It had worked that way for years. As far as Mary was concerned it would continue for years into the future. She could picture herself as an old lady, precise and solemn in a dark suit, known to the staff at the Ritz, arriving every few months to be met by her son, gone gray himself, a handsome and solid man with a well-trimmed gray mustache and skin creased and burnished like fine leather. They would walk through the Public Gardens together. They would have dinner at quiet little restaurants where she would continue, with the serene, childish impertinence of age, to insist on paying.
It seemed a decent way to grow old alongside her son, and she silently congratulated herself for her openness. Not every mother would respect a child's choices this way, or honor his privacy. Some mothers were harridans. Some mothers begged and threatened. She, Mary, packed her best clothes and took a room at the Ritz.
It was on her spring visit that Billy leaned toward her in a restaurant and said: “Mom, I think I'm in love.”
Just those words. She didn't realize, at first, how much they carried. She took a sip of her water and said, “Really?”
Neither of them spoke for almost a full minute. Mary was aware of how much gentle and contented noise the other diners were making with their silver and their coffee cups and their conversations. It was a lovely restaurant, one of her favorites in Boston, a formal place where the waiters were all handsome and where candles flickered before their own reflections in smoky mirrors. It was the kind of place Mary had hoped to go for lunch after Billy's commencement, all those years ago, when Constantine had been in charge and had taken her to an awful cafe done up in gingham and travel posters, with a single hothouse rose dying on every table. Now, as she sat across from her son and waited for him to continue speaking, she had an urge to leave. Not to walk off and abandon him—she wouldn't do that—but to merge with the restaurant, to abandon her own body and inhabit this room with its buzz of confident talk and its buttery damask-covered walls, the expensive and competent glow of it.
Billy said, “His name is Harry.”
“Well,” Mary said. She decided against pretending surprise. What would it earn her? “How long have you known him?” she asked.
“Almost a year.” Billy picked up his knife, set it down again. Mary saw that he was proud and embarrassed. She saw that a part of him had not changed at all since the day when, at the age of ten, he'd brought home an elaborate beaded necklace he'd strung for her at summer camp. She'd known he was pleased with the necklace and she'd known that most of the other boys at camp must have chosen to make ashtrays or wallets for their mothers. She'd pictured her son sitting among the girls, stringing beads with a look of furious concentration, full of a profound abandonment to his own love of feminine industry. Now, at the age of thirty-six, he frowned shyly and sheepishly over his knife.
He said, “I figured you probably knew. About me.”
Mary didn't speak. It seemed she would lose something she might need later if she admitted to her own knowledge. Billy waited, turning the knife over, and when he realized she was not going to say anything, he went on.
“I feel pretty stupid, coming out at this age,” he said. “I should have told you years ago. I just knew you knew, and I always told myself I'd formally announce the fact when and if I fell in love. Because, well, I wanted to tell you about it with a real live person attached, not just as, you know, a proclivity. Which was probably just cowardice on my part. But anyway, here it is. Better late than never, right? I'm in love with a man named Harry.”
“Well,” Mary said.
“Does it shock you?” Billy looked up at her and she saw how much he wanted her not to be shocked. How much he needed—what? Not her forgiveness, not exactly that. Her recognition. He desperately wanted not to be strange to her. At this age, after almost twenty years of living on his own and doing exactly as he liked. For twenty years, all three of her children had lived far from the sphere of her opinions. They had mocked her with their politeness and their forbearance. They had done only what they wanted to do, and left her to her own shrinking life. And now, this late in the game, Billy was suddenly as available to damage at her hands as he'd been when he was a baby.
Her first impulse was to take advantage. She could tell him it turned her stomach to think of her only son in love with another man. She could say that all her hopes were squandered. Or, worse (she knew, somehow, it would be worse), she could simply change the subject. She could treat this love of his as a minor distraction, barely meriting comment.
She could repay him for every slight, every disappointment and act of disrespect. She thought of him whining at four. She thought of him wild at seventeen, more loyal to a band of stupid, brutal friends than he was to her. She thought of him going to the movies on his own graduation day, denying her a deep satisfaction that would have cost him almost nothing.
She was nearly overcome with anger and with a throbbing irritation, like a piece of gristle caught deep in a tooth. But what she said, almost against her conscious will, in a soft clear voice, was, “No. I'm not shocked.”
“Good,” he said.
“Tell me more about Harry.”
Billy smiled, an involuntary little tic of a smile, and she could see—or she sensed more than she saw—that his eyes were hot with the possibility of grateful tears. Because she had expressed a calm and simple interest. Only that. Incipient tears in a boy, a man, who for so long had been remote as an almond inside its shell.
He said, “He's a cardiologist. He plays the saxophone. The main thing about Harry is, I feel like I could talk to him forever.”
Mary nodded. She felt something inflate within her, a tough little bladder of air that seemed to reside under her ribs like a third lung. She was disappointed. She was angry. But she couldn't harm her child, though she wished she was powerful enough to do so. If she'd been the kind of woman who could lash out at her son, who could take revenge, who knew how different her life might have been? If she'd been that kind of woman, firm and ruthless, quick to anger, mightn't she have married better? Mightn't she have raised children who respected her, who accomplished much in the world because their mother was always behind them with her sword and her scales? Wasn't that the woman at the Ritz? Someone with teeth, with influence.
But here in this restaurant, faced with her son's ardor and fragility, his aging hands, she knew finally and forever that she was not that woman. She was herself. She carried the long tangle of her history. All she could do was listen to her son with love and fear and a low distant crackle of rage as he smiled shyly and spoke, in a tentative voice, about a man he loved.
“It's a little mysterious to me,” Billy said. “He's not the bestlooking guy I've ever met. He's very smart and kind, but he's not some fantasy come true. I just seem to love him. It's never happened to me before, not something like this. I just get more and more interested in him.”
“It sounds serious,” Mary said.
“It is,” Billy answered. “I think it is. Would you like to meet him?”
Mary thought, suddenly, of herself walking through Central Park with Cassandra and Jamal over two years ago. That strange little boy who carried her blood mixed with the blood of a black man she'd never meet. She thought of Cassandra's face, the ancient and commanding look it had assumed as all pretense of girlish cordiality fell away.
What had Cassandra said? He may need you one day. Something like that. I don't want him going to live with strangers.
Mary thought of the wings that had almost touched her face. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course I want to meet him.”
1992/ There was a green emptiness down beyond the houses. There was a depth of buzzing grasses. Ben went with Andrew nd Trevor, singing bits of “Jeremy,” blueing the air with cigarette smoke.
“I love Mary Kelly,” Andrew said. “I mean, I love Mary Kelly.” Andrew had the expanse, the romantic fearlessness. Trevor was smaller, more intricately balanced, more prone to caution and laughter.
Ben was the one
with the silence. He held Andrew and Trevor with his eyes, promised quietly that somebody knew. Somebody knew about everything, and held them.
“You love Mary Kelly's tits,” said Trevor. “You love exactly two and a half pounds worth of Mary Kelly, you fuck.”
“They weigh more than two and a half pounds.”
“You weighed 'em?”
“Trust me.”
“Right. Trust you”
“Then eat me.”
“You wish.”
They walked deeper into the green. Andrew was the blond one with the loose stride. Trevor was broad, bunched up, pulled in around his strength and his habit of mockery.
Behind them, houses gave back squares of late sky from their window glass. Flowers whitened in the dusk. Water rose up in spirals, spun and hissed over lawns.
“Mary Kelly is a fucking goddess,” Andrew said. “Mary Kelly can have me if she wants me.”
Trevor laughed loud enough to flush a crow, which angled out of a spruce and flapped slowly away like a living illustration of the idea of black.
“Mary Kelly already had the football team,” he said. “Varsity and junior varsity.”
Ben walked behind, not speaking. He didn't look at his friends' backs, the strong innocent curves.
“Mary Kelly,” Andrew said, “is a slut, it's true, but she never did the whole football team. She left out a lot of guys.”
“The only guys in the junior and senior class Mary Kelly hasn't fucked are fags,” Trevor said. “Hey, Ben?”
“What?”
“You got the cigarettes?”
“Yeah.”
Trevor stopped, took a cigarette from the pack, lit up. He inhaled with his eyes closed, adoring the smoke.
Trevor asked Ben, “You think Andrew has a chance with Mary Kelly?”
“Mary Kelly's a senior,” Ben said.
“I hate being fucking twelve,” Andrew said.
“It won't last”
Ben lit a cigarette, handed it to Andrew, lit another for himself. Andrew took between his lips the cigarette that had been in Ben's mouth, and inhaled. He sighed out a ragged blue-gray stream.
He said, “I hate it. All the women I want are seventeen fucking Years old”
“Want women you can have,” Trevor told him.
“I can't want women I don't want.”
“I want every woman,” Trevor said. “I want the old ones and the young ones and the fat ones and the ones that've lost all their hair from chemotherapy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What about you, Ben?”
“What?”
“You're being very goddamn quiet over there.”
Ben said, “Yeah.”
“We're not bothering you, are we?”
“You're not bothering me.”
“Talking about women doesn't offend you. Does it?”
“No. It doesn't offend me.”
“Good.”
A silence passed. When they were little boys together, it had been enough to be present. It had been enough to take the chances, to have strength and a simple talent for games. Now, as changes started, you needed to speak as somebody new. You needed a galaxy of desires, and a language to tell them in.
Andrew said, “Ben's a cool customer. Ben's the guy who acts, he doesn't need to talk about it.”
When it was time to start hating him, Ben thought, Andrew would be the last.
“Ben,” Trevor said, “is a wiener.”
“Shut up,” Andrew told him.
“You a wiener, Ben?”
“No,” Ben said.
“You a dork?”
“Come on, Trevor.”
“You a princess?”
Andrew cuffed Trevor with the back of his hand, hard enough to send him staggering. Trevor nearly fell. He sprang back, blinking and squinting, getting his bearings. The air around him buzzed with confusion and he looked at Andrew as if Andrew had grown too small to see.
“Don't talk to your friends that way,” Andrew said.
“It was a fucking joke.”
“Nobody's laughing.”
Trevor sucked it in, the sour shiftings and the outrage. He would hold it, save it.
He said, “Joke, man. You fuckers better lighten up.”
“I don't like jokes like that,” Andrew said.
He was large enough to be generous, to defend others. He could afford it. The future was written on him. He had a carved and stoic beauty, a perfect throwing arm.
“Let's get out of here,” Trevor said.
But none of them moved. They cupped their cigarettes in the dimming green. Behind them were the houses, and ahead, a row of black trees ringed the lake. They watched the trees gather darkness around themselves.
At home, his mother served soup from the white tureen. Steam curled up and touched the tired beauty of her face. There was a yearning toward good in the world. It lived here in Ben's house, where every bowl and spoon was cherished. Where Ben himself, at all ages, smiled behind glass on the walls.
“I've been thinking,” his mother said, “that maybe we should start a college fund for Zoe's son.” She gave a bowl of soup to Ben, filled a bowl for his father.
“Hmm,” Ben's father said.
“I'm worried about him. Nobody's made any kind of provisions, he's just growing up any which way.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“It doesn't matter whose fault it is. We could help out a little, that's all that's important.”
Ben ate a spoonful of soup.
“Sure we can,” his father said. “Ben, what do you think about Jamal?”
The room went bleary from the heat inside Ben's head. He held his spoon. He looked at his father and said, “He's all right.”
His father said, “You're his cousin, you're an older boy, and you're, well, you're the kind of example a kid like that needs. You're the closest thing he has to a big brother, really.”
Ben kept his face usual. He concentrated on being who he was.
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe we should invite him up here more often,” his father said. “Let him run around in the woods, blow off some steam. You'd have to take him under your wing a little, would that be okay with you?”
Ben's father was full of worried hope. So much depended on him. He had to be at the State Assembly from early morning until late at night. He had to pay for everything and drive carefully and know the troubles of the larger world. He had to perfectly duplicate himself every day as a patient man who would improve the workings of governments—now Connecticut's, soon the country's—by the steady force of his knowledge, his hatred of laziness and waste.
“Sure,” Ben said. His voice sounded good. He sounded like himself.
“The city can't be good for him,” Ben's father said. “There's plenty of human garbage down there that likes nothing better than to prey on innocent ten-year-old boys.”
Ben was afraid the pound of blood in his head might be audible. The room was blurred, blazing. He sat in his chair, eating his soup.
“I think we should be investing some money for him, too,” Ben's mother said. “He's going to be applying to college eventually.”
“If any decent college will have him,” Ben's father said.
Ben's mother touched her lips with her napkin. She had sacrificed everything. “Jamal is very intelligent,” she said. “You know that. His tests are practically off the scale.”
“And you know he goes to school about one day out of three. Good colleges don't base their decisions strictly on test scores. They want kids who look as if they give a damn.”
“He's having a hard time right now. For obvious reasons. And he's only in the fifth grade.”
“That's why I'm saying we should have him up here more often. Take him in a little, give him some family love.”
“I suppose,” Ben's mother said. “I'm not saying we shouldn't do that. But he'll need money, too.”
“Throwing money at people doesn't necessari
ly help them.”
“Please don't start.”
“Besides,” Ben's father said, “some college or other will give him a full scholarship even if he quits going to school altogether. I'm not talking Ivy League. But believe me, there are still places out there that are dying for kids like this. Lining up for them.”
Ben's mother said, “Ben, honey, do you want some more soup?”
“I'm not sure about handing him a bank account,” Ben's father said. “I'm not sure that'd be much of a favor to him, sending that kind of message. About something for nothing. I'd rather have Ben teach him a thing or two about values and hard work, while he's still young enough to learn.”
“Honey? Soup?”
Ben's voice failed. It curled back in his throat. He flexed the muscles of his legs, thought about lawns and skies, the plock of a tennis ball struck squarely in the center of the racket.
“Yeah,” he said. “More soup. Please.”
That night, he awoke with his pajama bottoms sticky. The dream had already sunk into his bloodstream. Andrew had been in it. Andrew had been swimming. He'd risen up out of cold clear water, spangled, naked. There had been a roar, like wind but not wind. Andrew had stood naked and suddenly frightened in a platter of icy water and the roar had grown louder and without wanting to, without agreeing, Ben had come. He woke. He jumped out of bed, tore his pajama bottoms off, and went into the bathroom. He rinsed them under the tap. He put the wet pajamas in the back of his closet, got another pair from his dresser drawer. He tried to go back to sleep but he was too nervous for sleep.
How could he let this happen?
After nearly an hour, he went downstairs to the kitchen. He could feel his parents slumbering. He could hear the ticking of the hall clock. In the kitchen he took the pitcher from the refrigerator, drank a glass of water, and washed out the glass. He told himself that was what he had come for. But he stayed in the kitchen, in his pajama bottoms, looking around at it as if he had never been there before. Here were the varnished oak cabinets and shelves, here the tiles with pictures of herbs printed on them. Here were the clear glass canisters full of pasta and beans and sugar and salt.