He walked over slowly. He looked from me to his father and back.
“You guys sat together,” he said.
“Two seats apart,” I said.
“That’s together,” Sam said, and grinned.
That spring, the rink manager offered Sam a part-time job in the pro shop, sharpening skates on weekends. He took it. He works next to his father on Saturday mornings now, before they go skating at Hartley Park. Greg says Sam is better at it than he is. Sam says that isn’t saying much. They argue about it every week. I think they both enjoy it.
Greg is nineteen months sober now. He still goes to St. Mark’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He invited Sam to his one-year meeting last November, and Sam asked me if I would come too. I sat in the back row of a church basement, on a folding chair, and watched my son watch his father stand up in front of forty strangers and say, “My name is Greg, and I’m an alcoholic, and my son is here tonight,” and I cried so much that a woman in the next chair handed me an entire packet of tissues and told me to keep it.
