The day of the mocking, Allison’s shopping bag had tissue paper because she had bought a blouse she did not need. She thought about the blouse on the train home and not about the boy, and then about the boy, and then about the blouse again, and the blouse lost. She told her husband, who had not been there. He said kids surprise you. She said I didn’t let him surprise me. I told him he couldn’t. Her husband said you apologized. She said after. After was the part she would keep. Before was the part she would not repeat. She did not repeat it. That was the repair available to a woman in athleisure who had been wrong in a bright atrium and had said sorry to a child who said it’s okay because his mother had taught him the phrase.
Greg bought his son a basketball that week, as if running around were a correction he could purchase. The son played. The son also, months later, asked to stop at the station piano and did not get out of the car. Greg did not force it. Not forcing it was the only decent thing he did with the memory. He told the story in the bar-years of his son as if he had known the kid could play. He had not known. The half-grin had been ignorance with an audience. Ignorance with an audience was the thing Jonah had declined to serve. The backpack on the tile had been the decline. Greg was not owed a redemption. The story in the bar was already more than he had earned.
Denise’s sister asked why she still mentioned the boy. Denise said because I was holding Maya’s hand when I said the cruel sentence, and Maya heard it, and I had to give her a better sentence later or the cruel one would be the policy. The sister said that’s a lot of weight for a stranger. Denise said the stranger didn’t carry it. I did. She applied for the shift lead. She got it. Maya quit swim and kept the water on weekends, no clock. The clock had been the part Denise could cancel. She canceled it. The boy remained a backpack and a jaw in a story she told once in a car. Once was the right number.