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  “The prevent defense,” said Dad.

  “A term from sports?” said Bizzy.

  “Yes,” said Dad.

  “And you think Ryan will understand it?” asked Bizzy skeptically.

  “He’s been my dad all my life,” said Ryan. “I understand most of his sports references.”

  Dad grinned. “You don’t,” said Dad. “But I’m touched that you think you do.”

  17

  When Ryan left Bizzy at the Horvats’ and came over to the Burke side of the house, Mom wasn’t home, but Dianne was.

  “It’s all over school,” said Dianne. “You and Bo-nana.”

  “Her name is Bizzy,” said Ryan. “Please don’t be annoying. I like it better when we don’t fight.”

  “What’s with that? I used to be able to get into a fight with you just by looking at you funny,” said Dianne.

  “I’m trying to grow up,” said Ryan.

  “How’s that coming?” asked Dianne.

  “Mostly okay,” said Ryan. “Don’t you have homework?”

  “Already done, while you and Bo-nana were off doing whatever you do when you’re pretending to walk her home.”

  “I actually walk her home, Dianne,” said Ryan. “I’ve got an assignment due in chem tomorrow.”

  “A pipe bomb?”

  “We don’t do explosives,” said Ryan. “What is it you want?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Not about Bizzy,” said Ryan. “I don’t owe any explanations to you or to her little brother.”

  “He may have a six-pack, but he’s such a tool,” said Dianne.

  “My opinion, too,” said Ryan.

  “You think I’m a tool, too? Does Bizzy?”

  “This may be hard to believe, Dianne, but we don’t actually discuss you.”

  “Never?” asked Dianne.

  “Not once,” said Ryan. “What’s your agenda here, Dianne? You can’t really be trying to pick a fight with me, because Mom’s not even here to see it.”

  “You’re being nice to me because Dad told you to.”

  “Dad and Mom have told us not to fight since we were little.”

  “So why did it work this time?” asked Dianne.

  Ryan didn’t know what would come from telling her. But why not? “He said that he wouldn’t give me a job until I could prove that I would get along with my coworkers. And he said that the proof I was ready would be if I could stop letting you goad me and just . . . not fight.”

  “So I’m part of your job application to Dad,” said Dianne.

  “Being able to control my temper is part of my job application,” said Ryan. “And here’s the weird thing. Since I stopped yelling at you and figuring out ways to make you sad or angry, I’ve discovered a remarkable thing.”

  “That life at home is boring now?”

  “That you’re nice. And funny sometimes. And I like watching rom-coms with you and Mom.”

  “So you decided not to be a man?”

  “So I decided not to be a jack-in-the-box that you can wind up and set off whenever you feel like it,” said Ryan. “I decided I wanted to be a guy who could be patient.”

  “But not for a job with Dad, now, right? Now you just want to be nice in order to impress Bizzy.”

  Ryan shook his head.

  “Don’t deny it,” said Dianne.

  “I’m not denying it. But being nice to impress a girlfriend is easy, compared with being nice to a little sister.”

  Dianne sat down on the sofa that in a couple of hours was going to be Ryan’s bed. “We need to talk, Ryan.”

  “We could have skipped the whole trying-to-get-me-to-fight-with-you routine,” said Ryan.

  “I needed to know if I could actually talk to you,” said Dianne.

  “So . . . something serious?”

  “Mom’s not here,” said Dianne. “We need to talk about Mom.”

  Ryan felt his gut twist.

  “Don’t panic,” said Dianne. “But Mom and Dad are splitting up, and it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I don’t have any more information than you have,” said Ryan.

  “I know,” said Dianne. “But I have information you don’t have.”

  “What? Mom doesn’t keep a diary, so you can’t have been reading it.”

  “Ryan, listen,” said Dianne, and now there was no teasing in her voice at all. “I have information that you don’t have because you’re a boy, and therefore you don’t notice anything, or if you do, you have no idea what it means.”

  Now he knew why she had tested his resolve not to fight. Because a statement like that would have set off a huge fight only a few weeks ago.

  “Okay,” said Ryan. “I accept that possibility. What did I either not notice or not understand?”

  Dianne indicated for him to sit down. He did, and they each twisted around on the couch to face each other.

  “When did they get mad?”

  “About a day before Dad moved out,” said Ryan.

  “And up till that day, did you notice anything different about them?”

  Ryan tried to think back, but it wasn’t as if he had his memories all organized into a calendar so he could remember what happened just before something else.

  “Dianne, just tell me, please. Don’t make me try to discover it in my own memory, because I’ll never be able to do it.”

  “I know, I’m sorry, I just—I’m sure of what I saw and what it meant. I just don’t know how it all connects up.”

  “Tell me,” said Ryan. “Because she’s going to come home, and I’m guessing that’s the end of this conversation.”

  “Okay,” said Dianne. “For about ten weeks before the big implosion, they were all lovey-dovey.”

  Ryan tried to think what that meant.

  “Dad would come home from work,” said Dianne, “and he’d go straight to Mom and hug her and kiss her.”

  “I always try not to see that.”

  “They weren’t subtle, Ryan,” said Dianne. “You saw it. You even made icky faces at me.”

  “I was younger then,” said Ryan. “I didn’t know what kissing was for.”

  “And now you do?” she asked.

  “Don’t get distracted,” said Ryan. “And, yes, now I do.”

  Dianne sighed, sat up straight, and then relaxed back into a confiding posture. “There was other stuff I noticed that I’m quite sure you didn’t. First, sometimes Dad would come up behind Mom and instead of just hugging her, he’d put his hands—”

  “Oh, please,” said Ryan.

  “Listen,” she said. “He’d put his hands on her abdomen.”

  Ryan realized that yes, he had seen that.

  “He wouldn’t say anything, but he’d lean his head in and nuzzle her neck while his hands stayed there. If you think, you’ll know what that meant.”

  “He loved her?”

  “During that same time, Mom started throwing up every morning. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Flu?” Ryan asked.

  “She was perfectly healthy after she ate dry toast and drank warm water. Not tea, not honey-lemon, nothing she drinks when she’s sick. Just dry toast and warm water in the morning.”

  “I don’t know what kind of coded message that information contains,” said Ryan.

  “Bizzy would know,” said Dianne.

  “But she isn’t here,” said Ryan.

  “Ryan, Mom was pregnant.”

  “She’s not pregnant,” said Ryan.

  “I know she is not pregnant. But she was pregnant. And Dad was glad about it.”

  “They would have told us,” said Ryan.

  “Eventually,” said Dianne. “But in health class, they tell girls stuff that they don’t tell boys. Like, what pregnancy mean
s and stuff. And one thing my health teacher said last spring really rang a bell. She said that when women are older, pregnancy is a lot riskier. Chances of having a baby with birth defects are much higher. And chances of a miscarriage. And she said that’s why older couples often don’t tell anybody they’re pregnant for a few months, because they aren’t sure it’s going to last. See?”

  “But Mom’s not that old.”

  “Late thirties,” said Dianne. “That’s a lot riskier than early twenties, like when she had us.”

  “Mid-twenties,” said Ryan.

  “Whatever,” said Dianne. “They didn’t tell us, but she was puking. That’s morning sickness. I could hear her in their bathroom in the mornings—my wall is right next to—”

  “I know where your room is,” said Ryan. “Was. And I heard it too, sometimes. It wasn’t subtle.”

  “Exactly. But after Dad moved out, did she ever throw up like that again?”

  “I don’t keep a calendar in my head,” said Ryan. “So just tell me. Did she?”

  “The pregnancy was over. She threw up in the morning about a week before Dad moved out. But not after that. Not at all that last week.”

  “And you were actually keeping track of that?” asked Ryan.

  “When I realized she was pregnant, yeah, sure, I was tracking it. You’ll never be pregnant, but there’s a decent chance I will, someday. Maybe I’ll be a puker, like Mom. If it just stops after a while, that’s a good thing to know. If pregnancy means I puke for two months, but then it stops.”

  “So you were tracking it.”

  “Last vomity morning, and then a week later, they have a huge fight, of which we do not hear a single word because it was the worst fight of their whole marriage and they didn’t want us to hear it.”

  “A silent fight, and the marriage is over.”

  “And Mother wasn’t pregnant anymore.”

  Ryan leaned back on the couch. “You think Dad did something to her that—”

  “No, moron,” said Dianne. “Think! You know Dad isn’t violent; you know he never hits us or her, no chance of that. Haven’t you ever heard of a miscarriage? Suddenly Mom’s not pregnant anymore. And a week later, Dad moves out.”

  Ryan sat there, processing this. “But if it wasn’t Dad’s fault, why did she kick him out? Why that crap about Dad caring about another family more than us?”

  “You think I haven’t been guessing, trying to guess how it all fits together? We know Dad wasn’t having an affair, we know he wasn’t taking care of another family, and a couple of days ago, it finally dawned on me what Mother meant when she said those nasty things.”

  “You always blamed Mom,” said Ryan.

  “I still do,” said Dianne, “but that’s not what this is really about. I’m trying to understand, and here’s my guess. Mom lost the baby, because, you know, late thirties. It’s just the odds. But Dad says to her, fine, babe, we’ll try again. We’ll get pregnant again.”

  “And Mom . . . what, she says no?”

  “I don’t know why, I don’t know what led up to it, but I think maybe Mom says, let’s not try, it’ll just be another miscarriage, I’m too old, I don’t want to try, we’ve got these two kids and that’s fine, that’s enough.”

  Ryan thought that sounded believable.

  “But Dad wants to have a family with three children. Instead of this family with two children.”

  It finally dawned on Ryan. “He cares more about a different family. The version of the Burke family that has three children, instead of this one.”

  “So Mom mutters, ‘He cares about another family more than this one.’”

  “So Mom isn’t lying, but the other family doesn’t actually exist. It’s the family Dad wants, the one Mom doesn’t want to try for anymore.”

  “Maybe that was really a big deal for Dad. Maybe having more than two children was important.”

  “It was a long time to wait between you and Baby Three.”

  “Maybe there were miscarriages before. Back when I hadn’t had health class yet, and we were both too young and ignorant to realize Mom was pregnant. I mean, maybe this was the third or fourth or fifth miscarriage, and Mom was done trying.”

  “And Dad wasn’t.”

  “From there,” said Dianne, “I don’t understand what happened. But you know Mom. Even if Dad is being all understanding, she sees that he’s really hurt and disappointed, and you know how that—”

  “Mom gets mad.”

  “She gets mad because she thinks his being hurt is an attempt by him to manipulate her, because when she acts hurt, it is an attempt to manipulate somebody. Us, or him.”

  “Story of our happy family life,” said Ryan.

  “So the fight is because he isn’t happy enough about knowing she’s not going to try for another baby.”

  Ryan continued her scenario: “So it doesn’t matter that he would probably have accepted it in the long run. She starts being furious because he isn’t happy with just two kids, he wants to be with a larger family and—”

  “And she gets so mad she says, ‘Maybe you ought to go live where you don’t have to keep seeing this disappointing family all the time.’” Dianne’s imitation of Mother’s sarcastic voice was spot-on.

  “I can’t see Dad moving out because Mom had a miscarriage,” said Ryan.

  “But can you see him moving out because Mom was being a total . . . fishwife about him still wishing for more children? If she tells him to move out? If she tells him, if you want a big family, there are plenty of women who’ll pop out as many babies as you want, pop pop pop.”

  Ryan couldn’t help but laugh at Dianne’s imitation of Mom saying that. Still, “This is so not fair,” said Ryan. “We don’t know what she said, if she said anything at all like that. We don’t know anything.”

  “Correct,” said Dianne. “Except a week after Mom stopped puking, Dad moved out, and Mom was muttering all that crap about Dad caring about another family more than us.”

  “And you’ve been brooding about it—”

  “Because I knew Mom had been pregnant, and you didn’t,” said Dianne.

  “And finally you’ve come up with a pretty believable story—”

  “Because we’ve both lived in this family long enough to know how Dad and Mom both act,” said Dianne, “and the ridiculous way they fight without fighting, and—”

  “And even though we have no idea if they even had these conversations,” said Ryan, “we know that these are the kinds of conversations they might have had, and whatever got said, something happened, something was said that put Dad out of this house and got them to file papers because they agreed that the marriage was over.”

  “Exactly,” said Dianne. “That’s the crucial thing. Neither of them has said or hinted anything about wanting the other one back. They both know we think this is a stupid lousy thing for them to do to us, but neither of them is explaining anything, except for Mom’s veiled accusations. They’re just moving ahead with tearing up our lives, and that’s not like them.”

  Ryan nodded. “Mom should be defending herself even though nobody’s accusing her, because that’s what she does, only except for those mutterings, nothing. And Dad should be defending Mother, the way he always does, being totally understanding and explaining to us why Mom is so mad and how it’s probably inevitable now for the marriage to end, yadda, yadda, without ever blaming Mom for anything.”

  “That’s what’s missing here. Dad’s not defending Mom, and Mom’s not defending Mom, and yet Dad’s living in an apartment which we’re never invited to visit, and all we get is texts from him because Mom won’t take his calls—”

  “I know,” said Ryan ruefully. “I tried calling her on Dad’s phone and she texted back, ‘Die.’”

  “I’ve seen worse,” said Dianne. “It’s pure rage. Mom is walking around
so tight with rage that anything might set her off. I know you feel it, I know that’s part of why you’ve been so nice, doing the garbage, putting away dishes, washing dishes, being this model son. You even stopped sleeping naked on the couch. You wear actual pajama bottoms now, you pervert.”

  “I knew it bothered Mom,” said Ryan.

  “You used to do it because it bothered Mom—and me, too, I might add. I know you have a butt, but you don’t have to keep proving it—and then you stopped sleeping naked—”

  “Because I was trying not to be a jerk anymore,” said Ryan.

  “And succeeding. You’ve been succeeding. I have actually gotten some idea of why a cool girl like Bizzy would actually find you acceptable boyfriend material.”

  “Thank you for that,” said Ryan. “And thank you for telling me what was going on last spring. I almost said, I can’t believe I didn’t notice Mom was pregnant, but of course I can believe it. What would have been unbelievable was if I did notice. So thank you. For helping all this crap in our family make a little sense.”

  “But they’re still being childish,” said Dianne. “I still don’t buy it that they’d break up the family over this. Mom can be a loon sometimes, but come on, would Dad’s disappointment really set her off so much, so long, that she’d let the family break up over it?”

  Ryan sat there, thinking. “But that was your story,” he said.

  “It fits, but it doesn’t fit well enough. There’s something else.”

  “I can see why you refused to blame Dad, because you knew he hadn’t had an affair.”

  “You knew it, too. You just thought from what Mom said—and heck, Ryan, at least with an affair their splitting up would make some kind of real-world sense.”

  “So I was blaming Dad, and you were saying he didn’t do that, because you knew about the miscarriage—”

  And Mom walked into the room.

  How had she gotten the front door open without them hearing her?

  Because Ryan never closed it when he came in. He and Dianne had started almost-fighting immediately, and he set down his backpack but didn’t close the door. So Mom could walk up onto the porch and stand there and listen . . .