The Easy Way Out (32 page)

I called the sales representative of the airline in question and told him that because of an unforeseen and tragic series of events, I had bungled a reservation and a customer of mine had been canceled from a flight. I told him that Professor Fields—“practically the president of Harvard”—was on the wait list and pleaded with him to do something about finding two seats on the plane.

The sales rep and I had met at a couple of airline functions and hadn't exactly hit it off. Gary Bolton was a pathologically disingenuous windbag with the kind of pink, overscrubbed skin that's a sign of severe self-hatred. He tended to give me leering looks and make
ridiculous comments. “You've got awfully big feet, Pat, for such a skinny runt”; that kind of charming thing. I hated to beg for favors, but I made the best of it by reminding myself there's always something to be said for practicing humility.

Bolton responded to my Fields plight with the saccharine concern that seemed to be the only requirement of his job. He clucked his tongue a lot and repeated “Isn't that a shame” so many times I thought I was listening to a tape loop. Finally, he said, “Well, hold on for a minute and I'll see if there's anything I can do for you. Not that there isn't a lot I'd
like
to do for you.”

There was so little conviction or sincerity in his voice, I suspected he'd merely gone to the bathroom to scrub off another layer of epidermis. When he finally came back on the line, he was noisily chomping on something—peanut M&M's, from the sound. Obviously he'd been off at the candy machine. “That flight is so damned tight as it is, people are going to be sitting on each other's faces and laps and everywhere else.”

“Is there a regulation against putting passengers in the cargo hold? I know they wouldn't mind, just for a couple of hours.”

“You know, we wouldn't be having such a big problem here if you'd called in the ticket numbers when you were supposed to. Had your mind elsewhere, I bet.”

“Believe me, Gar, I would have called them in if it hadn't been for the accident. But how can you predict these things? You're walking to work, a bus comes along, jumps the curb, and you wake up in a hospital bed.” Since I knew he wouldn't go for any excuse, I figured I might as well make it truly implausible.

“A tragedy,” he consoled. “But I'll tell you what I can do for you; I'll put your friends at the top of the wait list. That way, if anyone does cancel, they'll be the first on. And in the meantime, I'll book them on a triple connection through New York, Atlanta, and Detroit. Just be thankful you're such a cute kid, or I wouldn't be going so far out of my way.”

“Cute kid” had lost its appeal as a compliment on my eighth birthday, but I wasn't in a position to complain. This at least sounded hopeful. I finished off the phone call renewed by my good deed and convinced that Professor Fields was lucky to have such a clever travel agent working on his behalf.

Twenty-seven

B
y all accounts, Sharon and Ryan were in the middle of a blossoming friendship. Since the meal at my apartment, they'd gone to two Celtics games together and had several dinners at restaurants Sharon picked out from among her Boston favorites. They'd apparently established a routine of watching
Jeopardy
together at Sharon's house. Rita called to complain that Ryan was spending more time in Cambridge than at home.

Despite Tony's feelings about Sharon, he seemed delighted with the news. He told me our older brother was making repairs on the staircase leading up to Sharon's second floor, replacing balusters and plastering the holes in the walls. “He called me up to find out how to do it. It was kind of nice, Pat. I mean, I'm sure it looks like hell. He's great in the kitchen but not exactly a handyman. I hope I get some points from Sharon for giving instructions.”

What I was most curious to find out was whether or not their get-togethers qualified as dates. Sharon wasn't giving out clues on that subject, and I thought it best to restrain myself from asking. I was secretly thrilled for both of them, no matter what the terms of their friendship, but something about the fact that it had begun weeks after Elaine asked for a divorce made me uneasy.

If they were dating, they'd already passed number three, the critical
date, according to Sharon's philosophy. As for the fourth fuck, it was anyone's guess.

One Sunday afternoon late in April, Ryan, Sharon, and my niece showed up at my apartment unexpectedly. I hadn't seen or spoken with Ryan since our talk at the store a couple of weeks earlier, and as he walked in, with Stacy held proudly in his arms, it struck me that his appearance was slightly altered. It would be going overboard to say he was glowing, but it seemed to me his face was less waxen than usual. Perhaps he'd been in the sun or the wind. If it was from a tanning booth, the dating question was answered. Sharon was trailing behind, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She was carrying a pink, pretty doll with as much interest as if it were a rotten head of lettuce. I pointed to it and raised my eyebrows.

She shrugged. “Transitional object,” she said. She had on a bulky belted gray cardigan and a pair of flared blue jeans that were almost short enough to qualify as pedal pushers, but she, too, looked different, more relaxed than usual.

Ryan was beaming at Stacy. He always beamed when he had his daughter in his charge. “You remember Uncle Patrick,” he said. “Can you say his name?”

Stacy took her thumb out of her mouth, swatted her hand at me as if she were shooing a fly, then buried her face in Ryan's neck. “Aw, she's being shy,” Ryan said.

Stacy was a bright, pretty child, with fat cheeks, adorably stubby legs, and her father's round blue eyes. She loved to dance and pretend she was playing a piano and singing. I was convinced she'd become a professional musician someday, maybe a cabaret performer with a devoted following of gay men. She was four years old and had a better articulated sense of style than either of her parents. On her last birthday, I'd bought her a punky black skirt and red-and-white sweater I thought she'd like. After she thanked me for the present, she asked if I'd kept the sales slip so she could exchange the outfit. “It's not really
me
,” she'd said apologetically. Today she was wearing lacy white ankle socks, black patent-leather Mary Janes, and a frilly pink dress with blue ribbons hanging from the waistline.

Aside from occasional holidays, I'd spent very little time with Stacy, and I was desperately afraid she didn't like me much. She'd never been able to pronounce my name, even though she had an extensive vocabulary. I was stung by the slight, but I had to respect her for having strong opinions and sticking by them. Ryan told me
she probably had a crush on me, his usual optimistic assessment of friction between any two people.

Stacy and Arthur had become great pals the few times they'd met. She squealed with delight when he came into the living room now. “Uncle Arthur,” she pronounced flawlessly.

“My best friend!” he said. He began singing “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” and Stacy wriggled down from Ryan's arms and ran to him.

Sharon looked at me reproachfully. “At least it's not ‘Hello, Dolly,'” I told her. “What brings you two here? Not that I'm complaining.”

“Sharon's always asking about Stacy,” Ryan answered, “so I thought I'd drag her into town and show her off.”

“Then I remembered how I feel about kids,” Sharon said.

“She's joking. She and Stacy are in love with each other.”

I wondered if this meant he and Sharon were in love with each other.

“Anyway, it's an incredible day. Sunny, windy, warm. We thought we'd hang out at the river. There's a love-in going on down there.”

“Love-in?” Arthur asked. He was walking around the living room with Stacy balanced on the toes of his shoes.

“Every time Ryan sees a group of people in Cambridge, he calls it a love-in,” Sharon explained. “It's a beautiful day, and we decided to take a walk.”

“So we thought we'd drive over here and see if you guys wanted to come. We're going to drive up to the Square and find a place to park near the river and then maybe drive out to the ocean.”

“Where does the walk come in?” Arthur asked.

“We had to walk up three flights of stairs to get here,” Ryan said. “Anyway, we'll probably have to get out of the car at some point and walk to buy pizza or fried clams.”

Both Sharon and Ryan burst into laughter at this comment, and the idea of spending time with them suddenly appealed to me enormously. I looked over at Arthur to see if he was interested. “Unfortunately,” he said, “I have to prepare some work for tomorrow. But you should go along and enjoy yourself.”

“Even if it sounded like he didn't mean it,” Sharon said, “he did give you permission to go, Patrick. Of course we could all learn from Arthur's example, working on Sunday. I really do admire that kind of dedication.”

“If you were any more dedicated,” Ryan told her, “you'd have to put a bed in your office. Did you know she's sometimes at that office twelve hours a day, Pat?”

“I hate to be the one to tell you, but she does have a bed in her office. A futon rolled up behind the desk.” I didn't mention that she kept it there for her afternoon naps.

*   *   *

Stacy was miserable that Arthur wasn't coming along, but she accepted me as a consolation prize and let me carry her downstairs. She poked her fingers through my hair and asked if Arthur and I were married. “Certainly not,” I said, mortified. “We're not even engaged. He's still available.”

As Ryan had promised, the day was warm and windy, splendid late-April weather, the kind of gentle and breezy afternoon that can trick you into thinking all's right with the world—if you didn't happen to know it was about to come to a swift, fiery end. Ryan made a production of piling and strapping us all into his car, but after driving three blocks, we discovered that Memorial Drive was closed to traffic and we parked at the side of the road. Hordes of people were passing by on bicycles and roller skates, were jogging, hooked up to headphones—hopeful, happy people, dressed in bright, hopeful colors, exulting on a Sunday afternoon.

The wind was blowing across the river from the west, whipping up whitecaps on the surface of the water, and the sky was a deep shade of blue, heartbreaking for being so clean and so rare. Stacy and I were in the back of the car. She was trying to teach me a complicated counting game that was over my head. My attention drifted away from her, and for a fleeting moment I felt absolutely content and happy. Ryan had his arm draped across the back of Sharon's seat. He reached up and gave her hair a gentle tug as she blew smoke out the window.

“What do we do now?” he asked. “We can't drive.”

This provoked an absurdly serious debate between the two on whether or not we should leave the car and actually walk to Harvard Square. I finally reminded them that it was less than a mile away.

“But Daddy has bad knees,” Stacy informed me.

“That's right, honey, I do. And Sharon shouldn't walk too far because she smokes too much.”

“I wish you hadn't said that, Ryan. Now we have to walk so I can prove my lung capacity.”

“I meant it as a compliment, kiddo.”

*   *   *

It took almost ten minutes for Ryan to unstrap Stacy from her car seat and dig a stroller, a bag of sweaters, two blankets, a box of cookies, and jug of apple juice from the trunk. Sharon and I watched from the sidewalk as Ryan handed the picnic items to Stacy and she loaded them into her stroller.

“I hope someone sees me pushing a baby carriage down Memorial Drive,” Sharon said. “That would really confuse them. Especially if there's nothing in it but sweaters and apple juice.”

Sharon and I walked along the river as Ryan played tag with Stacy ahead of us. The ribbons on Stacy's dress blew out behind her in the warm wind, and she ran with the jerky, halting steps of a wind-up toy. “Can you explain to me,” Sharon said, “how it is that Ryan knows how to be such a good father and doesn't have a clue about how to be a son? Cute together, aren't they?”

“You and Ryan are kind of cute together, now that you mention it.”

Sharon leaned against my shoulder and adjusted the straps of her sandals. “If there's one thing in life I've never wanted to be, it's ‘cute.' ”

“I meant it as a compliment, kiddo.”

“Yeah? Try ‘tough broad' next time.”

I thought to make some gratuitously flattering comment, but it was impossible to get away with those kinds of palliatives with Sharon. She always made sure compliments blew up in your face. “I wonder what Elaine will think when Stacy tells her she spent the afternoon with a woman friend of her father's.”

“I haven't met her,” Sharon said. “You'd know better than I would. But to tell you the truth, Patrick, I'm not interested in hearing about her, so don't tell me.”