Page 27 of Empty Net
I fill the space, which is not like me.
"He went back for six months after," I say. "Not to drive. Just to watch. Sat in the bleachers during public skate and complained the new guy was flooding too heavy."
Caleb's smile is small. "Was he?"
"Yes."
"Naturally."
"You can tell by the corners."
"The corners?"
"Bad drivers leave too much water in the corners. Kids catch edges there. You have to know where the ice fails."
The sentence leaves my mouth and sits between us.
You have to know where the ice fails.
Caleb looks at me. Not at my hip. Not at my hands. At me.
"And do you?" he asks.
There is an easy answer. Yes. On the ice, yes. In the body, increasingly. In life, not until recently. The failures have been under me for years and I have been skating the pattern anyway, pretending the corners are fine because I can still make the turn if I adjust early enough.
I do not say any of that.
"Usually," I say.
He accepts this. Caleb accepts partial truths like he knows they are the only kind I can hand over without bleeding on them.
We finish eating. Or stop eating, in the case of the wrap, which has lost its claim on being food. Caleb folds the Skittles wrapper into a small square. Precise. Controlled. A man making order out of sugar trash.
"Your father sounds patient," he says.
"He was quiet."
"Those overlap sometimes."
"Sometimes they don't."
Caleb nods. "True."
The empty arena settles around us. Somewhere in the concourse, a cart rolls. Far above, a light flickers and steadies. The covered ice waits under its surface.
I think about my father in the bleachers watching another man drive the machine. I think about Isaac Hale at the blue line, fast and afraid to be wrong. I think about Caleb above the rink behind glass, and Caleb beside me now, close enough that I cansee the place where his glasses have marked the bridge of his nose.
"I should go," I say.
"Okay."
He does not sound disappointed. He probably is. The not-sounding is kindness.
We stand. My hip objects. I keep my face still. Caleb keeps his eyes on the aisle. More kindness. It is getting harder to pretend I do not know what to do with it.
At the top of the section, he stops beside the trash can. I throw away the wrap. He throws away the Skittles wrapper.
"For the record," he says, "that was not dinner."
