Heft (25 page)

I had dreams about him. In between my dreams of anklebiting monsters I dreamt of my father. And every dream was of baseball: a great fatherly hand throwing me the ball from out of the sky, or my father as he looked in photographs waiting for my autograph after a game, or, once, playing with me on my team.
Catch
it,
catch
it, he was saying, but I couldn’t, and I dropped it on the ground.

If he has been in Queens this whole time it will break something about me. If he is my father—and he has been so close.

The sky is gray now and everything is gray. Usually I don’t have any cause to drive anyplace but Yonkers and Pells, so I am bad at going other places. In my hand there’s a sheet of scribbled directions. It’s shaking: I’m shaking. I’m driving badly I know.

I cannot get pulled over again.

The Bronx River Parkway to the Cross Bronx Expressway. I almost hit someone when I merge.

I’ve never been to Queens.

Where I am now there are factories, large brick-sided buildings with stray men standing outside of them in clusters. I duck my head down, I avoid their eyes. To me they are all my father. I am still clutching the paper in my hands, making turns off it. 295. Thirty-fifth Avenue. A young woman yells at a young man from inside of her car.

On Francis Lewis Boulevard I begin to scan. Connelly’s is on this street. I drive past it once—big sign out front, cluttered storefront window full of tools and mowers—and then go around the block again. I park the car down the block. I’m finally warm and for a moment I leave the heat blasting and the car running. My stomach is still empty and it’s making my hands shake but I have no money for food.

Stop, I think. Don’t do it.

Suddenly I don’t want to know anything: I want to be an orphan forever and ever, I want to collapse into myself until I no longer exist, I want to live in my mother’s house and never go out. I want to have things brought to me by mail and I want to have no friends or family at all, and I want to be my own family. I don’t care about baseball or anything. I miss my mother. I am a little boy again.

I turn on
Sports Talk
. It is not Charlie Rasco but someone else. An impostor.

I sit there for half an hour, until I feel ill from the car’s heat or fumes, until I notice that the gas tank is getting low again, and then out of fear of being stuck in Queens I shut it off.

I flip down the shade and I look at myself in the little mirror there. I am not me anymore. I am a different person altogether. Thin and frightening and old and pale.

It’s eleven in the morning. I get out of the car and walk around to the trunk and open it up. Inside of it I have my life: some bats and balls and my glove and all the clothes I brought with me to and from Trevor’s. I rummage through them looking for something better to put on than what I’m wearing: that gray sweatshirt, still, which is stiff now and stinks. Under it an equally smelly polo shirt. Below it jeans.

I come up with a button-down shirt, the other one my mother bought me, horribly wrinkled but better than this. Quickly I take off my shirts and fumble with the button-down, freezing again in an instant, standing there shaking with cold. My skin feels plastic. I have no coat.

By the time I’m dressed again I do not feel better. I look at my reflection in the car’s window and try without much success to slick my hair down in back. I wipe at the corners of my eyes and mouth.

Finally I stuff my keys into my pocket and I stuff my hands into my pockets as well. I walk-run the half block to Connelly’s. A little electronic bell goes off when I open the door. I hope there will be a crowd inside but there’s no one, just me for a moment, alone in an empty store. There’s a long counter to the right and no one behind it. There are aisles in the back and a wing that I can’t see. The lights above me are fluorescent and too bright.

A heavyset man emerges from an office and walks toward me behind the counter. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a thin gold chain with a cross on it. Connelly.

Help you? he asks, and I realize I haven’t moved from my place three inches in front of the door.

I’m looking, I say—I’m just looking around.

My voice is a husk of itself.

Connelly raises his eyebrows and shrugs. He is not as nice as he seemed in his pictures. He is not moving, I can tell—he suspects something about me.

I turn to my left wildly and see a wall of gardening tools. Rakes and those flat sharp-pronged things propped up against each other. Gloves and stuff. I walk toward it.

You a gardener? asks Connelly, eventually, after I have
stood there staring at things and not touching them for long enough.

My mother is, I say.

She never was though.

You looking for a Christmas present? asks Connelly.

I nod. I cannot speak.

Connelly comes out from behind the counter and asks me how big her yard is.

It’s small, I say. Like, barely anything.

So she’s got some little flower beds or something? asks Connelly. Some potted plants?

I nod.

He points to what looks like a miniature egg beater with sharp points. This is a great little tool, he says. Mixes up the dirt really good.

He looks at me when I don’t reply. You OK? he asks.

Does anyone work here, I begin.

He waits.

Does anyone work here named Francis Keller?

You know him? asks Connelly.

Yes, I say. Because I do.

Hang on, says Connelly, and he goes back behind the counter where he can still see me.

KEL, he shouts. He’s still looking at me.

I smooth my shirt. I clutch my hands together and release them.

I hear his voice before I see him.

• • •

T
he girl told me that I had to go for a walk.

She told me that she goes for a walk every day & so I should come with her once, just once.

It embarrassed me, thinking of this. Huffing & puffing away, laboring behind Yolanda, who, after all, is the pregnant one.

I told her that I would go for a walk if she would go see a doctor, & she said that sounded like a good idea, only she had no money to see a doctor.

“Don’t you have insurance?” I asked her. Stupidly.

“Nope!” she said brightly.

“Well what about when the baby wants to be born?”

“I guess I’ll find the money someplace,” she said.

In my heart I know it is why she has come to me, for help, & although I know I should be upset I can’t bring myself to be.

I told her I would give her the money. She made an appointment.

Yesterday she went out of the house at 10 in the morning and was gone for a very long time. Too long. By 2 I had told myself that she had left again & that was that & back to your old life, Arthur, but at 2:30 I heard her key in the lock & she came in carrying a bag of groceries.

“What are those?” I asked her. “You shouldn’t be carrying anything.”

“I got stuff for us,” she said.

I saw carrots peeking over the top.

“Good stuff for the baby,” she said. “Veggies.”

At 3 I was watching television when she said, “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“For our walk.”

My pulse began racing before I had even moved.

“To where?” I said.

“To the park. It’s nice out.”

“It’s December,” I said.

“Yeah. Nice for December,” she said. “Look at me, I wasn’t even wearing a coat this morning.”

“You should have been,” I said.

“Come on. I love the park,” said Yolanda. “So pretty.”

“I have to tell you something,” I said.

“What?”

But I couldn’t speak.

“You don’t have to tell me anything I don’t already know,” said Yolanda.

Prospect Park is less than 1 block from my brownstone. But the walk is an uphill one, and then there is Prospect Park West to cross, & then to get inside the park one must fight one’s way across an interior road around which cyclists and runners come careening all day long & in every kind of weather. When I was younger I made this walk routinely, with Marty, who lived next door & would drag me out from time to time, or even, some very good & virtuous days, by myself.

But this morning it seemed like Mt. Everest. I imagined that traffic had increased substantially since the last time I had been there. I thought perhaps I would die if I tried to walk it but more than that I was afraid of being embarrassed in front of the girl. I can barely walk ten level steps, I thought to myself. I can barely walk from my couch to the kitchen.

“I gotta warn you,” said Yolanda. “I’m slow right now.”

The girl is a mind reader, I sometimes think.

“I’m slow,” I said. “Too.”

I don’t think she knew the extent to which I had not been outside. But perhaps I am fooling myself.

I fetched my coat from out of the closet by the door. It was a coat I had not worn for years & I was afraid it wouldn’t fit so I tried it on when Yolanda wasn’t looking, & by some miracle it worked. It is a handsome coat & high quality. It is a nice gray trench that can be worn in the sun or the rain, and it has a tie that I let hang down by my sides.

Yolanda was the one to open the door.

“Yum,” she said. “It smells like winter.”

Indeed it did. When she had opened the outer door too I inhaled deeply and smelled the park from where I stood: the smell of cold air & fresh things dying. A lovely lonely smell.

“Come on,” said Yolanda, and I looked into her sweet face & saw my own mother. So clearly that I almost wept.

“Really,” I whispered, “I’m very slow.”

She looked down at her belly and rolled her eyes. “You and me both,” she said. “For real.”

She walked down one step and turned around. I took my cane from where it was propped just inside the door: I rarely use it, for it is an outdoor cane.

“This for protection,” I said. “In case of assailants.”

It was a joke.

“Come on, Mr Arthur,” said Yolanda again, & again I had a vision of my mother, inviting me into a swimming pool at somebody’s house in the suburbs when I was maybe four.
Come, Arthur,
she said.
Come here.
The flick of the wrist. The echoing voice. The beckoning hand.

I stepped outside.

It was warm for December, just as she had said it would be.

Yolanda was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. She had both hands under her belly. “Uf,” she said. “I can feel her swimming around in there.”

I walked down a step, cane first.

“She’s healthy,” said Yolanda.

I walked down another step, cane first.

“Who?” I asked.

“The baby,” said Yolanda. “The doctor said.”

Another step. My back, already, was crying out for mercy.

“Oh?” I said. “What else did he say?”

“She said it was a girl,” said Yolanda. “But I knew that anyways, so.”

“Did she,” I said, stepping down again. “Did she tell you you were bad for not coming earlier?”

“Yeah,” said Yolanda, looking chastened. “I felt really sorry about that.”

I was walking. Outside my house. I looked up at it just out of curiosity—I had not seen it from here for so long.

“Do you think it needs work?” I asked Yolanda, & she turned to see what I was seeing, & together we looked up at the old house.

“How long you lived here?” asked Yolanda.

“That depends,” said I. “I lived here once until I was eighteen. & again starting when I was twenty-six.”

I thought about it. “I have lived here almost all of my life,” I told her.

“Looks pretty good I think,” said Yolanda. “Maybe the steps need work.”

Indeed. The steps were in very bad disrepair. I had noticed on my way down. I told her she was smart, & that I’d hire someone.

In all the house looked happier than what I remembered. It looked noble & stately.

“Ready?” Yolanda asked, & she began putting one foot in front of the other very slowly, & I too put one foot in front of the other.

After five steps I was already breathing very hard, but fortunately Yolanda said she had better stop because her back was hurting her, so together we stood outside the neighbors’ house for a moment, until we had caught our breath. & then we continued up the hill of 5th Street.

I believe it took us close to half an hour to walk as far as Prospect Park West, and crossing it proved to be the most difficult feat of all—for the first time there was a need to rush. Somebody honked at me and that was a very bad feeling but Yolanda said to him, “I’m pregnant, assh-le!” and the man behind the wheel raised his hands in apology.

By the time we had gotten across the street I had sweated through my shirt. It was one shade darker all over. I could feel small rivulets forming in the creases of my back. I stumbled once, terrifyingly, & thought for certain I would fall down hard on my knees, but Yolanda put a steadying hand on my arm & somehow I regained my balance. I waited for her to retract her hand in disgust but she did not, just said, “Careful,” and only took it away when I was walking straight again.

I was worried about myself. I could barely speak in between breaths. & I had the whole way back to walk.

“Look how pretty,” said Yolanda, & for the first time I noticed the outside of the park.

It was true. There was a barren kind of prettiness to it & I thought of my favorite of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which I believe was my father’s favorite too—I once found it typed amongst his things. Almost all of the trees were bare except for certain ones that clutched their leaves to them dearly. The Litchfield Villa was bright against the darkness of the trees & the cars in its parking lot reminded me of families. The sun was shining brightly & illuminating what it had selected for its focus. I put one hand against the stone wall that runs the perimeter of the park & waited there for a while.

“We could go back now,” said Yolanda. “I wouldn’t mind.”

But suddenly I wanted to see inside it: Prospect Park is like a geode, hidden by a ring of ample trees, a jewel inside it. It was the inside that I remembered best.

This meant walking almost as far as I had already come, but a second wind was gusting in my sails, & so I asked Yolanda if we could go a bit farther. “Are you all right?” I asked her, and she said she was.