he was quiet. He said he was counting. She asked what. He said steps. It was a lie small enough for a park.
Margaret sold Frank’s blazer at a charity shop without telling him. He did not ask for it. He had worn it to be seventy. The blazer had stood up at the table and said mistake. She did not want it in the closet near the rose blouse. She kept the blouse. She wore it to lunch with Louise and Louise said you look like yourself. Margaret said I am trying.
Frank saw Matthew at a chain restaurant in Dayton in the second year. Josh refused to come. Matthew ordered fries and said Christine was dating a man who lived in the same zip code all week.
“Good,” Frank said.
“Don’t say good like you gave her that.”
Frank said nothing. He paid for the fries. Matthew let him. Letting him pay was not forgiveness. It was fries.