When Dicky was growing up, people liked to tell Suzanne she was lucky.
“Oh, a mama’s boy, how nice for you,” they’d say, as Dicky joined her on errands at the grocery store, or the bank, or they’d watch him volunteer at church bake sales and dinners and say, “He’s so sweet that one, you must be so pleased to have a kind son.” Dicky preened, as he was wont to do, and Suzanne would smile back politely they way she was raised to.
She understood what they meant, of course. Dicky loved baking more than football and would choose a night in on the couch watching movies with her over causing mayhem in town like so many other boys in town liked to do. By all appearances Dicky was more hers than Richard’s, at least in those kinds of things.
But appearances, especially in the south, don’t always reflect the truth.
Suzanne remembers a night when Dicky was young, maybe 12 or 13. He’d been home from school when Suzanne got off work– she’d stayed later to help a student rework an essay and traffic hadn’t been favorable on the way back. It wasn’t surprising that Dicky was home, as he had a key and tended to let himself in on his own if he didn’t have practice after school, but what was surprising was that Richard sat on the couch, flipping through sports channels, when Suzanne walked in the door.
She blinked. “Hon?” She dropped her bag, left her keys in the dish by the door. “What’re you doing home?”
Richard grumbled something and then, louder, “Cancelled practice.”
“What for?” Suzanne shed her shoes. “Weather’s fine.”
Richard grumbled more and did not clarify.
Suzanne knew better than to stir when he was in this state, so she padded off to the kitchen to start dinner only to find Dicky there in a haze of flour and pie filling. He did not look up when she walked in the room.
“Dicky, honey.” She surveyed the damage– not a clean dish in sight and at least four pies cooling somewhere in the room. “What’s going on?”
“I’m bakin’ Mama.” Dicky smiled over the bowl he was stirring, quite vigorously. “Thought I could bring something to Shirley May’s granddaughter’s baptism this weekend.”
“Oh.” Suzanne frowned. They hadn’t signed up for providing sweets for the social hour that week at church, and Mrs. Franklin who ran it didn’t take kindly to people disrupting the schedule. “That’s– nice, baby.” She cleared her throat. “Why don’t you go on upstairs and do homework or something while I fix up dinner?”
“I can help.” Dicky straightened up, shoulders braced. The way he did when Richard asked him about skating practice. “What’re you makin’?”
“Oh, honey, you don’t have to–”
Suzanne frowned deeper and Dicky just kept on staring at her, this odd smile on his lips and his body pulled straight like a puppet with taut strings. “Alright, baby, I’m sure I can find you a job. Why don’t you start on some dishes?”
Dicky nodded and rolled up his sleeves, turning around and starting the faucet. Suzanne watched him move, body coiled tight like before he went to do a jump on the ice.
“Is everything alright, baby? Did something happen at school today?”
“What? No, Mama, what would give you that idea?” Dicky didn’t turn from the sink. “Everything’s fine.”
“Yes.” Dicky grabbed a dish, dragging it into the sink with a clatter, the noise silencing any further questions. Suzanne started on dinner, as they had to eat, strangeness or not, and she had a heavy inkling that trying to prod Dicky when he was like this would be an exercise in futility.
Some ten years later, Suzanne sits on her couch in an empty house staring at her cellphone, clasped in a steadily shaking hand.
How did the game go? she typed out, a handful of minutes ago.
Read 9:13 P.M., her husband’s phone responds.
Dicky does not even give her that.
And that is the thing, Suzanne remembers achingly, that no one seems to understand. Dicky may be hers in the baking and the smiling and general demeanor, but at his very root he is exactly his father’s son.
