I can hear them talking about it through the thin walls of my converted closet, Adele’s badgering tone, imploring my father to call a meeting with Markham and point out all his years of success and experience. “Tell him that if he’s smart, he’ll make you the manager. Put the experience at the top of the heap.” I’m a smart kid, and I know that experience isn’t always the best card in the hand. Youth is. After all, youth rules, no old folks in the commercials.

My father’s reply is muted, his words mostly inaudible through the wall. Just one coming through: “Can’t.”

“Won’t is more like it.”

My father must be moving around the room, because suddenly I can hear his voice clearly. “We have the rents. It’ll be all right.”

Adele’s reaction to that is plain: “Not enough.”

“We don’t know that Markham will let me go. Let’s not worry.”

“That’s all right for you to say, but I have to run this house on your salary. It’s not easy. It’s never been enough. Don’t you think I want a little luxury now? A little improvement? Some of the things that I’ve been putting off for years? If he lays you off, how far do you think those rents will take us? They barely pay for the upkeep on that house. We’ll have to raise them. Bottom line. We raise the rents.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve overheard that conversation. Adele is obsessing on what she thinks is inevitable, while my father keeps his head buried in the sand. The discussions have moved out of their bedroom and into the kitchen, where the staple diet of conversation is the relentless conjecture: If Markham fires my father, how will we survive?

*   *   *

When Ronnie Markham began to show up at our house, my father did everything to encourage the friendship. Everything. In the end, Markham didn’t fire my father. I’ve never been able to decide if it was because of Paul’s friendship or my spectacularly bad date with Ronnie that kept my father employed until retirement.

*   *   *

The ambulance has arrived; the flashing lights bounce off the bedroom walls. I take Adele by the hand and drag her out of the room so that the EMTs can transfer my father’s inert body to a stretcher. Someone is trying to extract information from Adele, but, for once, she is silent.

Chapter 28

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