Straight Man by Richard Russo Page A

This explanation would satisfy William of Occam, and it ought to satisfy me.
    “She hates my pace,” I explain, finishing my coffee and sliding the china cup and saucer toward the middle of the table.
    Russell is grinning again. “You go too fast or too slow?”
    “She won’t say,” I grin back at him.
    “You’re supposed to know,” Julie explains. “You’re supposed to pay attention.”
    I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that this remark is addressed to Russell more than me, and from the look on his face, I’d say he’s come to the same conclusion. There’s another long silence, and when the phone rings and Julie gets up to answer it, I’m glad, until I hear her say, “Yeah, he’s over here. You want to talk to him?” A moment passes. Apparently not. Julie listens, her face clouding over. “I’ll tell him,” she says, and hangs up. Russell raises a sympathetic eyebrow at me. He’s young, but he’s been married long enough to recognize unpleasantness.
    “You’re to go home,” Julie says. “Mom says Mr. Quigley’s been trying to reach you. She says you’ll understand.”
    Unfortunately, I do, though if Billy Quigley’s trying to reach me, that’s a pretty good reason to stay where I am.
    “Mom says he refuses to believe you aren’t home.”
    I stand up, slide my chair back. “When Billy’s home, he expects other people to be home too,” I explain, approximating my drunken colleague’s logic. Billy’s problem is he’s smart enough to know I don’t want to talk to him, but he’s too drunk to remember that I always talk to him whether I want to or not.
    “I’ll give you a lift,” Russell offers.
    “No,” Julie says, showing him the keys dangling from her pinkie. “You’ve had a rough day. Relax.”
    Russell takes this parting shot like a man, without flinching. I flinch for him. “Hank,” he says without getting up, “take care.” There’s danger everywhere, he seems to imply.
    We take Julie’s Escort.
    I’m about to break one of the few simple rules I live by and ask Julie if everything is okay between her and Russell, when she says, “So what’s with this job interview Mom’s got in Philadelphia?”
    “It’s not something she’s seriously considering,” I explain. “The principal at Railton High is supposed to retire after next year though. The school board could clarify the line of succession if they felt sufficiently motivated.”
    “What if they won’t? Would she take this other job?”
    “Aren’t you asking the wrong person?”
    We’ve stopped at the Presbyterian church intersection. Its spire is a beacon, and with the surrounding trees so bare, the scene lacks only snow to be straight out of Currier and Ives. Julie’s looking at it, without really seeing. We’re idling roughly at this literal crossroads, as if we’ve both lost our sense of direction. Anyone coming up behind us would probably conclude that we’ve taken a wrong turn and are lost, that we’re either hunched over a map or consulting the stars, the full firmament of which are winking above us, suggesting an infinite number of possible directions, when in fact there are only three, two of which are wrong, and we know which two.
    “What would
you
do? Leave your job at the campus?” When I don’t have an immediate answer, she adds, “Are you the right person to ask that?”
    “No, that would be your mother again.”
    What happens next surprises me. Without warning my daughter, her small hand balled into a fist, pivots in her seat and punches me as hard as she can on my left biceps. No, as it turns out it wasn’t as hard as she could. The second punch is harder, and it’s hard enough to cause me to catch her by the wrist before she can deliver a third.
    “You bastards,” she cries. “You
are
getting a divorce.”
    “What are you talking about, Julie?”
    She’s glaring at me, like I’m someone she’s concluded, over a lifetime, is not to be trusted. I let go of her wrist to