Saturday night. Nina wore a new green peasant blouse with flared sleeves. Kit had a smaller version of the same garment in burgundy. Broker cleaned up as best he could, left his work coat on the hook and dug a decent leather jacket from the closet, ran a comb through the shaggy hair curling over his collar.
Then he took the newly coiffed girls out on the town. Such as it was. The Angler’s Inn was the only good restaurant that stayed open during the winter. It was located off the frontage road, near Glacier Lodge. The dining room was closed, but the bar side was open and served an abbreviated menu.
They entered the old eatery tentatively, like a family venturing into church after a long absence. Only two people sat at the bar; half the booths were filled. The TV was off. A ceiling of antique stippled tin stretched down the long room, etched gray with generations of nicotine, grease, and wood smoke from the open-hearth fireplace. Kit walked solemnly, hugging her bunny, inspecting the gallery of photos and taxidermy on the walls-musky, walleye, a wolf. A moose head projected over the bar like an incoming antlered spaceship.
Like a shrine to the departed twenthieth century, an old Wurlitzer jukebox pulsed and bubbled red and green in the back of the room. Kit had never seen one before, so Nina led her to the music box with a handful of quarters. Broker sat in a booth watching as Nina helped Kit load up songs. The waitress brought water and menus.
At a moment like this, he could be as sentimental as the next guy. He allowed himself a vacation from suspicion about the future; enjoying looking at his wife standing next to his daughter. Nina in the new green flowing blouse, one hand planted on her hip, filling out a pair of Levi’s 501s like a north-country roadhouse dream.
The women returned, and they ordered food as the songs came on. Some Gary Puckett. Jay and the Americans. Deliberate flourishes echoing back to their tornadic courtship.
“Come a little bit closer”…like that.
Midway through grilled walleye and moose burgers, he put the idea in play with a casual remark: “You know, I could call Dooley, have him get a housekeeper in to clean up the Stillwater place.”
Nina looked up from her plate, blew a strand of hair away from her eyes, nodded, and said, “Give me another couple days to be sure. But I’m for that.”
Seeing her mom and dad grinning at each other, Kit bounced in her seat. “You mean?”
“That’s right, Little Bit,” Nina said. “We’re going home.”
As they gabbed about Kit’s friends on North Third Street, and swimming and piano, Broker rode the happy thermals. Nina mentioned that she and Kit had bumped into Teddy Klumpe and his mother when they were shopping.
“How’d that go?” Broker asked, momentarily snapping out of his glide.
“It was icky,” Kit said. “Mom was so nice to her.”
Nina shrugged. “She’s one uptight lady, so yeah, I made nice. Bought the kid a T-shirt to replace the one that got bloodied up-”
“When he started a fight, and I got suspended. It was very icky, Dad,” Kit said emphatically.
Broker grinned as Nina and Kit went back and forth on the etiquette of the meeting. The waitress cleared their plates, and Broker asked for the dessert menu.
Nina was trying to explain to an eight-year-old the difference between necessary and unnecessary conflict. Kit scowled, furrowing her brow, looked to her dad for assistance.
Broker made a stab. “Remember our little talk about laws of human nature?”
Kit swelled her eyes. “Are we gonna throw more rocks in the air? Oh, boy.”
Nina masked her laugh with her hand.
“Well,” Broker said, “another basic law is there’s two kinds of people-”
“Yeah,” Kit said, “there’s girls and there’s fat creepy boys like Teddy-”
“Close. More like there’s people who like themselves and people who don’t like themselves. I don’t think Teddy likes who he is. See, it’s important to know the difference. Because the people who aren’t comfortable in their skins make you miserable.”
By way of response, Kit held up her bunny, holding its stubby arms over its ears. Broker turned to Nina and asked, “Whatta you think?”
“I think I’ll have the German chocolate cake and ice cream,” Nina said, suppressing a snicker.
“I give.” Broker tossed up his arms. The waitress returned and he ordered German chocolate layer cake and ice cream all around.
A little later, as they drove back to the small house on the lake, he found himself sneaking looks at Nina and pondering his glib, simple cliche: What goes up must come down.
Broker built a fire in the Franklin stove, and they played two rounds of Sequence, a board game Kit liked, on the kitchen table. Kit won the first game.
“Don’t pull your punches,” Broker hectored Nina as he reshuffled the cards and they sorted the plastic chips.
“Hey, I didn’t,” Nina said, a little testy.
“Mom doesn’t like to lose,” Kit said.
Kit won the second game and yawned. Haircuts, shopping, dinner, talk of going home, dessert, and the fire had worn her out. They put her to bed and returned to the kitchen and the embers of the fire. Sat across the table from each other.
Nina took out a cigarette and instead of lighting it manipulated it in the fingers of her right hand, like a prop in a dexterity exercise. Finally she set the cigarette vertical on the table, balanced on its filter. Then she poked her finger and knocked it over. Looked up at him.
“You got something you want to say, say it.”
Trying to keep the mellow mood going, he shook his head. “It can wait.”
She studied him for a moment. “You’re thinking, When is she going to call the doctor at Bragg, huh.”
“I guess,” Broker said. There it is.
“Pretty soon,” she said with a sliver of the old steel in her voice. “And then we’ll have a long-overdue talk. You and me.” She grimaced ever so slightly, looked away, and picked up the cigarette, started out of reflex to put it in her lips.
Broker felt the tiny slippage in the air, the day starting to slide.
But then she snapped her wrist and darted the cigarette across the table into the glowing coals in the stove. “You know,” she said, giving him that sidelong glance, “I wouldn’t blush if you wanted to fool around again tonight. Unless Griffin snapped your dick string lifting those weights this morning…”