It is a cliché to say that a town is sleepy, but in the case of Fireside, Pennsylvania there are few other ways to describe it. Its name suited its character and the habits of those who lived there. It would be difficult to figure just how the citizens found the money to pay their gas bills, their electricity bills, but they did. Scott Henry even built a pool in the accidental shape of a peanut after his second of two boys turned five. Paul Malone was also five when Mr. Henry built the pool and was called Paulie by the few people who bothered to call him anything at all.
By high school he had discovered stumbled upon comfort in the fact that he was an outcast, and this bred a confidence in him such that he resolved to get the grades he needed to go to an Ivy League school — just not Penn. And he did just that and left the county for the second time in his life three months after graduation. He looked out the bus window and didn’t sleep for a moment on the three-and-a-half-hour trip from the station in Briggs to Providence, and the confidence I him turned into a burning. He plotted his triumphant return to Fireside and imagined the town transformed, colored-in, converted into one of those cities you see on slideshows, by his generosity. And so his time at Brown went the same as his time in high school and he graduated with honors and his virginity. He moved to New York and got a job that paid him six figures. He got laid two weeks after moving to 38th and 2nd and not again for another 18 months. He got married at 32, had three children and went home to Fireside every Thanksgivings and every other Christmas. Six weeks after his 68th birthday, 14 years after feeling his most furious anger after one again being passed over for partner, he suffered a stroke, was rushed to to hospital and spent a most terrible 52 hours trying with all his might to tell the nurses that it hurt when they stuck things in him, and to tell his wife and children that he was scared and that he loved them before he died.
They truly were a miracle of a couple. 60 years together and never a single argument between them. No joke! Once she raised her voice to her son, but he was a teenager and boy did he ever deserve it. They had five grandchildren when he told her, for the first time, that he didn’t like onions. She had put onions in most everything she had cooked for him throughout their marriage. And she would continue to do so until the last meal she made for him. That time she used scallions.
“If they had made less noise, if they had stayed organized and followed protocol, I bet they would have survived.”
“Well, I can’t say I disagree. Let’s just hope you’re right and we get out of here alive ourselves.”
“No matter how many times I go up into space, there is something about it I’ll just never get use to.”
“That’s a good thing, ya know.”
He couldn’t see the green on account of having driven short of the steady slope that changed many a club selection over the years. Nevertheless, his swing had fallen into a rhythm over the past several weeks, so he put away his reliable 6-iron and reached for the 3-wood. How many times had he told his father that it’s Just too damn hard to hit that thing off the carpet? Yet here he was, thinking about how confident he’d grown in his swing while simultaneously leveling himself with self-critique. He took two swings that were silly to call practice swings because they mostly served the isolated purpose of making sure that his shoulders and back weren’t in spasm. And when he addressed the ball, the angle of the club face looked wrong. He questioned the physics. Examined the shaft and imagined the swing plane. And then imagined a slightly different swing plane. Considered coming in steep the same he would hit his 6-iron if he hadn’t put it back in the bag because he was losing faith. Is the ball lined up with my front foot properly? What if I spread my legs a bit more like the pro at the shop had recommended? “Sweep the groun’, sweep the groun’,” he’d often heard his father’s caddy say. But if I sweep I won’t get the club head speed I need and then I might as well just take the 6. The group behind had entered the tee box behind him. He looked back down the fairway and could feel his armpit getting wet. He looked across the fairway where his friends were waiting for him to hit so that they could drive up to their balls, which they had laid up with irons. He walked back towards his to swap for the 6 and take a nice easy shot, but then changed his mind, stuck with the wood, and in the instant that his backswing lasted reminded himself to: hold back the wrists, keep the right hip quiet, transfer the weight from the back to the front, no don’t! you haven’t practiced that enough yet, just hit it true and give it some right-field mechanics while trusting the physics and taking following just a smidgen of a shallower swing path because everything needs to be done in small increments, nothing to the extreme, hold the wrists back and then let them go and…
What you need to understand is that I don’t need a man, especially a man like you.
Well, for heaven’s sake, have you ever considered that maybe I need a woman like you?
Yeah… I have. But I don’t care about that very much.
Doesn’t it matter to you that you make me want to change so many of the things that I’ve done my entire life?
No. It doesn’t.
Then what the hell should I do?
You could kiss me. And take your fucking chances, I suppose.
