The Man Who Cancelled Himself (61 page)
He was not a big baseball fan. Didn’t know who was on first and didn’t give a shit, which is true of a surprising number of kids his age. Mostly, he just stared out at the field in sullen silence. Lulu, on the other hand, was clam happy. She has a major thing for Ryan Thompson, the Mets’ outfielder. Or, more precisely, his tush. Plus the housewife next to us had left a half-eaten tuna sub under her seat when she and her husband bailed in the fourth inning.
“I’m also a family friend, Arvin. Clethra and your dad are staying with me in the country.”
His eyes stayed on the field. “You must be writing her book for her.”
“I’m helping her.”
“Nah, you’re writing it. She’s a total doof when it comes to books. Doesn’t read a bit.”
“Do you?”
“A ton. Sci-fi, mostly.” He pulled a tattered paperback out of his back pocket. The cover featured a large, distasteful insect lost in cyberspace. “I could care less about the hardware. I’m just really into fantasy.”
“It sure beats the hell out of reality.”
He shot me an appraising glance, but said nothing more about it. Or anything else.
I ordered a bag of peanuts from one of the vendors and another beer. Out on the field, Dallas was finally pulling his pitcher, who was trailing 5-2 in the fifth. The kid got a polite hand from the tiny crowd when he left the mound, except for the six beery pinheads behind the dugout who started screaming obscenities at him. Six more rushed to the kid’s defense. Soon the whole bunch was throwing beer and wild punches at each other. They all got taken away in handcuffs by security. No one seemed particularly alarmed. Just another night at the ballpark, ’90s style.
“Looks like you got in a fight today,” I said, munching on the peanuts, which were stale. “Somebody give you a hard time about Clethra?”
Arvin shrugged. He colored slightly. “This dick Stan Passey, he heard about … he wanted to know if my dad let me watch while he filmed her dropping her clothes.”
“Did he?”
“No!” Arvin cried indignantly. “I wasn’t even there.”
“But you were there when it all started between the two of them.”
“Says who?”
“Clethra. She told me you were home the evening she and Thor made love together for the first time.”
Arvin gulped some air, his plaintive eyes on the field. “If I was, I didn’t see anything or hear anything,” he muttered.
“How about the other times?”
He didn’t answer me.
“Did you ever see the two of them kiss?”
“You mean like father and daughter or the other kind?”
“The other kind.”
“No. Not ever. I just wish …” He halted, his voice a strangled quaver.
“You just wish what, Arvin?”
“
People would leave us alone!
” he blurted out, loud enough to turn the heads of all the fans sitting near us. All three of them.
I drank some of my beer. “Arvin, your dad was real nice to me once, back when I was younger and kind of confused. I think he’s kind of confused now. So I’m trying to help him. Friends do that for each other.”
“So what’s that got to do with me?”
“He told me how much he misses you. Is there anything you’d like to say to him?”
“Sure.” He craned his neck uneasily, fingering his tender lip. “That I hate his fucking guts for what he did to Clethra.”
“What did he do to her?”
“He took her away from me. I miss her. She’s my best friend.”
She’d said the same thing about him. “You’re not friends with the guys at school?”
“I’m not friends with anyone.” He said it glumly.
“So you think all of this was your dad’s doing?”
“Don’t you?” he shot back.
“Clethra seems to feel she had as much say about it as he did.”
“I miss her,” he repeated earnestly.
“And that’s why you hate your dad?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. He didn’t reply.
“How about your mom?”
“What about her?”
“Do you love her?”
“I guess. She’s gone a lot of the time, making speeches and stuff. Clethra always used to be around. Now there’s nobody. Just some dorky woman I don’t even know who stays with me. She’s Mom’s publicist’s secretary. It’s really lame. It’s not like I need a baby-sitter anymore. Mom … she can be hard to take a lot of the time. But she’s okay.”
“Are you afraid of her?”
He frowned at me quizzically. “Isn’t everyone?”
He had a point. “Has she ever smacked you around? Beaten you, punched you?”
“She spanked me once when I was little,” he replied, gulping. “I called her a bad word is why. I called her a cunt. That’s a bad word, right?”
“Yes, that’s a very bad word.”
“How come?”
“Something to do with the way it sounds coming out.” I examined his bruised and battered face. “Arvin, did your mom give you that fat lip?”
“I got it in a fight at school. I told you.”
“That’s right, you did.”
“Mr. Hoag?”
“Make it Hoagy.”
“Is it wrong what Clethra and my dad are doing?” he wondered. “Is it a bad thing?”
“The world certainly sees it that way.”
“How do
you
see it?”
I tugged at my ear. “People aren’t always going to do what’s right, Arvin. Or smart or responsible or any of those sane, worthwhile things. A lot of the time they just fuck up. They don’t mean to, but they can’t help themselves. I know you’re pissed off right now. That’s part of the deal when you care about somebody. Not much of a deal sometimes, but in the long run it beats being all alone.”
He sorted through this, nodding miserably to himself.
“Which of your parents would you rather live with?” I asked him. “In a perfect world, I mean.”
“Neither of them,” he answered. “I’d like to live on a deserted island somewhere, just me and Clethra. We don’t need anybody else.”
“That’s your idea of happy?”
“That’s my idea of awesome.”
“I understand you’re heading out to Barry’s this weekend.”
“Yeah … ?”
“Care to see her?”
“
Could
I?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Mom won’t like it,” he pointed out.
“I can handle her,” I assured him.
He looked me up and down. “You?”
“Don’t kid yourself. I’m a lot tougher than I look.”
Lulu promptly started coughing at my feet.
“Why’s she doing that?” he asked, frowning at her.
“Peanut shell. Would you like to see your dad, too?”
“Never,” Arvin snapped. “Not as long as I live. I can never, ever forget what he did. Not
ever.
”
“It’s true, Arvin. You won’t forget. But you will forgive.”
“No, Hoagy, I won’t.”
Arvin Gibbs said this with total conviction. In fact, I’d never heard anyone sound more certain of anything in my entire life.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1995 by David Handler
978-1-4532-5973-3
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