The last family left for the night, and the heat from the worn-down Mother's Pizza escaped in a large swell out the open door. The sidewalk they stepped on was cleared but stained white from salt, and the snowdrift separating it from the street was dirty with sand and rocks and exhaust from passing traffic.
With a clumsy motion Ed Syrnyk pulled the car keys from his pocket and dangled them in the air. "Maybe you should drive home tonight," he told his youngest daughter, Charlotte. "Get some practice for that test of yours." His raised arm revealed a slight tear on the jacket's armpit, but no one pointed it out.
Charlotte's older sister, Liz, and Liz's boyfriend, Robert, were also standing in the cold with their arms tightly crossed. It was the first time Liz had seen her father since the fight two months earlier, and over dinner she glared at him through the light of the tiffany lamp. The place was empty, and the tired waitress sat with the hostess in a booth at the back when she wasn't serving them. For his part, Ed drank beer after beer and tried to ignore them all. He wasn't quite sure who arranged the dinner and neither was anyone else.
"We're going to walk home," Liz said, as they all stood for that brief moment, unsure of what to say or who to thank if anyone.
Charlotte grabbed the keys from her father's swaying arm. "We can give you a ride. You're only a few blocks away from the house."
Robert raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders at Liz. "It's damn cold out."
"This is nothing," Ed said as he leaned against the streetlight post. "Nothing at all." He wasn't the type to volunteer stories about worse times, although his tired eyes and sagging shoulders said enough.
"It's all the beer you drank, keeping you from feeling the cold." Liz tightened her arms and nudged Robert with her foot. "Let's get out of here."
Robert gave an embarrassed shrug to his girlfriend's father and, against the lights, he followed Liz across the street leaving Ed and Charlotte momentarily uncomfortable in the other's presence. Charlotte called out goodbye even though they were already on their way, huddled together and not listening.
Ed Syrnyk meant well, whenever he stopped to think about it. For the last ten years he'd meant well. He rarely went outside his ten-minute drive radius: the GM plant to the north, south by the tracks his brick row house that had once
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