"I can see," Renita said.
Sal looked at her face, then at Walter's, turned his hearing aid back on, and said, "I'll be in the office, I got invoices," and went.
"Dez," Walter said. "Go wash up. Use the orange soap by the sink. Scrub under your nails."
Dez looked between them. Then he went.
When the water was running in the back, Renita said, low, "You took my son to a machine shop at night without asking me."
"Yes."
"Without asking me."
"I should have asked you. I didn't, because you'd have said later, and the gear has to go on the robot tomorrow if the robot's going anywhere." He kept his hands behind his back. "That's not an excuse. That's what happened."
"You know what this is? This is what you did to me." Her voice cracked, and she hated it. "You brought me down to the basement. You showed me everything. I was *nine* and you made me feel like I could build the world. And then you went away into it and you never came back out. You left me at the top of the stairs."
Walter didn't move.
"And Mama worked herself into the ground. And you signed a second mortgage on the only thing we had without even asking her, because you were so sure. You're always so sure. And now you look at me in my own living room like I'm the one who doesn't understand what that boy is." She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist, furious. "I know exactly what that boy is. I watched it eat my whole family."
Behind them the water ran and ran. Dez was taking a long time to wash his hands.
"You're right," Walter said.
She stopped. She'd been ready for a fight, the old fight. *I did it for this family, you don't know what Kodak did to me, you don't know what it is to have a gift and no door.* She'd had her answers ready since 2009.
"You're right," he said again. "I signed it without asking her. I left you at the top of the stairs. I missed your birthday for a fixture for a man in Victor whose name I can't remember, and I remember the tolerance on that fixture to this day. Five ten-thousandths." He looked at her. "That's who I was. I can't make it not true."
"Then why are you doing it again?"
"I'm not." He finally unclasped his hands, and they were trembling slightly, an old man's hands. "I'm doing the opposite. I'm standing behind him with my hands behind my back. I'm teaching him the work so it belongs to him and not to me. Nobody's going to sign his name on anything but his own." He swallowed. "And I'm telling you, Renita, it isn't the gift that ate our family. It was me. It was a grown man who wanted something so bad he forgot to love the people who were already in the room. That boy isn't me. That boy brought me the broken part and asked for help. I never asked anybody for anything in my life."