"I got to go, Jo-Jo," he said. "Your mother's right. A man's got to bring something in. Mitch has work. It's good work. It's just for a while."
"Mom didn't say you have to go. She said you have to tell her."
"Yeah, well."
"So just tell her."
My father smiled, a little, under his mustache. Not a happy smile. "You ever have something," he said, "you ever have a thing that you didn't tell somebody for so long that it got too big to tell? Like it started out a little thing, and you didn't say it, and you didn't say it, and you kept not saying it, and one day you turn around and it's the size of the house?"
I thought about that. I thought about the time in second grade when I broke the ceramic Infant of Prague on my grandmother's dresser in Wilkes-Barre and glued the head back on and never said, and how every Christmas when we visited I'd stand in front of it and look at the crack.
"Yeah," I said.
"Well," my father said. "That."
"Is it about Mrs. Spratley?"