“Red Sox on top here, four–nothing, and due to a technical error tonight’s game is being brought to you by AFN: the American Forces Network. Our friends at AFN are delivering coverage to the US Armed Forces serving in one hundred seventy-six countries and US territories and of course aboard navy ships at sea. We say welcome to our men and women in uniform, serving so far from our shores, and thank you for everything you do.”
In the stands, three men with their hoods pulled up against the rain juggled plastic cups of beer and hand-painted signs: ON LEAVE FROM IRAQ. 31 ST CSH HOLLA: GO YANKS!
“Not a city in this country,” the Southern voice mused, “that reminds me more of the sacrifice and freedom that we enjoy because of our men and women . . .” Jason Varitek adjusted his chest protector. “. . . What a—What a guy. What a leader, man. He hit that fly ball . . . Take a look at this. Look at this guy, if you think of all the innings he’s caught, all that he’s done . . . Now watch what happens: he continues to hustle, into the dugout, so that he can get the gear on, and get back out, and catch as many pitches from Curt Schilling as he can, to get him comfortable for the bottom of the sixth . . .”
“On very tired legs . . .”
“Just makes you think he mighta made a pretty good soldier . . .”
Ezra pressed mute.
Alice stared at the screen a moment longer before finishing what was left in her glass. “Are you hungry? Do you want to order something?”
“No, darling.”
“I’ll get you some Q-tips tomorrow if you want.”
He leaned over to look for something on the floor. “Thank you, dear.”
“I wish they would stop showing that.”
“What.”
“His sock. It’s making me queasy.”
Ezra took a pill.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to take it every day.”
“Thank you, Little Miss Elephant Brain.”
“Whoa! Did you see that?”
“What?”
“A-Rod slapped him!”
They watched as the ball dribbled over the foul line and Jeter sprinted home. “He was running to first and Arroyo went to tag him and A-Rod slapped the ball out of his glove!”
Francona came out to complain. The umpires huddled. When they reversed the call, New York fans booed and pelted the grass with trash.
“I can’t believe it,” said Alice. “That was incredibly childish.” She looked at Ezra, but Ezra was looking at the screen. “If I were a Yankee I’d be ashamed, trying to get ahead like that.”
“If you were a Yankee,” Ezra said quietly, “they wouldn’t be in the playoffs.”
Alice laughed. “Can we turn the sound back on now?”
Slowly, he rotated to face her. “Mary-Alice . . .”
“What?”
“I hurt.”
“I know you do. But what am I—”
Ezra flinched. “But what are you supposed to do about it?”
Uncertainly, Alice nodded.
“Wait a minute,” she said then. “I do a lot actually. I go to Zabar’s for you, and to Duane Reade, and to the deli to get you Häagen-Dazs during extra innings—”
“Darling, you offered to do those things. Remember? You offered to help me out when I’m unwell. You said, ‘Whatever you need, I’m right around the corner.’ I would not have asked you otherwise.”
“I know, but—”
“Do you think I like being like this? Do you think I enjoy being old and crippled by pain and dependent on other people?” His head was pulsing more obviously now, as though it might explode.
“Fuck you,” said Alice.
For a while the only sound was the changing frequency of the static on the television screen as it flickered from dark to light and back again. Alice covered her face with her hands and left them there for a long moment, as if to be transported—or as if she were counting, giving one or both of them a chance to hide—but when at last she took them away again Ezra was still there, exactly as he’d been: legs crossed, eyes black with anguish, waiting. His face blurred through the glaze of her tears.
“What should I do with you, Mary-Alice? What would you like me to do? What would you do, if you were me?”
Alice covered her face again. “Treat me like shit,” she said into her hands.
When she got home, there was a letter from the Harvard Student Loan Office in her mailbox, thanking her for paying off her Federal Perkins debt in full.
The Red Sox won.
• • •
Without being asked, the bartender poured what remained of the bottle into Alice’s glass.
Alice moved the glass one inch to the side, then replaced her hand in her lap.
“Do you play chess?” the man beside her asked, in a British accent.
Alice turned to him. “I have a board.”
“Do you speak French?”
“No. Why?”
“There’s an expression chess players use to clarify that a piece is only being adjusted in its place, not yet moved to another square.”
“Oh really? What’s that?”
“J’adoube.”
Alice nodded and, looking up at the television, lifted her glass and this time drank from it.
• • •
“Hi,” she said, knocking on her boss’s door. “Here’s that—”
He slammed down the phone.
“Sorry,” said Alice, “I didn’t—”
“Fucking Blazer is staying with Hilly.”
Furiously he massaged his forehead with his fingers. Alice laid the file on his desk and left.
• • •
“The thing is,” she said to the British man, whose name was Julian, “they haven’t been in the World Series since 1986. And they haven’t won a World Series since 1918. And some people attribute this to the Curse of the Bambino: they think the Red Sox are being punished for selling Babe Ruth to New York.”
“To the Yankees.”
“Yes. Although these days there are also the Mets, but they didn’t exist until the sixties.” Alice took a sip. “Before that there were only eight teams to a league.”
• • •
Pujols took second on ball one inside.
When Renteria hit it back to Foulke, Foulke threw him out at first, and the dugout emptied onto the field, where the men ran to join a celebratory huddle, leaping onto one another’s backs and into one another’s arms and punching the air and pointing gratefully to the heavens. In the stands, camera flashes pop-pop-popped like muzzle fire. There was a brief satellite image of soldiers in Baghdad celebrating in their sand fatigues and then the picture cut back to the Bank of America Postgame Show and Bud Selig handed Manny Ramirez the MVP trophy. A reporter asked him how it felt.
“First, you know, it was a lot of negative stuff, you know, I was gonna get traded, but, you know, I keep my confidence on myself and I believe in me and I did it, you know, I’m just blessed, and, you know, I prove a lot of people wrong, you know, I knew I could do this and thanks God I did it.”
“Do you believe in curses, sir?”
“I don’t believe in curse. I think you make your own destination, and we did it, you know, we believe in each other. We went out there, we play relaxed, and we ground it out and we did it.”
Alice looked at her phone. The bartender bought them a round.
“Every man makes his own destination,” Alice said wryly, putting her phone back into her purse.
“He’s right,” said Julian, pulling her toward him for a kiss.
• • •
Shave and a haircut, two bits.
She stood in Alice’s doorway holding a bottle of wine, which was dusty and had no name except for a dense parade of Hebrew lettering, the old woman’s head wobbling faintly as if attached to the rest of her by a spring. “Can you open this for me, dear?”
The cork came out black.
“Here you go,” said Alice.
“Would you like some?”
&
nbsp; Alice returned to her counter, filled two jam jars halfway, and brought them back to where Anna continued to stand faintly quivering just inside her door. Her robe, made of a faded daisy print, had a brown stain shaped like Florida on its lapel. Anna accepted the glass of wine warily, with both hands, suggesting it had been some time since she’d drunk anything standing up.
“My nephew killed himself today.”
Alice lowered her glass.
“. . . So I needed some wine.”
“I don’t blame you,” Alice said softly. “How old was he?”
“What?”
“How—”
“Fifty.”
“Was he sick?”
“No.”
“Did he have any children?”
“What?”
“Did he have any—”
“No.”
Neither of them had taken a sip, but even so Anna was looking down at her drink as if wondering when it was going to work.
“Did you vote today?” Alice asked.
“What?”
“Did you vote? For the president?”
“Did I float?”
Alice shook her head.
“Tell me . . . ,” Anna began.
“Alice.”
“I know. Do you live here alone?”
Alice nodded.
“And you don’t get lonely?”
Alice shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Anna peered past her now, down the hall to where Alice’s reading light was on and The Fall of Baghdad lay facedown on her bed. The radio on her dresser could be heard quietly calling New York for Kerry and Nebraska for Bush. “But you have a boyfriend, don’t you dear? Someone special in your life?” Her jam jar of wine, which she continued to hold in two hands like a priest’s chalice, tipped another degree toward the floor.
Alice smiled a little sadly. “I might.”
CALLER ID BLOCKED.
SATURDAY
21
MAY
SATURDAY
18
JUNE
SATURDAY
2
JULY
A car door slammed.
“Sorry folks!” he called out from the kitchen window. “Your reservation is for tomorrow!”
Ignoring him, the children hopped jauntily up the flagstone path, the boy weaving a toy police boat through the air and the girl trailing fairy wings that glittered amethyst under the high summer sun. Holding the screen door open for them, Ezra resembled a butler to elves. “Olivia! You’ve grown wings!” Kyle’s hopping continued all the way up the steps and into the living room, where he collapsed upside down on Ezra’s ottoman and, hair sweeping the floorboards, announced, “Olivia has a loose tooth!”
“Is that right, Olivia?”
Sitting on the very edge of the sofa cushion so as not to crush her wings, Olivia nodded.
“How loose?”
“Weally loose!” said Kyle.
Sneaking a look at Ezra, Olivia blushed.
Over lunch:
“Ezra?”
“Yes sweetheart.”
“How’d you get to be so sophisticated?”
Ezra lowered his pickle. “How am I sophisticated?”
Olivia shrugged. “You wear nice shirts. And you know the president.”
A grape rolled off Kyle’s plate toward the edge of the table. “Uh-oh!” said Alice, lunging to catch it. “Runaway grape.”
“Wunaway gwape!”
“I’m not that sophisticated,” concluded Ezra.
“Ezra works hard,” said Edwin, pulling a shard of potato chip out of his daughter’s hair. “If you work hard and do well in school then maybe one day you’ll be able to afford nice shirts, too.”
“And meet the president?”
“And become the president,” said Eileen.
“That’s right,” said Ezra. “President Wu. Madam President Wu. You’d already be better than the one we’ve got now.”
Olivia spooned mint-chocolate-chip ice cream into her mouth and worked her jaw slowly, meditatively, as though it contained a foreign object. Sitting on Alice’s lap, Kyle farted.
“Whoops,” said Alice.
“Whoops,” said Kyle, giggling into his spoon.
In the pool, he wore lobster-print swimming trunks and his sister a too-big one-piece that drooped to reveal her pale, penny-flat nipples. “Look,” Olivia commanded, while her mother vigorously rubbed sunblock into her arms; flanked by four chocolate-filled molars, the loose tooth teetered steeply back and forth under her finger like a drunk.
“Wow,” said Alice. “That is loose.”
It was a warm day, cloudy but close, yet Ezra sat in his deck chair wearing trousers, a long-sleeved button-down shirt, and laced-up Oxfords tied in double bows. The Perpetual Orgy lay bookmarked in his lap and his Penn State Altoona cap was perched so lightly on his head its letters caved in a little. “Now, remember, boys and girls. I have this chemical I put in the pool that makes urine turn red. Bright red! The second someone pees in the pool, it’s going to turn bright red.” Kyle shot a furtive, furrowed glance to his wake.
“Marco,” said Alice.
“Polo!” screamed the children.
“Marco.”
“Polo!”
“Marco!”
“POLO!”
“MARCO!”
“POLOAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!”
Ezra put up a hand. “Excuse me, but does anyone here actually know who Marco Polo was?”
Kyle and Olivia halted, bobbing in place and blowing water from their noses and lips; then Olivia turned to Alice and asked sweetly, “Will you take me to the deep end?”
Alice crouched while the little girl half climbed, half floated onto her hip; then she waded until she could no longer touch the pool’s bottom and had to pull one hand over the other on the long side of its flagstone edge. The deeper she went, the tighter Olivia clung, peering over her shoulder and shuddering as though having caught sight of a grisly shipwreck below. “Mayday, Mayday!” laughed Alice when Kyle’s remote-control police boat caught up with them and butted her in the breast.
“Don’t let go Olivia,” her mother called.
When they reached the far corner, the girl’s limbs were as tight around Alice as a vise. “How’s this?” Alice asked.
“Good,” Olivia murmured, teeth chattering.
Bouncing his foot and looking a little bored, Ezra asked if anyone knew any jokes.
Edwin lowered his BlackBerry. “What do you call twins before they’re born?”
“Wombmates!” Olivia shrieked in Alice’s ear.
“That’s good,” said Ezra. “What else?”
Kyle tried to stand on a kickboard. “What do you get when you cwoss a Tywannosauwus wex with a . . . with uh . . .”
“With a what?”
The kickboard popped up. “I forget.”
Ezra shook his head. “Needs work.”
“Why did the cookie go to the hospital?” said Olivia.
“Why?”
“Because he felt crummy!”
Kyle cackled; Ezra groaned. Still barnacled to Alice, Olivia turned to her and wrinkled her nose. “Needs work?”
“I’ve got one,” said Ezra. “A guy flying into Honolulu turns to the guy sitting next to him and says, ‘Say, how do you pronounce it? Hawaii or Havaii?’ ‘Havaii,’ says the other guy. ‘Thanks,’ says the first guy. And the other guy says, ‘You’re velcome.’ ”
The little ones stared at him.
“I don’t get it,” said Kyle.
“He talks funny,” said Olivia. “Right?”
“Right.”
“But what’s funny about it?” said Kyle.
“Nothing,” said Ezra. “Never mind.”
“Needs verk,” suggested Eileen.
The wind picked up, shuffling the leaves. Undeterred, the children taught Alice Sharks and Minnows, then Monkey in the Middle, then a made-up game that involved one and then the other of them climbing onto her back a
nd pretending to whip her hindquarters with a foam-noodle riding crop.
“Do you want children, Mary-Alice?” Eileen asked.
Kyle waved the noodle above his head like a lasso, flicking water into her eyes. “Maybe,” said Alice. “When I’m forty.”
Lifting her sunglasses, Eileen shook her head. “Forty’s too old.”
“So I’ve heard. But I’m afraid to do it sooner. I’m afraid it will . . . consume me.”
“Mary-Alice is a very tender person,” explained Ezra.
Eileen nodded, squinting at the sky. “I take it back. Forty isn’t too old to have a child. Fifty is too old to have a ten-year-old child.”
When a light rain began to stipple the flagstones, Ezra pushed himself up and clapped his hands. “Who vants a jelly doughnut?” While Alice and Eileen helped them into socks that in theory would keep the ticks at bay, the children shivered, whined, whimpered, cajoled, and threw tragic glances over their shoulders at the departed water, still oscillating and densely pockmarked now with rain. The remote-control police boat bumped up against the aluminum ladder. Foam noodles lay on the surface like snakes sprung from a can. When all the remaining towels, tote bags, tubes of Coppertone and miniature goggles had been gathered up, Alice fell in line behind the others trudging in the manner of weary seafarers up the lawn: Ezra, making his long solitary strides past the redbuds no longer in bloom; Edwin and Kyle, pointing scientifically at something in the harbor; and Olivia and Eileen, on legs identically proportioned and knock-kneed. “See those trees?” Eileen was saying to her daughter, while all around them the rain made a racket like oil frying. “When Mommy was a little girl she helped Ezra plant those trees . . .”
• • •
After dinner they played Scrabble.
Kneeling on her chair, wearing a nightgown that had the Little Mermaid on it, Olivia considered her options for a long, tooth-worrying moment before at last extending an arm across the table and laying out, with maximum suspense: BURD.
“No sweetie,” said Edwin. “It’s B-I-R-D.”
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