City of Boys (21 page)

—They seem to be hitting it off, he says, and I nod.

—Like old friends, I say, trying for a cheery tone.

He puts down the envelope he is holding and picks up a small jar that contains stamps and paper clips. —Do you do much at this desk?

—Not really. Bills. Letters. It’s just there. Alan left it.

He nods. —I know, he says. —It’s hard to get much done anymore. He twists the lid of the jar back and forth. —I have this feeling, he says, —that I should be doing things. But I don’t know what they are. He puts the jar down and looks at me. —But you, he says. —You should be doing things. You were always doing things.

My mother laughs in the kitchen, over the sound of running water, and he stops to listen.

—So you and–what’s that guy’s name?

—Richard.

—Richard. So you and Richard. Are you going to move in together?

—I hardly know him, I say, but even as the idea is raised, I
can almost feel myself becoming resigned to it. Richard could use Alan’s desk and play with Alan’s cat, and the television could be on all the time.

David nods. —Well, you can always move back home. There’s plenty of room there.

My room at my mother’s house has high yellow walls, with stuffed toys still arranged in little animal groupings on top of the bureau and bookshelves.

—Oh, I say, —I’m happy here. Really.

David stares down at the desk, then picks up a flyer advertising a lecture I meant to go to a few weeks ago.

—I don’t know, he says. He turns his head quickly toward the window, as if he has heard something, but there is nothing there, only the wind and the occasional tick of a branch against the glass.

—Sometimes, he goes on, —sometimes I just can’t seem to move. You know? I wake up in the middle of the night and I just can’t even, he stops and looks into the kitchen, listens a moment. —Well, I just can’t even, you know, lift my legs off the bed and onto the floor.

He drops the flyer and lets it drift to the floor before he bends to pick it up. —Are you sure you don’t want to come with us? he asks. —You might just as well.

He looks at me and I realize he is right: I might just as well. I think for a moment, searching out some compelling reason I must stay–something that might go wrong in my absence. But all that occurs to me is that the newspapers would pile up on my step, and the grass would continue to go unmowed, lopping over onto the sidewalk. The neighbors would probably miss me in their way, drifting aimlessly to their windows, and the cats would just go on littering the lawn with tiny corpses. After a day or two of scratching at the door for their dinner, they’d realize the little bodies were
food, and they’d eat them. This is all that would happen. I try to think of something to say to David, but I am struck suddenly by the sense that I am living inside one of those pockets of air left by everyone who has been here. When David and my mother go, they will leave behind them empty spaces of their own for me to maneuver around; my life will be like an obstacle course.

David is still gazing at me when Richard and my mother come into the room.

—Well, Richard says, —I guess I should be going.

He stands at the door and my mother backs tactfully away.

—I’ll give you two a minute to say goodbye, she says.

I stand on the front porch with Richard and watch his face as he tries to think of the right thing to say.

—Well, he finally offers, —I really enjoyed that.

—Good, I say. —Thanks for coming.

—Oh, I was glad to. He looks out at the black street.

—Really glad.

As he leaves, he stops at David’s car and walks all the way around it, looking it over and nodding; when he gets to his own car, he gives me a little wave before he gets in.

His brake lights blink like eyes, all the way down the street. When I turn to go inside, I am for a moment surprised to see David and my mother through the window; it seems odd to see people there, and, watching them, I feel like a spy. David sits at the desk, my mother stands behind him; his eyes close as he leans his head back against her, and she smiles, stroking his thin hair. Her mouth moves with whatever words a mother would say to a son at such a moment, and it is clear to me that they could be anywhere: in their own home, or in any motel in any city along their route. I turn away from the window. It’s late, and the wind carries a faint sound as it moves through the trees. It could be anything:
the jingling of little bells, perhaps, or the tiny flickering out of tiny lives. I close my eyes and try to think of all I have, but all I can see is David and my mother; their voices echo in the deep canyons, and rocks are falling all around them as they look up at me, their faces dizzy with the steepness of the descent.

—Look, Teddy says, and when he turns to me, his eyes are the unquiet blue of the television, his skin lit by the reflected glare.

—Look, he says again. —You’ve got to see this, so I put my finger on a word to mark my place in the magazine article I
am reading and look up to see a tangled heap of men on a baseball field.

—Not that, he says. —Wait. They’ll show it again. He leans forward on his knees, his face a foot away from the television. —Watch, he says; then, —Okay.

The slow-motion replay begins, and we watch the man on third base run several yards into a dramatic collision with the catcher, the pitcher, and the umpire. Somewhere in the confusion, the baseball is thrown, and out of the pile the catcher’s arm emerges, miraculously holding the ball.

—Amazing, Teddy says. —Amazing. He turns to me.

—You’ll never see a better play at the plate. That guy should have been safe. Anyone else would have dropped the ball.

He looks back at the TV. —You’re looking at one of the best catchers in baseball, he says. —I don’t care what they say. The catcher stands, and walks around, shaking out his legs. His thighs are enormous, one of them alone the size of the waist of any model in the magazine I am reading.

—His thighs are huge, I say, and Teddy looks at me.

—He has to have those thighs, he says. —He’s got baseballs coming at him ninety miles an hour. He nods. —You’d want thighs like that, too.

The men on the screen untangle themselves, coaches hurtle out of dugouts, and everyone’s mouth is moving, but no one appears to be listening. I turn back to my magazine article about the things women do when they are on the rebound from love.

—If I’d had thighs like that, Teddy says, —I could have been a catcher in high school, instead of playing first base. I might have gone to the minors. They always need catchers. He sighs and turns back to the television. —That would have been a good career.

He rubs his hands up and down his thighs; even bent double, they aren’t as wide as those of the catcher on TV.

—You have a career, I say. —At the Safeway.

He turns to look at me. —I don’t think, he says, —that being an assistant manager in the produce section at the Safeway is exactly a career.

He watches the next batter swing and miss to end the inning. —Shit, he says, then turns back to me. —At least not yet, anyways. He watches the commercial a moment, then says, —But maybe someday. Maybe someday I might just manage the whole place.

He nods thoughtfully as the game comes back on. He says this often, that he might someday manage the store; in fact, he has promised me that when I am ready, he will get me a job at the Safeway, and together we will move slowly up the ranks, so that one day we will be at the top, a brother-and-sister management team. It will happen when things settle down, he always says, but he never says what this means, or when it will be. In the meantime, he reads books to prepare himself for that day, books on cost accounting and finance management, books by millionaires and businessmen. He’s going to be ready, he says; he is going to make his future happen. And mine. But for now, he smooths his pants down over his thin legs and leans forward to watch the failed play at the plate one more time.

It is early in the baseball season, and this year, as every year, Teddy believes that the Yankees are going to go all the way and recapture their past glory; this year he is so sure of it that he has spent what little money we have on a video recorder, so that he can record all the games he misses while he is at work.

—Consider it an investment, he said when he took the machine out of the box, —for the future. He untangled wires,
bent to attach the VCR to the television, and smiled up at me. —We’ll have all the games on tape, and maybe someday they’ll be worth something. Market and supply, he said, nodding seriously. It didn’t seem to occur to him that anyone at all could record these games; that, in fact, New York was probably full of people who were, at that moment, recording a ball game; and that all of those recordings would be worthless. It also didn’t occur to him to consider the cost of videotapes, and I didn’t remind him of it, but they do cost money, and we have only a couple, so that, instead of recording all the games, he has had to record every new game over an old one; at any one time the most he has is four or five games on tape.

To me, it is not a wise investment, but I keep this to myself, and I have almost gotten used to the sound of the VCR coming on when Teddy’s at work. I might be reading, or sitting at the kitchen table, or even watching television myself, when suddenly from the machine will come a click, a whirr, and I know that somewhere, at this moment, the Yankees are playing a baseball game, moving like tiny little toys across the neat green square of a baseball field. The VCR is like having another person in the apartment, someone who does things for you that you don’t particularly want done–someone I never see, but who always seems to be around, sneaking by me to turn on the VCR, then, when I look up, disappearing into the walls until the game is over. The game Teddy is watching now was played this afternoon; it has already been lost by the Yankees, and discussed thoroughly by the men who stand around on the sidewalk just below our window. As Teddy watches the Yankees hit and catch and run, the team is already back in New York, resting for tomorrow’s game. At work, Teddy puts his hands over his ears if he thinks anyone is going to talk about a game he’s recording, for fear of hearing the score. His pleasure
in watching is lost if he knows the outcome–every hit, every pitch, every play becomes meaningless if Teddy’s presence in front of the television cannot somehow affect what has already happened. He is superstitious in this way, and he takes it almost personally when they lose: he did not cheer enough, he was not paying close enough attention, his mind was wandering. The Yankees lost today’s game by only one run, and Teddy watches patiently as they build up a four-run lead that they will blow in the bottom of the ninth. I skim through an article by a man who writes that his girlfriend never buys him the right present for his birthday; she is always getting him things like pillows for his couch and books of photographs, beautiful things for which, he says, men have no place in their homes. He follows his complaint with a list of appropriate gifts: Super Bowl tickets, a camera, sunglasses for skiing. None of these gifts would be suitable for Teddy, who cares only about our future and the Yankees; otherwise he seems to exist without interests, without desires. For his birthday I plan to buy him more videocassettes, so that he can record more games and have something to watch during the long winter, when he wanders aimlessly through our apartment, waiting for spring training to begin. Winter is a long way off, but when it comes, I seem never to be alone; sometimes Teddy adds an extra shift, and he does spend time studying, but mostly, when we’re together, he is watching me, what I am doing, where I sit, when I go to bed.

—Hah, he says, and when the game cuts to a commercial, he rewinds the tape to watch the outfielder leap high against the fence to save a run. He rewinds and rewatches every important play; it can take him hours to get through a game, and when I once suggested to him that he advance the tape through the commercials, he smiled and shook his head. —You don’t understand, he said. —That’s part of the game.
That’s why it’s so relaxing–but he is always tense and hunched over on the floor as he watches, waiting for his team to lose again.

Downstairs a door slams; I turn to look out the window, and from the door below us a man emerges out onto the street; he struggles to breathe the summer air and walks uneasily toward the newsstand on the corner, then looks up and down Broadway, tracking the path of each cab that passes, but hailing none. He is coming from Madame Renalda’s, whose business is directly below our apartment.
MADAME RENALDA’S
, it says on the door, over a large blue eye, and under that:
FORTUNES TOLD
.
PALMS READ
. I asked Teddy once if it might be a good idea to visit her and find out what lay ahead for us, but he just laughed.

—You are so naive, he said. —It’s nothing but hookers. A massage joint. There are a thousand places like that in New York alone. He went back to his book on cost accounting, then held it up to me. —This is our future, he said.

—But she could read our palms, I told him, and looked down at my own hands. I couldn’t imagine anyone reading a future in the smooth pink surface of my skin. He laughed again.

—She doesn’t read palms, he said. —No one down there reads palms. There may not even really
be
such a thing as a palm reader.

He seemed so sure of himself, but I have seen the men who come out of there looking different from when they went in. When I told him this, he closed his book and looked at me. —It’s sex, he said. —That’s what sex does. That’s what it’s for. It makes you feel different. It makes you feel like somebody else.

He said this as though he knew, though he is not much older than I, and he is always either at work or here with me. Sometimes since then I have looked at his dark hair slicked
back, and his thin eyebrows, and tried to imagine him with a woman, his breath against her skin, his face pressed into her breast, but my mind closes at the thought. That down there, he told me once, was what he was protecting me from, a life in a place like that, which is where he seems to think I would surely have ended up on my own. Somebody has to take care of me, he says, and he guesses it has to be him, and I guess he is right. He is really all I have; he is really all I remember having. Our father I can only vaguely picture, a short dark man who stared at us uncomfortably, an absence in our life for many years more than a presence, and our mother lives in a small apartment on the East Side with her new husband, Stan, her cat Smokey, and a dreamy green aquarium full of tropical fish. They live there in the light of a thousand bright ampules of morphine that Stan keeps in the refrigerator; he brings them home from the hospital where he works, which is why my mother loves him as she does.