Bystander (14 page)

“You're a smart guy,” Griffin repeated. “Thirty, twelve, twenty-six. Do you really want it to go down that way?”

Eric kept walking, trying hard not to listen. He could get a new locker tomorrow. Yet Eric knew that Griffin would always be able to find a way to open it.
Even after Eric shut the front door, Griffin's laughter still echoed in his ears.

It had to stop.

Eric was a smart guy. Griffin said so himself. One way or the other, he'd figure it out.

ON SATURDAY
,
MRS. HAYES SHOOK ERIC AWAKE.
“
TEN
o'clock,” she clucked. “You can't sleep the day away.”

She served French toast for breakfast, made with challah bread, Eric's favorite. He accepted it with a bleary-eyed grunt. He didn't feel like talking; instead, his dark thoughts dwelled on Griffin Connelly.

Mrs. Hayes sat down at the family computer. Eric watched her unhappily. “Why can't I use instant message?” he complained.

“Eric, we've been through this.”

“Don't you trust me?”

“I trust
you,
” his mother replied. “It's the Internet I don't trust. Turn sixteen and we'll talk about it.”

She was right about one thing: They had been through this before. So Eric sat, stewing in silence. Which reminded him: “Where's Rudy?”

“He got invited to the Guillens'. It's the twins' birthday. They're driving out to the Hayden Planetarium, then going out for pizza afterward. He'll be gone most of the day.”

Eric shoveled more French toast into his mouth.

“I was thinking we could go to the beach,” Mrs. Hayes announced, rising to pour herself another cup of coffee. “Just you and me. We never get to spend time together anymore.”

Eric glanced out the window. The day was overcast, windy, probably no warmer than fifty-five degrees. The thought of spending a day at the beach with his mother left Eric unenthused. “It doesn't look like beach weather to me.”

“Oh, these are my favorite type of beach days,” she said. “It's empty and peaceful. We'll have the place to ourselves. Come on, snap to it! Finish those strawberries, get dressed, and let's get a move on.”

“Mom.”

“Please, Eric,” she said. “Enough with the grunts and brooding silences. Come on, let's go. Liven up! It'll be fun.”

She was bound and determined to enjoy some “quality time” with her eldest son; Eric had no choice but to go along for the ride.

“Should we take our bikes?” she wondered.

The bike.
Eric hadn't found the right time to tell her yet. “I have a flat tire,” he said, making his best effort to appear downtrodden.

His mother snapped up the car keys. “That's fine—we'll get our exercise on the boardwalk.”

They cruised along Wantagh Highway to Jones Beach, a long strip of gray-white sand beach that was divided into different “fields.” Eric's mother parked at Field Four in one of the biggest, emptiest parking lots Eric had ever seen. There were only about a hundred cars there, but the place looked otherwise deserted. Eric glanced skyward; dark cumulus clouds loomed overhead, laden with rain. His mother led the way, a definite bounce in her step. “Growing up, this is where I often came to get away from everything,” she confided
to Eric. At their first glimpse of the ocean, she stopped and inhaled the salt air.

They stopped at a concession stand, Eric grabbing a Coke, his mother some fries. “Boy, this brings back memories,” she gushed. “In high school, I worked all around here during the summers, mostly at West End Two and Field Six. You could get a job here in a couple of years, Eric. They are always looking to hire kids in the summer.”

“Does it pay well?”

“Horrible! But it's so much fun. Those were great times.”

They returned to the boardwalk, turned right, and headed west.

“Overcast and gloomy,” his mother observed, sunshine in her voice. “It reminds me of Ireland. That's where your father and I honeymooned, you know. Dingle Bay. The Ring of Kerry. We even visited Yeats's grave in Sligo. I'd love to take you and Rudy there someday.”

Eric wondered if she'd brought up the honeymoon on purpose. Now there it was, floating like a carnival balloon. The thought of his father. Eric asked her
about it. What had happened, why his father never got better, why he didn't care anymore.

“Oh, he cares, Eric, don't ever stop believing that,” she answered. “He loves you and Rudy very much.”

“But why?” Eric asked, feeling it unnecessary to fill in the rest.

“When things got hard, he just wasn't equipped,” she told her son. “He had difficulties—mental issues—that we kept under control with medication. But when he went off his meds . . .”

None of this was news to Eric. His mother had already told him everything, answered every question, countless times. Eric never understood why a sick person would stop taking medicine. It made no sense. But his mother said it was quite common, because most pills came with very unpleasant side effects. “I think your father started thinking he could handle it, you know, without the medicine. He kept hoping, you know. All he wanted was a normal life. So he stopped. I suspected, but he hid it from me. And after a while . . . he changed.”

“I remember,” Eric lamented.

“He did the best he could,” his mother said. “He still does.”

“Will he ever get better?”

Her lips tightened. She looked to the gray Atlantic. Seagulls wheeled near the surf, diving at the whitecaps. “I wish I could make it easier for you.”

“But if he took his medicine—”

“It's not that simple,” she replied. “The drugs dulled him. They controlled the bad parts. But they also carved away something from his spirit, the things that made him . . .
him
. You know?”

Eric didn't answer for a while. “I don't know if I'll ever understand.”

“I know, honey,” she said, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “But he's your father, Eric. You only get one in this life. All you can do is love him, even if it breaks your heart sometimes.”

“I guess,” he murmured.

She slipped off her shoes and stepped off the boardwalk onto the cool sand. “Come,” she said.

“It's been a crap year,” Eric confessed.

His mother held her hand flat above her eyes,
shielding them from the sun. “Are you gonna be all right?”

Eric nodded. “I think so, yeah.”

She slipped her hand around his arm. “You are growing up, you know that?”

“Every day,” Eric said.

“Just don't be in such a hurry. Hey, I've got an idea. See that building with the big glass windows? That's the Jones Beach restaurant. I haven't eaten there in years. Let's go eat some lobster. It'll be a treat. What do you say?”

“Lobster?” Eric repeated. “I'm always up for lobster.”

 

LATER THAT AFTERNOON
,
WHEN THEY PULLED INTO THE
driveway, Eric saw three boys knocking on the front door: Pat, Hakeem, and Cody. They had Eric's bicycle with them, lying on the front walkway. It was a crippled wreck, with bent forks and mangled tires.

His mother looked searchingly from the boys to the bicycle. “Eric?”

“I know these guys, Mom. It's okay. I got it.”

His mother went inside, with just a sharp nod to the group. Eric stood eyeing the three boys.

“We were thinking, that is, me and Hakeem and Cody, that, um—” Pat floundered.

“We found out about what happened to your bike,” Hakeem explained.

“It's not right,” Cody stated, glancing down at Eric's feet. He looked up. “We told Griffin that he went too far.”

“You did? How'd that go over?”

Hakeem smiled, tilted his chin to Cody.

“We kind of talked Griff into letting us take it back,” Cody answered, rubbing the knuckles of his right hand. “It was their idea. I just came as backup.”

“Did you have a fight?”

Cody shook his head. “No, no, we're still good. Griff and I have been friends for a long time. We just needed to air things out a little.”

“Still,” Eric said, “Griff must have been angry.”

Hakeem glanced at Pat. “You know, in some ways, he didn't even seem surprised.”

“We told him it wasn't funny anymore,” Pat said.

“Wow, that's, like, really—thanks,” a tongue-tied Eric replied. “I never expected this.”

“We want to help you fix it,” Pat piped up. “Do you have any tools in your garage? Otherwise, I've got some at my house. We could bring them back there.”

“It's going to need a couple of new rims, probably new brake cables,” Cody said, stepping toward the bicycle. “I think I can bend these forks back into shape, but it looks like the seat got slashed. I think I've got an extra one at my house. The derailer looks okay. . . .”

“Cody is an ace mechanic,” Hakeem said. “He's going to build his own car someday.”

Cody pulled a dirty bandanna from his back pocket to wipe the grease from his hands. “That's right. A Ford Mustang. You laugh now, but we'll see who's laughing when I'm—
eerrrrrrpp!
—chirping out, tires smoking, doing neutral drops in front of your house.”

Hakeem and Pat laughed.

Cody looked at Eric, shrugged, palms up. “What can I say? I'm a motorhead. I've got three older brothers. We have a shed filled with old bicycles and spare
parts. I think we can patch something together without too much trouble.”

Eric listened to him with something close to amazement. When Cody talked about forks and brake cables and Ford Mustang carburetors, he was like a different person. A happier, more confident one.

Eric couldn't refrain from asking, “Why are you helping me?”

Cody took off his cap, scratched his head. “I like working on bikes,” he said. “Besides, maybe after we get this piece of junk working again, you and me . . . we'll be even. Look, I don't know about you and Griffin, or you and Hallenback, or anything else like that. I'm not going there. I just want you and me to be square. Straight lines, you know. Leave the past in the past.”

“Sounds good to me,” Eric agreed.

Cody nodded, the business concluded. He said to Pat and Hakeem, “I'm going with Griff to see the car show tomorrow. My brother said he'd take us. You interested?”

The boys demurred, made excuses why not. Eric
sensed that it was Griffin's presence that put them off. Maybe that was just wishful thinking. Or maybe the tide was turning. Maybe things were going to change. The boys made arrangements to work on the bike sometime after school next week, Monday or Tuesday. It was up to Cody, really, since he was the one, as he said, “with the skills and the drills.”

After they left, a semidazed Eric wandered around to the back of his house. A soft, cleansing rain began to fall. He hit speed dial on his cell phone.

“Hey!” Mary sounded happy to hear from him.

“You wouldn't believe who I was just hanging out with,” Eric opened. Then he said, “Listen, are you going to be around tomorrow? I need your help with something. . . .”

Mary was dead set against it. But Eric was insistent. He was like his mother that way; his mind was made up.

Then the clouds broke, and buckets of rain poured from the sky.

ERIC FOUND THE NUMBER IN THE PHONE BOOK AND
dialed.

“Yeah?”

“Um, hi, this is Eric. Is—”

“Griff! Phone!”

It was a male voice, the father.

“What?” It was Griffin now, but with the same unfriendly tone as his father.

“It's Eric.”

There was a pause on the other end, a moment of silent appraisal. “So?”

“I need to talk to you. Can I come by tomorrow afternoon?”

“Unh-unh, mañana doesn't work,” Griffin answered. “I'll be out most of the day.”

It was the confirmation Eric needed.

“After dinner, maybe,” Griffin suggested.

“Nah, never mind. It can wait.”

“Oh no, you can't do that,” Griff protested. “You called me, remember? Now you've got to say what it's about.”

So Eric flat out let the words fly: “I'm not going to steal for you. It's a stupid idea.”

“If that's the way you want it,” Griffin said. “It's your life.”

“I know about the break-ins,” Eric said. He was bluffing now, playing a hunch. He didn't
know
anything, but he wanted to hear Griffin's response.

“What are you talking about?”

“You have to stop, Griffin,” Eric warned him. “You'll get caught.”

“Nope, I don't think so.”

So there it was. Just as Eric suspected. Griffin
Connelly had graduated from stealing birthday money to petty burglary. It was more sad than surprising.

“Why do you care, anyway?” Griffin asked.

It was a fair question.

“Because I do,” Eric answered.

“Sure, like I believe that.”

Eric sighed. He suddenly felt tired, so tired. The seconds yawned past.

“Well,” Griffin asked, “is that all you wanted to say to me?”

“That's pretty much it.”

Griffin snorted. “And that's just lame, if you ask me.”

“I guess I'm lame, then,” Eric said with a shrug in his voice. “See you around, Griff.”

Click
.

 

ERIC MET MARY AT ONE O
'
CLOCK THE NEXT AFTERNOON
, down the block from the Connellys'. They slowly walked past the house. “Driveway is empty,” Eric noted. “I don't see any lights on. Nobody's home.”

“Eric,” Mary said. “This is such a bad idea. I mean, in the history of bad ideas, this is right up near the top, next to, like, I don't know, veggieburgers and spandex unitards.”