The sympathetic glance she cast Scott irritated Wes more than the idea of the pie. “Half of what’s wrong with him is you. You’ve spoiled him, Dora. If you had your way, he wouldn’t even go to college. You’d keep him here and baby him for the rest of his life.”
They finished their meal in silence. Scott kept his head down, shoveling food into his mouth until his plate was clean, then asked to be excused.
“Tell you what,” Wes said, giving his son a magnanimous wink, “let your dinner settle, then I don’t think one slice of pie will hurt you.”
“Thanks.” Scott tossed down his napkin and stamped from the kitchen. Seconds later they heard the door to his bedroom slam shut and loud music come on.
“I’ll go talk to him.”
Wes caught Dora’s arm as she tried to stand up. “Leave him alone,” he said, guiding her back into her chair. “Let him sulk. He’ll get over it.”
“Here, lately, he sulks a lot.”
“What teenager doesn’t have mood swings?”
“But Scott didn’t have them until recently. He hasn’t been himself. Something’s wrong.”
With exaggerated politeness, Wes said, “I’ll take my pie now, please.”
She kept her back to him as she sliced the pie that had been cooling on the counter. “He loves you, Wes. He works hard to please you, but you rarely give him credit for anything. He would respond better to praise than to criticism.”
He groaned. “Can’t we get through one conversation without you slinging some Oprah-inspired bullshit on me?”
She served him his pie. “Want ice cream?”
“Don’t I always?”
She brought the carton to the table and spooned a scoop onto his pie, then returned the carton to the freezer and began to stack the dishes. “You’re going to drive Scott away. Is that what you want?”
“What I want is to eat my dessert in peace.”
When she turned to him, he was surprised to see a flicker of Dora the coed, whom he’d first seen sashaying across campus in a tennis skirt, racquet bag slung over her shoulder, T-shirt damp with sweat, fresh from a match that he learned later she’d handily won.
That afternoon her eyes were flashing with anger because she’d seen him toss a candy wrapper onto the carefully cultivated lawn in front of the athletic dorm where he and several buddies were lounging on the wide verandah.
“Dumb, dirty jock.” She said it like he’d crapped in a water fountain or something. Then she walked over to the wrapper, picked it up, and carried it with her to the nearest trash can. She continued on her way without ever looking back.
His cronies, including Dutch Burton, whistled and catcalled after her, making lewd remarks and propositions when she bent over to pick up the wrapper. But Wes stared after her thoughtfully. He’d liked her pert tits and firm ass, sure. They’d heated up his loins. But he’d been blown away by her “and the horse you rode in on” attitude.
Most coeds swooned when he walked into a room. Girls notched their bedposts same as guys, and sleeping with a star athlete ranked high. At that time, he and Dutch were the football team standouts. He quarterbacked. Dutch carried and caught. Girls withheld nothing from them, and usually they were given even more than they asked for. It was easy to get laid or blown, to the point where easy had lost its allure. He’d liked this girl for showing him some sass.
He wondered what had happened to Dora’s sassiness. Since they’d married, it had all but disappeared, although there was a trace of it in her expression now.
“Is apple pie more important to you than your son?”
“For chrissake, Dora, I only meant—”
“One day you’ll push him too hard. He’ll leave us, and we’ll never seen him again.”
“You know what your problem is?” he asked angrily. “You don’t have enough to do, that’s what. You sit around all day, watching those male-bashing talk shows on TV and applying every flaw they discuss to me. Then you dream up these crazy scenarios that are never going to happen to our family. My daddy was hard on me, and I turned out all right.”
“Do you love him?”
“Who?”
“Your daddy.”
“I respect him.”