Page 94 of Perfect Mess

Kyle continued studying me for a moment, then asked, “You don’t have a kid I can play with?”

“No, God no. I don’t have any kids. Not that there’s anything wrong with you. I mean, not you, you, as in you personally, I mean kids in general. Or you personally. I think.” I was blathering again. Talking to children was not a life skill that I had much opportunity to develop. As you can probably tell, I kind of sucked at it.

“How come you don’t have a kid?” Kyle asked.

How about a thousand reasons?“Because I’m not married,” I explained.

“My dad’s not married.”

“I know.”

“He has a kid.”

“He does.”

“He has me.” Kyle pointed at his chest. I may have been pretty dense occasionally, but I’m pretty sure Kyle took me as a fool.

“Well,” I said. “That’s different. He was married.”

“My mom’s gone now.”

“I know. Sorry.”

Kyle nodded again. I looked back up into the black abyss that was the attic door, wondering where Gary disappeared to. He needed to get back down quick. Kyle was asking a lot of questions and at that rate, it was only a matter of time before he was going to ask me to make him a flow chart and Venn diagrams to explain the birds and the bees.

“Were you ever married?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

How about a million reasons?“I just haven’t found a nice man yet.”

“My dad’s nice.”

“Well, yes. Yes, he is.” My brain scrambled for a new topic to change the conversation. But I did not know how to converse with an eight-year-old, as evidenced by the past five minutes we had been standing together in the hall.

Then it occurred to me. This was my chance. My chance to get some inside information. I still didn’t know Gary all that well. Did he go on a lot of dates? Was he even interested in getting serious with someone again after what must have been a very difficult divorce? It had taken my dad years to get back out there after what my mother did to him.

It made me wonder once again what happened between Gary and Kyle’s mother. How bad were the scars? How likely was it really that Gary would follow through on our plan to woo Janet? I thought it was a safe assumption that Ann was the one who had done the leaving. Gary didn’t seem like the leaving type. Gary seemed more like the getting left type. Regardless, this was my chance to get the inside scoop.

“I bet you and your dad were excited to come over,” I said. “So you could swim.”

Kyle nodded.

“Have you and your dad ever gone over to anybody else’s house to go swimming?”

Kyle shook his head. “We just swim at our house.”

“Wait. You have a pool at your house?”

Kyle nodded. At the park, after baseball practice, when Kyle had asked Gary to go swimming, I assumed he meant the public pool at the park. So that was why I offered for them to come over. If Gary already had a pool at his house, why did he accept my invitation to come here?

“Is your pool broken or something?” I asked.

Kyle shook his head.

“And it has water in it?”

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