The following Saturday, they ate in the languid silence that followed games in which Connell pitched. His exhaustion passed to the two of them through some invisible membrane.
“How did you do?” she asked.
The gleaming newness of the kitchen hadn’t yet faded; it still felt like someone else’s room.
“Fine,” Connell said.
“Fine,” Ed said, amused. “He did more than fine. He struck out—what?” He looked to Connell.
“Thirteen.”
“And not one batter made solid contact,” Ed said.
“I also walked eight guys.”
“His control is an issue, there’s no denying it. He was pitching out of jams the whole game. He threw a ton of pitches.”
As if on cue, Connell rubbed his shoulder.
“But the sky’s the limit. A lefty with this kind of velocity? If he keeps working at it, he’s going to be a force.”
She waited for Ed to transition into the discussion of the disease. She caught his eye; he shook his head to say the plan was off. She tried to indicate displeasure, but he looked down at his soup to avoid her gaze.
“Ed,” she said, coughing. He looked up.
Connell’s eyes were heavy with fatigue. Ed stood up and put his hand on Connell’s head for a second and tousled his locks affectionately. He walked over to the sink and gazed out the window.
“What’s up? You guys fighting again?”
“No,” Ed said, still looking out the window. “Just listen to your mother.”
“You’re getting older now,” she said. “You’re getting to the point where you can hear adult things.” Connell sat up straighter in his seat. “The things adults talk about. What your father and I talk about.”
“Please don’t tell me this is about the birds and the bees. I’m way too old for that.”
She couldn’t hold back a thin, sad smile. She felt a lump in her throat. “We’ve got some bad news,” she said.
The boy’s jocular expression faded. “What is it?”
“It has to do with your father’s health,” she said after a bit.
Ed turned around and walked back toward the table. He sat. “What your mother is trying to say is that I have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.”
“Do you know what that is?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He looked back and forth between them. “It’s where you forget things.”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that what old people get?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Most of the time. But sometimes it happens to younger people.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“There’s not a lot of medicine out there,” he said. “I’m on some experimental drugs. We’ll see. But it’s going to get worse.”
“Are you scared?”
This was the first time she’d seen anyone ask Ed how it affected him personally. It had always been questions about the illness. She hadn’t even asked him herself.
Ed straightened up. His eyes got a crinkly, philosophical look in them. “Sometimes I am, sure,” he said. “That’s part of it, no question about it.” He looked at the sugar bowl, the top of which he’d been clacking like a cymbal. “I like my life. I love my life. I don’t want to lose it.”
“Aren’t you too young for this?”
“If you’re asking me, yes,” he said. “If you’re asking the disease, no.”
“How quickly will it get worse?”
“Honey,” she said to him, “don’t pepper your father with questions.”
Ed put up a hand to quiet her.
“It could be quick,” he said. “It could be years. Every case is different.”
Connell seemed to chew on what he’d heard for a little while.
“Is there going to be a time when you don’t know who I am?” he asked.
Ed’s face took on a fierce expression, as though the question had angered him. She thought to intervene, but then he rose from his seat and leaned down to put his arms around the boy.
“I will always know who you are,” Ed said, kissing the top of his head. “I promise you that. Even if you think I don’t know, even if I seem not to. I will always know who you are. You’re my son. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“You neither,” he said, rising to hug his father.
She started clearing the dishes.
“Mom,” Connell said. He held out his gangly arm to her.
She walked over and stood near them. Connell seemed to urge her to join them in some sort of embrace. She had wanted him to hear, and now that he’d heard, she wanted him to come to terms with it and carry on stoically, but he was a different kind of creature from her. She and Ed had worked to give him an easier life than they’d had. Sometimes she wondered if she’d erred in not making him tougher.
The idea of a group hug embarrassed her and she couldn’t comply. There was going to be more darkness than hugs could begin to dispel. She thought of this embrace he was offering as the come-on of a huckster selling a spurious remedy. She gave him three quick, sharp pats on the back, as if to punctuate some unstated conclusion, and headed upstairs.