The Palace Thief (17 page)

Clemens calmed down in the fourth and began to overpower the Yankees, but by the sixth he had started to tire, and in the seventh he came out of the game, kicking the rosin bag in the air. The Red Sox led, 2–1, but two walked Yankees were on base and Mattingly was coming to the plate. The crowd booed absently. Wilson overheard the usher talking about The Curse. Reardon came in and walked two batters. By the time Wilson and Brent were waiting in line for hot dogs at the inning break, the Yankees led, 5–2.

Inside, the concession line wound back through the dark corridor and was filled with grumbling fans. To Wilson, some of them looked truly stricken, and he wondered at their foolhardiness. “Of course the Sox are going to blow it,” he said to a man next to them. “They’re the Sox.”

Nonetheless, inside the stadium Wilson had felt disappointed and chilled. It would have been nice for Brent to see a victory. A few places in front of them in line a fat man gave off the odor of booze so sharply that Wilson wondered if he too ever smelled like that after the one or two glasses of wine he usually had at dinner or the scotches he drank in the bars. Brent noticed it also. Wilson could see him watching, looking the man up and down with the strange type of distaste he’d noticed in young people lately. It was an odd prudishness, and Brent seemed to feel it deeply. When the man moved forward in line he took deliberate, stiff steps, trying to act sober, and Brent turned away.

“Say,” said Wilson, “you going to stop by The Sanctuary while you’re here?”

“Right,” Brent said. “Maybe say hi to the gals.”

Wilson laughed. It was a relief to hear a joke about it finally. “Whoa,” he whispered quickly, “mermaid on the rocks.”

“What?”

It was a gag that Milos and Hank used in the bars, but it had slipped out. He shifted his eyes behind Brent, toward a well-dressed woman who had just taken her place next to them in line, and whispered, “What do you say, captain?”

Brent looked around.

“Beaver in the water,” Wilson finally said, lowering his voice even further. Even as he said this he felt sick, but it had come out now, and suddenly he felt that as long as it was the truth, it was all right for Brent to hear it. He turned his back to the woman and winked.

Brent smiled thinly. Wilson was feeling almost giddy. He winked again and whispered, “Ready the nets.”

Brent thought for a moment. “Do you ever talk to Mom?” he said loudly.

There was nothing Wilson could say. When he glanced behind him the woman was looking at the ceiling, and he wondered whether she’d heard their whole conversation. God, how had he gotten to where he was? When Brent was in junior high, Wilson and Abbie used to chaperone the school dances, and at the end of high school, when Brent began dating girls, Wilson had taught him to always go inside his date’s house to meet the parents.

“I’m afraid we haven’t talked in quite some time,” he said. Then he shouted, “Polish, Polish, chips, chips, Bud, Coke,” to his friend Maurice, the hot-dog vendor, and moved in quickly to the counter.
Albany
,
Atlanta
,
Augusta
, he repeated to himself. Knots of men clustered around him at the mustard tubs, slathering sauerkraut on hot dogs and cursing the Red Sox.
Augusta
,
Baton Rouge
,
Bismarck
. He was used to shame from his evenings out with Milos and Hank, to waking up and recalling their sarcastic renditions of failure in the back booth at Ned Clancy’s, but now he had demeaned himself in front of his own son.

He shouted his order again, and Maurice shouted back, “He’s stinking today,” which took Wilson several moments to understand.

As Maurice gave him the sausages Wilson muttered back, “Can’t buy a strike.” Then he said, “Maurice, this is my son, Brent. Brent loves your sausages.” He gestured to his side, but when he turned around Brent was gone.

“Handsome kid,” said Maurice.

Wilson shrugged and moved away toward the mustard tubs. He didn’t want to look around, in case Brent was watching. He
loaded up the sausages, layering Brent’s with sauerkraut and ketchup the way he used to like them, and rewrapped them carefully in the wax paper.

When he looked up it took him several moments to find Brent, because he was standing with the woman who had been next to them in line. They were behind a column, shielding themselves from the streaming crowd, and they were talking. Wilson had the sudden thought that his son was apologizing for him, and he told himself that he didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, Brent could do what he damn well pleased. Then he stepped over and saw that the woman was doing the talking and that Brent was mostly just nodding his head and pursing his lips in his familiar way.

He mustered up a jovial voice. “Hello, there,” he said, stepping forward. “I’m Wilson, and I’ll be your waiter.”

The woman laughed. “Waiter,” she said, “this soup is cold.” Then she laughed again, closing her eyes.

“Dad,” Brent said, “this is Margaret. Margaret, this is my father, Wilson.”

Wilson didn’t know what to say, and in a moment Brent was speaking again, asking her something as they started down the dark corridor. Her seat was behind home plate, it turned out, and she and Brent continued their conversation as they walked. Wilson fell behind in the crowd, guarding the sausages. The corridor brightened and darkened. He could tell Milos and Hank about this on Thursday, at the Dunked Rose. “My own son,” he would say, affecting a hangdog look. “My twenty-year-old son.”

When he got back to the seats, he handed Brent a sausage and said, “Not bad for a rookie.”

“Ditto for an old-timer,” said Brent.

Wilson laughed. “But a sale’s not a sale if you don’t close, buckaroo.”

“You know, Dad, you should see someone like Margaret. I liked her a lot.”

“Thanks, kid,” Wilson said, “but I do fine on my own.”

In the eighth, with nobody out and Red Sox on first and third, Wilson started to hope. They were still trailing by three, and he knew better, but nonetheless he felt the rise in his blood. The first out came on a called strike. “Don’t blow it,” he said. He leaned forward in his seat, and when a wave came through their section, he leapt up. The count went to three-and-two. Then came an infield pop-up, and the crowd booed. A section of Yankee fans began to cheer and thump their seats. “Watch this,” Wilson said, “they’re going to blow it,” and on the next pitch Gatling hit a weak fly to right and the inning was over. “Damn it,” he said. “Damn it, damn it.”

“It’s only a game, Dad.”

The Red Sox would always do this, but even after all these years he felt the disappointment each time. No matter who they picked up in trades, no matter who they paid five million dollars for, they were doomed to lose. He sat low in his seat. Coming onto the field now was a team he barely knew. The old team of 1986, the team that had almost done it, was gone. They were the ones who had truly broken his heart. They’d come two outs away from the world championship and then, crazily, catastrophically, given the game to the Mets. That team was broken up now. Marty Barrett was gone, Tony Armas was gone, poor Bill Buckner was gone. Bill Buckner was the truest Red Sock, snake-bit, the man who played the Series with taped ankles and high-top cleats, grimacing in pain, only to muff the ninth-inning grounder that would have won it all for Boston.

“Hey,” Wilson said to Brent, “Did you hear that Bill Buckner tried to commit suicide?”

“Poor man,” Brent answered. “You mean after the Series? There was a lot of pressure on him.”

“Yeah,” Wilson said, “he jumped in front of a subway train.” He tried to look serious. “But it went through his legs.”

Brent was nodding, the way he had to Margaret.

“That’s a joke,” Wilson said. “The train went through his legs.”

“Why don’t you see somebody?” Brent said.

“Hey, slugger, I do.”

“I mean a therapist or somebody.”

“That stuff’s not for me.”

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong,” Brent said. “I’m just saying you seem sad.”

“I
am
sad,” Wilson said. “I’m sad that the Sox can’t score a run. I’m also sad that you think I need to see a therapist.”

Brent finished his sausage, folded up the wrapper, and set it underneath his seat. “Mom sees one,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“We talk about it.”

“Well, then, maybe he’ll tell her why she left us.”

“Maybe
she’ll tell
her, you mean,” Brent said, “but I doubt it. That’s not what therapists do.” This was his only answer. He leaned back in his seat and put his arm over Wilson’s shoulder, and he kept it there for the rest of the inning. Wilson was angry but grateful. The Yankees went down in order. He didn’t feel like talking, and they watched the game in silence. At one point he actually imagined Billy Buckner walking down to the Fenway T stop and jumping onto the tracks.

As the Red Sox came to the plate in the bottom of the ninth, Brent said, “I asked Margaret to come to dinner with us.”

*  *  *

The Red Sox lost, and after the game Wilson brought Brent home and showed him the house. He hadn’t seen it since Easter, and Wilson couldn’t help showing him several things Brent probably thought were ridiculous—the new garbage disposal he’d had installed, a row of bricks he’d replaced himself along the garden walk—even though he was struck by how similar this was to what Brent used to do, as a child, when Wilson and Abbie visited his bunk on the last day of overnight camp. Wilson was aware of his time running out. Brent nodded and followed him around the house. Then, just before they left for dinner, Brent went upstairs to make a phone call, and when he came down he said, “Good, she’s meeting us there.”

“You’re kidding,” Wilson said, “Right? Tell me you’re kidding.”

“No joke, Dad.”

“You talked to the dame for five minutes at the ballpark, and now she’s joining us for dinner?”

“We talked for longer than five minutes.”

“Okay, ten minutes.”

“Yeah, well, we connected. I listened to her.”

Wilson didn’t want to answer this. He felt the mixture of bafflement and ire that he knew from their brunches at the Charles Hotel. Was Brent implying that Wilson himself didn’t listen? If only Brent knew how much he wanted to hear everything about him, to be a part of the strange, distant life that his son had come to lead. Again he fought back discouragement. In the car on the way into Cambridge he talked about the game instead, because he didn’t want to mar their last few hours together. He had brought this on himself, he knew, with the borrowed antics of Milos and Hank. He glanced at his watch.
He talked absently about the final innings, and as they were parking he said, “So, let me get this straight, you use this listening business to make time with dames?”

“I don’t use it for anything, I just do it.”

“But you were able to get this dame to dinner.”

“I invited her to dinner because I liked her. We had a wonderful conversation.”

“About what? Does she like mustard?”

“We talked about serious things.”

“Ah,” Wilson said, “the Oregon maneuver.”

“Her father has cancer. That’s one thing.”

“Oh, God,” Wilson said. “I didn’t mean to joke.”

“It’s okay, she’s used to it.”

“To the cancer, you mean.”

“Right.”

“Not to me joking.”

“Not to you joking,” said Brent.

As they made their way up the sidewalk Wilson watched him. He even walked in a serious way, his arms pulled in tight to his sides, his hands in his pockets. Actually, it was impressive, Wilson had to admit—the way he moved among women, the way he seemed to be privy to their secret communication. Maybe it was his seriousness, after all; maybe it reassured them. Maybe this was why he had been allowed to work at The Sanctuary.

As they neared the restaurant Margaret stepped from a taxi, and Brent hurried ahead to greet her. Wilson watched them. Brent held the door for her, which was interesting because Wilson was under the impression the younger generation didn’t do this for a lady anymore. Wilson fixed his tie. The whole thing was ridiculous. In the dimmed light Margaret seemed to be in her early fifties, and as they passed through the atrium into the
dining room Brent actually touched her, lightly, on the small of her back, and guided her. It was an old-world gesture.

Now Brent had pulled out her chair for her, and Wilson realized he was being a little slow. It was ridiculous, but for a moment as he struggled to cross the restaurant and catch up with them it occurred to him that his son was trying to show him how to put the moves on a woman his mother’s age. Wilson had the sudden, piercing memory of opening the bathroom door one Sunday afternoon years ago and surprising Brent’s high school girlfriend, Marjorie, as she stepped from the shower. She had paused with the curtain open, and Wilson—although he really hadn’t meant to—had paused as well, before he apologized and shut the door. He had never told Brent about it, but it struck him now, strangely, that perhaps
she
had told him instead. He stepped quickly toward the table. Brent said something to Margaret that made her laugh, and Wilson took his seat between them.

The dinner was well prepared—it always was—but Wilson felt disoriented watching the two of them, listening to them as though they were speaking in another room and he was hearing them through a wall. He leaned forward and tried to concentrate. They were talking about politics, of course, but Wilson couldn’t help being impressed with Brent’s conversational ingenuity. Instead of carping about the administration, as Wilson was tempted to do, Brent was trying to discern her opinions. He asked what she had thought about the different presidential candidates, about the glass ceiling in corporate America, and about the climate surrounding women in professional positions. Margaret talked enthusiastically. Wilson couldn’t decide whether to be dismayed or buoyed. Had men of his son’s generation merely taken a different tack—and perhaps a better one—to the same old goal of finding, attracting, and seducing
a woman? Or had they somehow taken on the cause of women as their own? As for himself, he couldn’t talk about these things. It wouldn’t sit right.