These Things Happen (22 page)

   "What can I tell you?" I say. "I'm putty; I'm hypnotized. And on top of that, she sees perfectly." She calls for me. Does she know he's here? "Coming, babe," I say. But it seems I have one more thing for the two of us, out here. "And the thing is, Wesley—"

   "Yeah?" he says, which I'm grateful for; I have too many things to say; like him, I have to choose one, at least for now.

   "The thing is— I cherish her."

   " 'Cherish,' " he says, cocking his head like Branwell does, or used to, when he still felt he had to woo us. "What do you mean by that, exactly?"

   I'm not an eloquent man; I'm about seeing, not saying. But I'll try; I will always try. "Exactly? It's
in
exact, probably, if it's anything."

   "Inexactly, then."

   "It's like love," I say. "It's something like that."

   "How?"

   "It's r
elated
to it. That's more what I mean."

   "Oh."

   Maybe he'd be satisfied at this point, happy with my answer to his question. But I'm not; I see a little more. "That
grows
from it."

   "From love."

   Has he been in love? We don't know. Will he be able to love? Oh, yes.

   "And maybe it's even a
place
," I say. "That you get to. Or maybe it's none of those things."

   "Oh, no," he says. "I doubt that." Then: "Wow."

   "For what?"

   "Everything. This has been an awesome day. Can I say
awesome
?"

   "This once."

   "And this
cherishing
thing, Ben," he says. "Do you think it's better than love?"

   "You'll find out, I think," I say. "In fact, I'm sure of it."

   "I will? Where?"

   "It's different for everyone, probably. Maybe it's somewhere in
The Grapes of Wrath."

   He groans. "I doubt that."

   "Me, too."

   I'm sneaky, now; I stuff my twenty into his pocket. Before he can protest the elevator comes, as if we'd rung for it; he now has two open, waiting doors. Isn't there usually a third, in the fables? Maybe not, when the two you have already both might have tigers inside. He looks from one open door to the other, and does it again, and once more. Then, without a good-bye, he steps into the elevator, to turn the page to the next chapter of his night.

H
e has, as it happens, taken the train, anyway; not to pocket Ben's twenty but because trains, all day, have been willing to carry him and have helped, in their subtle directive sway, in his decisions where to go. He's grateful to the train, then, and sees it as a tame beast, with a soul; he is, after all, a city boy. And, also, as Theo once said, does anything really significant ever happen in a cab? Taxis, unlike trains, just aren't all that interested in you. On the subway he says some of this out loud, loud enough so he can hear it but not for others to hear, too. Because suddenly, he's finding, everything is practice, for conversations that haven't happened yet, with people he's yet to meet. And as for the cash from Ben? He'd never take it back, of course, so he has decided to give it to George, as the last payment on his phone bill. That's if George doesn't hate him, naturally, as he is likely to do. If he doesn't, George will want to let the balance go. But the boy won't go for that; what kind of man makes a deal and then, at the end, suggests he never took it seriously? No kind. Period.

It is eleven, or around that. He doesn't have a watch; like everyone

all over he wants his phone to do the work of twelve magic oxen, machine division, and he doesn't have his phone. He gets off at Fiftieth, walks down three blocks, then turns west with the flow of traffic. This is Forty-seventh, a street he knows mostly in the mornings, when it steams and simmers sweetly, like something waiting to be eaten, dunked into coffee, shedding delicious crumbs. He works against the crowds, disappointed or delighted, coming out of theaters to either go home or to one of the hundred restaurants like Ecco, for a bite, for a salad with
soppresatta
or garbanzos. As he's a stupid kid, occasionally, he doesn't think that
he's
hungry, which he should be, but that he's invisible, instead, which is stupider yet; he with the puffed, meaty face, the stitches and swollen lip, the taste of blood still in his mouth. Who would notice a boy like that? Then he hears his name! It has to be his, because how many people are saddled with it, really? The callers turn out to be those old-lady Galligan girls— the twins— at their ninety-four-degree angles to the pavement, making their maidenly way home from ushering a night's performance. He offers them each an arm; the sisters try to decline, for their own reasons, but he insists. His gallantry might be unnecessary, as they have a mere half block to travel. But Wesley, who remembers, more or less, everything interesting or funny that has ever been said to him, thinks of what George told him about their breakability. So he will not be the one to let them fall, and crack, and shatter; sorry. Not he.

   "Take this," says Mary Galligan, who is now at a hundred and five degrees, as opposed to the ninety-four of her sister, Therese. She has plucked a powdery dollar from her pocket and, with her toy hands, presses it upon him.

   "Take this," says Therese, offering her own dollar, this one with a half-sucked Life Saver stuck to it.

   He's caught, then; this is the third time tonight he has been offered cash. Will the ladies be as sneaky as Ben, and stuff singles in his pocket? But he decides not to resist; he understands tonight, as he might not have before, that to accept what someone wants to give you is, in its way, a kind of bravery. The next assist to the Galligans, he decides, should there be one, will be free.

   "For college," says Therese, about her dollar.

   "A girl," says Mary, about hers.

   He nods to both suggestions, and hopes someday that, when people think of him, their imagining of the poles of his life will be— what?—broader, say.

   He sees the ladies to their third-floor rooms. But they're not done with him; Mary, or Therese, hurries in and returns with a package of shortbread. She hands it to him, then, whispering, vanishes behind the door with her twin. He opens the package, eats a cookie; it is the only thing he remembers eating since a bite of pizza bread yesterday afternoon, if that was, indeed, yesterday afternoon; he's sure of very little, right now, mostly the avenues he's suspended between (Eighth and Ninth, each with its own views as to how traffic should flow), the cookie in his mouth, its grit dissolving into sweetness, his own skin and hair and rollicking, restless cells.

   He is sure, too, that he has more stairs to climb, even if he's unsure what to do when he gets there.
Maybe it's somewhere in
The Grapes of Wrath, Ben said. Which reminds him: he's now even more behind than he was and, whether he's welcome or not, he somehow must get his backpack as the book is in that. So, like a cat, he gets to four and then, hesitating two steps below the landing, he becomes Superman, or at least acquires X-ray vision skills which, if he also does well on the SATs, might help get him into Brown. He can see through the door he helped George scrape and repaint (from shit brown to what George calls Della Robbia blue) to the stack of Playbills on the kitchen table, to George's shelf of tinted French salts, even to the two men— George and his father— talking to each other, a sound that causes him to head, for now, to the roof. He likes it there; he has come to think of it as his, even though it isn't, of course. Still, in the time they've let him live here, it has been the one place he can go where there are no college coaches, papers due, adult brows that wrinkle and say, without need of words, that they are worried, even sure, that you will amount to nothing.

   When he steps out onto the tar-paper roof what he sees, first, is a book. Whose could it be? Not his, he knows that; he comes up here, yes, but late, to think and to walk; never, certainly, to read. The book is a paperback, its title T
he Secret History of the Pentagon
Papers as Reported in the New York Times.
He opens it; at each of a dozen paper-clipped markers someone has written
Song.
The copyright date is 1971. His dad and mom were three, Ben was twenty, George had not yet been born. Which of them could he ask about it? There is too much he doesn't know. His mother and father would, first, wonder why he's asking; is there significance to his question, or something they should worry about, without saying what that something is? They would then go on to be worthy, and stern; he knows this isn't fair, but he's too weary, right now, for balance. Ben, he knows, would make him laugh; he would like to be as funny as Ben is someday, funny in that way that doesn't separate it from the rest of life. And George would plead ignorance, as he always does; when Wesley asked him, not long ago, if he could shed any light on the Oslo Accords, George said, "It's my blue pantsuit, right? You're thinking I'm Hillary Clinton."

   This is when George appears, at the open door. He has heard Wesley on the roof, as he always does; he thinks, first, that Lola should be informed of his whereabouts, if she doesn't already know; it is as much a habit for him to be
seen
as trustworthy as to
be
trustworthy; one is always in need of a defense. But that's different now, or, at least, changed. He has been accused; he has not been defended; he had forgotten how unsafe it always is. But he remembers now. So should the two of them be up here, alone? Best to stay at the doorway, then; best to not step through. But then? He wants to know if the kid is all right, this boy who, through an instinctive show of courage on a friend's behalf, has changed everything for everyone. How will my life change? George wonders. He understands Wesley's nights up here now; a roof is a good place to go when you can't imagine what will happen to you.

   He waits; if Wesley is aware that, even tentatively, George has joined him, he doesn't let on; he is turned away, looking through a book; he is posing, with thoughtfully furrowed brow and a boy's ever-broadening shoulders, for a picture whose title anyone could guess:
Boy, Reading.
George sees the moon, light-years closer up here than it is four floors down, on the street. He thinks of the words
a little silver slipper of a moon
, and, for a moment, can't name their source. Then it comes to him. Of course; Tom in T
he Glass Menag
erie
, writing poems on the lids of shoe boxes; the remembered words are said by his mother to him, when she asks him what he wishes for and he tells her, of course, it's a secret. His nose finds work, now, as the street's cuisines compete for customers. Southern Italy. Northern. Sicily. Crete. You might think, up here, that the whole city had been breaded and fried, with rivers of
sauce diavolo
running through the oil-absorbent streets. George has taught Wesley tricks with cal amari, zucchini rounds, stubby pencils of polenta; he's got a light touch with a fryer, which isn't something you can learn. Will he remember this skill? Will it help him, in life, at all?

   "Hey," George says, quietly enough that the sound might have come from an open window, or someone's tv. Wesley hears him, but he doesn't turn or look up from his book. The P
entagon Papers
, which he'd not heard of as of four minutes ago, has become all that matters in the world, somehow. He even moves his head, side to side, like an old typewriter carriage. He's never seen one, but George has, of course, and it's what George thinks of as he watches. He also thinks of acting, actors, all the classes he took. As he gazes at Wesley from the doorway he decides Wesley is "indicating," which is the worst thing anyone can ever say about an actor, at least as an actor sees it. This means that he is
performing
something instead of being it; it is, for an actor, the way of the coward. But the kid isn't either, George thinks, an actor or a coward.

   "We heard you," George says.

   Wesley turns a page, nods to himself as if it is all coming clear to him. He wants to look back, but for what? What would he say? He doesn't want George to go, but he doesn't know how, when the time comes, he'll be able to turn to see him.

   George seems to understand. "In other words," he says, "you've been heard. Okay?" And is this it? He doesn't expect an answer, knows he has no right to say more; the boy is someone else's. But he can't help himself; he has a final word left that wants out, wants to take the air. It's a name. That's all. "Wesley," says George. Wesley gives no response, other than turning a page. Below, on the street, someone opens the restaurant door. George hears a chorus of " Happy Birthday" from within; Lenny will be doing what he, George, usually does, lighting the candle stuck into the birthday person's
torta della nonna
, joining in the song to end, as he has so many times, the big night out of a table full of strangers. Maybe, he thinks, he'll stick his head in down there. There are always people to greet, with whom he can be knowing, whom he can reliably delight, who come for a dose of the small bright gifts he has and likes to give. He's already a few steps down when Wesley clears his throat.

   
"I hear you,"
says Wesley. "Okay?" This said, too, without looking at him, at George.

   "Okay," George says. Question, answer, simple as that, nothing guaranteed beyond it. George realizes, though, looking at his back, that he made a promise to him, lost in the events of the last thirty-six hours, to consider and answer a question, a promise he has yet to fulfill. But he says to himself: W
ait. Don't breathe. If you breathe, it
breaks.
"In case you're interested, not that it's that interesting," he says now, "but there's some lemon almond polenta cake downstairs. You usually like that." Because Wesley is still turned away George can't see his mouth move, as the pleasure center in his brain kicks in, going back, Wesley thinks, to the time in race memory when man first walked upright and first had friends over, for some grass tea and a little lemon almond polenta cake; he wants to get into this with Theo, soon, when some of this present shit clears and they can get back to their Facts and Interesting Things. Until then, he'd love some of this cake. But he overrides the instinct, and stays turned away.