Reaching into the warm water seemed to soothe her. She pulled out another dish and heard her utensils settle to the bottom of the sink.
“I called my boss after I got the letter, and I told him I wasn’t coming back. He got real silent on the phone and then he did just as I thought. He told me the job would always be open for me in the future. He had that tone of voice on the other end and I could feel his discomfort. I can’t bear to go through that—I’ll climb down into my own grave before I have to endure that.
“I know this puts more pressure on you. It’s the last thing you need, Michael, I know that, but I can’t do it. I have to stay away from that place.” Rebecca looked over at her husband. He’d risen from his chair and gone to the window.
* * *
Lately he hadn’t been listening. Not really. Just her general tone. Apologetic but angry. Restless and annoyed. Her tone seemed to always be reaching for some purpose, but the words it carried landed just inches before the feet of purpose. He knew this, now, that he hadn’t been listening, and felt in some way that turning over his glass on top of the open neck of the bottle was the first thing he’d been aware of consciously doing since . . .
And yet, even his distraction from what she was saying to him just moments before felt different than the way he’d been tuning her out in the past few weeks. She couldn’t know that, but it was true. Another conscious thing. He felt a tingling sensation behind his ears.
The young Illworth boy preoccupied him. Seeing him piece all his materials together to build that tree house had somehow cast Michael back to his own youth. He didn’t build tree houses; they didn’t interest him. He dove for clams in South Bay with his uncle. A smile nearly reached his face as he watched the trees in his backyard form a wall of shadows from the world.
He wouldn’t tell Rebecca just then. It wouldn’t make sense to her. But he told himself about the clams. How his uncle showed him the way to dig with his toes. How to decide by feel, what is a stone; what is the elongated black shell of a mussel. What is a baby horseshoe crab. What is a colony of snails clinging to sea sponge. What is the broken tooth of an old anchor. And, at last, what is a clam. The surf clam snuggled in the arch, the quahog was a golf ball wedged under the toes.
Then how to hold his breath. Dive down into the murky brine and reach blindly into the mud beneath his foot. Grab the clam and firmly pull it from the bed. How his uncle always told him the best part of clamming was that if you missed it the first time, you could always dive back down to get it. The same way he’d learned to stay afloat when the waves surged and lifted him from his feet, by keeping his face turned toward the sun. By taking deeper breaths.
“Otter,” he muttered, his voice broken. The nickname his uncle had assigned to him for all the many times he had to dive back down into the now-disturbed water to redeem himself. He grinned inside the memory. Pressed his forehead to the window pane. The rush of cold from the glass felt good against his brows, which ached every day.
What sounded like a squeak escaped from Rebecca’s voice and Michael rolled his head to look at her.
What is this—thing—they had? What word or phrase existed that could describe how they’d been avoiding each other while they still slept in the same bed, ate at the same table, held hands to the silence of the ticking clock on the living room wall? How many times this week did they hug each other, how often did one dry the other’s tears with their own sleeve, or their hair, or pressed their faces tight against one another. And yet they’d divorced each other, somehow. They’d clung to small facts that were meaningless. She had said to him a few weeks ago, “You were going to beat him.” He had pointed out how she always fought him on getting to the church early, and if they had gone early on that day . . .
And yet, it wasn’t divorce. It was the furthest thing from it. Michael watched her as she methodically dried her dishes and he allowed himself to see her standing before him on their wedding night. How she had dropped her paper-thin nightgown onto the floor with a flirtatious finger and bit her bottom lip. It was all he could do to stay a gentleman.
They’d known without speaking when it was time for Dallas. They’d collapsed into each other that night, and the night after, and the night after, until she finally emerged one night from the bathroom, crying.
She was standing in the kitchen drying dishes and yet she was that woman; she was all of those women—a culmination of a life lived, and even though everything had changed, none of it could change. If anything could be said of his faith in God, it was that, though boiled away and maybe gone forever, he could not deny that the past would often circle back and become the present. And here was his proof, he thought, as he watched Rebecca in the dimming light from the kitchen become that woman who stood before him at the foundation of his world. Flesh of my flesh, he thought. And he knew what he meant.
Michael went up behind Rebecca at the sink and wrapped his arms around her waist.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and kissed her squarely between the shoulder blades. Tomorrow, he told himself, he’d pull his tie on with his face turned toward the sun. He’d step into his old shoes, which were now his new shoes. For nothing would ever feel comfortably nostalgic again, and he knew he still had miles of regrets ahead of him. He felt Rebecca’s hands grip his arms, which were now cinched around her waist. He was no longer a little boy. But in that warm instant he could hear something like a voice singing from his heart: Dive back down. Dive back down.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
FELIX CASSIDY WAS STANDING JUST A FEW FEET AWAY from his back porch. Inside his house, his mother watched him from the kitchen window. His father was at work. Felix sent a rock over the treetops and watched it disappear. He picked up another one, and when his eyes fell upon the fort James had built, he twisted his body slightly and aimed for the structure. He hit a line drive and banked the rock off the side of the fort’s wall. Then he went back to hitting them in no particular direction. James had been watching him, but was gone now.
When he saw James, everything that had happened weeks ago suddenly seemed to have happened five minutes ago. He remembered the fight in the yard, being beaten. His mind couldn’t shake the demonic laughter—the two boys beating him up. He remembered James breaking the twig just before they were caught. And now the fort mocked him, hanging just above the fence line. He could have done a better job, he thought. He could have built it higher in the trees. He could have built it stronger. Felix took another serve and lifted the rock over the fence. It dropped just short of the fort. He tried again. That one banked off its hollow side loudly, ringing out into the air.
From the kitchen window, Anne Cassidy watched and unconsciously shook her head. Her son had been at this business for a few days now, and she was beginning to worry. She noticed he was getting more accurate with each swing, striking the small rocks and knocking them against the trees. But she wished that he would go back out and play with his friend again. Every time she tried to speak to him about all that had happened, he’d shrug and stare up at the ceiling. Occasionally he would even tear away from her violently, and move into the backyard. She worried even more because there would be a trial soon, and everyone’s interest would intensify. She knew she couldn’t protect him from people. But they couldn’t get him to speak about it, and a grief counselor had told them to give him time. So time it was.
That evening, after Felix had fallen asleep, Simon and Anne Cassidy sat down with Bob to talk. Simon had gotten home from work that day and watched Felix hit rocks for the fourth or fifth day in a row. He hardly spoke at the dinner table, and he was all too eager to go to bed.
Simon was a large man, bald on top of his head, with fingers like rolled-out tubes of clay. He rested his hands on top of his belly like a shelf, and sat back in his chair. Anne sat across from him rubbing Bob’s back with her right hand. Her feet were tucked under her on the couch. Simon rocked back and forth.
“I have no idea how long we should keep letting him do this . . . t
hing he’s doing,” Simon declared, looking toward the windows which were now black pools with funhouse reflections of their living room lights. Bob looked at the floor quietly.
“The grief counselor says we should wait . . .” Anne offered.
“Grief counselor doesn’t know anything,” her husband snapped. “They’re not the ones watching this every day.”
The family sat quietly again. Simon looked at his son, who was staring at the ground. “What do you think, Bobby?” he asked.
Bob looked up at him and held out his open palms. Then he dropped his eyes again to the ground.
“I mean, have you ever in your life seen anything like this?” Simon whispered, shaking his head and tapping his hands on the arms of his chair. His knees jutted straight out in front of him, and he was slightly slumped in his small chair. He sighed loudly.
“What do you suggest we do?” Anne asked.
“Can’t let this thing go on indefinitely. What does he say to you when I’m not here?”
Anne shook her head, staring out into space. “Nothing. He says yes, if he wants lunch, no if he doesn’t. Shrugs a lot. He hardly says anything,” she said, choking on suppressed tears.
“Well, what’s he planning to do, hit rocks his whole life?” Then, as if feeling guilty that he’d lost his patience, Simon leaned back in his chair and bit his thumb nail. Bob stared at his father for a moment. A slight smile stretched across his face, but vanished.
Simon looked at him curiously. “What?” Bob shook his head and looked away, but his father pressed: “What is it? What’s funny?”
“I was just going to say that he’s doing wonders for the lawn. All those rocks aren’t good for the grass,” Bob said with a slight laugh.
Simon looked away as if he regretted even asking. His wife gave Bob a slightly amused slap on the arm.
Bob laughed through his nose. “Seriously,” he said, “at the end of the day, he’s at least doing something productive.”
Anne shook her head and smiled softly.
Bob watched his father. He was sitting in his chair, hands resting on the arms, staring back. Bob could tell he was trying to conceal a smile, which encouraged him.
“I got a friend in college,” Bob continued, “his brother’s got epilepsy. Pretty bad too, every so many hours he goes into a seizure. So they hand him the iced tea mix, or the chocolate milk. He makes a great blender for the family.” He laughed, but tried to be quiet for Felix’s sake.
“Bob,” scolded his father, though even he succumbed to the joke, and his belly shook with laughter. Anne followed suit. Bob covered his mouth, and leaned back on the couch. But soon his laughter sobered, and he was suddenly sobbing into his hands. Anne stopped laughing and held her son.
Bob was not one to discuss things with them. But he’d spent the weeks following David Westwood’s arrest thinking that had he not humiliated him that night, and had he not told Felix to stay with his friends when he saw him only moments before, his brother would be his usual self, and not half crazy, and his friend would be alive, and the whole world would not have changed.
Simon stared at his boy in wonder. Bob had only been joking, but somehow the joke had stumbled on what was now so obvious to him. What was clearly needed to connect Felix’s grief to something he could use—something tangible. Something productive. He rose from his chair. Anne was still consoling Bob.
“I want to get my hands on him and kill him myself,” Bob said, pulling on his own hair.
“But you wouldn’t, Bobby, you’re not violent like him . . .” Anne said.
Her son gave her a strange look that she did not recognize.
Simon heard his wife’s words trailing off as he drifted down the hall to the basement door. He quietly pulled the door open and then closed it behind him.
The basement was where he went to take in the reflections of his life gone by. It was where he’d collected all of Bob’s football trophies. His team picture. A framed jersey from his first varsity game. Felix’s accomplishments were beginning to accumulate too—his citizen’s badge, his physical fitness completion, the tin star he’d earned in first grade for Safety Patrol.
Simon had a metal shelf unit bracketed to the wall. The bottom shelf held Bobby’s things, the middle shelf was for Felix, and the top one held all the trinkets and memorabilia from his and Anne’s life. His high school yearbook, her wedding gown, folded and compressed in a lined box. Cookie cans of film chronicling their honeymoon, their first camping trip, the day he first taught her how to fire a rifle—when she swung the barrel of the gun around to face him, everybody dove for cover.
Then there were trophies from his own varsity years, pitching for the Baystone High School Arrowheads. A printed certificate recording his fourteen strikeouts in one game against Saybrook Central—the most in the school’s history. For the first few years after he’d graduated—he didn’t know why—he’d swing by Coach Ladski’s office under the pretense of saying hello until the man would finally tell him his record was still intact. Eventually he stopped visiting.
He grabbed his old glove and flexed it open like a book. Hyperextended the thumb far enough to see the Spalding insignia—black ink in the dim light. He slid his hand into the glove and it came to life. He brought it to his nose, smelled the palm, and began to laugh at himself. Stupid nostalgia.
Simon tucked the glove under his arm. The bat wasn’t far away and he slid it to the side the way a jeweler handles a diamond necklace. Observed the once-white smudges of his line drives, now darkened from age. He vaguely remembered his swing. The ball giving way to the lumber, moist in his hands.
“You poor old man,” he said aloud. “You poor, rich old man,” he cried, swinging the bat in sharp, expert strokes toward the outfields of ancient history.
* * *
The next afternoon, home from work, Simon took awhile to get out of the car. He was hauling a large plastic bag from a nearby sporting goods store. He looked into the backyard and watched Felix take a violent swing.
“Hey, kiddo, what’re you doing?”
Felix took another swing, sent a rock straight up into the air. Simon tracked its flight, and when it dropped a few feet in front of them, he bent down to one knee and held up his gift.
“Why don’t you try this?” he said to his son, holding up his old Louisville Slugger.
Felix stopped swinging and looked at it. It was a rosewood bat, with a black-taped handle. He eyed it up and down almost suspiciously, and then looked at his father, who nodded.
“Here, I’ll take that stick, and you try this.” Simon reached for the stick in Felix’s hand. The boy tugged a little before giving it up and taking hold of the bat. He bent down to pick up a rock, but his father stopped him.
“Let’s try something else,” he said, and reached for the large bag.
Felix watched curiously. It was filled with baseballs. Felix’s eyes grew wide at the sight of them—their perfect round shape, the red stitches. His father took a ball out and rubbed it with both hands like he used to. Then he scooped the bag up by the handles and walked about thirty feet away from his son.
“What are you doing?” Felix asked.
“Okay, I’ll serve ’em to you, let’s see what you got.” Simon took a pitcher’s stance. The old feeling was returning to him.
Felix began to smile slightly. He stepped with his left foot, dug in, and cocked the bat behind his shoulder. Simon went into a windup, and fired the ball, aiming for an imaginary catcher’s glove. Felix swung and missed, spinning around awkwardly with the heavy bat. Simon glanced over and saw his wife and other son watching him from the kitchen window.
“Sorry, kid, I’ll slow ’em down for you.” Simon grimaced at the two in the window.
“Don’t,” said Felix, and after throwing the ball back to his dad, he dug in again.
Simon went into his old, exaggerated windup and delivered another fastball at knee height. Felix swung and connected with an echoing thunk. The ball leaped from
Felix’s bat, and Simon could only spin around quickly to get a glimpse of its flight. It cleared the treetops. Simon lumbered up to the fence, putting one foot on the lower strut and hoisting himself to see over it. Through the trees, he watched the ball bouncing in the middle of the street. Good Lord, he thought, this kid can hit! He jumped down and grabbed another ball from the bag.
“Nice shot!” he yelled. “There’s home runs still in that old lady!”
Felix had dug in already. “Throw harder,” he said.
His father wound up and delivered, using all his strength and weight. The ball sailed upward, speeding right toward his head. Felix dove back from the pitch, and the ball crashed into the side of the house behind him. He looked back and saw a piece of their asbestos siding fall to the ground. He stared at his father, mouth open.
Anne and Bob craned their necks to assess the damage from their position at the window. Simon covered his face with both hands and began to laugh. When Felix saw this, he laughed as well. He picked up the ball where it had bounced off the house, and tossed it back.
“Throw it like that again,” he said, and got into his stance.
His father wound up and fired another fastball. This time the pitch curved in toward Felix’s midsection, but Felix went inside and drove it the opposite way, over the fence. The ball clanked off the side of James’s fort. Simon stared at his son and grabbed another ball. He whipped a pitch up high, and watched Felix follow the ball into the barrel of his old bat, driving it straight up, over the trees behind him, and it landed in the woods with a soft, leafy crash. The next pitch was low and fast. Felix adjusted, and golfed the ball deep into the woods again.
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