The Slide: A Novel (30 page)

But not here. This temple of mass commerce and popular whim. Here, my hug was nothing, would be trivialized, cheapened, end up in some promotional photo on the mall’s Web site.

We crossed the bridge and descended to the yellow level. I reversed out of our parking spot and maneuvered slowly and deliberately through the structure, accelerating and braking with extreme prejudice, doing everything within my minimal power to ensure my mother’s coffee wouldn’t spill.

august

four

i
used my car key to cut through ancient packing tape and then ripped, creating a small cloud of dust and stickless glue residue. Box flaps peeled back to release more dust into the attic’s minimal light.

And lo.

I hooked a finger through a ring of big colorful plastic keys and lifted them toward my face. I set the keys down and picked up a bright yellow toy truck, dump truck, yellow Tonka dump truck. I set the truck down and reached back into the box. Little worker men wearing little helmets and overalls. Once everything was out of the box I spoke to my brother.

“This explains why you only appear in the attic. Some paranormal system or like statute of conduct. You, dead brother, are anchored to these toys. Right? My reference points here are mainly literary. Like Dickens.”

Across the room, Freddy stood over the toys I had excavated from another box. He wore an old two-piece swimsuit from some era that connoted sepia. A modest, turn-of-the-century costume.

“I’m here because you are my brother and I love you and yes these are my things yes and go right ahead if you want you’re welcome to look at them touch them hold them.”

“Have you tried appearing somewhere else?”

“You keep missing the point this is my home and your home it’s our home that’s why we’re both here.”

I glanced to where Freddy had moved by the window and noticed for the first time that he had no shadow. I reached into a box and pulled out a plastic telephone with oversize buttons.

“Oh, but soon enough we’ll officially rupture,” I said, “and scatter about. Mom will go one place and Dad somewhere else—Dad probably into a loft downtown, a new urbanist act of solidarity. Mom’s hard to say. She’ll need green space, obviously. A small garden outside some town-home duplex thing. New construction.”

I could feel him watching as I dug into the next box.

“Movement you didn’t listen movement Potter is part of love a big part of love. Wherever they go whenever it happens Mom is still Mom and Dad’s Dad and that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you about love but it’s not working. I’m not doing a good job.”

“There’s that word. I was talking to Dad about this. It’s so soft when you say it, like a shallow depression in space, a natural exhalation. Listen to me:
love
. Not as good.”

“Why do you think I’m here Potter why would I be here? Because of the toys you don’t really think that don’t be a twerp.”

“The ball was bobbing there in front of you. And you reached for it and nicked it with your fingers, and I bet this made you want it even more. And you fell in, and somewhere in my infant mind this connection was formed between wanting and dying.”

“They’re still Mom and Dad will always be my mom and dad and you’re my brother always look I died Potter and you’re still my brother. You think love means staying still that’s why you can’t do it right you keep looking too hard at it like some thing sitting there but it’s moving and you have to stop looking and start moving with it.”

“One in love does not create pain for the object of that love. True or false? True, obviously. Nor does one abandon the beloved or fail over many many years to forgive. Love. Shared phantom concept.” I looked at him. “Phantom.”

Because who was I even talking to here? A GHOST who had lived all of five years. Who was, if we’re going to be frank, quite possibly a FIGMENT. What with the emotional turmoil, mood liability, and confusion. Psychotic symptoms occur because of inadequate coping mechanisms or as an escape from a trying psychological situation. No point ignoring the facts at hand.

“You have to let it be something big Potter big and moving and bigger than what your eyes can see at once let it contain all of this and more like a mystery you can’t see all of it at once.”

I stared at him resolutely and watched him lose definition, growing dimmer and dryer until he was gone completely. Inside the next box was a child’s blanket, chewed and drooled upon, faded and old. Wrapped inside the blanket was a shoebox. I peeled tape and lifted the top half. Shapeless piece of textured rubber, dried by years and the Midwestern cycle of seasons. I dropped the box to the floor and stared at the deflated rubber ball in my hands. I squeezed it and tried to rip it and failed.

I heard landscapers going to work in a nearby yard. I had crossed into whatever day was to come next.

It was everywhere, streaming along the gutters of our roads, hovering like a weather system.
Belief.
We took two of three from the Phillies, gained a game and a half on the Cubs. The team began playing small ball, moving runners with abandon. The city celebrated this newfound aggression—reminded everyone of the mid-eighties. They double-stole second and third and bunted for singles. We beat Houston in the bottom of the twelfth on a suicide squeeze. By the cleanup hitter.

I drove to find Ian standing in front of his house with his back to the street. He threw his baseball onto the roof, waited as it rolled up then down the shingles, bounced off the gutter, and fell into his bare hands. Then he did it again.

At the slam of my car door he turned for a second, looked at me, then returned to the game. I took a seat in the grass. On every fifth throw or so a little bit of roof came down with the ball. I picked up a blade and tried unsuccessfully to make it buzz. I watched Ian for a while longer, then shifted onto my back with hands behind my head, closed my eyes, and listened to the ball hit the roof, clunk off gutter, clap into hands. This continued for twenty-nine more tosses. When the sound stopped I sat up and saw that he was sitting on the porch.

“I tried to break in one of my gloves with some oil and it fell apart. Now I only got one glove. What’s even the point of having one glove?”

“You could’ve used it just now.”

“No, because of the way that other one fell apart I feel like I should get used to not having any glove. Because who knows when the other one’s going to fall apart or get lost or explode.”

How was this goddamn kid so goddamn
smart
?

“The Tower Tee batting cage is hands down the best batting cage in the city. The old machines, the old netting and fences. The sounds and the smells. The whir and creak of ancient machinery. Come on. I’ll drive.”

It had been years since I’d been to the cage, and I hadn’t made the connection that it was so close to Ian’s house, just a few miles. The sign for Tower Tee was tall and yellow, jarring out here among the many trees and grass and so many other trees. Upon turning into the lot, I was overwhelmed by the most pleasant subsection of memory. The last time I was here I would have been fine-tuning my swing, sheer repetition, confident in the causal chain between work and success. They still had the old Fanta machine.

We finally had our break in the heat. Daily temperatures had fallen to the upper eighties and the chill had lured people outdoors; there were cars overflowing the slim strip of parking lot onto grass. Among them I saw the familiar pinched snout of an old silver Datsun 280Z, much like my father’s. The car was backed into its spot just as he would park, almost always, a memory of Richard lifting his arm to my seat’s headrest and glancing over his shoulder, eyebrows up, a bit of paternal showmanship justified by a valuable lesson when we left—look how much easier to get out.

And now I saw him up there, standing over a section of Astroturf at Tower Tee’s driving range. He was wearing dark pants and a plain white undershirt. At his feet sat two mammoth wire buckets, one halfway empty, the other overflowing with cheap range balls. Just across the lawn, fifty feet away.

What day was it? Was he even in town officially? Had Edsel sent him the pictures? Only now did I consider that there would be no warning when he did. No courteous heads-up alert. I looked to the main Tower Tee building over by the putt-putt course and batting cages. Was I the type of son to pretend like I hadn’t seen him here? My own car was parked not far away.

“We should go say hello to my dad.”

“Oh,” Ian said. Then he sighed, and I wondered, should this go on record? Age eleven, sighing like a sixty year old.

We walked past three high school football players dressed in practice uniforms, legs still padded, seeing who could come closest to hitting the fence at the far end of the range, a good four hundred some yards away. Absolute brute force and laughter. The singularity of what was happening here, the one-way propulsion of objects into a void. The sounds were
fwip,
then
clinnuk,
as clubs cut through thick air and caught a bit of turf along with ball and rubber tee. About halfway down the line of golfers was Richard, with one club and two buckets. We stood behind him for several minutes, unnoticed. Ian climbed onto the park bench and watched from there. We might have stood there all day long.

“That’s a lot of balls, Pop.”

Sudden laughter from Ian because balls, yes,
balls are funny
. Kids and their comedic carte blanche: balls, farts, midgets, monkeys. Richard turned and took the two of us in for a moment before leaning the club against the divider, smiling, and stepping toward the boy.

“Hello. I’m Richard Mays. What’s your name?”

“Ian.” They shook hands. “How come you’re not at work? Did you get fired like him?”

“Nobody’s been fired,” I said.

Richard glanced at me briefly before raising a hand to the glare and grinning at the boy.

“We can all use a day off from time to time. Gives me a chance to work through some physical motions, move around a little.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “Good for the noggin.”

“My dad runs a jackhammer for the city. He works six days every week plus some holidays when they pay double.”

“That’s mighty important work, Ian. The city would be in trouble without people like him. I bet he uses one of the big ones too. The eighty-pounders.”

“He says it makes your teeth jiggle. I could ask if you could do it too, if you want.”

Richard’s eyes shut briefly as the grin expanded. “May just take you up on that.”

The longer the exchange went on, the more worried I became. At fifty-two, my father was in fine shape, but slight. He had a long-married lawyer’s physique. Ian’s father was a force, as I remembered him stomping into his house. This comparison must have been going on somewhere in Ian’s head, even if subconsciously. Connections forming, spreading in a network of dots and lines.

“Dad here grew up in South City, right, Dad? You should tell Ian about the trouble you used to get into. All the fights.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary, Potter. You ever play golf, Ian?”

“Nope.”

“Would you like to learn?”

“I guess.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “Swinging a golf club is about the worst thing you can do for a baseball swing. You start dropping your back shoulder, throws everything out of whack. He’ll start popping everything up.”

“I think it’ll be fine, son.”

“Alright,” Ian said. “Sure.”

He hopped down and took the club. My father illustrated the basic grip and outlined the simplest components of the swing. Arms go here, then here, then through here. Nothing beyond the general sort of tips that floated across airwaves and radio, waiting for anyone to take and apply. Feet about shoulder width, head down, don’t overswing.

“Keep your left elbow locked,” I said.

Ian spoke to my father. “So I just hit it when I want? There’s no signal or something?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“What if I mess up?”

“You’re going to mess up,” Richard said, teeing a ball before stepping back to stand beside his unemployed son. “That’s why people come here. Mess up as much as they want.”

Ian’s prestroke routine was impressive. He shuffled his feet into position, opened and closed his choked-up grip. I could see an envelope poking out from his back pocket, the letter from his mother that he had refused to share. His first swing missed. Back into the routine like nothing happened. On the second swing he sent the ball spinning wildly off to the right. He bent down to tee another and began the routine over.

I could tell he was looking at me, underdressed father of mine, untucked shirt, tired eyes looking at me.

“When I first saw you there with him, I had no idea what was happening. I couldn’t place you. That’s my
son,
I thought. For some reason my son is standing with a blond boy.”

“It’s like that Big Brother program. I met him during a delivery. We played catch. I’m not sure what else to say.”

We stood two paces behind the turf, far enough that our role was clear and defined. Ian took swing after swing, each more composed than the last. He caught one squarely, sending it fifty or so yards, and we clapped. He continued with mechanical focus.