She ate. The soup was too salty, which meant he had measured by hope. She did not correct it. Outside, a neighbor’s dog objected to a squirrel and then forgot the objection. The house held its evening noises: the clock, the refrigerator, the small click of the baseboard heat coming on. Emily told him the problem, not to boast, but because he liked the shape of a thing solved, being a man who had lived by measurement. She walked him through the twelve and the two. When she got to the inverse, he grunted in satisfaction, the same grunt he used when a joint went flush.
“Ninety-three,” he said, after she let him try the last division himself, slowly, the spoon set down, the fingers late and then loyal. “I’ll be damned. And the mother?”
“Cold, then amused, then something better than both. She has a card in my pocket. There’s a Saturday program in the spring. She won’t send my name unless I ask.”
Thomas nodded. He wiped his mouth with a napkin he had folded into a square, an old shop habit, corners aligned. “You don’t have to take it to make the afternoon worth the talking,” he said. “And you don’t have to refuse it to prove you love me. I can work a can opener. I can call you if I fall. I would rather call you from a house where you’re allowed to be more than my driver. That’s not me being noble. That’s me being tired of watching you make yourself smaller so I won’t feel like a burden. Burdens don’t get to have opinions. I still have opinions. It’s the best evidence the stroke didn’t finish the job.”