Chapter 8.

A hit to his breadbasket knocked Frank’s wind out of him. He flailed, eyes popping open to a small freckled face nestling on his chest, giggling. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

Frank chuckled, messing his five-year-old grandson Ben’s blue-black hair, and asked, “Hey, kiddo, what brings you here?”

“We’re going to the orchestra with you,” Ben said, pronouncing his l’s and r’s like w’s. “Peggy’s playing violin at Serious Hall.”

Frank belly-laughed. “Not ‘Serious’ Hall, ‘Severance’ Hall. Can you say ‘Severance?’”

“Sure. Severus.”

“No. Try again,” he said, and then broke the word into clear, easy-to-digest syllables: “SEV-ER-ANCE.”

“Severance.”

“Atta boy.” Ben slid to the ground, glowing with pride, and Frank stood. “Now let’s go see your Gram.”

They walked through the dining room where Peggy, an elfish wisp of a girl, struggled to lift a baby carrier onto the solid oak table. Frank swooped in, hoisting it, and unclasped Ben’s brother, Ted. Frank kissed Ted’s forehead, easing him to the ground. The lad toddled after Emer, a calm terrier mutt, his hand opening and closing as if grasping for her, and towed a doting Peg playing mother behind.

Frank rolled back on his heels, patting his belly, content, thinking, Kids.

“What happened Frank?” Maddy stood in the breezeway door, short and stout but stylish in her dark print dress, concern flooding her ocean-blue eyes.

He lifted his tea-towel-wrapped hand, which held a bag of melted ice. “This?”

“Well, I meant your truck, but that too.”

He raised a finger, motioning her to wait a minute, and turned to his grandchildren. “Hey, Peg.”

She turned, her bright face eager. “Yeah?”

“Would you take your cousins outside so Gram and I can talk?”

“Sure Gramps,” she said. Ben shot out the door. Peggy hooked Emer to her dog-run before helping Ted outside.

“And keep Ben clean,” Maddy said, shaking her head, “kid’s a mud magnet.”

Once alone, Maddy filled the teakettle and fired the burner while Frank spoke about Howard screwing Otto, the fisticuffs with Bo, and discovering the vandalism. She was a good listener, so listened in silence as Frank spoke, her demeanor serious.

When he’d finished, she sighed. “Will insurance pay to fix it?”

He hung his head. “I reckon so, but ain’t positive. Tried to call Pat’s office,” he said, referring to their son, Ben and Ted’s father, “but got no answer.”

Maddy smiled, nodding towards the backyard. “No one there. Sheila and Pat are in Toledo for a wedding. Their sitter got sick, and we got the boys.”

“Ah, the gray-haired daycare to the rescue.”

She grinned. “That’s us.”

In silence, Frank replenished the ice, fastening it to his fist with the towel.

She sighed, her gaze drifting from his iced-down hand to the kids visible through the rear window. “A fistfight, and trying to sort out labor troubles with a hard-headed, hard-hearted man like Howard Rourke at your age? I mean, you’re sixty-six, you can retire.”

“Come on Maddy,” he said, his blood pressure rising, “we’ve been through this. Peggy’s bright, like her mom, so she’ll need college tuition, and things like these violin lessons aren’t cheap.”

Maddy’s face softened to a warm smile and she laid her hand on his cheek, caressing. “Frank, we’ve got more than enough. Sure, we ain’t Rockefellers, but the house is paid off, no car notes or credit card debt, and we got how much money squirreled away?”

Somber, he leaned forward, staring into his palms. “It ain’t just money. I make a difference, fighting the good fight... like this Otto business, for instance.”

Her eyes soft, she removed her hand from his cheek. “You know, Saint George and the union were around before you, they’ll survive you leaving.”

“Point taken,” Frank said, wanting to continue, to share from a deep place but stymieing the impulse.

Truth was, Frank continued working because death terrified him. His father had died at sixty-eight, three years after retiring. It was a horrible death, his memory going bit-by-bit. At the end, he’d forgotten everyone and everything and sat like a vegetable, sipping soup and smoking. Frank did not want to follow his dad, diminishing in death. He wanted to die with his boots on.

He longed to share this with Maddy, but couldn’t. Hell, he couldn’t even tell Father Klein, the best priest he’d ever known, so Frank chastised himself for cowardice. To hide his discomfort, he stood, turned off the whistling teakettle, and poured water over tea bags for Maddy and himself.

He shuffled to his chair in front of the Hi-Fi which blared BB King. From the kitchen, Maddy sighed as if an enormous weight pressed on her shoulders. Somehow, this annoyed him, so he stifled a derisive groan while setting the steaming tea on the coffee table to cool and pulled the ornate brass spittoon Maddy insisted he use indoors from its nook. Listening to ‘The Thrill Is Gone,’ he gnawed off a plug and leaned back, nodding to the music as the tobacco sharpened his mind, waiting for his tea to cool.