The Jealous Kind Read Free Page B

throat. “How’d you get home from Galveston?”
    â€œThe Greyhound. You thought you had to check on me?”
    â€œDo you like miniature golf?”
    â€œMiniature golf?”
    â€œIt’s a lot of fun,” I said. “I thought maybe you’d like to play a game or two. If you’renot doing anything.”
    â€œCome inside. You look a little dehydrated.”
    â€œYou’re asking me in?”
    â€œWhat did I just say?”
    â€œYou told me to come inside.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œYes, I could use some ice water. I didn’t mean to call those guys greaseballs. Sometimes I say things I don’t mean.”
    â€œThey’ll survive. You coming?”
    I would have dragged the Grand Canyon all the way to Texas to sit down with Valerie Epstein. “I hope I’m not disturbing y’all. My conscience bothered me. I didn’t go looking for you last night because I had to get my father’s car home.”
    â€œI think you have a good heart.”
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œYou heard me.”
    I could hear wind chimes tinkling and birds singing and perhaps strings of Chinese firecrackers popping, and I knew I would probably love Valerie Epstein for the rest of my life.
    S HE WALKED AHEAD of me into the kitchen and took a pitcher of lemonade from the icebox. The kitchen was glossy and clean, the walls painted yellow and white. She put ice in two glasses and filled them up and slipped a sprig of mint in each and set them on paper napkins. “That’s my father in the backyard,” she said. “He’s a pipeline contractor.”
    A muscular man wearing strap overalls without a shirt was working on the truck parked under the pecan tree. His skin was dark with tan, the gold curlicues of hair on his shoulders shiny with sweat, his profile cut out of tin.
    â€œHe looks like Alexander the Great. I mean the image on the coin,” I said.
    â€œThat’s a funny thing to say.”
    â€œHistory is my favorite subject.I read all of it I can. My father does, too. He’s a natural-gas engineer.”
    I waited for her to say something. She didn’t. Then I realized I had just told her my father was educated and her father probably was not. “What I mean is he works in the oil business, too.”
    â€œAre you always this nervous?”
    We were sitting at the table now, an electric fan oscillating on the counter. “I have a way of making words come out the wrong way. I was going to tell you how my father ended up in the oil patch, but I get to running on.”
    â€œGo ahead and tell me.”
    â€œHe was a sugar chemist in Cuba. He quit after an incident on a ferryboat that sailed from New Orleans to Havana. Then he went to work on the pipeline and got caught by the Depression and never got to do the thing he wanted, which was to be a writer.”
    â€œWhy would he quit his job as a chemist because of something that happened on a passenger boat?”
    â€œHe was in World War One. The German artillery was knocking their trench to pieces. The German commander came out under a white flag and asked my father’s captain to surrender. He said the wounded would be taken care of and the others would be treated well. The captain refused the offer. A German biplane wagged its wings over the lines to show it was on a peaceful mission, and threw leaflets all over the wire and the trench, but the captain still wouldn’t surrender. The Germans had moved some cannons up on train cars. When they cut loose, they killed half my father’s unit in thirty minutes.
    â€œTen years later, he was on the ferry headed to Havana when he saw his ex–commanding officer on the deck. My father insisted they have a drink together, mostly because he wanted a chance to forgive and forget. That night his ex–commanding officer jumped off the rail. My father always blamed himself.”
    â€œThat’s a sad story.”
    â€œMost true