Page 60 of Woman on the Verge

“So youweresnooping?” he says. “Yes, that’s her.”

“You’re close?”

He nods. “We are.”

“And your father?”

Just as I’m formulating an assumption that his father abandoned the family, as fathers are permitted to do in a way mothers never are, he says, “He died,” and I feel like a horrible (or more horrible) person.

“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t seem particularly emotional about it.

“He died before I turned one,” he says. “He was a firefighter.”

“So you never knew him,” I say, thinking of my mother.

He shrugs. “No. Which I know is terrible, but it’s hard to miss what I didn’t know.”

“True,” I say, tempted to share my own story. I decide against it, still unsure how much of a bond I want to develop.

“Any siblings?”

He shakes his head. “Just me.”

Same as me,I think. We have a surprising amount in common.

“An only child, that’s why you’re so mature,” I say.

“Am I mature?”

“For a thirty-year-old man? Yes.”

“My mom would be happy to hear you say that.”

I finally take a bite of my egg roll.

“I told my mom about you,” he says.

“Oh god.”

“I talk to her every day, so it came up,” he says. “Naturally.”

“You really are a mama’s boy.”

“Guilty.”

“I guess if it was just the two of you, it makes sense.”

“We are talking an awful lot about me,” he says.

“I know. It’s great.”

“Katrina, Katrina, you are an enigma,” he says with an amused shake of the head.

“That sounds like a song lyric.”

He attempts to sing it, and his voice cracks. I have found his first flaw: he cannot carry a tune.

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