"What is this?" his mother said when he took his seat next to Janet. All the faces were staring at his plate.
"Don't you want any bird?" said his father.
Randy shook his head no, and the others looked around, embarrassed. His father stared at him. He said, "Your mother's been cooking all afternoon for you," and his voice opened a vacancy in the air above the table. Randy sat rigid as he always had when his father challenged him or raised his voice."
Leave him alone," said his mother.
Mary asked, "Shall we pray?" and everyone exchanged glances.
"Certainly we'll pray, if you'd like," said his father. "Would you do us the honor, young lady?"
Randy looked at the parts in everyone's hair as the others bowed their heads. His father's part was low on the left side of his head. Teddy's was higher on the left. Mary's cut squarely down the middle and his mother's was on the right. He couldn't see a part in Janet's hair. He thought for a moment and recalled that when he parted his hair he parted it on the right.
Mary's voice droned, and Randy tried to imagine the baby in her womb, curled behind the pale lavender material of its mother's blouse. But all he got was the image of a fetus floating in a bottle like the one he'd seen at a science fair. The blouse, with buttons to the neck, hung below her waist, he remembered, outside her baggy slacks, and he wondered if she was making believe they were maternity clothes. And Teddy, with his new image: maybe he wants a boy, a boy who will grow up to be a ranch hand, "a kicker" that's what they were called in high school.
Mary said, "Bless all of us assembled here today. Amen."
They all looked up, pleased with themselves, and started passing platters of food, talking among themselves. Randy passed everything except Mary's green beans, of which he took a heaping portion. The mushroom sauce soaked his hamburger buns.
Then Teddy stood up. He had a camera in his hand. "I want to get you all together," he said, backing into the living room. "Lean in," he said. "Lean in over the table so you're all in the picture." His mother had to turn in her seat. Janet leaned forward and draped an arm over Randy's shoulder. Their faces were almost touching when Teddy said, "Say whiskey," and, smiling himself as an example, clicked the picture. "Let me get one more," Teddy said but he was called down by a chorus of "No."
"Mother," said Janet, reaching for a roll. "I like the flower. It's pretty. It makes you look festive."
"Oh," said his mother. "Thank you, dear." She reached up and almost touched the geranium but then brought her hand down on Randy's wrist, giving it a squeeze. She looked at him, smiling, and then, her gaze spanning the table as if to speak only to his father, she said: "Randy gave it to me." The others said, "Ah."
Randy, his face flushed, stared, at the food on his plate. He was afraid to look up, afraid to see them looking at him with their inquiring smiles, afraid Janet's face would be grinning at him and make him return an expression that would tell the others the two of them were sharing secrets. He could feel Janet's eyes lingering on him. He thought, Please don't make me look at you.
His father said flatly, "Who wants yams?"
When the bowl came to Randy he passed it to Janet and in that instant of contact, as each held the bowl, he felt something drawing his eyes up to her. He saw again the secrets in her eyes, a glint of light, the slightly lowered lids, that mysterious penetrating bond that had linked them all through childhood in a way that nothing else in the world is linked. It had no definition, nothing specific. It said simply, I know what you're doing.
He felt her eyes leave him when she took the bowl. She said, oddly, as she spooned a yam onto her plate, "Thank you, Randy."
He was embarrassed by the long moment that had passed between them and sensed a lull in the talk among the others as if each had stopped to watch them or to listen for anything else that might be said. But soon the business of dinner resumed.
"Is butter on the table?"
"We only have margarine."
"Pass the spuds, please."
"Who still needs turkey?"
"I do."
"Your beans are delicious."
"Don't I get a napkin?"
"Look at this."
"What?"
"There's something gross on this fork."
"Well get another one."
"We should have wine."
"We can't, dear, it gives Daddy a headache."
"Pepper. Where's the pepper?"
"It's right next to you."
"What'd you do to this meat, Mother?"
"It's barbecued. . . ."
"It's smoked."
"It's very tasty."
"Very juicy."
"Yes . . . well . . . save room for dessert."
He submerged himself beneath the talk until it was nothing but amorphous noise, ripples above the surface of his thoughts. He wanted to return to something that had flitted through his mind earlier. It had come to him while Janet was in his closet and again when he passed her the yams. He summoned the face of Janet and then remembered being in his closet one night, sitting amid shoes in the darkness, smelling the sour dusty odor of his clothes, afraid of something in his room. What? He'd been there a long time when the door opened; it was Janet in a nightgown. She said only: "It's gone, Randy."
Now he knew the secret they were sharing, knew what Janet thought: you're hiding in your closet and you won't come out until whatever is in the dark room has gone away. He wanted her to say, "It's gone, Randy," but he knew it wouldn't work this time. It was too simple to work again, and she had changed.
Something in his chest stirred, a tentative pain, and he was thankful when he heard his name mentioned. "You want potatoes?" It was Janet again, holding the bowl out for him. He thought she might be trying to get his attention. He shook his head no.
He slipped back under the surface and for several minutes he heard only the clinking of silverware against china and an occasional "Mmmm, delicious." Randy ate his hamburgers quickly and then the beans and he sipped his iced tea. He waited for the others to finish. But a conversation had sprung up at the table.
"Remember that trip to Garner," said Teddy. "The one when we rode horses. These two were just grunts." He nodded toward Janet and Randy.
"Oh yeah," said his father slowly.
"And Randy got lost," said Janet.
"That's the one," said Teddy.
"I remember," said his father. "We looked all afternoon in a rainstorm for him, riding those stupid horses."
"What happened?" said Mary.
His mother laughed: "Oh, we found him finally."
"But we found the horse first, remember," said Teddy. "God, we thought the horse had thrown him and killed him or something."
"Where was he?" said Janet. "I can't remember."
"Remember, the little jerk was sitting under a tree on a hill and when we rode up he yelled out, 'Where you been? I thought you were lost.' He was on the verge of tears."
They all laughed and Randy felt the warmth of a blush spread up his neck and over his face.
"That's right," said Janet, loudly over the laughter. "And Daddy almost shook the life out of him."
The laughter turned to awkward coughs and everyone seemed to be trying to look away, out a window or something, until finally it was only the clinking of forks and knives again.
"I don't remember shaking Randy," his father said, glancing between Teddy and Janet. Everyone was quiet, faces turned slightly down. Their eyes darted like the eyes of cheaters.
"Why don't we just drop it," said his mother.
"I remember it," Janet said, and all eyes stopped on her.
"What's it matter," said his mother. "It was so long ago."
"I remember it clearly," said Teddy. He paused as if wondering whether to go on. "First, you kind of hugged him and then, I guess, when you realized he was all right, you said, 'Don't ever do that again,' and then you grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him like an old rug. I remember it because that stupid hat he always wore,
the Robin Hood hat with the feather, remember, it fell in the mud and we had to clean it up in the river later."
"I never did that. I don't remember any of that."
"Yeah, you did," said Teddy. "He cried like a little baby."
"I remember it," said Janet, "because Randy wouldn't come out of the tent all the next day. He kept saying, 'I hope lightning strikes Daddy.'" She laughed.
His father said, "Well, now I sort of remember the lightning stuff but I don't remember any of that other business."
Randy did. He remembered feeling frightened at being alone under the tree in the rain and at having let his horse wander away. He had been searching for them among the hills, thinking he'd find them at any turn but every turn had seemed the same. He had remembered being told that the best thing to do was to remain in one place and allow rescuers to find you. So he got down from the horse and climbed onto some rocks that formed the base of a hill and he went up the hill until he found the tree and sat down underneath it to wait. The tree creaked and strained in the wind, making eerie moaning sounds, and drops of rain plopped onto his hat. It was the first time he had ever thought that he might die, that he would die someday like his grandmothers and grandfathers, that he would disappear like Carmen, the dog his father had brought home one day when Randy was small, very small, saying,
The oddest thing happened, an old man, "a bum really," crossing a street at a stoplight downtown had paused in front of his car, looked at him hard through the windshield and opened his overcoat to reveal a puppy clutching to the crook of his arm; "and then he came to my window I don't know why he picked me he came to the window, the light was about to change, and he held up the puppy like it was a prize." And the man said, "Mister, I can't care for it, you take it, her name's Carmen." His father said, No he couldn't. "But that old bum grinned like a fifty-dollar bill and he said, 'Sure you can,' and then he threw the dog in the window. When I looked up the old guy had crossed the street and was running away and just then the light changed."
His father had told the story with sparkling eyes, looking down at the dog shivering on the porch. Teasing, his father had said, "That's how we got Randy, isn't it, Mother?" And they all laughed. Carmen disappeared the week of his seventh birthday. "She's gone to heaven, sweetheart," his mother said. Sitting in the rain and the chill that afternoon he had tried to prepare himself for heaven and what he would say to God. But he didn't know how, what was expected of him, and he was very thankful when his family appeared beyond the rocks at the base of the hill with his horse in tow. He remembered feeling like a survivor, someone who should have been carried on shoulders and cheered. Instead, his father yelled at him and shook him and knocked his cap off. And all the way to the campsite he had imagined his father alone under a tree in the rain and the lightning.
The others at the table were still talking about it.
"Please, that's enough," said his mother.
"Randy, is any of this true?" said his father.
Just then Randy stood and left the table.
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The catcher's mitt was still on the bench where he'd left it so he laid himself down and put the mitt under his head. For a moment he imagined the others still at the dinner table, excited, hissing at each other about who was at fault, who had driven him away. The image soon receded and was replaced by another.
The five of them in the old station wagon. His father and mother in front, the three children in back with Randy, wearing a baseball uniform, in the middle.
Where had they been? Practice? A game? He tried to recall it, but for an instant his mind wandered out of the scene to the day around him. The shadows of the trees and the garage were long and sullen, clinging hard to the ground. Then he remembered his father saying, "It wasn't your fault. You had your stuff. No back-up from the infield," and he was thrown back into the scene.
It's a familiar street in the neighborhood, lined with shopping centers and restaurants. Signs pass by. Lights. "I want Chuck Wagon," says Janet. "We always go to Chuck Wagon." Teddy says, "I'm sick of Chuck Wagon. How about Dairy Queen?" It goes on and on. His mother enters the argument, suggesting they eat at Whataburger, and then his father sides with Janet. They go on and on, arguing as if it's a family rule, as if nothing can be done without first arguing and kicking and crying. Janet and Teddy lean across him and jab at each other. His mother screams, "Stop that," and turns in her seat to smack Janet's knee. Janet says, "You never hit Randy." Teddy is laughing, taunting her. His father, glancing into the rearview mirror, threatens to stop the car and make all of them get out. "You never hit Randy," Janet wails. They go on and on. At last Randy slams his glove against the ceiling of the car, two, three, four times. "Shut up!" His father scrutinizes him in the mirror and his mother looks over her shoulder. Her face is stunned as if she's been slapped. He says, "You're all stupid." There is a long silence until his father turns the car into the parking lot of Chuck Wagon.
The face of his father came into focus. He was standing over the bench, looking down at Randy. He said, "Hey, Bud, you okay?"
The opening to the cavity suddenly quivered and he said, "Why did you shake me?" The words sounded distant, hoarse, as if someone else had said them.
His father's eyes went tight, and he let out a noisy breath. His mouth had the downward curve of a penitent facing the minister. He looked away at the yard. He shivered and drove his hands deep into his pockets. He said, "It's better to remember the good times, Buddy. Why can't you remember them?"
Slowly his father's face changed. It became firm, driving downward somehow as if he were getting angry, as if he wanted to say, Snap out of it, get a grip on yourself. The face said, I've made my life and I'm living with it, now you make yours.
Troubled, uncertain, his father glanced up at the sky and then looked down at Randy on the bench. His face had mellowed again, and when their eyes met a thread of anticipation snaked its way out of Randy's heart to his mind. Yes go on, he thought.
"It's gonna be chilly tonight," he said, turning away. "Maybe we'll have a fire. You always liked fires."
The back door opened. Randy heard the screen clang and then Teddy was standing beside his father in the thinning light of the beautiful day. They said nothing for a good while, taking in the afternoon, then Teddy asked, "Say, you want to throw some?"
"Sure," said his father. "Sure. Come on." "How about you, Bud?" Teddy said but Randy didn't answer. He pulled the mitt from behind his head and handed it to his father.
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"Hey, Randy." It was Teddy, calling to him from the yard where he and his father had been playing pitch for half an hour or so. "Why don't you toss a few before it gets dark."
"Yeah, come on," said his father.
He stood up and watched them for a moment. Teddy's awkward way of throwing the ball had always amused Randy. Teddy had always tried hard but he never had been able to master it with any kind of rhythm. Teddy threw one wide and his father had to leap out from his squatting position to catch it. He threw a couple more, one into the grass and the other high.
"Here," said Teddy, tossing the ball to Randy. "I'll ump."
Randy placed his foot where Teddy's boot had been in the grass and he threw an easy one to his father, who was now standing behind the make-believe plate near the wall of the garage.
"That's it," his father said. "Warm up first."
With each throw Randy felt stronger, looser, until he was starting to hurl the ball. After each pitch his father would shake his mitted hand as if the pitch had been a zinger. He squatted behind the plate again.
"Come on, now, burn it in here," he said, smacking the pocket of the mitt. "Come on, Babe."
Randy sensed Teddy just behind him, leaning forward to judge the pitches. Teddy would say softly, "Ball," or, "That one's in there." Now Teddy said, "Okay, you've got a man at the plate. Let's see what you can do."
His father was giving him signals, his hand at his crotch. One finger
for a fast ball, two for a curve, three for the reliable sinker Randy had been known for in his glory days. He made four pitches and Teddy called them two balls, two strikes. His father signaled for a fast ball. Randy wound up and heaved it as hard as he could, following-through perfectly, bringing his right foot to the ground at the instant the ball met the mitt.
Teddy said, "Nope, nope, that's a ball. Okay, three and two, let's see you get this guy."
Randy strained to see his father's hand in the dusk light. Three fingers, the sinker. The mitt went down almost to the grass as a target. His father crouched lower, preparing to trap the ball, and Randy saw him wince with the effort. Randy gripped the ball along its seams, calling up the oft-practiced motion and the required flip of the wrist that used to send pulses of excitement through his body when he did it right. The charge of anticipation now pulsed through him, up his back, into his hair. He brought his hands up, looked closely at the mitt, went into his motion, kicked his leg, carefully lolling his weight backward and then upward and then over and then forward, and he let the ball fly with an audible "oomph." But as soon as he released it he knew he had done it too soon. He knew it would be high. He saw the ball rising as his airborne foot sought its landing place. And his father's face, a mask of surprise, lurched as he tried to move away from the pitch. The mitt came up but not in time. The ball grazed the leather and zipped just past his father's ear, then smacked the wall of the garage. His father fell backward and landed hard on the ground.
"Jesus, Randy," Teddy hissed. "What'd you do that for?"
"Hey, boy," cried his father, who couldn't have heard Teddy. He seemed to laugh. "Wow. That one almost got me."
"It slipped," Randy said to Teddy. He saw an ugly and pointed kind of fear in his brother's face.
Teddy said, "You could have hurt him, you little jerk," and then he brushed past Randy to go to his father. Randy watched Teddy help his father up, two figures in the gray light now. They were brushing off his clothes. Then they were still. The three of them looked at each other for a long moment, and Randy almost said it again: "It slipped." But what good would it do? Teddy wouldn't believe it and his father would say, "Kind of rusty, eh?"
Memorial Day Page 10