The Best American Short Stories® 2011

by Geraldine Brooks

  Dad put his arm around me. There were three cumulus clouds in the sky.

  "Son, doesn't matter if you're a silverback or not. That's just how nature decides."

  This got me talking. "Did you eschew Mom?"

  "Of course not," he laughed. "What are you, crazy?"

  And in truth I did feel a little bit crazy. He laughed hard, as if my question had been unfathomable, and all my odd behaviors, all my silent moments and my not wanting to put the markers on the ground so I could pee, it all seemed crazy. I didn't laugh out loud, but I was sort of laughing on the inside.

  Dad explained again how my mother was in Rwanda helping those she felt morally obligated to help. I asked him why he hadn't felt morally obligated himself, and he told me he felt morally obligated to raise me where there wasn't strife, and then he explained to me what strife was. I was talking again, and Dad couldn't be happier. He asked me if I wanted to drive a little.

  The last thing I outgrew was the feeling of driving with Dad, and part of the reason was because of our drive down Scenic Drive Road. It only went for half a mile, but it was vacant and it transected a landscape of mesas. We got up to fifty once, our windows down, and as far as I knew the world was perfectly flat.

  "Son, we need to get back on the road," Dad said after a while. I went over to shotgun and he adjusted the rearview. I thanked him.

  "Son, today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Who said that?"

  Dad liked lobbing me easy ones.

  "Lou Gehrig."

  "Exactly, son. Exactly."

  Here's the thing with Billy's gift: Dad and I picked it out together. We called all the different sporting-goods stores in the metro area, and we even called up the equipment manager for the Wichita Aeros. Which begs the question, what in the world were we doing getting Billy Rod a vintage Mark Grace first baseman's glove in the first place?

  Despite my dad's efforts, there were things I didn't realize while growing up, like how I invariably gave the most expensive gifts at all the birthday parties. When I mean expensive, I mean exceedingly expensive, the most expensive gift by a long shot, more expensive than all the other gifts combined, including the parents' gifts. What I mean is two season tickets to the Aeros, a one-week registration at the Huntsville, Alabama, Space Camp, an original Rickey Henderson Oakland A's jersey, to name a few. Monster gifts, the kind that made parents go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Would you look at that! Thank Ricky and his father!" when opened (and always opened last, I might add, as Dad emceed the presents part of all parties). Gifts that nonsyndromic kids would feel ashamed to give.

  The first thing I did when we got to the Rods' was make a beeline for the bathroom, right past Billy's dad. I could hear Dad ask Mr. Rod, "So how're things going?" and I knew exactly what he meant.

  Dad pulled me close to him when I came out of the bathroom. "Ricky," he said. "Aren't you going to say hello to your best friend's father?"

  Billy's dad was wearing a polo shirt and some really comfortablelooking but ostentatious plaid shorts. His short hair was wet and slicked back and he had hound-dog rings below his eyes. Something crucial to know about the Rods is that they came from money, which is why Billy's dad made the mistake of marrying a good-looking woman. I think what Dad meant by this was that he married nothing but a good-looking woman.

  "He doesn't have to," said Billy's dad, messing with my hair. I would've bet a million dollars he was gonna call me "Ricky Rags" that afternoon. "The boys are playing Wiffle ball. Why don't you two gear up?"

  Dad always took a long time getting ready for anything, especially baseball (he was third-base coach). Mr. Rod left us inside after waiting some. I waited until I couldn't wait anymore and then I started snooping around. Billy's house was made entirely of wooden boards stacked one on top of the other, a perfect trapezoid (nice pointy roof). In the highest part of the roof, locked in by three beams, was an old Indian-style canoe. It looked as if the whole house had been built for the canoe, as if each member of Billy's family had held it high while the workers nailed the boards and the beams together. The canoe featured in many of the Rod family pictures, old pictures of Billy's dad rowing, Billy and his brothers with their paddles on their father's head, etc. In fact, there were photographs everywhere in Billy's house, and not just of the canoe. There were Polaroids of the boys dressed like mariachis, portraits of Billy's grandfather looking away from the camera, even little passport photos of Billy and his brother doing blowfaces. Every room had pictures, and not just one or two: whole collages. In the utility room there was a stack of them like you'd find in the back room of a gallery.

  I found no evidence of Billy's mom in any of the photos. I couldn't tell if this was something new, as in since she'd skipped town. Or maybe she was the one taking all the pictures, making the collages, gluing the pictures so as to hide herself.

  I had to find her. She was somewhere in the house, I was sure, except she wasn't. It was like Where's Waldo?, only without Waldo. One of the collages on top of the washer, where Billy's dad stacked the presents, had a picture of a woman wearing a headscarf and sunglasses. I hopped up to take a closer look. The collage was of the Rods at the Renaissance Festival, and in the picture, Billy and his dad are ready to take a bite out of two massive turkey legs they're holding crisscrossed like lovers do with champagne. You can see a Mrs. Rod–like figure in the back right-hand corner, sitting alone on a bench.

  And this is what happened: I started thinking about Billy's mom not taking those pictures, sitting on a nearby bench wherever her family went, letting her boys be boys. I pictured her sitting quietly, and then I realized that I was sitting quietly in the Rod utility room with nothing but Billy's presents. All the gifts looked nice except mine. The wrapping paper was wrinkled.

  Dad came into the utility room. I could tell he'd been knocking for some time.

  "Ricky," he said. "What are you doing?"

  He had this look of disbelief on his face.

  How else can I explain it? I'd opened all of Billy's gifts.

  Was it the first time I'd opened a friend's birthday presents? Yes. Was it the first time I'd caused my father shame? Of course not.

  Dad pulled me off the washer. He picked up a piece of wrapping paper.

  "Ricky, what are you doing?" he said again.

  Part of my problem is I don't cry. I've been told it has to do with an inhibitory synesthesia involving the limbic system, but I don't know, it's been a part of me since birth (Apgars of eight and eight, zeroes on grimace). Right then I thought to myself, I should really, really be crying. I opened my mouth to see if it would help, but all it did was make me feel thirsty. Imagine that: a kid who hardly talks, with his mouth perfectly agape, having opened all his best friend's gifts at his birthday-slash-dad's-sobriety party.

  "I don't understand." That's all Dad could say.

  He led me outside and sent me off ("Go ahead, son. I'll take care of this"), and I slipped into the father-son Wiffle ball game like a cat into the attic, no "Let Ricky bat," nothing. Dad didn't arrive until much later. All the dads yelled, "What's up, Doc?" as he skipped down the stairs and took his position along the third-base line. I was on first and Billy's dad was batting, and instead of giving me the sign to run, Dad gave it to the batter. Billy's dad hit one hard down the line, and I ran hard from first to second to third. Mr. Rod was right behind me when Dad waved us in.

  Truth is, it should have been an easy inside-the-park home run. Candy Maldonado would've made it. But Billy faked like he had caught the ball and ran toward his dad, yelling, "I got it, I got it." In retrospect, it was a cl ever move, like the old fake-back-to-the-pitcher-to-get-the-man-leading-off. I don't think anybody on the field believed him, though, and the thing is, a third-base coach should know when a fielder's faking. That's his job.

  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Dad jumped in front of Billy's dad with the hold sign as the big man rounded third. I don't think either of them saw what was coming until the very end, when
it was too late.

  Billy's dad tried to put on the brakes, but he stumbled, and instead of falling down he elbowed my dad square in the head. He gunned it home right after, and before the real Wiffle ball was relayed in he was standing on home plate beside me, messing with my hair.

  "Excellent base running, Tricky Ricky," he said, all winded.

  ***

  I was taking cuts when Mr. Rod approached me an inning and a half later. "Whydontcha check on your old dad," he said. "I don't see where he went."

  After catching that elbow, Dad had stumbled down the line like he was drunk. "Doc, you all right? We need to call 911?" said the dads. It took him a while, but he gave them a thumbs-up. The rest of the inning he gave no signs. We probably lost him during the changeover.

  I ran toward the Rod house like I was stealing home. As if Billy's presents were still wrapped and ready to go. And maybe they were, by then.

  Far away from the action, on the Rod deck, Dad was rocking in a rocking chair. At first I thought he hadn't heard me sprinting up the stairs, he rocked so thoroughly. I sat beside him looking at what he was looking at, the ground, mostly, when out of nowhere he looked over at me and said, "Come on, Ricky," like I'd interrupted him. I didn't know what he meant.

  A couple of minutes later he asked, "Son, what are we doing?"

  "We're having fun," I said. I thought that's what he wanted to hear. He rocked the rocking chair all the way to the tip and back.

  "Son, I have feelings and I remember events, but the feelings don't match the events." He grabbed my hands and placed them on his head. "The brain is in a box, son."

  Being my father's son, I knew exactly what this meant. It meant he was bleeding inside his skull. It meant the knock had jarred loose a vessel and that blood was pooling, flooding synapses, compressing neurons, killing thoughts. It meant Dad needed a neurosurgeon.

  To be fair, the man was a hypochondriac, his own worst patient. He wasn't sick often, though when he was he acted like he was in the grips of a deathly illness. "Spinal meningitis," he called it. What were flulike symptoms to normal people was neurosepsis to him. I was his little orderly. I'd hang towels over the windows to exclude the light and draw daily bubble baths for him that when ready he'd eschew, saying they'd "have to wait" to avoid the risk of ascending paralysis and secondary drowning. In case of shock, I was not to call an ambulance ("They're a racket, son"). Every time the virus hit (or bacteria, whatever it was), I missed three days of school, though Dad insisted the wisdom I gained in providing him care superseded whatever I would have read in my textbooks. And that's the point: Dad might have been half jokester, but he was all teacher. Even at his sickest moments, the man had to teach.

  We set off for the emergency room right then and there, no interrupting Wiffle ball, no informing the dads. I never got the chance to break in Billy's glove, though even with my father bleeding into his brain, I thought about it.

  Dad started off steering, but pretty soon he was swerving. He wasn't braking when I squeezed his wrists. What I did was grip the steering wheel through my sweatshirt. I didn't care that my hands were sweaty. At each stop the car jumped and Dad's head rocked forward until his seat belt locked. Then he yawned.

  "Stay awake," I urged. His yawns didn't sound tired at all.

  "She's a good-looking woman, son."

  At first I thought he was talking about Billy's mom, but then I could've sworn he said something about my mom, and then the whole thing sounded like it was about his own mom. He was definitely talking about somebody's mom.

  The closest hospital was the Thomas Mantle Memorial Hospital. When we pulled into the ambulance port, my first thought was, The Mick's brother? A couple of ambulance guys, upon seeing Dad stumble from the car, brought out a stretcher and a fluorescent green backboard. They taped down his head and put his neck in a c-collar. One of them parked our car.

  We waited in the triage line for what seemed like forever. The ambulance guy went to see about his partner, leaving me alone to push Dad's stretcher. I tried my best to snap him out of his state, doing things I knew he'd do if not for the blood in his brain, like guessing the diagnosis of those who entered the ER ("Kidney stone, Dad"). Useless.

  When it was our turn in line, the triage nurse started asking us questions. Instead of answering them in a calm and dignified manner, I went off into syndrome land. The triage nurse would have none of this. She grabbed my shoulders, told me to speak. The words were on my lips; I would have said them, if not for a naked lady who cut the line in front of us.

  She wasn't totally naked—she had a towel on—but whenever she raised her arms, I made sure to cover my eyes. She cut right in front of Dad and me. The triage nurse asked, "What happened?" and the lady took off her towel. She had cuts all over her back. Some of them were bleeding. Others looked raw.

  "What happened?" I said.

  "Dog bites!" she said. She looked at me. "You a dogcatcher?"

  The bites may have looked bad, but they weren't enough to get her treated ahead of Dad. The triage nurse asked the lady to take her place in line, but she refused, and stormed out.

  When they came to wheel off Dad to CAT scan, I kissed him on a small space on his forehead where there wasn't tape. While I waited, the naked lady made another brief appearance to collect her towel.

  As she was leaving, I heard the triage nurse talking with security.

  "Those aren't dog bites," she said.

  When they called me in to see Dad, I felt something, like an aura. Those dog bites are an omen, I told myself over and over. I couldn't think of the mathematical term—forecast? They'd reinforced my certainty that Dad had taken a turn for the worse.

  I found Dad sitting in front of a large computer, scrolling with a mouse, silent. I slipped in behind him and watched as he scrolled back and forth through radiographs of his brain. Then he turned around, all surprised.

  "Ricky! What are you doing?"

  He had that incredulous look on his face. I started chewing.

  "They're not dog bites." Of all things, this is what I said.

  "What?" He grabbed me in his arms and gave me a bear hug. "Son, that was a close one. Look." He scrolled through images of his brain on the screen. "Look at those gyri, son. Brain wrinkles but no blood. Nothing but an old-fashioned brainshake."

  He patted his breast pocket as if he was looking for markers, but he had none.

  Dad never accompanied me to another birthday party. Not because he didn't want to—the parties changed venues from roller rinks and lake houses to high school gymnasiums and then to grassy lots in the middle of nowhere. Parents weren't invited. Gift-giving stopped. Around the time Billy and I began to concern ourselves with good-looking women, we lost touch.

  I ran into him years later. He confided to me after a keg stand that he missed my father. I told him that I did too. Dad and I had disagreed about my future, and I ended up enlisting in the air force to pay for a private college that in the end wasn't worth the money. I asked Billy if his family still had that canoe. He was headed on a canoe trip that night, in fact, with his brothers and friends. He couldn't believe I remembered.

  Would you believe the military forced me to become a doctor? Not forced, but strongly suggested, incentivized it. Those with a personal or family history of Syndrome X (whatever it was that month) were encouraged to seek desk jobs, but desk jobs weren't for me, and so I studied medicine. (During the interview process, some air force doc told me, "We can't find anything wrong with you." I have my doubts.) Dad pretended like it was no big thing when I told him. Now we get together once a week and talk late into the evening, always about patients.

  My son has something called Raynaud's syndrome. What this means is that his fingers turn dark blue when it's cold. It's more an inconvenience than a danger in a temperate climate like ours, but whenever there's the slightest chill in the air, I make him wear mittens. I buy him a pair every birthday.

  Some nights when I'm tucking him in and telling him a story, I ta
ke off his gloves and show him his little fingers turning blue. Then I pretend like I'm chewing on them.

  "Dog bites, dog bites," I say.

  Except the other night the bright guy corrected me.

  "They don't look like dog bites."

  So I indulged him. "What do dog bites look like, then, son?"

  And what did my little professor do? He bit me! Right on the wrist.

  No! I told him, little boys don't do that, human bites are dirtier than animal bites. But all he did was laugh like he knew better.

  ID

  Joyce Carol Oates

  FROM The New Yorker

  "FOR AN eiii-dee," they were saying. "We need to see Lisette Mulvey."

  This was unexpected.

  In second-period class, at 9:40 A.M., on some damn Monday in some damn winter month she'd lost track of, when even the year—a "new" year—seemed weird to her, like a movie set in a faraway galaxy.

  It was one of those school mornings—some older guys had got her high on beer, for a joke. Well, it was funny, not just the guys laughing at her but Lisette laughing at herself. Not mean-laughing—she didn't think so—but like they liked her. "Liz-zette"—"Liz-zette"—was their name for her, high-pitched piping like bats, and they'd run their fingers fast along her arms, her back, like she was scalding hot to the touch.

  They picked her up on their way to school. The middle school was close to the high school. Most times, she was with a girlfriend—Keisha or Tanya. They were mature girls for their age—Keisha especially—and not shy like the other middle school girls. They knew how to talk to guys, and guys knew how to talk to them, but it was just talk mostly.

  Now this was—math?—damn math class that Lisette hated. It made her feel so stupid. Not that she was stupid. It was just that sometimes her thoughts were as snarled as her hair, her eyes leaking tears behind her dark-purple-tinted glasses— pres-ciption lenses—so that she couldn't see what the hell the teacher was scribbling on the board, not even the shape of it. Ms. Nowicki would say in her bright hopeful voice, "Who can help me here? Who can tell us what the next step is?" and most of the kids would just sit on their asses, staring. Smirking. Not wanting to be called on. But then Lisette was rarely called on in math class—sometimes she shut her eyes, pretending that she was thinking really hard, and when she opened them there was one of the three or four smart kids in the class at the board, taking the chalk from Nowicki. She tried to watch, and she tried to comprehend. But there was something about the sound of the chalk clicking on the board—not a black board, it was green—and the numerals that she was expected to make sense of: she'd begin to feel dizzy.