Triple Pursuit by Ralph McInerny Read Free Book Online Page B

Western Sun Community. The idea was that he would be near things, able to walk or take public transportation, and not have to bother with driving. He was a terrible driver. But he had become almost a recluse. It was a major event when they got him to the house, despite
the fact that they picked him up and returned him. Of course his father had never really been at ease with Tim since the great accusation.
    One summer his father got Tim a job at the station, on the television side. It was then that Tim first realized that his father was obsolescent, a man who did radio and not television. On that station, there was no room for such specialization now. For a time it had even been thought that radio itself was obsolete. No one then could have imagined the plague of talk shows that lay ahead. When Tim heard gossip about his father’s pursuit of the girl who did the weather, he broke out into a little sweat of embarrassment. It was one thing to learn that his father’s status at the station was sinking, it was another to hear him mocked—and about such a subject. That night at home, he confronted his father with the accusation. His father almost sprang from his chair, took Tim by the arm and steered him out of the house.
    â€œDo you want your mother to hear such nonsense?”
    â€œThey’re all talking about it at the station.”
    â€œAnd you believed them?” His father was capable of theatrical tones at home but this was as unmodulated as he could make his voice. The words penetrated Tim and made him feel the deeper shame of doubting his father. Then he was in his father’s arms, his back being patted, friends again.
    â€œActually, Tim, she’s in pursuit of me.”
    Thus in a joke had it been passed over. Why did he remember that now? Because it conveyed more surely than any other consideration how a child reacts to anything that threatens the home. Husbands and wives might have formed their union voluntarily, but the child is born into it as his only world. When Tim heard his father spoken of in that way, in pursuit of a weather girl, it was like his first travel by plane when he realized there was literally nothing but miles of air beneath the floor on which his feet rested.
    As that summer wore on, Anita, who did the weather, seemed to be flirting with everyone. She even stopped at Tim’s table in the commissary, gave him a look of appraisal and chucked him under the chin.

    â€œBe careful, Anita. That’s Jack Gallagher’s son.”
    Her eyes widened and she stepped back. “Then I better be careful.”
    By then Tim had learned that many meaningless things were said at the station. But what an odd memory to have when Jane mentioned his father and St. Hilary’s school.
    â€œHe went there as a kid, Jane.”
    â€œAnd now he’s back. He’s seeing friends he hadn’t seen in years. Your uncle Austin hangs out there too. And there’s going to be a dance.”
    Much of Jane’s enthusiasm was relief that his father had any news at all to tell, let alone all this. He realized how the old man’s loneliness had weighed upon them. Maybe the fact that Colleen was getting married at last had snapped him out of it.
    Jane was a little disappointed when Colleen suggested they have dinner in a restaurant in order to meet Mario.
    â€œShe’s thinking of you having to prepare the meal.”
    â€œI know, but still.”
    â€œMaybe she thinks the reality of domestic life would scare him off.”
    â€œTim, he’s Italian. Colleen is going to have to learn how to cook modo Italiano .”
    â€œYou make him sound like an immigrant. He is the shining light at Mallard and Bill. They’ve already made him a partner so he can’t be lured away. All the youngsters there are jealous and angry.” Of course he was thinking of Aggie and she was probably not a good example. She had called Mario “the cardinal,” making an