Sport

by Louise Fitzhugh

  Mr. Rocque was so mad that it took him a minute to cool down. He appeared finally in the kitchen, sat down, and drank some coffee. “There’s something going on,” he said finally, almost to himself, as though there were no one in the room. “She’s got some sort of plan that needs …” He remembered Sport and locked up. “I don’t get it, son. She wants you over there more than is reasonable. You can’t help any. There’s nothing for you to do there. I don’t get it.” He drank some coffee. “What happened when you were there? Did Mr. Wilton say anything to you?”

  “He asked me if we had enough money”

  “And?”

  “I said yes.”

  Mr. Rocque smiled. “Anything else?”

  Sport hesitated. “He said I had a hole in my sweater.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Rocque was no longer listening. He looked toward the window and moved his lips around. Moving his lips around was a sign to Sport that some intense thinking was going on. He waited, hoping he would be let in on the answer when it came.

  “I think …” said Mr. Rocque, and then stopped.

  “What?” Sport couldn’t help himself.

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about money and wills to figure it out. But I do know that if it didn’t have something to do with money, your mother wouldn’t care if you were in Alaska. It’s something to do with money, the old man, and you, but I don’t know what.”

  Thirty million, thought Sport, but it was too big a sum to think realistically about. It sounded like something the government would spend to send up a missile.

  “Can I still go out?” he said finally.

  Mr. Rocque looked at him. “Sure,” he said. “Stay as long as you like.”

  Sport jumped up. “Are you gonna be here for dinner?” he asked his father.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Kate’s going to come and cook for us,” said Mr. Rocque, all smiles.

  “When’s she coming?” he asked his father.

  “‘Bout six,” said Mr. Rocque. “You like her, son?”

  “Yeah!” said Sport.

  “Well,” said Mr. Rocque, rubbing his clipped head with embarrassment.

  “So long, Dad,” said Sport.

  “So long,” said Mr. Rocque.

  Sport jumped down the stairs. One flight down he saw the landlord coming in the front door. Sport turned and ran back into the apartment.

  “Hey, Dad, I forget to tell you. Write the rent check. Mr. Collins is right downstairs. You could give it to him and save the stamp.”

  “Okay, son,” said Mr. Rocque, smiling.

  Harry lived over on Eighty-second between York Avenue and First Avenue. Sport went up the steps to his apartment. The building was the same kind of building as Sports. The halls smelled of cabbage and cat pee.

  He knocked on Harry’s door.

  “Yes?” came a girls voice from inside.

  “It’s me, Helen … Sport.”

  Harry’s sister, Helen, opened the door. She was very pretty, somewhat lighter in color than Harry, and about the same size even though she was seventeen. She went to Hunter College, and typed manuscripts for a living.

  “Hi, Helen. Is Harry here?”

  “Sure, Sport. How’re you?”

  “Okay.” He came into the living room. There wasn’t much furniture, only a couch, two armchairs, and a card table that Helen had set up by the window to do her studying on. There wasn’t any rug, nor any coffee table.

  “He’s back in the boys’ room,” said Helen.

  Sport went on back along a small hallway, past one bedroom with a big double bed into another bedroom with another big double bed.

  In the middle of the bed, his long black boots propped against the headboard, lay Harry, reading a book.

  “Hey, Harry,” said Sport.

  “Hey, man.” Harry swung his long legs around and sat on the side of the bed. He grinned. “What’s up?”

  “Let’s go play ball,” said Sport.

  Despite the rain, they played all afternoon. At about five thirty they went home.

  Coming up the steps to his apartment, Sport heard angry voices. He stopped outside the door. His father said, “That’s ridiculous. Just because I don’t know where he is doesn’t mean he’s up to anything. He’s eleven years old, not four. He has friends in the neighborhood, they play ball, things like that.”

  “I can imagine what friends,” said Charlotte.

  Sport realized with a shock that his mother was in the apartment. To his knowledge his mother had never been in the apartment. He began to itch. It wasn’t right her being there. It was like getting out of a shower and running into Winston Churchill.

  Sport moved away from the door. I’ll go out and wait’ll they leave, he thought, and turned to go, but his father’s voice said: “I take care of him!” He sounded desperate.

  “He could be dead on a street corner for all you know,” said Charlotte.

  I have to go in, Sport said to himself. The poor guy’s really getting it.

  He opened the door.

  His father turned around. His face flooded with relief. He didn’t say anything.

  “There he is,” whined a sharp voice, and Sport looked over at a woman he’d never seen before, sitting beside his mother on the couch.

  “Hello there,” said his mother. “What have you been up to?” She was smoking a cigarette in a long holder and had a martini in front of her. She must have brought her own gin, thought Sport.

  “Hi, son,” said Mr. Rocque. Sport looked at him and nodded and then looked at the strange woman. She was older than his mother, but she looked like her. She looks, Sport thought suddenly, the way my mother is going to look. She was all sharp lines, baggy-eyed, tight-lipped, long-legged. Her eyes were small and mean. Her hands, folded across her lap, were long, with long yellow fingers. Looking at her, Sport felt unaccountably afraid.

  “This is your Aunt Carrie, Sport,” said his father.

  “How do you do, Simon,” said Aunt Carrie rather primly, as though she were making a point about his name.

  “Tell us what you were doing,” said his mother insistently. She took out a flask covered in paisley and filled her glass.

  “Are you hungry, son?” asked his father. Sport nodded, not taking his eyes off the women. They held a horrible fascination for him, like two crows on a fence.

  “There’s some cake, take a glass of milk,” said his father.

  Sport went into the kitchen. As he got out the cake and milk he could hear them talking.

  “Won’t that spoil his dinner?” asked Aunt Carrie.

  “He’s not big on manners, is he?” said Charlotte.

  He heard his father sit down in the armchair with the broken spring. “First of all, it won’t spoil his dinner. Have you ever tried to spoil an eleven-year-old boy’s dinner? They don’t spoil. Second, his manners are fine.”

  “Well,” whined Aunt Carrie. “I must not have heard him say hello.”

  Sport winced.

  Charlotte lowered her voice so much that he had to strain to hear. “Aren’t you even going to ask him where he was?”

  “Of course not,” said his father loudly. “I trust my son.”

  “Well,” sang Aunt Carrie.

  From the slinck made by the broken spring Sport could tell that Mr. Rocque had stood up. “It’s been very nice meeting you, Carrie,” he said, rather wildly.

  “Is this a dismissal, Matthew?” began Charlotte. “I have my rights, you know.”

  “Charlotte!”

  Oh, fizz, thought Sport, he’s lost his temper.

  “Don’t start, Matthew. You might as well control yourself. We have a whole lifetime together.”

  “We precisely do not have a lifetime together.”

  “I mean a lifetime of making decisions about Simon.”

  “I make the decisions,” yelled Mr. Rocque. “And the first one is that you get out of here.”

  “Well, my hea
vens,” said Carrie.

  “Come along, Carrie. He always was a boor.”

  “I never heard of such a thing,” said Carrie.

  “Don’t think about it, dear,” Charlotte said in a silvery voice as they went down the steps. “We don’t, thank God, run into many people like him. Just dismiss him. He’s about as important as a bad martini.”

  “Oh, my,” said Carrie, and they were gone.

  Sport went to the kitchen door. His father was standing at the hall door. His back looked bent and tired. He turned around and saw Sport. For a moment it seemed as though he didn’t know how to look and then he laughed, saying, “How do you like that for a couple of cats?”

  Sport laughed.

  “Hey,” said his father, coming into the kitchen, “how about that Carrie for an old bag?”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Your mother’s older sister. And not that much older either.”

  “What did they want?”

  “Purportedly for you to meet Aunt Carrie, although why this should be considered such a delicious project I can’t imagine. It shows something, though. The clan is gathering. They’re up to something. I wish I could find out what it is.”

  “Why don’t you ask Mr. Wilton?”

  Mr. Rocque looked at his son with surprise. “Not a half-bad idea. I’d have to think how to phrase it, though. Nothing has really been done or said yet. It’s just a feeling I have.”

  “Wonder what Kate will cook for dinner?” said Sport, trying to get his father back into the room. He hated seeing his father involved with his mother in any way at all.

  “What?” Mr. Rocque looked at him blankly.

  “Dad!” Sport looked exasperated.

  “What? Oh, sorry, son, I was thinking. What did you say?”

  By now it seemed inane.

  “I just wondered what Kate was going to make for dinner.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. She asked what all our favorite foods were and I told her.”

  “I hope you said steak.” Sport’s eyes gleamed.

  “I did indeed,” said Mr. Rocque.

  Sport thought about steak. They could never have steak because it cost too much. A big, thick, juicy steak, and maybe mashed potatoes, and corn and string beans, and sliced tomatoes, and big glasses of milk to wash it all down with; he started to drown in images of food, he wanted it all so badly.

  “At least we know it won’t be beans,” said Mr. Rocque, smiling.

  CHAPTER

  Seven

  The doorbell rang. “Gee,” said Sport, “you’re not dressed.” Mr. Rocque got up and went to the door. “She said not to,” he said happily.

  “She doesn’t care what we wear.”

  He flung open the door, and Sport saw Kate, smiling, with an enormous bag of groceries. Mr. Rocque was holding the door open.

  “Take the bag, it’s heavy,” yelled Sport.

  “Oh, here, what am I thinking of?” said Mr. Rocque, coming out of his daze. He grabbed the bag and Kate laughed.

  “How’re my starving men?” She came into the kitchen.

  “God, you bought the A and P,” said Mr. Rocque as he put the bag down.

  “Just enough to feed two skinny men,” said Kate. She pulled an apron out of her purse and put it on. Mr. Rocque was taking things out of the bag. Sport watched everything with fascination, a big grin on his face.

  “Look!” said Mr. Rocque, pulling out an enormous slab wrapped in butcher paper. He put it down and unfolded the paper. Sport ran over and together they stared with wonder at the beautiful steak, red and white with tiny white streaks through the red, a great, enormous, beautiful thing. They looked up with wonder to see Kate smiling at them.

  “Well, don’t eat it raw,” she said gently.

  “It’s great” said Sport and before he knew what he was doing, he had run to her and given her a hug. She laughed down at him, and he gasped with embarrassment and ran from the room. I’ll put on a clean shirt, he thought wildly, I’ll clean up the living room, I’ll… nothing was big enough. I know what, he thought immediately. I’ll bring out a bottle of Scotch. He crawled under the bed. Carefully hidden under an old sweat shirt, the bottle of Scotch was where he had stored it a year ago. He remembered the day that an old friend of his father’s had come to the house bringing three bottles of Scotch as a Christmas present. His father had been out. Sport had taken them, given his father two, and put the third away for some special day. Tonight is special, he thought. Tonight I am happier than I have ever been.

  He opened the door to his room and ran to the kitchen, yelling, “Here, here’s the surprise,” holding the bottle above his head.

  Kate was at the sink cleaning vegietables and his father was just reaching for the beer in the icebox. They looked at him in astonishment.

  “Here! It’s a celebration!” He held out the bottle to them. Kate’s eyes were warm and searched his face.

  “Where in the devil did you get that?” asked his father.

  “Remember that time Mr. Bixley brought you that Scotch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I kept one hidden for some special time.”

  “This is a special time, son,” said Mr. Rocque, “but I don’t know how you knew it.”

  Sport looked at Kate. She continued to look at him with her eyes warm, smiling, almost wet, her mouth in a trembling smile.

  “Here,” said Mr. Rocque, taking the bottle, “lets drink to a great…”

  “… steak,” said Kate and smiled at Sport.

  “Yeah,” said Sport, grinning wildly.

  “… marriage,” finished Mr. Rocque and looked at Kate.

  Kate looked at Sport.

  “What?” said Sport, looking from one to the other.

  “I asked Kate to marry me, Sport, and she said yes.” Mr. Rocque looked at him patiently.

  Sport stood uncertainly, his mouth open, feeling slightly dizzy, not knowing if it was true, or what to say if it were. He stood on the brink of the future and felt himself wavering, feeling completely blank inside. I don’t know what marriage means, he thought crazily.

  “How about it, son?” said Mr. Rocque quietly, and Sport realized that they were both looking to him for support, like two large children waiting anxiously for his permission to play

  “Kate?” he said uncertainly.

  “Yes, darling,” she said quietly, and he ran then, ran to grab her in a great unembarrassed hug. She grabbed him up and hugged him back, laughing, then they were all laughing and smiling and crying and they all three hugged at once.

  “Well,” said Mr. Rocque finally. “Let’s drink to that!”

  “Yes,” said Kate, wiping her eyes, “and let me get this dinner on, before my boy gets much skinnier.” Sport felt funny inside, skinny and sweet, and felt the words “my boy” like two pats on the head. “I’ll have a Coke,” he said.

  “Good,” said his father. “Get your glass, and we’ll have a toast.”

  “There!” said Mr. Rocque as they all clinked glasses.

  “To our … family!” said Kate.

  They all drank. Then they laughed again.

  “Now get out of the kitchen, the both of you,” said Kate.

  “Where will we go?” said Mr. Rocque piteously.

  “Into the living room, watch television, read, anything.”

  “Aw,” said Sport.

  “Out, out.” Kate waved her hands at them. “I mean it.”

  They went into the living room.

  “Set the table, for one thing,” called Kate.

  They both started to get the things out. “I’ll do it,” said Sport. Mr. Rocque went and sat down in the living room.

  Sport got out the mats, knives and forks, and napkins. He looked at his father, who sat rather stiffly doing nothing. “Why don’t you read the paper?” asked Sport.

  Mr. Rocque looked surprised, as though this were a brilliant idea. He grabbed the paper like a lifeboat and sat down self-consciously to read it.

>   Sport finished setting the table, then went and turned on the radio for the news. I am doing what I have seen families do in comic books, he thought quickly. This is the way they behave when there is a man, a woman, and a child. He sat down on a chair. I should be doing homework now, he thought, but I haven’t any to do. School doesn’t start until Monday. He sat, feeling a kind of peace, a strange sensation of no worry that he had never felt before. He went into his room to be alone.

  He closed the door to his room and sat on the edge of his bed. I have a mother. No, he thought hastily, the mother I have is terrible. I have someone else. He thought of Kate in there cooking and his father in there sitting and trying to read the newspaper. He doesn’t know what to feel either, he thought sadly, seeing in memory his father’s thin shoulders bent over the paper. This will change everything. Where will she hang up her clothes? There aren’t enough closets.

  Suddenly his mind swirled and he saw his life with his father torn apart like a broken jigsaw puzzle. Where will she hang her clothes? Will we move? Does she know we don’t have any money? What will we do with her here? We can’t feed her. Not enough money. She makes money. A feeling of total confusion overtook him.

  He dug his hands into his pockets and tried to restore the reassuring fantasy of a moment ago—Kate in the kitchen, his father protected and loved by someone who would take care of the laundry…. But she works, Kate works at a job, how can she do the laundry? If we only had money, he thought again as he had thought every day of his life that he could remember. If we only had money, we would be all right. Does she intend to quit her job? If she does, does she know she’ll never see another steak?

  But he couldn’t really see Kate having to have anything, the way his mother had to have this, had to have that, as though the world might cave in if she didn’t.

  Then he heard Kate call, “Dinner’s ready,” and he thought no more of anything but steak, and bounced out the door, colliding with his father who was rushing to the dinner table.

  “When’s the last time you fellas ate?” asked Kate, standing at the table, taking off her apron. They laughed and sat down. “Here, darling,” said Kate to Mr. Rocque. “Here at the head of the table. Carve the steak.”

  Mr. Rocque got up, embarrassed, and stood over the steak. He remembered to hold Kate’s chair for her, and as she sat she said, “A couple of savages I’m getting.”