I pull my phone out of my backpack—like it’s no big thing—and hand it over.
“Old-school,” he says, flipping it open. “Nice.”
I reach out my hand. “If you’re just gonna make fun of it . . .”
He punches a few keys, then hands it back. “There. Now you have my number. Just in case.”
I smile, wondering if he can actually see my heart in my throat. “You’re like a little safety patrol officer, aren’t you? Rendezvous points and emergency phone numbers. Are my clothes bright enough?”
He waves a hand in my face, turns back to the game. “Your pretzel awaits.”
I jog up the cement stairs, unable to hold back the smile of my young adult life. This detour has already paid for itself.
THE CONCESSION LINE is about a mile long, but I don’t mind. In my experience, the amount of time a person is willing to wait in line for any given thing is a pretty good barometer for how much that person wants the thing. And right now, “about a mile” is just the distance I’m willing to wait for a salty soft pretzel.
With the top half of the inning over, the Jumbotron is airing an animated race between two boy baseballs and one girl baseball (an anatomical feat in its own right). Nearby, a woman of considerable girth is holding a couple of hot dogs and a funnel cake; she’s staring at the Jumbotron, cheering mightily for the girl baseball to win. Three kids stand around her, grimy, silent, eyes fixed on the food in their mother’s hands. One of the kids quietly asks for a hot dog, to which the woman lets loose a slew of curses and threats about interrupting her while she’s “busy.”
Around us, other people keep their heads down, check watches, read programs, anything to avoid acknowledging the uncomfortable nearness of this horrible stranger.
“Hey,” I say, a slave to my impulses. The woman stops screaming, and looks at me as if I just apparated right in front of her. “You know they’re animated, right?” I point to the Jumbotron. “The numbered balls, I mean. They can’t hear you.” Her kids are staring now, too, their faces dirty but cute. I point to them, look the woman dead in her eyes. “But they can.”
Before I know it, everyone in line is clapping. The woman starts to say something, then thinks better of it. I smile wide and wave at her as she storms off. I won’t pretend not to be pleased by the response of those around me, but still—this woman’s ridiculous behavior is exactly why I really don’t care for crowds. Sheer mathematics dictates a ten-to-one ratio in favor of crazy.
The line inches forward. I keep my head down, follow the steps of the man in front of me.
Shit.
My epiglottis flutters, bottoms out.
His shoes.
Before I can get to a bathroom, or even turn my head, I vomit all over the bottom half of the guy.
“What the hell?” he says, quietly at first. Anger of this magnitude needs time to set in. “Oh—God.” He turns around wild-eyed. “What the hell?”
Without a word, I’m gone; down the bustling walkway, into the nearest ladies’ room. The mess drips down my chin, leaving a trail behind me like Hansel’s white pebbles. Running straight to the sink, I finish throwing up.
Penny loafers.
I close my eyes.
I’d like to be friends, Mim.
It does no good.
You want to be friends, don’t you?
All I can see are those shoes.
The glassy eyes.
What then—for the rest of my life, any time I see a man wearing penny loafers, I should expect to vomit? Lord help me should I work in a bank one day. Plenty of people wear penny loafers, and not all of them are Grade A pervs.
The mirror—caked in dust and dirt and a thin yellow layer of bathroom grime—reflects a host of curious glances.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” asks a woman in a flowery dress.
But I don’t answer. I can’t. I just stare at my reflection in the mirror and wonder how long my right eye has been closed.
“WHAT TOOK SO long?” asks Beck.
“I got . . . held up.”
He eyeballs me. “I thought you were getting a pretzel?”
I lean over and put my head between my legs.
“Mim? You okay?”
“I threw up.”
“Are you sick?”
“What do you think?” I snap, harsher than I mean to be.
Walt turns to me with the most concerned of looks. “You’re sick, Mim?”
“No, Walt.” I give him a thumbs-up. “I’m fine. Just fine and dandy.”
My unenthusiastic response is rewarded with a double A-OK gesture.
Beck pulls his camera out of his bag. “Mim sure is lucky to have a friend like you, Walt. Damn lucky.”
Walt nods, smiling. “Damn lucky.”
A cool, post-rain breeze floats from the Ohio River, a small gesture of gratitude from what has otherwise been an unforgiving climate. Beck takes some pictures, and the Cubs, as they’ve done so beautifully for so many decades, go down in a glorious blaze of errors, stranded runners, and missed opportunities. In the symphony of losing, the Cubs aren’t just the first chair violinist—they’re the conductor, the bassoonist, the entire percussion section. And Walt, bless his heart, hasn’t lost one ounce of enthusiasm. He’s just wild with it, actually, cheering hard on the most mediocre of plays. The game draws to a close with the Reds winning twelve to three.
A little while later, the fireworks show starts behind the center field wall.
“Ha! Oh yeah! Ooh, look, Mim! Beck! Hey, hey, that was a good one!”
Smiling, I lean sideways toward Beck. “He’s like a kid on Christmas morning, huh?” I look from the explosive sky to Beck’s eyes—surprisingly, there’s not much difference.
“I lied,” he whispers.
Careful, Mary. There’s something fragile.
“Okay.”
“Ahhhhhh, Beck, look at that one!” Walt shouts.
Around us, the congregation of fans cheer, laugh, point, each of them gleefully oblivious to all but the fireworks. Beck and I are with them, but not with them. It reminds me of Thanksgivings growing up, sitting at the “kids’ table.” The grown-ups are right there, talking about important matters at work, upgrades around the house, goings-on in the neighborhood. What they don’t realize is that none of that matters. But the kids know it. God, do they ever.
“It’s not just a photography pilgrimage.”
“Wowwwwwweeee!” screams Walt, jumping up and down.
Beck stares blindly at the Reds program between his feet.
“Claire,” I say. “The phone call?”
He nods. “She’s my foster sister. Lived with us for a year in high school before she ran away. We were close, and the way things ended . . . I just need to see her again.”
I say nothing. I wait, listen as the pieces take shape.
“Kaaa—boooooooom! Hey, hey, that was a good one!”
“She’s near here,” continues Beck. “Just across the river. After getting kicked off the Greyhound, I was just gonna hitchhike the fifteen miles, but then I heard you guys trying to buy that truck.”
“Ha! Yeah, yeah! Ooooh!” Walt sounds like he’s about to have a heart attack.
“That truck,” I say, “has a name.”
Beck smiles, a movie star smile, a smile which my left eyeball takes a picture of and sends to my brain, which in turn, directs a lightning bolt straight to my heart, which melts on the spot.
“I called her six months ago,” he says. “Arranged this trip to come see her, but . . . she keeps calling back, telling me not to come. The whole thing’s been a disaster.” His voice is low, at once fleeting and infinite. “I don’t know what to do.”
For just a moment—just this one singular moment—we’re the only two people at the kids’ table.
I reach
up and gently nudge his face toward the sky. “I think you do, Beck. And I’ll help. But right now, you’re missing one hell of a show.”
Together, the three of us watch the sky explode.
What I would give to see these fireworks with both eyes . . .
28
Devou Park
September 3—late at night
Dear Isabel,
I was eight.
Dad was drinking beer, working on his motorcycle. He never rode, just worked. This was one of the many missing pieces of my father, his aptitude for the unfinished. Whatever pleasure he found in the toiling means, he rarely found in the rewarding ends.
The three of us were in the garage. Mom was trying to explain how a record player worked. (I can’t remember exactly how these conversations went, because, well, I was eight. So I’m paraphrasing, but you get the gist.)
“Yes, Mom, but how does the music get from that needle”—I pointed my chubby little finger to the record player—“to my heart.” My earliest memories of music had nothing to do with listening, and everything in the world to do with feeling.
“Right,” said Mom, blowing the dust off The Doors. “That’s called the stylus. And it runs along these grooves, yeah? And then something else about vibrations or something, and an amplifier I think, and then there’s another thing, and then voilà. Music.”
Dad, who was now polishing his spic-and-span motorcycle, snorted.
“Frog in your throat, love?” said Mom, setting the vinyl on the turntable.
He mumbled something I couldn’t hear, sipped his beer.
“Get me one of those, will you?” said Mom.
Dad left the garage. We sat on Mom’s old College Couch and listened to Jim Morrison break on through.
“This feels weird,” I said. “Like he’s singing crazy.”
Mom nodded. “That’s because he was crazy. A lot of famous rock stars were.”
“Like who?”
“Well, remember Jimi Hendrix, the one who played Star Spangled Banner?”
God, did I. (Are you familiar with this particular rendition, Iz? Inspired.)
“Yes,” I said. “His guitar sounded like this man’s voice. Like”—I shook my head, pondering the nebulous intricacies of rock stardom, and how to wield such wildness into words—“like . . . just . . . crazy and good and crazy good.”
Mom laughed, and it was full of the Young Fun Now. She let her head drop back against the rough plaid of her beloved couch.
“The Jimi-man went crazy, too?” I asked.
“Yeah. Jimi-man went good and crazy.”
“But why?”
“Well, different reasons, Mary. Drugs and fame and I-don’t-know-what . . . I guess when too many people like you all at once, it can sometimes make you go crazy.”
“What are you doing?” interrupted Dad. His voice was quiet, but I remember it startled us. He was standing in the open air, just outside the raised garage door, a beer in each hand. I could see Mom wondering how long he’d been there, carefully choosing the words that followed.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just talking.”
Dad didn’t move. “She’s eight, Evie. What the hell?”
For a second, we remained still. No one said a word. Eight or not, I usually had a pretty good handle on things, but I remember being confused. I couldn’t figure what it was about our conversation that had angered him.
“I don’t mind,” I whispered, tucking my legs underneath my bottom, trying my best to look cute. Looking cute sometimes stopped the fights before they got bad.
Dad set the beers on the ground, then walked over to the couch and picked me up in his arms. “Not everyone goes crazy, honey.”
Mom stood to get her beer. “Blimey, Barry, I didn’t say everyone went crazy.”
“You said enough.”
Later in life, it would occur to me how strange it was that this obsession of my father’s—that something was wrong with me, serious enough to warrant serious drugs and serious doctors and a life full of serious remedies to avoid serious madness—was driving him mad in his own way. Later in life, it would occur to me that despite his actions, my father really did want what was best for his family. As to how he would accomplish that? He had no idea. Later in life, it would occur to me that this was the ultimate dichotomy: for a person to want what’s best but draw from their worst. Dad did just that. It wasn’t enough to help the old woman across the street. He had to produce a fucking firearm and tell her to haul ass. His methods weren’t just ineffective, they were insane. Such were the fates of good men once succumbed to the madness of the world.
Later in life, I would come to realize all these things.
But just then, as he carried me from the garage, attacking my forehead with kisses, whispering sweet comforts in my ears—as if Mom had just beaten me senseless—just then, I hated him. I hated him good and hard.
Inside the house, he plopped me down on the living room floor. “You can watch TV for as long as you want, honey.”
I grabbed our giant remote off the coffee table, ran to the kitchen, and placed it in the microwave. Two minutes on high did the trick.
And those were my first fireworks.
And Mom didn’t come inside for hours.
Signing off,
Mary Iris Malone,
Crazy and Good
THE ONLY THING more beautiful than bright stars on a chilly night is bright stars on a chilly night with Beck and Walt.
I stuff my journal back in my bag, turn off the interior cab light (leaving the radio on), then join them in the bed of the truck. After the game, we found a spot in this nearly abandoned park overlooking the Cincinnati skyline. Beck has been taking advantage of the view, snapping photos left and right; Walt, after spending a few minutes looking at something in his old suitcase, fell asleep on his back.
I plop down in the middle of the truck bed, pull one of Walt’s extra blankets over me, and stare at the sky. The radio is crackling a song about an undertaker, which the deejay classified as a “new oldie.” I have no idea what that means, but under this kind of picture-perfect panorama, the song’s lo-fi, starry-skied, smoky-eyed recipe is exactly what the scene calls for.
After a slew of nighttime photos (and more than a few terrorized nocturnal critters), Beck sits next to me and leans his head against the cab window. “Do you believe in God?” he asks, his breath visible in the cool night air.
“Jeez, Beck. Just like that, huh?”
He smiles. “Willy-nilly. It’s the only way.”
Something about these stars made the question inevitable, I guess. Clusters of them blink and shift in the sky, taking the shape of a tall bubbly-skinned man whispering pithy truths in my ear.
“You ever see a guy with a really deformed face?” I ask. “I mean like, just grossly—”
“It was a serious question,” interrupts Beck.
I sit up and round on him. “Beckett? Chill. I’m going to tell a serious story, and that’s going to be my serious answer. Mmkay?”
Smiling, he nods. “Continue.”
I clear my throat, summoning my best Morgan Freeman narrator voice. It’s no March of the Penguins, but it’ll do. “When I was little, maybe four years old, I went with my mom to a bank. It could have been a pharmacy or a fish market, but I remember it as a bank. I held her hand in line while she talked to someone behind us. A man stood in front of us—he wore a trench coat, and was tall. Like a giant.”
“You were four,” says Beck.
I shake my head. “His tallness wasn’t contingent on my shortness. By any standard, this guy was tall. Anyway—God, this is weird—I remember he smelled exactly like a slice of Kraft Singles. Like milky and sweet and sticky or something.”
“Gross,” whispers Beck. “Also, specific.”
“I remember reaching up and touchin
g the hem of his trench coat. When he turned around . . .” A shiver runs up my spine to my cortex, raising the hairs on my forearms and navel.
“What?” says Beck, sitting up.
I touch my left cheek. “This entire side of his face was just a mound of bubbling skin. Like foamy toothpaste, or a . . . pile of zeroes, or something. It was just all bubbly. I don’t know how else to describe it. I remember he smiled down at me, which just made his condition worse. Like his smile was a butter knife, cutting through all those—”
“Mim!”
“Sorry. Anyway, I tried to wrap my infantile brain around what I was seeing. I compared his bubbly face to what I knew of the world, but drew a blank. It just didn’t make sense. So with the tact of a four-year-old, I pointed right at his cheek and asked what happened. He smiled even bigger and said God made him that way.
“‘Did he mess up?’ I asked.
“‘Nope,’ he said, smiling like a fool. ‘He just got bored.’
“I have no idea what happened the rest of the day. Mom probably jumped in, considering the guy looked like a blistered caveman.”
Chuckling, Beck slides down on his back next to me.
I lower my voice to a whisper. “Ever since then I’ve wondered—if that’s what God makes when he’s bored, I’d hate to see what he makes when he’s angry.”
For a second, we just lie there, enjoying the specific silence of nature. The bubbly skinned constellation is gone. Hell, it probably never existed.
“So is that a yes?” asks Beck.
I consider the original question and answer the only way I know how. “Honestly, I don’t know. The prospect of there being a God scares me. Almost as much as the prospect of there not being one.”
The undertaker song climaxes into a final smooth chorus and draws to a close with that mystical power so many songs attempt, yet few achieve: it leaves me wanting more.
“What about you?” I ask.
“What about me?”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Oh, definitely.”
Considering my own spiritual wrestling, Beck’s conviction takes me off guard. I sit up on one elbow and stare him down. “How can you be so sure?”