The Society Read Free Page B

community located almost midway between Fredrickston and Worcester. Beeper and cell phone at the ready, Will checked out with the ER and surgical residents and headed west through modest late-afternoon traffic. He knew that he was hardly the only divorced dad forced to drive to the house that had once been his to take his children out for dinner, but that knowledge did nothing to assuage the weirdness he invariably felt in the situation—especially when the doorbell was answered, as it was tonight, by Mark Mueller, once a friend and financial adviser to him and Maxine, and now, for more than a year, her live-in.
    “Hey, how’s it going?” Mueller said, knowing better than to attempt a handshake.
    Mueller, though about Will’s height and build, had a full scalp of curly hair, which invariably made Will reflect on the modest but relentless recession at the corners of his own. Max had explained that she and Mueller were too much in love not to live together but that the cost of marriage, in terms of lost alimony, made nuptials a fiscal impossibility.
    Will stepped into his former foyer.
    “Kids ready?”
    “Danny’s just finishing up his homework. Jess is ready, though.”
    Will smiled to himself. Could any pair of twins ever be more different from each other—or more wonderful in those differences? Jess always ready, Danny last minute or beyond; one meticulous, one scattered; one serious and intense, one flaky and wildly imaginative; one (Jess) an athlete, the other already credited with several community-theater productions.
    Damn you, Max.
    “Hey, Dad, who loves you?”
    Jess, in jeans and a bulky sweater, came racing around the corner and dove into his midsection.
    “Who loves
you
, baby. Everything okay?”
    “Fine. Tammy got sent home today for throwing spitballs. Cody Block said he likes me. I got an ‘A’ on my Morocco project. Are we going to the Hearth or your place or a restaurant?”
    “Hearth.”
    “Great!”
    “Danny, let’s get—”
    The shoulder-first assault from behind, with more force than any ten-year-old should be able to generate, nearly knocked both Will and Jess over.
    “Open Hearth night, right?” Danny asked.
    “Right on.”
    “Um . . . Max wants them home by nine,” Mueller said uncomfortably.
    Will’s eyes flashed. His thin smile said many things.
    “Nine it will be, Mark. She at the gym?”
    “Office. She should be back soon.”
    “Nine. Come on, guys.”
    “I keep telling you, I’m not a guy.”
    “All right, come on, girls.”
    “Daddy!”
     
    Will, two classmates, and a saintly psychiatrist had started the Open Hearth Kitchen during Will’s sophomore year in med school. The idea was to survive two intense years of basic science studies by involving themselves in a project centering on real live humans. Almost immediately, the other students and faculty joined in, helping to make their efforts a success. A dynamic, visionary young director and a committed board saw to it that the merchants, schools, churches, and residents of Fredrickston and the surrounding towns understood the place and embraced it. Now, after sixteen years, there were times when volunteers had to be turned away, although none of the thousands of diners who had patronized the kitchen ever were. Three hundred and ten was the record for dinners served on one night, but with the economy continuing to nosedive, that record seemed likely to fall before long.
    No matter how hard it had been to take time off from work, Will seldom missed the monthly board meetings, and almost never his serving obligation—the first and third Tuesdays of every month.
    The rugged, three-story clapboard structure occupied a corner lot in the most run-down part of town. Maxine had tried insisting that the area was too dangerous to keep “dragging” the twins to, but in this debate, unlike most of the rest, Will had prevailed.
    “Okay,” he said, easing his four-year-old Wagoneer into the small parking area, “you guys