Like a wayward time machine the co-op sailed directly out of the 1960s, arched over the end of the century, and settled in time’s meandering tributary as it flowed through Kenmore Square.  The building sits like a mighty rock piercing the surface of time’s river; not agitating, just standing.  “If you rest on me,” the mighty rock splitting the river bellows, “I will protect you.”

Like the rock, the building too declares its purpose, “Rest here and let time pass you by even if only for a moment.”

Before I can roll up my car windows I hear the hum of the outside world.  In this place, it’s quiet.  Words are wrapped in echo’s envelope and tires squeal softly as they wind their way up from parking spaces below.

Bubbling up from a level somewhere below us I hear the tinny voice of Harry Chapin seeping from a car radio.  Other than the hum of the outside world this song, wrapped in in an envelope made of tiny echos, is the only noise I hear.

I roll up the windows and unbuckle my seat belt. As I do so I jump from the resting place in the middle of time’s ebbing river. I close my eyes for the briefest of moments and recall the first time I heard this song.

Sitting in the passenger seat of our family’s 1976 Impala station wagon my father was driving me home from a 7AM hockey game at the long since bulldozed Bergen County Mall hockey rink. I remember such days with a smile as time’s current catches me just long enough to swirl me in a soothing whirlpool.

Exhausted from my early morning game I rest my back against the inside of the passenger door.  I spread my legs across the bench-like front seat and, with seatbelts a thing of the future, my sneakers come to rest against the side of dad’s right leg. He doesn’t mind. We talk about the game. I won 6-3, stopping two breakaways and receiving a slashing penalty for cracking an opponent’s ankles after he set up camp in front of my net.  In doing so I made the opponent cry and, on the ride home, I now have to defend myself against dad’s admonishments, “You gotta focus on the game; on the puck.  Jesus Christ.  Just don’t worry about the guys in front of you.  Just play the game.  You’re too good for that kinda crap, OK?”

“But he was screening me, dad.  I couldn’t see!  They wouda scored and he was like…”

As I defend myself against dad’s suggestion that I not use my goalie stick like an ax he hushes me and, in response to a song just beginning to wind its way through the single dashboard speaker, he raises the volume, “Hey, cool if for a second. Be quiet now.  All right?”  I don’t have time to answer before he continues, “Listen to this song and tell me what you think.”

When I’m in the car with dad he routinely listens to either country or folk music.  It’s painful so I don’t expect much.  With little traffic on a Sunday morning we hurtle up New Jersey’s route 208 listening to Cat’s in the Cradle. As the song unwinds I watch dad.  His lips are pursed together forming a tight seam against the world.  He stoically stares forward as the song ends and the disc jockey suggests we shop at ‘Paramus Park where, every day, there’s a picnic in the park.’

Dad turns to me and unseals his lips, “Well.  What’d you think?”

I shrug, “I liked it.  Kinda quiet, like.  Is it a kid’s song or something?”

“No, I think he sings about kids’ stuff but, it’s, well it’s more for adults.”  I nod trying to think about the song.  He does not see me as he is looking at the road unwinding before us.

Not seeing my nod, he keeps his lips unsealed and continues, “No, ah, the words; what do you think of the words? I mean about the dad not playing with the son and then the, ah, the son not going to see the dad at the end.”

I struggle.  “Oh, that.  That was kinda sad, ya know?  Like the boy just wanted to have a catch and, like his dad was too busy so he didn’t remember him or something at the end.  And I think the singer sounded sad, really sad.”

“Uh-huh.” He struggled against the muscles in his face as his lips fought mightily to re-seal themselves.  I watched as the rest of his body threw its lot in against his lips’ efforts to re-seal themselves.  From my vantage point the battle lasted but for a moment and soon the lips were vanquished.  The victors pried them open and prisoners poured from the breach.

“And, uh, what do you, I mean, do you think, someday when you’re grown up and, uh, I want to do something with you will… will you want to, ya know, do something with me?”

Gasping, a terrified a prisoner falls to my feet and, though only 14, I begin to understand.

I look at him, “Uh, yeah, dad.  I guess so.  I guess when you’re all old and can’t play catch with me anymore or when I’m old enough to go to my old hockey games, I can, you know, I can take you to a Rangers game, or something?  Like all the times you took me and KJ.  Yeah, that’ll be fun. You’re always there for us so, yeah, I’ll take you.  Ok?”

I don’t know it yet but, before I can make my way to New York as an adult to treat dad to that Ranger’s game, time will interview and he will be killed.  Now, though, such an intruding arrow patiently remains in time’s quiver.  Sitting across from him in his station wagon on the way back from hockey I don’t yet understand the weight of such missed opportunities; they weight of such questions.

I watch him in silence as he glides the car towards an exit ramp.

He looks straight ahead and purses his lips.  I watch as they turn white.  He nods, and then whispers, “OK.”  Other than anger or laughter this is the most emotion I will ever see my father display.

My thoughts return to the present as I survey this garage-shaped time capsule in Kenmore Square. “Enough,” I whisper to no one.  “Enough,” responds echo.

Shutting off my car I jump out, stand and stretch.  Turning to look for my lingering children I rap out a drum roll on the Camry’s silver roof.

“Come on.  Let’s go you two.  Get a move on, Gee. Come on. Make believe you’re excited to be here; to be with us.”

DJ tugs down his Sox cap as he shuttles out of the back seat, “Ready dad.  Ready.  Oh and, hey, I forgot.  Who’s pitching tonight?”

“I think it’s Beckett.”

“Awesome!”

Gee rolls her eyes.  She is 16.

Turning my attention from DJ to my daughter for a moment I watch Gee as she uncoils herself from the car’s passenger seat.  She no longer sits in the back.  She stands to face me across the roof of the car.  Like a long limbed praying mantis she crosses her arms and stares through me. She blinks.  She reminds me of Liz.

Gee has her mother’s eyes; big brown and commanding attention. Her teenage lips pout; letting me know how she feels about attending another Sox game with the likes of her father.  Her face and smooth arms are deeply tanned, nearly brown.  Without setting foot in a gym she’s sculpted herself into an athlete. The practice of swimming two to three miles a day every day for six years has chiseled her arms and shoulders into a subtle display of strength.  The strength is deep.  Should you be afforded the opportunity to take hold of her hand and enjoy a closer inspection you will see, standing out against the brown skin of her knuckles, a line-up of thin white scars earned as she sparred her way to a black belt. And if, by chance you are fortunate enough to get so close as to take one of her hands in yours, hold it warmly against your cheek, and whisper, “I love you Gee,” you’ll see her finger tips and right thumb are stained by an artist’s finish of charcoal and paint.  Her nails, tipping the ends off those strong arms and fingers, display the tiniest specs of dried paint.  Those flakes hold on dearly and, like me, don’t want to let go.

She looks strong.  She looks alive.

She looks at me.  And then she looks bored.

She feigns a smile, “When’s this gonna end?”

“When’s what gonna end, Gee?  Me loving you?  Or maybe me thinking you’re wonderful?  Or, I don’t know me wanting to spend all my time with you two?  Gosh, I. Just. Don’t. Know.” Seeing no response I continue, “When do ya think it will end, huh?  Let me guess.  Ok. Well, I guess, well, I guess … um, how ‘bout never?”

She glares at me.

“Oh, you mean the game?  Well then I guess probably 9:30 or 10 or so.  Though now that I think about it I’d guess closer to 10 ‘cause, ya know, Beckett is pitching and he can be melodramatic.  And painfully slow.  You know, kinda like you’re being right now, Gee!”

She rolls her eyes and steps around the side of the car.  She’s tall; 5’ 9” or maybe 5’ 10” now.  Her long legs pull her size zero frame in my direction.  Her boots settle on the cool concrete floor like a cat touching snow.  Showing off her figure, she wears skinny jeans, purple Dr. Martens and a skin tight Red Sox shirt.  Too tight I notice.

As Gee approaches me I see my little girl.  She was 10 when we first started going to Sox games.  We started with 10 games a season and laughed our way through freezing nights, rainy nights, sticky July nights like tonight and just plain fun nights.  Time rolled past and we plucked fun from the current. The games were an adventure; our adventure.

We broke rules at the games.  I gave Gee and DJ money and let them go without me to get hotdogs and popcorn.  Sometimes they’d lose their way and I’d have to hunt for them but, in the end, we were always reunited. They selected their own food and, as you can imagine, they gorged on junk.  At home Liz’s focus on the benefits of healthy eating kept Coke and most junk from our kitchen.  Here?  At the games? Forget about it. I wired the kids with Coke and stuffed them with popcorn and treated them to red and blue cotton candy as we laughed our way through twilight and into the evenings.  We sprang from our seats at every foul ball approaching the right field line. We never caught one but it didn’t matter.

Back then, six years ago, Gee wore baggy cargo pants, one of her two loose-fitting Red Sox shirts (untucked) and a ponytail pulled through the opening in the back of her red and white Sox cap.  She looked as much like a feminine boy with long hair as she did a young lady emerging from a cocoon spun from Red Sox clothing.

Now her long bare arms swing gracefully as she lopes towards me from around the car.  I sigh.  She looks more like a woman than my little girl. Her brown hair, short and styled, frames her oval face and draws strangers into her gaze.  Her lips work hard to cloak braces.  They’ll come off in less than a year.  Then time will pour over an edge and churn like a waterfall.

When Gee was 10 she didn’t care about her looks. She cared about playing. She cared about enjoying the view as she floated down life’s stream.  She screamed hysterically when surprised.  She ran barefoot at the park.  She held my hand and hugged me without reservation; without thought.  She cared about little else than having fun.

Now she cares about becoming a woman.  She cares about how she looks.  Unlike the garage, time has not passed Gee by.  Time has carried her forward and sculpted her into a young lady.

I sigh again, “Gee you look nice.”

She shrugs.

Continuing to walk she ignores me.  As she steps past me I pull her into a hug.  She leans against me and then, using her shoulder to push off, breaks my embrace, “Come on dad, let’s just go.”

I look at DJ and shrug, “Tough crowd tonight, huh DJ?”

He shrugs and, as Gee glares at him, he sticks out his tongue.

Ignoring him she pries her phone from her pocket and whips off a text to someone outside the time-cloaked garage; someone in the current flow of time.

“Gee, were you just texting your friends to tell them how totally cool your dad is?  ‘OMG my dad is so cool.  At Sox with him. Gotta Go.’  Is that what you texted, Gee?”

“Yeah, dad, something like that.”

“Well put away the phone.  It’s ten minutes to game time.  This is our time.”

We exit the garage, passing through the air conditioned co-op lobby to say our hellos to the concierge.  He remembers Gee and DJ and shares a father’s smile, “All grown up, huh?”

“Yup.  God help me.”

Knowingly he shakes his head.  He watches us pass before returning to his book.

Exiting the lobby we we’re hit by a wall of sticky July heat.

DJ mimics a solider wading through a stream, walking in slow motion, “It’s like being under water.”  His arms pull him through the imaginary delta towards the safety of shore just outside of Fenway Park.

Gee fixes her hair.

We make our way across Beacon Street and start up Brookline Ave.  It’s a short but enjoyable walk as we become part of the many individuals clumping together to create a single current of fans.

From a nearby group of twenty-somethings we hear the first chant, “Let’s go Red Sox.” Clap-clap-clap. “Let’s go Red Sox.”  It dies down after a couple of halfhearted choruses.

Gee walks a step ahead, distancing herself.  Her eyes fix on something ahead; something I cannot see.

Turning to silence we soak in the heat, the mix of voices and the taxis’ insistent honking of their horns.  The smells of sausage and foot long franks wind their way through our nostrils, coming to rest on the tips of our tongues.  We follow the scent towards the ballpark.

DJ breaks our silence and tugs at my arm, “Hey dad, you think Big Popi will hit another homer tonight?”

Distracted I nod slowly. Not seeing my nod, DJ looks up towards me in search of an answer.  He watches me watch Gee as she puts another couple of steps between us.

He reaches over and yanks on my arm.

“Huh?  Yeah, DJ.  I do.  I hope so.  Hey, come on, let’s catch up to Gee.”

We run the few steps necessary to catch Gee and, upon doing so, we each bump her, one from the right and one from the left forming a Gee sandwich.  I squeeze her arm, “Hey, you almost lost us there, Gee.”

She looks ahead, “Almost…”

We continue walking. As we do I lean forward, tilting my head so my face is squarely in front of Gee’s.  She can’t help but look at me as I straddle the borderline of annoying. I share a smile.  Gee gives me a quarter smile back; somewhere between a smile and a smirk.  She rolls her eyes, “Dorky, dad, just dorky.”

As we near the park DJ starts reminiscing about the location of our first Sox seats.  Six years ago we sat in right field, 15 or so rows up from the foul pole; far from home plate.  The seats faced the right field bullpen and we were forced to bob our heads like pigeons clucking among the trampled peanut shells to see home plate over a sea of Sox caps.  With an often obstructed view we spent as much time watching people as we did watching the game.

DJ looks to Gee and then me, “Hey, remember Peanut Guy?”

I look to Gee and raise my eyebrows.

Scrunching his eyebrows, DJ continues, “You know, the guy behind us; wore a blue Red Sox jacket and always shared his peanuts with us.”

Engaged by someone other than her father Gee jumps in, “Oh yeah. Oh my god, I remember Peanut Guy!  DJ, that’s so funny!  Like, he’d tell the guy selling the peanuts to throw the bag to me or you and then, like, everyone’d clap when we caught it!  And if we missed it he’d order a second bag and give us a second try!  Yeah. I remember.  Man, he was so nice! So nice.”

She continues walking forward, though now she sports a smile.  She picks up the thread, “Oh, and, remember Chicken Finger Guy?”

DJ looked to me. I shrug. “Don’t look at me. I’m not Chicken Finger Guy.”

Seeing she had us stumped Gee continues, “Come on.  You know that huge guy; that guy that always sat next to me.  He was like, huge.  Chicken Finger Guy.”  She held her arms wide, extending them to form the shape of an upside down heart before continuing, “Yeah, and he was always with his kid I guess it was.  And, like, they would always go and get two things of chicken fingers and wolf ‘em down in like, I don’t know, in like 10 seconds.”

She mimicked a crazed person desperately shoveling food towards her mouth.

DJ scratched the side of his head.

Then, with Gee’s spastic pantomime playing out before me, I remembered Chicken Finger Guy, “Oh my god, Gee.  I remember! Wow.  Yeah, Chicken Finger Guy. Now that’s funny, Gee. Yeah, he was always with his kid.”

I looked to DJ and tried to add some details around the memory Gee had sketched out, “The guy was really big.  He filled the seat – and hogged up the arm rests! And when we first started sitting in those seats he’d lean forward and block your view and sometimes you’d have to sit on my lap to see past him.  He was like a mountain.  And when Big Popi was up you’d always stand.  And sometimes I’d tap him on the shoulder and he’d smile at you with chicken fingers and fries jammed all which way in his mouth before leaning back. Man, that guy was a whopper.  I guess chicken fingers ‘ll do that to ya!”

Looking at DJ expectantly Gee and I wait for the connection to register.  A moment passes before we see the memory hit its mark.

“Oh yeah.  Chicken Finger Guy.  I remember him!  And when he got his chicken fingers he would always sit back and eat ‘em.  I remember I was always happy ‘cause I could see better when he was eating.  Yeah, I wanted him to eat!  Chicken Finger Guy…  Good one, Gee.  Good one.”

Content with our shared memories we continue to make our way towards the ballpark. Gee receives a text.  Slowing her walk to a cautious read-a-text-while-you’re-walking pace she lets the crowd swirl past her.  DJ and I slow to track her pace.  I try leaning over to read her text and she pulls the phone away from my view, protecting her precious sliver of private teen life.  I watch as she reads her text, looks up at the sky, mouths the words, “Oh. My. God.” and smiles. Then she shakes her head and types furiously before squeezing the phone into her back pocket.

Satisfied with her text exchange she lurches forward without warning, quickening her steps just enough to cause me to have to work to keep up.  Deliberately, she tries to outpace us.

She moves a step ahead of me and DJ.

I think back to our first seasons going to the park, to when she was still in childhood’s cocoon. Six years ago I pulled her forward, leading with my shoulder to clear a path through the crowd with my 210 pounds.  Now she works hard to walk in front of me; away from me. Now I follow in her wake.

Then, when clearing a path for Gee and DJ I relied – and still rely – on old fashion mass to shunt strangers to the side, forming a moving bubble for my children.  I watch now as Gee relies on her big brown eyes and her figure to clear a path. She artfully slinks past the current of individual fans.  I watch as girls and guys eye her, stepping out of her way.  Girls look at her face, then her figure, then her shoes.  Guys look at her face, then her body, then her face again.

I watch as a large fan wearing an Orioles jersey stops about 10 feet in front of us and looks her over. As she passes he gives her a smile.  She eyes him without breaking stride. Working to keep up I quicken my pace.  I turn, shifting my angle of attack through the crowd to lead with my right shoulder.  I change course ever so slightly to align my shoulder with the right side of the gawking fan’s chest. Moving towards him I dip my shoulder at the last moment and place it firmly into his chest, plowing him backwards with a single shoulder check, “Sorry dude.  Didn’t’ see ya.”

I keep walking and smile as he recovers, complaining to his friend in a voice meant for my ears, “What a fucking asshole!”

I look up and watch as Gee moves forward, her lead extended by a few steps.

Ever so slightly she pulls away.

I turn to DJ, “Come on buddy, step it up.  Let’s catch Speedy up there.”

DJ takes the lead, hopping forward and darting between bodies to catch Gee.  I trot forward and squeeze between them, “Man you guys are fast.”

Gee looks at me and frowns, “Dad, please.”

I tease her, “Hey Gee, I hope you don’t notice that you’re making guys stop and stare at you.”  She ignores me, “Ya know, I don’t know if I really like that.  So, if I have to stop and drop someone just wait for me at the gate, OK?”

I give her shoulder a gentle bump with my arm, “Huh? OK, Gee?”

She gets serious, “Dad, it’s not funny, OK?  Don’t be such a dork.  I mean, come on.”  She keeps walking as DJ looks up to me.  As she steps ahead I stick my tongue out.

DJ laughs as we work to keep pace.

We pass a throng of scalpers, “Selling?  Buying?  Selling?”  Buying?  Who needs two, huh?  Who needs a single?”

We ignore them in much the same way Gee ignores me.

At the mouth of Lansdowne Street the crowd thickens as thousands of baseball fans funnel together into a single stream. Without thinking I reach to take hold of my children’s hands.  After six seasons the act of reaching for their hands is as automatic as the scalpers’ script. With each passing year the scalpers’ calls grow dimmer while the hands of my children become larger, stronger.

In years past their hands rested expectantly in mine, like a baby bird seeking comfort in a warm nest.  Now these hands have a life of their own.  They squeeze back and jockey for a comfortable position, making our unspoken connection a two way dialogue. With the crowd jostling us I reach for DJ’s right hand.  I meet him halfway as, without thinking, his hand had already started to reach for mine.

Unlike Gee, he has yet to discover I am a dork.  He has yet to associate me with embarrassment. Holding hands and hugging remain frequent occurrences and he loves me openly.  His hand easily slips into mine forming a perfect fit.  Secure in my palm I feel his pulse. His hand is warm and sticky from the July heat and he wriggles his fingers to find a comfortable position. As he settles in I give his hand a gentle squeeze.  He squeezes back causing me to smile and turn towards him.  He looks up, returning the gesture in kind.

Gee, on the other hand, requires work.  Without looking I swing my right arm towards her.  She doesn’t reciprocate and I grasp a handful of air. Turning to look to my right I search for her hand.  I watch as she subtly maneuvers her left hand just out of my reach.  I search her face as we keep pace with the crowd.  Like a stoic model on the runway of public opinion she ignores me.

Pulling DJ ever so slightly to the right I lean towards Gee, fishing for her hand once again.  My fingers graze her brown wrist. She pulls away and I try a third time, catching her pinky, softly pulling her hand into mine.

I lean my face towards hers, whispering, “Gotcha, Most Excellent Gee.”

She doesn’t respond and wriggles her hand a bit in a show of light resistance.  She gives in only after coming to the conclusion that I’m not about to let go.

“You OK, Gee?”  She nods and forces a smile.

She continues to look ahead, scanning the crowd.

The crowd presses in as we work to stay together.  We move down Lansdowne Street and, as the crowd thickens, we’re jostled back and forth.  I squeeze both of their hands, “Keep moving, kiddos.”  DJ squeezes back.

Scalpers continue to swarm, “Buying?  Selling?  Buying?  Selling?  Hey buddy, need an upgrade?  Green monsta seats, right here.  For your kids maybe?”

Without slowing I shake my head, “All set.”

The crowd continues to congeal around us forming a single torrent.

Directly ahead of us a void appears, offering a slice of open space.

Seeing an opportunity Gee lurches forward to fill the space, pulling my arm as I continue to hold her hand.  We continue shuffling forward as Gee works to lengthen the distance between us.

Extended to a nearly horizontal position my arm seems to stretch past its normal length as I try to maintain our connection. She presses forward and my arm continues to stretch.  In turn, Gee’s arm is pulled back like a runner in a relay race ready to receive the passing of a baton.  She doesn’t look back.

I continue to hold her hand.

She keeps walking.  As I hold on she works to slip from my grip. Our arms stretch further as she does her best to keep ahead of me. I give her hand a quick reassuring squeeze.  I receive no such reassuring squeeze back.  On the contrary her hand wriggles a bit seeking to fray our connection.

Finally she lets her hand go limp, releasing her grip.  I am left to hold her hand alone.

With my arm stretched towards her and as thousands mill about me I shiver in the July heat as my daughter pulls away from me. With DJ holding my left hand I look up just in time to see an invisible arrow making its way towards me.  I notice the featured end vibrating wildly just before I see the tip reflect a sliver of the day’s remaining sun light.  Then it rips through my chest spilling a father’s invisible blood from a wound no one else can see. Much like the Oriole’s fan I am knocked backwards.

For no particular reason DJ squeezes my hand.  I squeeze back, perhaps just a little too hard.

I try to hold on.  I tighten my grip on Gee’s hand and, as I do, she turns to see if the arrow has hit its mark.  Our eyes meet.  She gives me a smile, willing me to do what she wants.

She looks towards her hand, silently asking me, “Please dad.”

I give her what she wants.

I let go.

Although I have DJ’s hand to comfort me, for a moment I am the loneliest man in the world.

Unshackled, Gee slips lose and accelerates her graceful movements.  She artfully wends her way through the throng of fans; moving forward without me.  She floats ahead and begins to blend in with the crowd.  I watch as she continues to distance herself.  I watch her beautiful shoulders and her bobbing brown hair. I notice I can see her bra strap through the back of her tee shirt.  The left strap is twisted. On the back of her tanned neck little specs of light flick on and off as the sun passes through tiny beads of sweat.  Like me they too hold on for as long as possible.

I watch as she returns the smile of a boy her age.  As they pass each other she turns just enough to catch his eye but not enough to catch mine as I follow behind her.

I pass the boy silently.

I watch as she goes where she wants to go.  I watch as she floats away.

I stop in my tracks and let go of DJ’s hand, pulling my Blackberry from my pocket.  Annoyed, the stream of fans behind us splits, flowing past on either side.  I pull DJ in front of me, protecting him from the swirling current.  Tapping quickly I whip off a text and look up towards Gee.

Returning my phone to my front pocket I place my hand on DJ’s shoulder.  “Come on, DJ, let’s keep moving.”  I take his hand as we begin to walk, following in Gee’s wake.

I watch to see if I’ve hit my mark.  Somewhere far above me my text sails into the sky before turning to arc back to earth in search of its target.

Gee pulls her phone from her pocket and, without breaking stride, reads the inbound text.

“I love you, Gee.  Love, dad ”

She continues to walk, turning quickly to wave her phone at me.  With a bit of playful drama she rolls her eyes and smiles. I watch as the smile lingers. Then she returns her gaze forward and quickens her pace.

I watch her move through the crowd, asking myself, ‘Will she remember how I didn’t want to let go?’  And will she know I held on for as long as I could; letting go only after that arrow pierced my chest?

She’ll know if she looks back.

For when she does she’ll see I’m still standing here; still waiting for her to reach out and take my hand.

Until then I watch.

I watch as she floats away.

Like every Thursday – or Friday depending on how mom felt and how my work schedule shaped up – my day started in Somerville, Massachusetts.  After delivering Gee and DJ to school in neighboring Cambridge I’m on the Pike by 8AM, stopping at the second rest stop to grab a Dunkin Donuts coffee and then hitting the road in earnest as I make my way to NJ for lunch with mom. Four hours to NJ and four or five hours back depending on traffic.  Lunch is about 30-45 minutes. Almost always it’s a single day trip and I am back in time to join the kids for dinner.  Though a slog, I don’t mind these round trips.

More often than not I drive the four hours to NJ in silence; letting my mind wander about and filling the space that might otherwise be occupied by the radio or an MC900 Foot Jesus CD.  The silence allows me to figure out why I’m mad or resentful or stressed.  At silence’s suggestion I start with simple emotions and work my way back to the raw materials feeding the emotion.  I probe and investigate veins of thought much like an octopus might probe a seam within a reef.  My mind tentatively squeezes past sharp edges of newly apparent crevices and wriggles a bit deeper into the dark.

The crevices are dark and silent but the car’s methodical hum assures me nothing in those crevices can hurt me. On the ride my friend, silence, pats my hand when appropriate.

Today, as I drive forward, thinking about how many lunches mom and I have left, I am unaware that today’s lunch is to be among our very last together. Crossing the line into New Jersey silence feels the need to pat my hand. Not knowing the future yet I wonder why she does so.

During our lunches mom and I take turns speaking.  After her requisite inquiry about Gee and DJ I share a thought or problem or perhaps something I previously considered a secret.  Sometimes she gasps and sometimes she just smiles.  Then I place my hands in my lap, one on top of the other, and listen as mom pours out her heart, tilting it towards me like a pitcher of warm milk.  She shakes free stubborn drops clinging to the surface of a nearly empty container.

Wanting the last words mom hears from me to match the last words I shared with my father I end each of our conversations the same way, “I love you.” Now, years later I end my conversations with Gee and DJ the exact same way so someday, when I do not return home, these will be the last words they hear from me.

And of course, in addition to not knowing this was to be one of my last lunch dates with mom I don’t yet know that I’ll be up tonight, from about one to three changing the sheets on mom’s bed, running a wash and reassuring her, “No, no.  Shhhh. Shhhh. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, mom. You know, this is no big deal.  No big deal.  I mean, come on, just think about all the times you helped me with, you know.  You, you just go rest across the hall in the guest room for a little bit and I’ll set up your bed for you.  Come on, let’s get you back to sleep now.  Here, hold my hand.”

I had been forewarned. Before this week’s trip to Jersey my brother, KJ, had tried to shed light on what to expect when staying with mom.  He was a man of carefully selected emotional words and shared the heads up in his own muted way.  Staying nearly every evening tending to mom after the nurse left for the day he knew what to expect.

Last Sunday I had called KJ and, during our conversation, explained I could cover for him for an evening this week.  He listened and then let out a long deep breath, advising me, “Just get to bed early, dude.  And, before you get to bed have some extra sheets for mom’s bed, and some towels, ready.”  I didn’t respond.  He continued, “You know, you may need them. You can get ‘em from the linen closet, you know, at the end of the hall, and have them out just in case.”

“Ah, OK, but, just in case of, of what?”

There was silence for a moment before he answered.  “Cause, mom, well, she um, she gets up and needs help with the bathroom sometimes.  It’s dark and, ah, she wants to do everything herself.  She’s independent to the end, ya know? Even if… even if sometimes, ya know, she can’t make it herself.”  He slowed his speaking and measured his words, “And, it’s uh, it’s not easy. It’s not so easy.”

This conversation is not what I expected and I’m confused.  “Jesus, I didn’t know about any of this, KJ.  How bad?  How bad is it?”  My heart sinks, slipping into a crevice and nicking itself on a sharp edge, “Jesus H. Christ.”

On the other end of the line I could hear him swallow.  He didn’t respond so I continued, “Well, ah, how much help does she need?”

“Brother, let’s just say there’s some stuff I wished I’d never seen, OK?  Just be ready to do whatever you can to help her.  And don’t let her feel bad or embarrassed or anything, OK?  Don’t get pissed off or anything. Just be ready to be the parent.”

Just be ready to be the parent. Lost in thought I nod but, of course, he doesn’t see me do so.

I hang up and ask my companion silence, “My god, how did he never complain? Not once. How did he not ask for some goddamn help?”  Silence does not respond.

Silence stands idly by as additional unknowns emerge.

In addition to not knowing I was to be up helping mom this evening and in addition to not yet knowing of my brother’s repeated acts of stoic grace I also don’t know that tomorrow, after my return home, I’ll call mom as is my habit following a visit only to discover she will not recall today’s lunch date, asking me in a whisper passed from New Jersey to Boston, “Oh, Beasley, when will I see you again?  Come down for tea, will you?  Maybe, maybe for lunch?  Can you come today?”

As she speaks I look up to the ceiling, “Sure, mom, sure.  I’ll be down next week, OK?”

Her question taps her remaining strength.  I listen to her raspy breathing over the phone.  It sounds like the sounds fine grains of sand make as they hurtle over each other following a turn of the hourglass.

“Mom?”  Silence has joined our call. “I love you, mom. I love you.”  Click.

I stand very still for a moment listening to sand pass through that invisible hourglass, an hourglass hidden deep within a crevice.  I hear nothing else. Then, without thinking, I wind up and smash the plastic phone against the wall, breaking both the handle and the cradle.  It happens in just a moment and, as always, I am shocked at what I’ve done.  I stare at the damage, my chest heaving.

Silence returns but I push her away, “Oh, what the hell.” I jerk the cord from the wall, pulling screws from 100 year old plaster, and slam the broken handle to the floor, sending Rifka the cat scurrying for cover under the kitchen breakfast table.  Surveying the shattered silence I stand quietly wondering if I’ve woken the kids.

I hear nothing.  Silence returns and without words takes my hand.

That is tomorrow, though, and that has yet to happen.  Now I am still at mom’s deathly quiet house in New Jersey and have yet to change her sheets, travel home, think long and hard about my brother’s personal acts of heroism, make my 10AM meeting, call mom, discover she doesn’t recall my visit, smash my fourth kitchen phone of the year and replace it following a silent drive to Target.  Now I simply have to prep for my departure tomorrow morning.

There isn’t much to do.  I need some joe in the morning to get me rolling.  Mom doesn’t have much of an appetite anymore and there isn’t much in the fridge nowadays. When I opened it earlier this afternoon a crisp white light greeted me.  She just doesn’t eat that much anymore.

Living nearby KJ or my sister Caitlin visit every day.  They shop once or twice a week sprinkling mom’s fridge with a few soft foods.  KJ and Caitlin carry the load.  During my rides to New Jersey I have determined that, compared to their efforts, I am a pretender.  That said, among the soft foods and easily digestible items they purchase for mom, cream for my coffee is absent.  I should grab some now as I’ll need it tomorrow at 5AM.

I lean towards mom and in my softest whisper ask, “Hey, mom, you awake?  Did you fall asleep on me?”  In bed with the covers up to her chin her eyes remain closed.  Day and night no longer cleave her day; they are blended into one long unit of remaining life. The light – any light – hurts her eyes and her eyes are shut as a rule. Moving forward like a hegemonic demon cancer has staked claim on the back of her eyes. She looks tiny. She wears a red silk scarf over her hairless head.  Little wisps of white hair poke out from under her scarf, declaring the presence of life much like a weathered flag left on an abandoned field of battle.  She had given up on the wig six months ago with a confident, if tired, declaration, “I’m me with or without hair.”

With the greatest of effort she nods.  Then like a slow rusted crane her arm swings mechanically from under the covers, lurching to a stop at the edge of the bed.  I reach out and grab her hand.  It reminds me of my daughter’s little hand; fragile and expecting to be held. There is a difference, though, as the hand I now squeeze ever so gently wears the glove of age, fashioned with delicate tissue paper skin, jutting knuckles and a red string of small circular scars representing five years of needle marks.  I watch her lips purse in effort as she squeezes back, squeezing with all her strength.  Her effort musters a shadow falling across my fingers; a shadow of her previous strength.

“Mom, I’m gonna run up town to get some cream for coffee in the morning.  Can I get you anything?”  Eyes closed, she moves her head back and forth.

“OK.  How ‘bout I drape a wash cloth across your forehead?  Would that feel better?”

She moves her head up and down.

“Warm?”  Again, she moves her head.  Gently, I place her hand down on the bed next to her sinking body.  Every day she sinks a little deeper, like a graceful sea creature unable to return to the surface, sinking towards a crevice formed between the boundaries of her bed and a place I have never seen.  She floats slowly, gracefully, to a place cloaked in darkness.  As she wafts away from the light she reaches out.  She drifts down slowly towards undisturbed silt without complaint telling me at one point, “No matter how dark it gets, Beasley, I’m not afraid.  Not one bit.  Because, well, soon I’ll be with your father.”

Leaving her room, I catch my breath and rub my eyes.  I stop in the hallway and return to her door sticking my head back into her room to whisper, “I love you.”  She doesn’t move.  I make my way past the stairs leading up to my old bedroom before turning left into the bathroom at the end of the hall.  In the bathroom my bare feet seem to stick to the floor’s latticework of black and white tiles. The tiles are cool on my feet.

Grabbing a white washcloth from the cabinet next to the sink I turn on the water and wait for it to turn warm.  How many times had I woken on a chilly morning and warmed my hands at this sink?  How many bloody noses had mom plugged up here?  And how often, as a little 13 or 14 year old, did I cry looking in the mirror as pimples set up camp across my face?  Now I cry like a grown-up. Silently.  No movement, no change in expression; tears just exit my eyes and roll down my cheeks.  I’m good at crying like this.

I warm the washcloth in the water, minding the temperature to ensure it’s not too hot.  Squeezing out the required amount of water I lean over, resting my head on the mirror.  I open the washcloth, spanning it across the sink.  A tear falls onto the washcloth joining the ranks of tap water.  Folding the cloth I return to mom’s room where I open the moist washcloth and rest it across her forehead.  Softly I pull it down a bit so it covers her eyes as well.

Startled, she reaches out.  I grab her index finger and pull it up to my lips, resting a kiss on the tip of her finger. She smiles as best she can.  “I’ll be right back, mom.  I love you.”

I make my way downstairs, put on my sneakers and quietly close the door behind me.  I drive three blocks alongside silence towards the town’s only open convenience store.

During the ride I hear nothing.

I pull into the space directly in front of the store’s front door and jump out.  I hustle as I’m pretty certain the store closes as eleven.

I enter as the clerk is sweeping the floor towards the rear of the store. Her back is facing me and she looks up to a circular mirror mounted in the back corner to make sure I’m not about to rob her.

She continues to sweep and, without turning around, warns me, “You just made it.  I’m closing in two minutes.”

I waive an OK and make my way to the dairy case.  In the mirror she watches me watch her as I walk up the aisle.  She’s short with skinny hips. I can’t help but look at her ass.  She sports tight low cut blue jeans with a horizontal rip just under the left cheek.  She has an athlete’s ass. She’s wearing a worn midriff Metallica concert shirt which leaves her lower back exposed.  Like the cream I am about to purchase her skin is light.  The top of her red underwear peaks out at me from the low slung jeans, crossing a straight spine firmly tucked between a pair of strong back muscles.

I smile at this living work of art before grabbing the cream.  I check the expiration date and clear my throat, “Um, excuse me, should I just meet you at the counter?”

She wheels on her heal to face me.  Like drapes, her shirt hangs softly from two small breasts forming a slight canopy and causing a soft shadow to shift across her exposed stomach.  Her flat muscular stomach peeks from under her shirt.  Her brown eyes are coy.

I know this woman…

With one hand on her broom she cocks her hip to the left and pushes a strand of soft black hair from her face, “It is you. My god!  Beasley Kinkade.  I knew it was you.  I knew it!”

I have no idea whether she is trying to look sexy or if this is just her natural state.

I know her…  I know her…  I look her up and down, groping for her name.  She shifts her weight and I watch the shadow pirouette across her stomach.  I remember. Stephanie.

My eyes narrow, “Stephanie?”

She beams and lets her broom fall against a shelf of cereal boxes and crackers.  Captain Crunch tumbles backward.  Without hesitation she scoots forward like a skipping school girl and hugs me tight, placing her head on its previous resting spot on my chest, “Oh my gosh, Beasley.”  She leans up and rubs her forehead against my neck before pulling away to look at me.  Her hair is soft.

As she steps back her ivory soap-like scent drifts up, enveloping me in memory.

Over 20 years ago, following my senior year in high school, Stephanie and I had met not three blocks from here, at Main Street Park.  Packaged in a five foot tall tightly coiled body she had just finished her junior year. Prior to her senior year her parents had divorced and she had convinced her mom to let her stay out late during summer evenings.

“Mom, come on, it’s summer, alright?  I mean, what’s gonna happen to me if I just hang out in town or at Main Street?  Jesus, I mean, like I’ll just be in town.  And it’s like, where else am I gonna go, huh?  Come on, I won’t go anywhere else. Please mom, don’t wreck this for me too.”

Guilt ridden, her mom capitulated.  So Stephanie hung out, slipped in with the partying crowd, and met me.  I guess that’s what can happen when a teenager just hangs out in town.

My first conversation with Stephanie, or Steph as she called herself, occurred on a June evening at Main Street Park. With no real hangouts available in our small town we took to meeting, and sometimes staying, at the park at Main Street.  Some nights I left town from Main Street to drive into the city to drink.  Some nights, when money was tight or I couldn’t muster coconspirators I hung out at Main Street park.

On the evening Steph and I met pockets of kids milled about, congregating around benches or hiding behind overgrown bushes to drink or light up.  When the police cruised by we scattered like slow motion cockroaches only to return to the park minutes later. As the evening of my first conversation with Steph wound down the summer air cooled.  With an uneventful night coming to a close my group of friends began to break up. Accelerating the process a police car cruised by dispersing the remaining loiterers.

Not yet wanting to head home, I turned towards a bench occupied by three girls. From a distance I didn’t recognize any of them.  Not knowing them didn’t bother me as they’d either ignore me or I’d know them soon enough.  Steph was seated in the center of the three girls on the bench. As I made my way towards them she eyed me, pulling at her cigarette and flipping long black bangs from her eyes.  Tracing her gaze the other girls stopped talking and turned towards me. I introduced myself, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Steph responded. “Hey,” the other two chimed in.

“Hi, I’m Beasley.  Cops are pretty annoying tonight, huh?”  They nodded.  Steph nodded more slowly than the others.  She wore a Grateful Dead shirt and a short skirt, highlighting her milky smooth legs.  She crossed her legs, slowly bobbing one Ked up and down.   Her foot pointed towards me as it bobbed.  Her calf muscles were bigger than mine.  “Man,” I thought, “this girl is hot.”  Catching myself I wondered if I said it out loud.

I ignored the other two and looked right at Stephanie, “You’re in high school, right?”

“Yup. Senior year.  I’m Stephanie.  You can call me Steph, though. And, well, I know who you are.  You’re Beasley Kinkade.  I know all about you.”

I crossed my arms, “You do, huh? How so?”

Her girlfriends squirmed as Steph blushed.  Before she could continue her girlfriends blurted out their respective names. But I wasn’t listening to them.  I was listening to Stephanie.

She offered me a Marlboro and I declined.  “We were in study hall together.  Third period, I think.  Auditorium with Mr. Boyle last year.  You were the one that ah, I mean wasn’t it you who rolled a piano off the stage?” I shrugged as she eyed me. “You’re kinda a crazy one, aren’t you, Mr. Beasley?  And you have those wild parties at you house, right?” I shrugged before she continued, “Ya know, I went to one last year.  I was at your house.”

“Yeah, which party?”

“Um, the toga party.  Now that was crazy.  Really crazy.  I mean, it was like that movie, with everyone in togas.  And like, I remember when I tried to, I had to pee, ya know, and I mean I went to open the bathroom door – the one in the basement where all the strobe lights were – and, well, then someone tried to pull the door shut from inside but I’m pretty strong and I really, really had to pee.”  She stopped and cocked her arm, pulling her sleeve back, to make a muscle like Popeye.  She watched my eyes as I smirked.  She continued, “And, when I pulled the door open there were like four naked people in there. In your bathroom! I mean they were actually naked! In your bathroom!  Man, that was so crazy.  I got so wasted that night.  I was like, I was grounded, for like, a month because of you.”

I vaguely remembered seeing her at the toga party.  I didn’t know about the naked people, though.  That was interesting.

“You mean you got grounded because of you, not me.  You.  And, ya know, you shouldn’t be watching people get naked unless they invite you to see them naked.”  I smiled, “I mean, come on, seems kinda like a private thing, ya know? Am I right or what?”

She leaned forward, laughing silently.  Then she leaned back against the bench, looked up and locked eyes with me, “Yeah, I know, Beasley, I know.”  The four of us were silent together.

She broke the silence, “Are you going to college or something next year?”

“Yeah, I’m going up to Massachusetts.  Hopefully to play hockey.  So, yeah, this is my last summer in town.”

Expertly she flicked away her cigarette.  We watched the orange trail arc into the grass before disappearing.  She looked around and shivered, “Man, it’s like freezing tonight.”

I took off my denim and, after pulling my Cricket lighter from the pocket, handed it to her, “Here wear this.  It’s warmer than it looks.”

She stood and stretched like a cat before slipping into my denim.  She pulled the front around her and stuck her head inside the collar.  “Smells good in here.”

Her two girlfriends squirmed again, having come to the conclusion that this was a two person conversation.

Steph and I chatted about school while her girlfriends groped for ways to join the back and forth with one of them finally asking, “Wait, what time is it?”

Steph pulled up my denim sleeve to look at her watch, “Oh shit, it’s almost midnight.  I’m so screwed if I get home after twelve.”  She stood up, looking panicked. “Shit.”

“Hey, it’s cool.  I can give you a ride.”  I nodded over my shoulder, “My car’s over there.”

“Really? A ride?  That would be totally cool.”

I eyed her two friends, “How ‘bout you two?  Can I give you a ride home?  It’s getting kinda late, ya know.”

The three girls exchanged glances in silence, communicating in a language unrecognizable by my gender.

“No, we’re good,” said the girl on Stephanie’s right.

“OK, suite yourself.  Stephanie, I mean Steph, you coming?”

She skipped up and surprised me, grabbing my arm.  She rested her head on my shoulder.  We walked to the car in silence.

Though I was a troublemaker, my parents had hammered the basics of manners into my head from an early age and as a result of such hammering I opened the passenger door for Stephanie, closing it as she settled into the front seat of my family station wagon.

I watched her watch me as I walked around the car to the driver’s side.

She stared at me as I settled in and turned the ignition. “Hey,” she asked, “can we listen to some music?”

“Sure,” I shrugged, “Pick out an eight track and stick it in.”  I pointed to the new stereo crammed into the dashboard of my parents’ 1976 Impala station wagon.  I backed out and started down Main Street.  She slid towards me to grab a Van Halen tape, turning it over to inspect the song list before popping it into the stereo.

As David Lee Roth crooned she volunteered her address, “But can you drop me off down the block?  Like, my mom will kill me if she sees a boy driving me home.”

We continued our conversation about school.  I entertained her with a couple of stories involving me and my friends in study hall.  She had heard of some of our activities.

She interrupted me, “Here. This is fine. You can stop here.”

I pulled over and shut off the car.  I turned off the headlights.

“Thanks for letting me wear your jacket.  That was pretty cool.”

She arched her back as she pulled off my jacket, causing her shirt to pull tight against her little teardrop breasts.  She looked over at me, catching me check out her breasts.

She smiled and asked for help, “Hey, I’m stuck.  I mean, like, I thought you were a gentleman or something.  How ‘bout a little help here?”

I reached over to tug at the sleeve, inadvertently yanking too hard and pulling her towards me.  Ever so gently her head fell against my shoulder.  My jacket slipped off behind her. She smelled beautiful.

In mock indignation she protested, “Hey!” She pulled back and looked up, facing me.  Her glance darted between my eyes and my lips.  Eyes. Lips.  Eyes.  Lips.  I lowered the music and reached over to hold her chin between my thumb and index finger.  She closed her eyes just as we kissed.  She tasted of bubble gum and cigarettes.  We kissed softly for a moment before I pulled back to look at her.  Her hair had fallen across her face, cloaking her eyes.  Light from the street lamp reflected off her lips.  She really was beautiful.  She opened her eyes and then surrendered, closing them again.  We kissed.

Pulling at her upper lip, I stopped, “Go on, before you get in trouble. I’ll see you later this week at Main Street, OK?”

She nodded in slow motion.  Then before I could get out to open the door she pecked me on the cheek with a final kiss, whispering, “Beasley Kinkade.”  She jumped from the car and ran up the street.

We did see each other later that week and we continued to see each other on and off during the summer.  When I wasn’t clubbing at bars in the city or out with my drinking age friends I’d meet Steph and take her to a movie, or we’d walk through the woods together or, when her mom and little sister were out, I’d park down the block from her house and spend the early part of an evening in her room.  I got to know her in her room.

“Steph, you know I’m a bad influence on you, right? And that, after this summer, I’m going away to school?  And that beautiful little virgins like you should probably not be hanging out with the likes of me.”

“I know all that, Beasley, I know.  Beside, you’re not so bad.  Except for when you don’t call me or go out with your friends to bars and stuff and leave me behind you’re actually pretty nice inside.”  She looked me up and down, “Pretty damn nice.”

“Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying. Not everyone is as nice as they look. And, well, you’re only a virgin once, ya know.  Don’t waste it.”

She rolled her eyes, “You sound like my mother, I mean, come on.”

I scratched my head, “Jeeze, you mean I sound like my mother.”

I thought of my mom’s warning to me, doled out not long after my 16^th birthday.  She and dad sat me down in their room on the chair next to the bed.  Ever the facilitator, mom had said she and dad had something important to talk about.  Dad stood still, arms crossed.  His head looked like it was ready to explode.  Nervously, his right hand reached upwards to pluck at his lower lip as mom began the conversation, “Beasley, you are, well, you’re old enough to start thinking about sex now and your dad and I want you to know you can ask us anything you want or need to know about, you know sex, OK?”

My jaw dropped.  When they said they wanted to talk I thought I was busted for something like stealing or smoking or drinking.  This I did not expect.  This, I smugly assumed, I did not need.  I mean, I had started having sex earlier this school year so the horse was out of the barn by the time I was 16.

My face burned.  I’m sure dad looked at me and thought, “His head is ready to explode.”

I took a breath as I weighed the option of blowing their minds by letting them know they were late to the party and that I really enjoyed sex.  I looked at mom.  Her eyes pleaded for dialogue.  I looked at dad.  His expression prayed for silence.

I opted for the most convenient route, “Um, I’m good.  Um, thanks, I guess.  Can I go now?”

“Nothing?”  mom asked, “Nothing? There’s nothing you want to know?”

I just wanted this conversation to end.  I shook my head back and forth.

Dad chimed in, “Well, uh, then, good enough.  And you know, if you have questions you can just ask us.  Me or your mom.  Just ask us.”

I nodded, “Uh-huh, I know now, dad.”

Satisfied, he turned and left the room.  I wanted to get the hell out of here and started to get up from the chair.

Mom watched dad leave then glared at me, “Beasley, not so fast. Sit down.”  She eyed me.  “I didn’t just fall off the god dam turnip truck so sit down and listen to me.”

I returned my butt to the chair and stared at her.  I rested my hands on my knees. What did she know?

She stepped forward, reached down and gently grabbed my right hand from my knee, “Are you listening to me?”

I nodded as she pulled my hand towards her.  The mood changed as she adjusted her fingers to wrap them around my index finger.  Ever so slightly she bent my finger backwards, just to the point that it was about to hurt but didn’t yet hurt but you know it’s gonna hurt, “Beasley, I know you’re going out with girls and, I want you to promise me something, OK?  Promise me you’ll be careful, OK?”

She stared into my eyes.  “Promise me.”

“Mom, I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I’m fine. Just let me go, OK?”

Ever so slightly she bent my index finger backwards, “Beasley, someday you or some girl are gonna want to go all the way and you’re gonna know it’s not right and you’re gonna have to say no, OK?  If it doesn’t feel right you’re gonna have to say no, OK?”

“Mom, will you just give it a rest, I…”

She picked up speed and bent my finger back hard, forcing me to yank it away from her grip, “Jesus, mom, what’s your problem?”

I rubbed my finger as she leaned in even closer, her eyes inches from mine, “Beasley, you may be a teenager but you’re still my baby and I want to protect you.  And if you think a broken finger would hurt, just think what a broken life would feel like. Huh? So just remember, don’t break your life or some poor girl’s life just for one night’s worth of fun, OK?”

“OK.  Jeeze, mom.  Can I go now?”

Jarring me back to our conversation, Steph shoved me, “Your mother?  What do ya mean you sound like your mother?”

“Forget it.  Where were we?  Oh yeah, I think you were about to kiss me, Miss Stephanie.”

She kissed me.  And, though she had rolled her eyes at my initial comment Steph and I were always careful.  We made our way to her room on a number of occasions, finding plenty to do while, each time, minding the boundary we’d discussed on that evening in June.  She is a girl I do not wish to break.

Tonight, in the convenience store in town my heart begins to beat a bit faster as I recall our last evening in her room.

It was towards the end of our summer together. Steph’s mom was at the movies enjoying Raiders of the Lost Ark with her little sister. I crept to the back door of her parentless house and knocked on the door.  Letting me in Steph took my hand and rushed me upstairs to her bedroom, closing the door behind us.

The room was the embodiment of Steph, straddling the border between teenager and adult.  Stuffed animals and Tiger Beat posters filled empty spaces. There was a bong purchased from Spencer Gifts hidden behind a pile of shoes under her bed.  Clothes – many of which included very sexy lace bras – were scatted all over the floor and shelves. Along with bras and clothes, a line of gymnastics trophies, ribbons and medals spanned a top shelf over a built-in desk area. The desk and the shelves were painted white.  Two well-worn Barbie dolls observed us from an overflowing bookshelf.  An ashtray was stowed under a shirt next to her window allowing Steph to sneak a smoke while her mom slept.  Steph’s mom was a smoker and the smell permeated the house. A music box with a ballerina inside rested on top of her dresser.

When I first visited the room, I opened the top of the music box.  The ballerina sprang to attention.  I whispered to the ballerina, “You’re free now.” She did not respond so I twisted the handle to the point of resistance and let go. The tinkling of music filled the room around us. I expected a tinny clinking sound but the music was actually nice.

During the summer, I became friends with the little ballerina.  Steph and I wound her up over and over again.  We measured our progress by that music box and, over time, we fell into the habit of taking stock of our situation whenever the ballerina stopped dancing.  When she came to a standstill Steph and I stopped what we were doing, separated and took inventory of the clothing we wore. It was our little game.

This evening she closed the door and jumped on her bed, pushing clothing to the floor.  I took off my jacket, removed my boots and crawled up next to her.  We began to kiss when, without warning, she jumped up, “Wait, the ballerina!  I like when she dances when I’m with you.”

I feigned surprise, “You do?”

She blushed, “Yeah, and, well, then when I’m not with you and you’re out at some bar with a bunch of older girls your age doing who knows what I, well, I play the music box so I can think of us, you know, together.”

I leaned over and kissed her on the nose, “You’re so cute.” She rubbed her nose before we returned to each other.  We continued to kiss and, after a long dance the ballerina stopped.  I rolled away from Steph to take inventory, “Pants, no shirt and one sock.  Hey what’d you do with my sock?”

She gave me an exaggerated shrug then inventoried her remaining clothing, “Tee-shirt, Fredrick’s of Hollywood panties and, do these count?  Two leg warmers.”

This was before Flashdance.  Steph and a few of her gymnasts friends were the only people I knew wearing leg warmers. “I don’t know what the hell those things are.  Are they even clothes?  They look like the bottom of someone’s pants, like frigg’n cut-off pants legs.  So if they’re pants they count! If they’re not pants, they don’t.  Hey, wait a minute; I know.  How’s this? If it’s in the Sears catalog then it counts, OK? So there. Those things do not count.”

She placed both hands against my chest and pushed me away, “Well, silly, then my underwear doesn’t count!”  She rolled over to show me her lace covered rear end.  “These you don’t buy from Sears.”

Now I blushed.  I turned away to address the ballerina, “Jeeze, she’s good-looking and smart!  That’s a hard combo to beat, Miss Ballerina.”

Steph continued pushing me, rolling me over onto my back, “Let me wind her up.  My poor little ballerina needs to dance some more.”

Steph released the key and the ballerina danced, filling the room with her music.  We continued to repeat the cycle and after a longer than you’d expect performance the ballerina grew tired.  Her pace slowed and her metallic notes clinked to a meandering pace before coming to rest.  We separated.

“One sock,” I volunteered.

“Two leg warmers.”

We laughed out loud and then took stock of each other.  I rolled closer and kissed her with a score of little kisses across her upper lip.  I stopped and grabbed her muscular little shoulders, holding her at arm’s length.

“Look at you, Steph.  Man, you really are totally, totally beautiful.  You are my flawless little virgin.”

Playfully she ran her finger down my nose and then stretched her legs taunt, forming a point with her toes as she placed her right foot just over her left.  She threw her arms over her head, pushing her hands against her bed’s pink and white headboard. Her stretch revealed a body of interconnected muscles running from thighs, over her stomach and chest to her strong little neck.  Two beautiful Hershey Kiss breasts were stretched out over her chest muscles while the blackness of the smallest of landing strips stood out against her cream colored skin.

Her muscles blended together to create sloping valleys of shadows across her body.  Ever so gently I glided the back of my hand across her stomach.  I turned my hand over to roll my fingers across her flat tummy.  Her skin was like a bowl of milk warmed in sunlight.  My fingers seemed to break the surface of her skin as I traced the edges of her stomach muscles. “Your body is totally amazing, Steph.  Totally amazing.”

“Gymnastics,” she volunteered.

She rolled towards me, touching her breasts against my chest.  She was warm; like that bowl of milk. She reached up and with her middle finger slowly pushed my long brown hair from the side of my face, “Bease?” she continued.

“Yeah?”

“I’m ready.”

“Ready?  Ready for what, Steph?  Ready to wind up the ballerina?”

“Ready for you to be my first.”

She blushed and looked down at my chest before continuing.  She squeezed my upper arms and spoke slowly, softly, “I want you to be my first, Beasley.  I want to make love to you, with you, I mean.”

I felt her fingers shaking against my arms, “Now, Beasley.  Right now.”  Ever so slightly her body began to shake.  Swimming out of her depth, she was nervous; really nervous.

I looked away from her eyes and, starting down at her feet, followed the curves of her body, drinking it in before finally letting my eyes return to hers.  I didn’t say anything.  I kissed her on the lips.

She fidgeted, then looked down at my naked body, “And, uh, from the looks of things down there it looks like you’re pretty ready too I’d say!”  I blushed again.

“Be with me, Bease.”

I want to.  She is so hot; so very, very hot.  I think of our previous conversation.  I think of an even earlier conversation. My mind floats.  I consider that I’m having plenty of sex with other girls this summer so I don’t need sex with Stephanie.  She is a girl I do not wish to break. And, I don’t have a rubber.

I roll my hand up her body and, with my arm coming to rest across her breasts, begin to stroke her hair just behind her left ear.

“Steph, think about it.  Once we do this you can’t take it back.  This is a big deal.”

Her eyes grow a bit narrower.  “Don’t you think I know that?  I’ve been thinking about this all summer.  I mean, please, I want it to be you.  You, Beasley.  Someone like you.”

Someone like me.

“Steph, it shouldn’t be someone like me.  It should be someone you’re in love with. You know, with someone that loves you.  I mean, like, in less than a month I’m goin’ away to school and, well, you know, I may never see you again.”

She rolled onto her back and crossed her arms across her little breasts.

Her face and neck grew red, “Don’t you think I know you’re going away?  That’s why I wanna do it now.  I’m not stupid, ya know.  And, besides, like, I’ve thought about this so I want it to be you.  I mean, I already told…”  She caught herself.

“Told who?”

“Oh, forget it, just forget I even frigg’n mentioned it.”  She stared up at the ceiling.  She struggled to hold back tears.

The ballerina watched in silence.

“Stephanie, like, I don’t even have a rubber.  I didn’t even bring one to your house ‘cause, like, you said you wanted to stay a virgin. So I don’t even have one with me. And, like, we need a rubber you know.”

Seeking to compose herself she pushed back anger, or maybe embarrassment. She reached for me.  Her voiced waivered, “No.  No we don’t.  Just slip inside me.  Just for a moment.  You know, you can just pull out.  Please.  I want it to be you.  Nothing will happen; I mean, nothing bad will happen.”

“No, Steph.  This is a big deal and, well, this should be with someone you love.  Not with someone like me.”

Her face grew even redder, “Why are you being such an asshole?  I mean, don’t you want to be with me?”  I nod but it’s not enough.  She pushes me away. “Well, then fuck you, Beasley.  Just go fuck yourself then.  You can go now.  Go back to your college girls and your bar sluts in New York and your sluts at Seaside; yeah I heard about that one too.”

Naked, she rolls over, turning her back to me.  She begins to cry.

I dress in silence. Before leaving I place my hand on her shoulder, “Steph, this is a once in a life time thing.  This should be special.  With someone you love.”

The ballerina looks from Steph to me and back to Steph.

“Yeah, well, I do love you.  There, happy?  It would of been special.  To me it would of been special, Beasley.  To me!  Just go. Please. Just leave me alone.”

The ballerina looked towards the door.

I left and when I turn to pay for the cream at the convenience store she is standing there.

After she rubbed against my neck she patted my stomach, “Hey put on a couple of pounds, there Bease didn’t we?  I don’t remember that little tummy!”

I rub the back of my head and offer Stephanie my two cents, “Well, I guess I got older, you know?  Besides, though; my belly’s not that big. Is it?”  I rub my stomach and smile at Steph.  She smiles back and then squints as she makes a little space between her thumb and index finger.

“You though, Stephanie.  Man, you look beautiful.  Like a teenager. I mean, you really are, you know, still unbelievably beautiful.  What’s it been, 20 years?  And, I mean, do you even age or what?  You look great.”

She cocks her hip to the side and crosses her arms.  They slip under her breasts supporting them like trophies displayed on her top shelf.  “Yeah, well I saw you checking out my ass in the mirror, there.”  She turned like her ballerina, twisting her rear end towards me.  “See?  Still working out, ya know.  Even after 20 years.”

I raise my eyebrows, “I can see that Steph.  Um, anyway, how ‘re you doing?”

“Me?  Oh, I’m good. It’s all good.  Got divorced not too long ago and I live in Fair Lawn now. Just up the road.  I work at a law firm during the day.  I have to dress nice there.  I do this at night ‘cause I’m saving for a house, ya know?”

Before I could answer, she continued, “And you, mister fancy pants.  I hear things are pretty good for you up in Boston or wherever you are.  You stayed up there, huh?  And, you have kids, right?”

“Yes, a daughter, Gee and a son, DJ.”  Their names pour from my mouth like a wave, filling the convenience store and drowning out the hum of the freezer units.  She closes her eyes as my children’s’ names pass over her.  Like bubbles left after the tide recedes the names linger.  I continue, “Both wonderful and happy.”

“Nice.  And are they with you, you know, here in Jersey?”  She doesn’t wait for my answer. “Hey, wait, what are you doing here anyway?”

“Yeah, that, well my mom’s pretty sick so I’m here visiting her for the day.  I go back tomorrow.”

She stretched her arms above her head, forcing me to work very hard to avoid dropping my eyes to look at her breasts. Her eyes stay settled on mine the whole time, measuring me.

“Bease, ya know I still remember that summer with you.  Man, you were some piece of work; gentleman to the end.  I mean, I was really, really crushing on you.  You know that right?”

“I remember, Steph.  And, you know, I really liked you too.  I liked you a lot; more than you think, I would guess.”

She tilted her head down just a bit, “Well… you still owe me, Bease.  You know you were basically the first boy – though unfortunately not the last – to break my poor little heart.”  Theatrically, she covered her heart with both hands. “It took me a long time to start listening to that music box again.  A long time.  Hey, ya know, I’m off in…” She looked up at the clock, “Shit, I’m off now!  Come out for a drink with me.  I already swept up and just have to close the register.  Then we can go to the Inn or up the road by my place.  Come on.  One drink.” She tilted her head, “Maybe two.”

“Aw, I can’t Steph.  I have to be up by five tomorrow and off to Boston for a meeting. Don’t think I don’t want to, though.”

“Well, if you want to, than just say yes.  Join me?”

I hold the cream up, “Can’t.”

She put on her coy face, “You know, Bease, if you’re nice to me we can find my music box and wind it up.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

I hold up my hand to show Steph my ring finger, “Doing the in love with my wife and mother of my children thing.”

She placed her hands together in front of her in mock prayer, “Aw, how cute.  Well, come on.  I won’t tell if you won’t.”

I don’t answer.

“You know, Bease, just think, if you had said yes to me, you know in my room that night, well who knows?  Maybe you’d be doing the ‘in love with your wife and mother of your children thing’ with me here in Jersey! Just think, if you’d just said yes that night we might of kept it going.”

Slowly she stretched out her arms to form the shape of a cross, palms facing me.  “Huh? Imagine that!”

I do imagine that and I think about what might have happened if I’d stayed with Steph or if I’d gotten her pregnant and how life might have turned out.  I think about Gee and DJ popping out of existence like fragile soap bubbles, for a moment captivating me as they whimsically float over a kitchen sink in Fair Lawn before disappearing into nothing more than a funny sense of déjà vu.

Though invisible to all but the might-have-been me the bursting of the bubbles in quick succession tears open a gaping crevice deep inside me, dropping me to the kitchen floor and, after rushing me to the hospital, Stephanie is greeted in the waiting room by a young doctor.  He takes her hand and solemnly tells her the might-have-been me was felled by what could only have been a cataclysmic stroke, “I’m so very sorry, Ms. Kinkade. Whatever happened simply ripped open a hole deep inside his brain.  I’m sure he felt nothing; just stopped existing.  I’m sorry. He’s gone.”

I shiver before returning to Steph, asking, “Well, anyway, how much for the cream?”

Steph looks towards the door and sighs, “No charge for you, Beasley.  No charge.  I guess I’ll see you around, huh?”

I thank her for the cream and walk to the door.  Before I leave, I turn to spy Steph taking her turn watching me, “Steph, just so you know, you really were, and I don’t know how you do it now, but you still are completely and utterly beautiful.  I hope you realize that.”

She crosses her arms once more and smiles.  She gets smaller as I walk away.  I hop in the car and stare into the store before pressing the ignition.  As I back out she’s obscured by a “Milk $1.99” sign in the store’s front window.  After a moment she seems to vanish like a just-popped soap bubble.  I smile as I do not fall victim to a stroke and collapse to the floor of the car.

I drive home with silence, thinking of Steph’s body and our summer together.  I pull into the driveway, exit the car and unlock mom’s front door.  Sneaking into the house as I’ve done hundreds of times in the past I cause the floor boards to creak.  I make my way to the kitchen to prep the coffee maker for tomorrow. I deposit the cream in the lonely fridge before hushing my way upstairs, remembering without thinking which stairs make noise and which do not. At the top of the stairs I turn left to go to the bathroom.  I take a nice long pee and put the seat and cover down to muzzle the sound of the flushing water.

Exiting the bathroom, I leave the light on and the door cracked so as to give me just enough light to make my way to mom’s room.  The door is half way open and I step in, bending over to listen for mom’s breathing.  Wisps of breath escape her body; short and shallow.  Though it may just be the moonlight playing tricks on me she appears to have sunk a bit further into the bed.  The washcloth has fallen to the floor.  I bend to scoop it up.  The warmth exhausted, the cloth is cold in my hand.  Without thinking I squeeze the cloth tight, causing the last drops to fall to the floor as I lean over to kiss mom’s forehead.

I stand up and stare at her moon-shaded face peeking out from the covers, “Thank you, Mom.  I love you.”

I back out of her room and quietly pull the door shut.  Ever so gently silence takes my hand.

To my left Nico shook his head, “Dude, you were completely asleep.  And you were drooling like a drunken baby. Come on, wipe that crap off your face and let’s get outa here. Wake up, man. It’s Friday.”

I squinted at Nico and put my flannel sleeve to good use, wiping the drool from my cheek.  Orienting myself, I looked around our chilly classroom. Kids were getting ready to leave, shuffling papers and jamming books into book bags.

Remembering my earlier effort I looked down to the open pages of my science text book.  Before falling asleep I had finished coloring an entire page black, filling in all the white space separating the page’s lonely letters.

Before my coloring efforts the letters had rested at arm’s length as if placed in graves at a for-profit cemetery. All alone in space the letters stood, shivering just out of reach from respective neighbors. From above I could see they were joined together to create something bigger. I could see it; they couldn’t.  Poor lonely letters.  They wanted to reach across the white space between; they wanted not to be alone.

So, I helped.  I started by connecting a couple of neighboring letters, first coloring a box to cloak each of the two letters making up the word “at” in a veil of privacy.  Starting from the simple II I then filled the space between the ‘a’ and the ‘t’, allowing the two letters to dissolve within a larger pool of black. With the constraints of white eliminated, the two letters responded by flowing across space to touch a previously untouchable neighbor.

Witnessing the singsong of activity produced by the newly connected ‘a’ and ‘t’ neighboring letters pushed against insurmountable boundaries, yearning for such a connection.  I obliged and proceeded to methodically fill in every space between every letter on the page.  Soon the entire page was covered in a cloak of intimacy and letters and punctuation marks alike slipped into a sea of black. Under this cloak they embraced, finding connections across recently unimaginable distances. I watched.

Nico shoved me, “Come on, drooling baby.  Let’s go.”

I pushed away from my back-row desk, turning to grab the gray Snorkel jacket resting on my chair. As I pulled myself together two front row girls scooted up to Lurch, our science teacher, seeking to fill in spaces of their own before weekend studies.  They held yellow highlighted science books tight against their budding breasts as Lurch gestured with his hands and filled in the space outlined by their question. They stood three in a row, I   I I, with the petite brainiacs nodding in unison.  Soon, though, Lurch turned his attention from their questions to the back row; to me.

My pace was slow as it took time for me to surface from the world of the letters (and, it’s not easy to put a broken pumpkin back together). So, I lingered. As I did so Lurch eyed me.  And he eyed Nico.  Then he drew a deep breath before saying goodbye to the girls.  Keeping his eyes on us, he began to make his way to the back of the class, filling in more space. I       I I

“Let’s move it you two.  Hit the road.  And, Kinkade, you better catch up.  Do you even know the reading assignment for this weekend?”

Diverting my eyes from Lurch, I looked towards the reunion of letters milling about on the darkened page below.  I imagined the letters as newly freed prisoners, previously held hostage by the white space, coming home to the warm embrace of an entire city of celebrating letters.  Then, remembering Lurch’s question, I tilted my head to face him, “Atoms?”

He slowed his pace and stopped after passing the second row of desks.  He gently placed both hands on top of his head and then, ever so slowly, pulled them down to cover his face, taking care to cup his fingers around his coke-bottle glasses.

He took a second deep breath and then removed his hands, “Atoms?  Atoms?  My God Kinkade do you even understand the English language I use to convey scientific knowledge?  You have to read chapter seven, Kinkade.  Chapter seven. And, quite frankly, I’d suggest you wake up from your stupor and read chapters one through six before thinking about the ‘atoms’ in chapter seven. My God.”

Lurch’s neck became blotchy as our interaction went nowhere fast.  He was now less happy than he was just a moment ago and he would be even less happy if he spied my blackened page of rejoicing letters. Ignoring him for the moment I reached down to turn the page, offering the milling letters a chance to continue making connections without interruption.

Things seemed to slow to a crawl in our cold classroom as I pinched the lower corner of the page between thumb and index finger. The weight of time poured across my shoulders as the page bent upwards and then rolled like a tsunami of scribbled blackness.

The page’s incline slowly increased.  Tilting over, the letters piled over themselves within the sea of ink. They reveled in their swarming mix and, as the tsunami fell across that world within a page, a wave of warmth fell across me.  The feeling lasted for something measured in degrees as opposed to seconds.

I floated in the wake of this feeling. I thought of my dad bathing me when I was among the littlest of boys, naked in a white-enameled cast iron bathtub in our Bronx apartment. Steam rose from the bath and stuck to white tiles as he splashed the soapy water on my chest and shoulders. He scooped up the water in a bowl made of grownup hands and, before gently pouring it over my head asked, “Ready, Bease?  Now close your eyes tight.  We don’t want any soap stinging you!”  As he released the warm water it flowed over my face and, I couldn’t help it, I opened my eyes to peek.  A few drops stung my left eye and I rubbed it hard.

“I’m OK, daddy.”

He smiled and drew his fingers across my forehead pushing some wet hair to the side.  His fingers felt cool, like a layer of white snow chips on a stream covered with ice.

“Don’t worry, Beasley. It only stings for a second.  And then it goes away.  See?  All better.”  Bound to his words, to his touch, I nodded. II

The page and wave full of letters fell forward without a sound, coming to rest out of Lurch’s site. Braced by the creeping cold of Lurch’s classroom I returned his stare, “Reading chapters over the weekend?  Not gonna happen.”

His real name wasn’t Lurch of course.  On the first day of class Nico took one look at him and screamed, “Lurch!  Look, man, it’s frigg’n Lurch from the Addams Family. A Lurch with glasses!”

Indeed he did look like Lurch; so much so that the nickname stuck and for the rest of the year we screamed “Lurch!” at every opportunity.  When he turned towards the blackboard – an act he eventually eliminated from his teaching routine – our back row spontaneously clicked fingers in honor of the Addams family.  After staring at us he looked away and, as he did, we belted out snippets of the show’s theme song, “We’re gonna make a call on, the Addams family.”  Snap. Snap.

Now he was staring at my book. “Kinkade, what the hell was that in your text book; on that page you just turned?”

I slammed the book shut. “Nothing.  Look, school’s over.  And, I ah, I gotta go.  I gotta meet someone.”

“You’re not meeting anyone until I see that book, young man.”  He pursed his thin lips and strode towards me. “Get over here and give me that book! Right now!”

Like a letter surrounded by cold white space I stood still.  My breadth was just barely apparent as a wisp of white seeping into the now icy classroom.  With his next step my breathing quickened.

With winter outside the classroom’s circa 1970s windows let pass a constant stream of cold air.  Despite the stream of cold air Lurch sweated profusely. Perspiration stained his armpits, casting gray shadows along the sides of his white shirt reaching for his pants. His rat-like eyes were made even smaller by the curvature of his black Clark Kent glasses. One side of his frayed white collar was unbuttoned, pointing out at a weird angle like a mangled whisker.  His thinning hair was matted down on a blotchy scalp, incrementally worn away by decades of rubbing his head in response to a tide of tiny battles with the likes of me.

Continuing his plodding approach he held out his hand. “Let me see that book.”

Frozen in in his glare I remained motionless.  This is what it feels like to be a lonely letter.

“Now!” he screamed.

The room seemed to fly forward and the warmth from the page’s earlier turn thundered through me.  For a moment I saw summer sky above me.  Disoriented I watched as Lurch made his way to a place where a single desk separated us.  The warmth left my body as he stretched his arm towards me.  I grabbed my book and, with a lunge, shoved the desk forward, filling the space between.  Lurch reacted quickly and blocked the desk with his hands, protecting himself from what might have been a painful blow to the thighs.  I ran for the door, cutting towards the center of the classroom as desks scattered behind me.  He wheeled his sweaty body around in time to watch me run from the classroom.

And, as you can imagine, Lurch didn’t yell or run after me.  He sighed.

Not wanting to be left holding the bag, Nico bolted after me, screaming “Lurch!” as he cleared the classroom doorway.  Making our way into the hall we continued running from class, blending in with students belching from classrooms and joining the newly formed stream in the hallway, milling about like an orgy of liberated letters.

Though free from Lurch, caution was warranted. Lurch was known to take his time and plod his way to our lockers in response to an indignity.  Memory has a long reach.  With the thought of Lurch’s long arm reaching from behind to grasp my shoulder at any moment I quickly darted through the crowd to my locker.

As planned Tony was there waiting for me, “Where the fuck were you?  I cut outa gym early so we could do the running of the cars today, man. And I’ve been waiting here for like five minutes. I’m goin’ for the record today and we need to get there on time!  Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry, man. I had to deal with Lurch.  He gave us some shit.” For appearances sake I opened my locker and shoved a couple of books in my book bag. “Come on let’s get outa here before he comes looking for us. It was weird – like, warm then cold – in his class.”

Nico jumped in, “You mean you’re weird and it’s not warm anywhere. It’s winter, you moron.  And let’s get this straight. He gave you shit. Not us. You.” Nico turned to Tony, “He caught Kinkade scribbling in his book.  Then falling asleep and drooling like a baby in class.  He must think you’re like two years old or something.”

“Yea, well, so what.  Lurch can think what he wants… Oh crap, wait. That reminds me.”

I reached into my locker to grab my science book.  Quickly flipping the pages, I opened the text and ripped out the blackened sea of letters.  First holding it up to the overhead light to see if the shadows of the letters were visible through the blacked ink – some were, some weren’t – I crumpled the page into a tight ball and hurled it over the sea of kids milling around me. Truly free, the page and all the newly connected letters arced into the future.

Tony agitated, “Come on, moron. Let’s go.  If we’re gonna run the cars we gotta get outa here and be there by 3:30.  You know, before the 3:30 train shows up.  Once the 3:30 shows the early birds get in their stupid cars and leave; and they’ll be gaps.  They’ll be spaces.  I need the cars to be all lined up in a row, with no spaces between them, man.”

I nodded and turned to Nico, “You coming?  We’re gonna run the cars parked along Main Street; you know, by the train station.  Our record, my record I should say, is 15 cars.  Tony thinks he can beat that but he’s too much of a pussy.”  Tony gave me a good natured shove as I continued to apply peer pressure to Nico, “Come on; join us.  You in or out? 15 cars, man. 15 in a row.”

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 

Nico shook his head, “No way.  You two are way too fucked up doing shit like that. Way too fucked up. Ya know, maybe Lurch is right.  Someday, man, someday you’re gonna run across the hoods of those cars and you’re gonna land on some old Caddy and a big huge construction worker is gonna be waiting for you and, when you clomp across the front hood of his Caddy, he’s gonna grab your ankle and throw you to the ground and beat the living shit out of you. Beat the living shit outa you.  Or, maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll just get caught by the cops. That stuff is just too messed up for me, man. So, no.  No fuckin way.  I’m not running across a bunch of cars in the middle of the day with you two idiots.  No way.”

“OK fine you big pussy. Well then just walk with us down to the tracks, alright?  Come on, we have to hurry to get there before the 3:30 train.”  I kicked my locker shut and spun the lock.  Tony wound up and gave the locker a ferocious kick, denting one of the bottom slots.

“Good one.  Come on.”

Leaving school and entering the lightness of the air outside, we moved quickly through what remained of winter’s snow.  The lingering snow was blackened and slightly soft, huddled against the creeping warmth of spring in the form of mounds.  We made our way along a two lane road as moms driving kids home from school passed by.  After three blocks we turned left into a long thin clearing known simply as the Gully. Rumor had it the Gully was the home of an old abandoned trolley track.  Now it was a thruway for kids.

On weekends the Gully was a place where older kids smoked and drank. Someday I would smoke and drink here.  The cops frequented the Gully looking for kids in or on the verge of trouble.  Someday the cops would find me here, in and on the verge of trouble. Today the entrance of the Gully was guarded by two large mounds of snow, deposited by the DPW after the season’s last snow removal effort.  Though we still had to hustle to make it to Main Street before the train we had just enough time to stop and join a group of eight classmates preparing to throw snowballs at cars.  Some smoked.  Some peed their names into the smaller of the snow mounds.  All made tightly packed snow balls from the un-peed upon pile. We joined them.

I I I    I I I I I I I I

I went to grab some snow, “Shit, I left my gloves at school.”

Nico and Tony didn’t have gloves.  Nico shrugged, “Fuck, it.  You don’t need ‘em. Just rub your hands together.”

I pulled the hood of my Snorkel jacket tight around my face.  The risk of missing the train was nothing compared to the risk of being recognized by a mom as you beaned her car with a snowball.  The reward, however, was the delivery of a little sliver of mayhem on a Friday afternoon. Worth it.

With my hood high and tight I worked quickly.  I alternated shaping snow into baseball sized projectiles and rubbing warmth back into my bare hands.  After a minute both hands were a bright shade of red.  Without words, we stood behind the mound and created a small cache of snowballs, taking turns to gently bend and place the finished products at our feet.  After making four snowballs I joined the others, crouching down and waiting, letting our breath form a line of rhythmic dragon swirls before us.  I I I I I I I I I I I

We didn’t have to wait long as a group of three cars carrying their student cargo approached.  We pelted the first car.  As expected, the car screeched to a halt.  We watched as the driver’s head jerked forward and silhouettes of children without seatbelts tumbled from their perches. Like clockwork cars two and three slid to a halt behind car one. I I I

Drawing from our cache of snowballs we began pelting the second and third cars.  From the second car, a mom with a cigarette hanging from her mouth threw open the driver’s side door. She stamped a rubber boot to the road and stood from the car, “Hey you little shits, get your asses over here so I can smack the living shit outa each and every one of ya.”  She was thick and presented an attractive target.  We unleashed our remaining inventory.  She moved quickly, ducking away from Tony’s well aimed snowball.  She jumped back inside her wood paneled station wagon as our salvo slammed into the side of her car.

Our inventory depleted we scattered to safety.  I didn’t want anyone to see my face so I ran with my head down.  History has taught me when I am recognized nothing good happens; history has taught me memory does not fade like snow.

Earlier this winter my mom received a call from a woman claiming to witness me hitting the panel truck in front of her car with a snowball. After taking the time to speak with the woman on the phone, mom called me into the kitchen, “Beasley. Get in here!” Not a good tone.

“Now!” she screamed.

When I entered the kitchen mom still had the receiver in her hand and, rather than return it to the phone cradle screwed into the kitchen wall she simply dropped the receiver to the floor.  I watched as the receiver met linoleum at the exact moment her right hand met the left side of my head, the noise of the two events joining into a single crack!

That said, the scariest response to a snowball infraction happened a couple of years ago when the recipient of a snowball attack recognized me at a baseball game, long after the original pelting. Half a year later, she spied me and suggested to her husband that he communicate her displeasure to me. As a half dozen parents looked on, the thick waisted husband walked the distance from winter to summer and, without warning grabbed the collar of my baseball uniform before settling his fingers around my neck, “Listen you little shit, do not ever, ever, fuck with my wife or my car again, understand?”  Trying to pry his fingers from my throat I shook my head in agreement before he shoved me away, causing me to fall backwards.

“You ever hit my car again with a snowball, I’ll choke the life out of you, hear me?”  Looking up from the ground I rubbed my neck and nodded. The jury of parents nodded as well, approving of the husband’s sentence as they returned to their previous conversations.

I  I                            I I I I I I

Though terribly risky, I couldn’t let such an affront stand.  I seethed with anger as I imagined that lady telling other moms, “Yea, well, my Louie took care of that Kinkade kid, huh?  Last time he ever gives us trouble!”  Like the mom’s memory my memory grew in intensity as the page of time continued its turn.

I waited a respectful three to four months, maybe less, before retaliating.  And, one evening, with a rock tied to the memory of his fingers around my throat, I snuck out our basement window and under the cloak of darkness smashed the windshield of Louie’s truck.  Nearly a year passed before I saw him again.  He glared at me from across the town pool as I waited for an adult swim to end.  Hiding a sense of dread I faked a deferential smile and nodded.  He stepped towards me but stopped, then looked around before turning away.  Our truce in place I respected the length of his memory and kept my distance.   I                    I

So we ran from the three cars into the Gully.

Fueled by a fear of getting caught, as well as by his short but powerful legs, Nico plowed through pockets of snow and dead grass to pull away from us.  Before turning the corner towards town he slowed to look back at us.

“Don’t look back!” I screamed, “Ever!”  He turned forward and continued running as we crossed a field, clambered across a small bridge covering a busy street and cut behind a row of stores; a Laundromat, the 5 & 10 and a gas station among them.  Nico ran farther than was necessary, stopping only after he made it to the safety of the hidden alley behind the town’s small line of stores.  He waited, bending over and gasping for breath as Tony and I caught up.  When we caught up, Nico was rubbing his hands together, condensation flaring from his nostrils.

I peeled my hood back, “Dude, never look back, they’ll see your face, man.”

Tony bent over joined Nico, gasping, “Nico, man, you’re too fast.  Why… why’d you keep running?  No, no one was after us.”

Trying to catch his breath, Nico stood up and placed his hands on his hips, “You guys live with trouble, man.  Like, you’re used to it, right?  Me?  If I get caught I’m screwed.  So…” he took a couple of breaths, “so I just kept running.”

We snuck down the alley, behind the stores, stopping only to look for breakable items in the garbage bins.  The ideal find was a discarded fluorescent light bulb.  Once found it was treated as a treasured spear and hurled like a javelin into the future.  Finding no such treasure we continued to the end of the ally, jumped the chain link fence and crossed the parking lot towards Main Street.

On the far side of Main Street, and running parallel to the road, was a set of train tracks carrying commuters to and from New York City on a daily basis. In the morning, the earliest of these commuters pulled their cars nose first into one of 50 parking spaces perpendicular to the tracks on Main Street.  These parking spaces represented ideal commuter parking spots.  The 50 parked cars occupying the spaces represented our objective; the running of the cars.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Making our way across Main Street I walked between two parked station wagons and leaned forward to walk up the eight foot incline to the station’s platform.  Tony ran ahead of me, kicking small pieces of gravel behind and beating me to the top of the platform.  Nico stayed put, filling the space between the two parked cars.  From this slightly elevated vantage point 50 pair of lonely headlights stared up at us. Joining the headlights Nico looked up thinking of what lay ahead, “Dudes, I’m outa here.  You’re on your own with this one.”

“Oh, come on, Nico” I yelled down, “Just be a stupid lookout and watch for cars with me.”

Tony jumped in, “Come on, man, I’m gonna break the record, today Nico.  I can feel it.  50 cars!  50!  Come on and watch me make history.”

“Watch you make trouble, you mean.  Besides, it’s slippery.  You’ll go sailing off one of those cars and break your frigg’n neck.”

Tony, held up his boot, showing off the Vibram-clad sole.  “Not with these. This shit grips.”

As Tony stood there trying to stay balanced while holding his right foot up between he and Nico, Nico turned and walked away.  We screamed after him.  He didn’t look back; just waived his hand in the air as he kept walking away. I I          I

Tony turned to me, “What an asshole.  Why’d he just leave us and not watch me when I asked?  I mean, come on.”

I shrugged, “Don’t worry about Nico.  He’s probably gotta work or, ya know, maybe he’s just smart enough to avoid trouble, ya know?  He’s not gett’n busted and smacked around like us all the time is he?”

Tony ignored me, “I don’t see any cars should I do it?  Should I just go for it and do it now?”  His head swiveled from right to left looking for potential witnesses, “Come on, hurry up.  Look around.  What do ya think?”

My head swiveled in unison with Tony’s, looking first at the platform behind me. Clear.  Then down the tracks to the west, then to the east.  Clear.  Clear.  Then at the parking lot across the street.  Clear.  With one last glance at Tony, I placed my hand on his shoulder and yelled, “Ready?”

“Now!” he screamed.

Tony bolted off the platform and down the incline as the earlier wave of warmth returned to me.  It felt good.

Starting his run, Tony jumped onto the hood of the first car, a Lincoln Continental.  After taking one last look behind him he sprang into action.  Tentatively at first he jumped to the next car and then the third as he began to find his stride.  Soon he was bounding across the car hoods at a steady clip joining them together in his wake.

I alternated watching for traffic on Main Street and counting Tony’s cars.  If he was going to beat my record I wanted an accurate count.  He was really moving now.  He hurled across the fifth, sixth and seventh cars, some of which now sported new dents.  He was careful to focus on his footing to avoid the catastrophic spill Nico warned of.

Looking ahead I saw the kiss of death in his run for the record; a VW Bug.  The rounded Bug offered no front hood and therefore no running room.  Oh well, he’d hit double digits before stopping at the Bug.  My record will stand. I nodded thoughtfully as the cold returned to my core, washing away the fleeting feeling of warmth.

I pointed ahead, “Watch the Bug.”  He turned towards me.  “The Bug,” I screamed.  “Watch out!”  He flailed his right hand at me then slowed his pace, looking like a juking running back scouring the line in search of a hole. Upon landing on the red Pinto parked before the Bug, Tony searched for way to fill the space between the stoic cars.  He lurched to a halt, then, stepping on the windshield, clamored to the top of the car before leaping across the gap onto the roof of the Bug.  Sagging under his weight, the Bug’s roof held!  From the newly concave top of the Bug he sprinted forward gliding across the tops of cars joining them in a string of powerful strides.

“Fucking A,” I whispered.  I looked all the way down the line to see if he could possibly run the entire row of cars.  No gaps. He could do it.  Then I swiveled to look up and down Main Street.  No witnesses. It was possible he’d run all 50 cars.  I had to contain myself.  I was on lookout and couldn’t leave my post.  I kept scanning, when honing in on what would be Tony’s 39^th car, I gasped.  I reached up to grab the top of my head in an unintentional imitation of Lurch.  Tony was heading towards a convertible with a soft canvas cover; a rag top.

I screamed, pointing at the weathered rag top, “Tony, Tony!  Stop!  Look out. Rag top, man.  Rag top!  Look! Out!”  Without losing his stride, he turned towards me, thrusting both arms in the air.  He was lost in the moment, pounding from roof to roof, leaving a trail of dents in his wake.  Seeing my spastic display of horror, Tony turned just as he jumped from an AMC Javelin towards car number 39; the rag top.

I watched as he swung his arms like a long jumper in an attempt to control his forward progress. His motion slowed to a crawl as he hurled through the air towards the flimsy convertible roof.  Time accelerated as he crashed through the roof of the car, shredding the canvas top. He fell into the car smashing his balls on the back of the front seat. His momentum carried his upper body forward ripping the roof from passenger side to driver side.  His motion stopped as the canvas enveloped Tony in an off-white prison.  His hands went down towards his balls before he slumped forward, listing over like a ship waiting to sink.  He didn’t move as the world became quiet.

Involuntarily I squeezed my balls before bolting down the platform towards Tony.  Frantically I stumbled down the incline, catching my foot on the curb and falling forward towards the parked Continental.  I saw a brown spot hurtling towards me just before I hit the left side of my head on the car’s rusted metal bumper.  Crack! Stars, surrounded by blackness, filled my head.  I found myself on my back.  As the world continued to spin above me I tried to get up.  I fell backwards onto my rear. I held my hand to my eye to see if I was bleeding.  I was.  I rolled over on all fours.  Blood fell from the left side of my face dripping onto the pavement. Drip.  Drip.  Drip. “Shit!  Shit! Shit!” I watched as blood fell through my heaving white breath.

Like Ali getting up after a Frazier left hook I staggered to my feet.  I tried to catch my breath as silver stars floated across my eyes.  These stars, man, these were minor league compared to the stars I’d see if we were caught. My face felt warm.  My eye stung like a mother and I reached up to wipe blood from my face.

“Fuck!” Now blood was all over my jacket sleeve.

“It only stings for a second.”

I peeked over the cars and, seeing no witnesses, started towards Tony, running the distance with my hand on the side of my face.  Tony was trying to extract himself.  He was wedged within a white tangle of wiring and canvas.

Reaching him, he screamed, “Help me!  Help me! Get me the fuck outa here, man.  I’m trapped!”

I yanked on his arm trying to pull him from the roof.  His arm jerked forward but that was it.  I couldn’t budge him.  He was right.  He was trapped.  I started to tear at the white canvas holding him in place.  Riiiiiiip! It pierced the afternoon air.  As the canvas peeled away the space was filled with the view of the car’s black leather seats.  Without the supporting canvas, Tony tilted sideways towards the rear seat.  “Tony, come on man. Come to me.  Get the door, Tony.  Open the door and get outa there,” I screamed, “Open the frigg’n door!”

He fell into the car.

The back seat’s cold leather creaked under his weight.  Upon landing on the seat he simply curled up like a baby wearing a big winter jacket.  Rocking slowly, he held his balls and moaned, “Ahhh, my nuts, man.  My nuts.”

Leaning over the side window I peered in.  In addition to smashed balls Tony had a bloody nose. The car looked like a horror movie; a movie in which a tidal wave had scooped up Tony and carried him through time and space to crash him into the back seat of a lonely car; this car. There was blood all over the ripped rag top and now the back seat.  Adding to the scene there was now blood all over the door as I yanked the handle with my bloody hands in an effort to reach Tony.

“Come on, forget your nuts! Let’s get the fuck outa here, man.  Move it! We’re screwed if we get caught.”

“My fucking nose, man.  My nose is broke.”

“It’s not broke!  It’s just bleeding. Come on!  Just shut the hell up and move, man!”

He wailed, “My balls!  I can’t, I can’t move.”

“Please! Just shut up and move it!”

I opened the door.  Reaching in, I dragged him by, first the foot, then the waist.  “Here, put your hood up and cover your face! No one can see us!”  I pulled his hood over his head and then zipped my Snorkel hood as high up as I could, tight around my face.

I kept yanking on his leg and, finally, Tony began to participate in the effort; slowly at first, and then fueled by fear, his pace quickened.  He began to clamber out of the car.  Feet first, he scurried to exit the vehicle as the first witness of the day slowed her car to a crawl behind us.  I covered my Snorkel enclosed face with my bloody left hand as the driver – an old lady with a scarf around her head – leaned across the passenger seat to roll down her window.  I I          I  

I didn’t wait.  I jerked Tony from the car and he fell to the pavement, “Get the fuck up and run!  Run!”

Pulling him from the space between the cars we scrambled up the embankment and bolted down the tracks away from the station. Tony was really hurt and I had to pull him by the jacket as he stumbled forward.  He tripped, landing hard and squealing like a baby.  I yanked him up, “Come on, man, just keep moving. And don’t look back!”  I pointed forward, down the tracks to where the two rails seemed to converge into a pin point. “There.  The woods.” I gasped, “Down the tracks and to the woods.  Run to the woods, Tony! Run!”

We ran along the Main Street tracks as fast as could.

We ran without thinking and, once the woods swallowed the rails, we cut to the right, piercing through thickets into the safety of the trees.  We plodded our way down well-known trails towards the stream. We knew these trails and didn’t stop.  After what seemed like hours but must have been all but five to ten minutes we came to a halt at the edge of the stream.  It was partially frozen.  We couldn’t walk across so we followed the stream to a fallen tree and, with practiced effort, walked the length of the tree across the mix of ice and water to the safety of the other side.  Far from the threat of capture we fell to the ground, gasping, struggling to catch our breath.  It poured from us in white bursts.

I crawled over the hardened dirt towards the edge of the water and placed my hands on a band of white ice separating me from the water.  Unlike the ragtop it took more than one blow to pierce.  Using my elbow I broke open a half-moon hole to reach the water.  I plunged my hands into the water.  It was freezing.  Drops of blood turned to swirls as they let go of my hands and swam away.  ‘Bye blood,’ I thought.  Tony crawled over to the half-moon.  We didn’t say a word as we washed our hands and faces.  The freezing water dulled the pain in my head.

My adrenaline started to slow and I could think again.  I looked over to Tony.  He held a big piece of ice to his cheek and the side of his nose.  The bottom of the ice slowly stained red from the trickle of blood.  With each of his heavy breadths white puffs belched out from behind his ice.  As he settled down he surveyed his body.

“My balls, man.  Oh man, they’re killing me.  I don’t know what hurts more; my balls or my nose.”

I nodded.  “Man, you hit that car hard.  And you ripped right through it; right through it, man.”  I broke off another piece of ice, handing it to Tony, “Here put this on your balls.”

He pulled up his jacket and shoved the ice down his pants.  He fell backwards resting there without moving.  His chest heaved as two pieces of ice comforted his face and balls, respectively.

Through a filter of white breadth I watched Tony lie motionless.  I grabbed some ice and rubbed it against my sleeve trying to scrape away the remaining blood.  It didn’t help.  All I succeeded in doing was turning the stain from red to brown as dirt stuck to the bottom of the ice mingled with my blood, or maybe it was Tony’s blood.

Finished sullying my Snorkel I returned my attention to Tony.  A racing stripe of blood ran down the front of his chest.  It was matched by a big blotch of blood across his left shoulder.

I grabbed another piece of ice and crawled towards Tony, “Don’t move.  I’m gonna try to get this blood off you.”  I scrubbed for a good minute, getting some off and turning the remainder into a mixture of red and brown.  Under his right arm I found a huge gash, running up the seam to his armpit, “Uh oh.”

“What, what is it?”

“Tony, man, you ripped the shit out of your jacket.  Look.  Here.”  I pointed to the split.

He sat up on his right elbow and discovered a new injury.  “Oh, shit. My arm…”  He twisted his jacket and found the gash.

“Oh, no.  Oh man, I’m screwed.  My mom just got this for me at McHugh’s.  My dad’s gonna beat the crap outa me for ripping this so soon.  He just told me; just told me, ‘this better last three winters, young man.’ It lasted half a fuck’n winter.”  There were tears in his eyes.

I tried to divert his attention, “How’s my eye?”

He didn’t answer but instead pulled away the reddened block of ice from his cheek, “How’s my fuck’n nose, you mean.”

His was worse off and I obliged, “No cut, but red and pretty puffy; here, and over here.”  I gently moved my reddened index finger towards the side of his nose.  The blood was seeping from his nostrils.  Involuntarily he pulled back.  “Not so bad, though. Here.  Take a new piece of ice.”  I turned and broke off a clean piece of ice and handed it to Tony.

“What about my jacket?  I’m gonna get whooped.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem.  Hey, wait, we can, we can say we cut through the Gully and got beat up.”

“No, my father will wanna know who did it.  He’ll choke it outa me.”

I nodded, “Alright.  Street hockey.  We played street hockey after school.  No wait, we went to the stream, here in the woods, to walk on ice and you fell through.  Yeah, and your jacket ripped when I pulled you out.  Sound good?”

“My feet, man.  My feet will have to be wet.”

“Well, stick ‘em in the water,” I shrugged.

He hurled his piece of ice at me, “Are you fuck’n kidding me! You stick your stupid feet in the water, asshole!  I’m not freez’n all the way home. We’ll say you fell in.  And my jacket ripped when I saved you. How’s that, asshole?”

I held up my hands as the ice sailed over my head.  “Alright, alright.  Calm down.  Jesus, man. No falling through the ice.  Don’t be such a dick.  I’m trying, trying to…  Come on, we need a story that’ll stand up.”

Tony struggled to keep it together as I continued, “Alright, how ‘bout this?  We walked home, through the Gully, right?  Kids were hanging out there, right?  Some were throwing snowballs at cars, OK?  But we didn’t want to.  We won’t mention that unless they ask.  And, some, some other kids were playing Pick Up & Slaughter; older kids with a Nerf ball. A green one.  And so we stopped to play and they kept throw’n the ball to us and they then, well, they kept tackling us, trying to hurt us.  But, we, we didn’t quit, right?  Our dads will like that. And then, they, ah, when they ripped your jacket we left.  OK?”

Taking care to mind his injured arm and balls Tony leaned back on his other elbow.  I noticed the ice down his pants had melted and it looked like he pissed his pants. He saw me looking at his balls, “Now who’s the baby? Peed your pants, huh Tony?”

“Fucking ice!”  He shoved his hand down his pants and twisted out the remainder of his ice.  He took aim at me and then caught himself.  He heaved the ice across the stream.

Dignity restored he nodded, “Yeah, ya know, we can say we got hurt – and all dirty! – playing Pick Up & Slaughter. Yeah.  And if anyone saw us in the Gully pelting cars we can say, ‘yeah we were there but we were playing not throwing.’  That’ll work.”

We were both nodding now.

“OK. Done.  Gully.  Snowballs.  Walked past.  Pick Up & Slaughter with big kids.  Nerf. Didn’t want to quit when we got hurt.  Ripped jacket.  Went home.  And we’ll stay here for a while and, before we start home, we turn our jackets inside out so we won’t look like trouble.  Good?”

“Good,” said Tony.

Our plan in place Tony returned to the moment, “So how’d I do?”

“How’d you do?  How’d you frigg’n do, man?  38 cars!  39 if you include the rag top.”

“What?  Of course you include the goddam rag top, man?  My foot landed on it!  It fuck’n counts, man.  It counts!” he wailed.  With one side of his nose now swollen shut, puffs of white steam slipped from his remaining open nostril.

I thought for a while then rubbed my eye, “Ouch! Shit,” my eyebrow was tender, “yeah, you’re right.  We gotta count it. We gotta.  If you think about it, for one split second, maybe even half a split second, your Vibram touched down on the roof of that car; right before you ripped through and smashed your frigg’n balls, man!  Shit, that was crazy.  Crazy!  Does it still hurt?”

“Everything hurts.” He nodded as he rubbed his newly flattened balls.  Following the wisps of white dragon’s breadth my stress continued to float away, up towards the tree tops.  Then, for the first time, I started laughing, “Man you paid for that record with some smashed up balls, huh?”

He shook his head, “Yeah man, but it was worth it.”

“Man, Tony, you were like Franco Harris climbing up a pile of Cowboys, ya know, when you jumped up that windshield before the Bug.  That was totally awesome.  39, man.  39 is now the new Running of the Cars world record.  Congratulations.”

I reached over and we shook hands.  His hand was warm.

Gingerly Tony, rolled onto his back again.  He fell to rest, staring upwards towards the sky, visible through a filter of bare branches.

“39,” he repeated, “Do you think anyone will ever beat it?”

“39?  Are you kidding me?  Think of what you had to do back there, man.  Think about the shit you just did.  So, no, man, I doubt anyone will ever touch that one.  Shit, man; 39.”

Joining Tony I fell over onto my back, laying to his left.  I closed my eyes and focused on the blackness on the inside of my eyelids.

I didn’t see it, but Tony lifted his left arm, stretched it straight towards the sky and, like a cresting wave let it fall towards me.  He must have been looking at me as his hand came to rest on my right shoulder, startling me, “Thanks, man. You know, for not leaving me back there.  Thanks.” II

I turned to open my eyes as if from a daydream.  I was standing.  And I was older; much older.  Involuntarily I reached for my left eye.  It felt fine. I pulled my hand away looking for blood.  Except for a slight film of sweat my hand was clean.  I looked around.  It was summer, not winter.  My father’s younger brother, Uncle Ken, stood next to me.  He reached out and, slowly at first, began to turn the page of time to the present.

His hand came to rest on my right shoulder, “Ready?”

Time had accelerated as the page rolled over, throwing me forward like a tumbling letter and landing me back on Main Street in front of the refurbished train station.  It was now a fancy little coffee shop and newsstand.  Tony was long since gone, having moved to Arizona after college to start a business, father two children and fight to keep his family together.

I continued looking around, turning my attention from the running of the cars so many years ago to a crowd of runners milling around me, waiting for the start of this year’s 5K Fourth of July race.  My sister, Caitlin, and her friends had started the annual event in 2003 as a fund raiser to pay for a scholarship program and maintenance costs associated with the town’s 9/11 memorial.

The memorial stood on the other side of the street across from the train station.  It carried forward the names of my dad and 10 others from our town, all lost one day when the page of time turned without warning.  With some commuters not returning that day their cars were left parked at Main Street long after the 3:30 commuter train had passed.  Like quivering letters the cars stood alone until family members uncovered second sets of keys and retrieved the lonely cars, wondering how they were ever going to fill such a space.

 IIII   IIII    II   IIIII   IIII   I   III   IIIIIII    IIII   II   II    I

I looked up towards the tracks thinking of 50 uninterrupted cars and, as if trying to return to an early morning dream, my eyes came to rest on what looked like Tony standing high on the platform.  His head swiveled as he scanned first right, then left, looking up and down Main Street at the sea of disjointed runners.  He nodded towards me, letting me know it was time.  I didn’t hear a word as he looked right into me and silently screamed, “Now!”

Crack! The start gun went off.  Cold air seemed to fill my lungs as the page of time neared the end of its fall. Jockeying for space, I mixed with other runners and surprised myself as a wisp of winter’s dragon breadth slipped from my lips. I reached forward ever so slightly touching the runner in front of me and, like a letter able to cross white the space for the first time, he turned and smiled.  Then, as the page of time fell to rest, a mix of letters broke loose, pouring onto the next page to fill the space between past and present; pouring onto the next page to fill the space between me and you. II

The subway was loud and DJ did not answer with words. Instead he began to bob his head, slowly at first, then at a quickened pace, moving in a deliberate, methodical, manner. Up down, up down, up down. He continued bobbing as he picked at the edge of his red seat with an index finger. Much like a squid’s curious tentacle might, he pushed forward with his probe, eventually curling his fingers under the plastic edge to plum the area beneath his seat.

“Jesus Christ, DJ. What are you doin’? It’s nasty under there. Nasty. Give me your hand.” I pulled his hand from the lip of the seat but, within a moment, he wriggled away. “Don’t stick your fingers down there again, DJ. OK?” He bobbed his head.

Gee looked up towards me waiting for her cue to stand up. I remained seated as she leaned towards me to speak over the din of the subway car, “I’m ready, dad!” We shared a smile.

“Don’t get up just yet, you two. We’ll stand after the train stops. OK? Here, hold my hand.” On each side I placed my hands out, palms up towards the ceiling. Respectively Gee and DJ deposited their miniature versions of my hands in my own. They were warm. DJ’s deposit felt funny. Looking down, I slowly opened my left hand and spied a blackish pink lump of chewing gum perched like a bubble at the end of his right index finger.

“What tha…?”

I recoiled then, recovering, grabbed his gum enhanced hand between my index finger and thumb, “DJ, what the heck? That’s just gross. Gross. Give me your frigg’n finger.”

He stopped bobbing and, in a not so fluid motion, jerked his newly capped finger away from my grasp. First feigning a desire to hold his hand against his chest he lunged forward forcing me to reach out and stop him from falling off his subway seat. He then thrust the dirty blob across my chest towards Gee. He was going for her long brown hair which, unaware of the incoming attack, swayed peacefully in time with the rocking motion of our subway car.

Like DJ, Gee was quick. She lurched away, bumping the arm of the rider next to her. She squealed, “Ewe! You’re disgusting. That’s someone’s gum, stupid! Get it away from me. Daddy, get it away!”

I grabbed for DJ’s hand and, in the process dislodged the wad of blackened gum. Masked by the sound of the train, it silently plopped to the floor, falling like a little turd to the smooth surface in front of us. I still had a couple of seconds before we arrived in Harvard and, as the train began to slow, I zipped open the front pouch of the well-worn (and well stocked) backpack resting between my feet. I grabbed a wipe and, taking hold of DJ’s hand, thoroughly rubbed the remnants of the gum from the tip of his finger. There was a pinkish piece stuck under his nail as well. I scraped it out with my wipe-wrapped finger.

“DJ, that’s just gross. Gross. How many times have I asked you not to poke around under the seats, huh? There’s tons of germs under there. And that gum is dirty. It was is someone’s mouth, you know, and it could make you sick; really sick.”

I looked from DJ to the wad on the floor. The gum had been recently chewed as it was still gooey. It took root to keep from rolling as the train continued to slow.

DJ shrugged, “But daddy, I didn’t know it was there until I pulled it out and it was stuck to me. It stuck to my finger.” He held his index finger up and stared; as if amazed his finger had survived such an attack. I shook my head side to side and smirked before grabbing his hand and giving his finger one more wipe, “No more, deal?”

“Deal.” He underscored his agreement with renewed head bobbing. Up down, up down, up down.

As we entered the station I used the dirty wipe to scoop up the gum from its restful spot on the floor. I jammed the newest member of our team into the mesh pouch hanging from the side of the backpack. It joined other bits of dirty napkins and travel trash from earlier this morning.

“And when the train stops we’ll hop off, OK? Oh, and who remembers the name of this stop; the stop where we’re getting off?”

DJ continued bobbing away like a slow motion bobble head. I rubbed the top of his head as the woman in running shorts and Nike tee shirt seated across from us smiled at the older sister younger brother scene. Apparently she’d enjoyed a front row seat to our show. Her light brown hair was pulled into a pony tail, tucked through the back of a Red Sox cap. Her hair was long. She had a radio or cassette player Velcroed to her left arm with headphones pumping rap music into her personal bubble. Our show must have appeared as a silent movie with, what sounds like, Lil’ Kim as the soundtrack. Though no one asked, I would have gone with Sargent Pepper’s.

As the kids stared out the windows of the decelerating train I stole an additional glance at our audience of one. She was looking to the left, towards the nearest car door. Her forehead was moist with specs of sweat sprinkled just above long thin eyebrows. A Harvard athlete, I wondered. Her cheeks and neck were flushed red and blotchy from, I assume, a long run; a run which had deposited her at the end of the subway line in time for a front row seat at the Gee and DJ locomotion show. She breathed deliberately. Every couple of breaths she sat straight and inhaled deeply. She had pushed it. I’m guessing she’s probably closer to Gee’s age than mine. She shifted a Gatorade bottle from one hand to the other and placed it on her bare right knee. Her left knee sported a slim vertical scar. I imagined the coolness of the bottle’s bottom must have felt good against her sweaty skin. I turned to face Gee, “Well, Gee, what stop?”

“Harvard? Is it Harvard, daddy?”

“Correctamundo, Gee. High five.” She slapped my right hand as DJ kept up the bobble head routine. “And look, DJ agrees with you!” He ignored us as Gee and I shared another smile.

“DJ, high five. High five.” Spying a ready target he stopped moving his head and wound up, cracking first my hand and then a smirk before yelling for all to hear, “High five!” We laughed as the Red Line came to a stop at Harvard. I shook my afflicted hand in mock pain, scooped up the backpack and tossed it on my shoulder. We stood and as I tried to grab hold of my children’s hands, DJ muscled over to my right side, switching places with Gee. Gee obliged the move and, once in their new positions, they took my hands.

“Ok, here we go.” As the car doors slid open the runner gave Gee a little index finger wave and a wink. Gee returned the gesture with a shy little waive of her own. Witnessing this exchange, DJ stopped and then tugged at my hand, stepping towards Gee’s coconspirator. Still holding onto me he leaned towards the runner to hold up his right hand, inviting her to smack it, “High five.” She hesitated, perhaps recalling the chewed gum’s role in the recently concluded locomotion show. Then slipping into a nearly contained smile she gave him a little high five. He beamed at her before turning his attention to me, “She gave me one, on the hand.”

The runner and I exchanged our own smiles before I scooted off the train with Gee and DJ.

“Hurry up. Let’s go!”

The doors closed immediately behind us. Our hands formed the links of a little three person chain as I tugged Gee and DJ away from the train and towards the center of the platform, “Whew, that was a close one, huh?”

As the train began sliding into the black tunnel with the runner Gee looked back towards the emerging blur of red, white and glass, “That lady was nice. She waived at me.”

“She gave me a high five,” DJ crowed. As we walked down the ramp he held his right hand in front of his face examining the invisible remnants of his most recent high five and perhaps, the memory of the chewed blob of gum.

“She was nice, wasn’t she? She waived at you Gee and she gave you a sweaty high five, DJ. Hey, DJ.” He craned his neck upwards as I continued, “Why don’t you share the lady’s high five with Gee? And give Gee a high five too. You know, if you do, then you’ll all be connected; starting with Gee’s waive, the lady’s high five to you and your high five to Gee, like a little circle. Go ahead. High five.”

DJ wasn’t interested. He pulled his hand back and protectively jammed it into his armpit. He scrunched his round face into a puckering frown and proceeded to squeeze his right hand between his left arm and body.

Tired of the little brother routine Gee barked, “You mean it all started with that gross gum stuck on his finger! He’s contaminated! With germs! And I don’t want to touch his gross finger. It’s disgusting. He’s disgusting!” Gee stuck out her tongue. DJ responded in kind.

I shrugged and sought to move forward, “Alright, alright. Come on kids, let’s keep moving.” We started walking away from the tracks. “You know, DJ, it’s OK to be nice and share a thing like that, like a high five. It doesn’t take anything away from you. And, ya know, sometimes you get a little something in return.”

He wasn’t buying it. The three of us walked the rest of the way down the ramp, through the turnstiles and up the escalators towards Harvard Square. We continued to hold hands, with one un-held hand securely tucked into an armpit. We made our way to the top of the last escalator as it deposited us under the Red Line’s grimy steel and glass exit. The noise of Harvard Square greeted us. Sunlight arced through the glass ceiling covering the end of the escalator and made its presence known by reflecting off tiny specs of dust swirling around us. We moved from under the glass ceiling and swirling specs to the warmth of Harvard Square’s red bricks.

“Feels good, huh?” I looked down just in time to catch Gee and DJ closing their eyes and tilting two softball sized faces skyward to catch the rays of the sun. As if frozen in time they stood still, smiling and drawing in the warmth. I obliged them as crowds continued to belch out from the subway exit flowing towards the Mass Ave. cross walk. Men, woman and children slid past like a school of salmon slipping around three well anchored rocks poking their tops through the surface of a newly swollen stream. Beginning at the curb the surge of people grew to engulf us, each member of the swell waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green. As the crowd flowed and then clogged around us Gee and DJ were jostled back into reality. Eyes open, they scanned their transient neighbors and then looked towards me.

“We’re waiting for the crosswalk light,” I volunteered, “When it turns green we’ll cross the street and go, first to my very favorite store, and then we’ll get a snack and go to the park, OK?”

“Will you read to us in the store?” DJ asked.

“Of course I will. I’d be happy to, DJ. And when we get there we’ll walk around and find the kids’ section and you can pick out a book for me to read to you. You guys have to pick it out together though. And remember, I can never find that doggone kids section. So I think I probably get lost unless you two help me when we get there. Will you help me find it so I don’t get all lost and all turned around in there?”

Gee rolled her eyes, “Daddy, we’ve been there like a hundred times. How can you even get lost anymore? We just have to go down the stairs and look around like we always do, then go to our book section or just ask someone. You’re silly, daddy. Really silly.”

Not to be outdone, DJ jumped in, “I’ll find it for you, daddy. I can help find books to read. I’ll show you. We have to go down the stairs.”

I pulled them together into a little squeeze, “Well you can both help me, OK?” The light turned and we crossed Mass Ave. continuing our walk of about 100 steps from the subway to the end of the block. As we made our way to the entrance of WordsWorth we were in agreement.

At the entrance to WordsWorth we were presented with two sets of stairs; one up, one down. “Gee, you pick.” Without hesitation she led us down and into the first floor of my favorite store. We made our way past a homeless man sleeping in the corner of the platform at the bottom of the stairs. Withdrawing his right hand from his left armpit, DJ held his nose, “It smells.”

Holding my gum-free index finger to my lips I whispered, “Hey let’s be quiet here, OK?” I nodded to the homeless man curled in a swirl on his piece of cardboard. At one point in his life he had been a child greeted by the arc of sunlight. It smelled a bit of urine and, though summer was everywhere, the store’s homeless sentinel wore a winter coat. His hooded head was tucked safely into a corner as far away from danger as possible. “He needs to sleep and, inside, people need quiet to read.” DJ nodded as Gee quietly pulled open the first of two doors. Before crossing the divide their glances both returned to the homeless man.

“I feel sad for him.”

“Me too.”

We stepped through the doors to find the store crowded with young and old alike. We were greeted with a different type of warmth. The aisles were jammed with readers, some sitting, some standing; most holding books cracked open in a personal hunt for new words and thoughts. The smell of the newly cracked bindings mixed with the scent of summer sweat and perfume, enveloping us. It reminded me of studying with a pretty girl on a Sunday morning at the school library; a mixture of curiosity, desire and expectations; of expectations only recently coming into view. I breathed deep, replacing the lingering smell of urine with the scent of a small piece of heaven.

“OK you two, now where the heck is the kids section? Could it be … over there?” I asked, pointing towards the first floor travel section.

“Yes!” yelled DJ. He released my hand and bolted forward, running away from the last known location of the kid’s section towards the travel section. He took a sharp left into the first aisle. Gee and I waited a moment to see if he would return. He did not.

The kid’s section was upstairs but Gee shrugged and followed after DJ, turning the corner to find him readying himself to sit on the floor with a photo book featuring Barbados, by coincidence, the country in which he had celebrated his first birthday. As DJ assumed a place on the floor Gee plopped down next him. Cracking open the book they took turns flipping the pages and commenting on the images.

That was easy.

“Hey, you two. Do you want to come with me to the front desk so I can ask for a book or do you want to stay here?”

Gee looked at DJ and then at me, answering for the two of them, “Stay here, daddy. Stay here.”

“OK, fine, but you can’t leave this aisle, deal?” They nodded. “Please be careful. And be gentle, with that book, OK? And move back towards the wall so no one trips over you. I don’t want you to get hurt.” They scooted back and continued flipping through the world of Barbados.

As a parent perhaps I should have been concerned about potential kidnappers or perverts in Harvard Square but, here in WordsWorth, I found no reason to be worried. In this place I felt comfortable balancing Gee and DJ’s independence with close monitoring as I feared the risk of dependence and over parenting as much as any other risk. Here in WordsWorth the worst that might happen is a Harvard student might try to persuade my children to become Democrats or, perhaps, consider Green Peace as a future career path. I wasn’t worried. If they became Democrats, well, that was their choice. I’d still love them. Nonetheless, I kept stealing glances in their direction as I made my way to the customer service desk next to the cashiers.

Arriving at the customer service desk I assumed a position in the short line. It moved quickly and, after a brief wait, I was greeted by a pretty lady, a few years younger than my 40+ years. Her reddish hair was pulled back in a bun to show delicate ears filled with multiple piercings. She sported dark rimmed rectangular librarian type glasses allowing her green eyes to better survey the bookstore landscape. The glasses worked well for her. Her lips were full and accented with glossy lipstick. She stood on a lift so her head was above mine aligning my eyes with her neck. She wore a white blouse with short sleeves and a high collar, unbuttoned enough to allow me to see a remnant trail of sweat between her small breasts. Through her white blouse I could see she wore a sheer bra, presenting the actual shape of her breasts as opposed to the Wonder Bra shape. The real shape – no matter the size – is always more beautiful than the lift and separate version.

She gave me an efficient customer service smile, “What may I help you with today, sir?”

Before answering, I stole a glance over my shoulder to confirm Gee and DJ had not been kidnapped by Democrats. I turned back towards the pretty lady and returned her smile with a little shrug. “Hi, I’m a looking for a book. It’s called ‘The Only Guide to a Winning Investment Strategy You’ll Ever Need’ and I’m, ah, hoping you can tell me where it is. Thank you.”

She was very businesslike, quickly typing the name of the book into her computer. As she did so she looked over my shoulder towards Gee and DJ asking, “Yours?”

“Yup, girl eight, boy four. They’re keepers. Yeah, I think I’ll renew their contracts.” I turned to look at my children.

“Cute.” She responded with a smirk. “Do you know the author’s name?”

I shrugged, “Excuse me, ah, no. Sorry, I don’t.”

“I have two myself. Two girls. A bit younger than yours. They’re with my mom now; on days when I work… Oh, OK, here it is. ‘The Only Guide To a Winning Investment Strategy You’ll Ever Need: Index Funds and Beyond–The Way Smart Money Creates Wealth Today’ by Larry Swedroe. It’s in the business and finance section. It’s a frequently requested title.” She looked up, “Are you a student at HBS or something?”

“Me? No. Though I graduated from Sloan a while ago, so I kinda like finance.” I shrugged, “That was a pretty long time ago though so, ah, thanks for making me think for a moment I can still pass for a student.”

She smirked her half smile. She gave smirks. I gave shrugs. Without thought an exchange rate had developed; one smirk for one shrug.

I continued, “And, I guess I’m a pretty good saver. I’ve been doing the index fund thing for years now.” She smirked the second half of her smile inviting me to continue, “And, well a friend and me, we ah, we just sold our little company so I’ll be able to save some more going forward. And I, ah, did some digging and this is one of the best investment books around; this and ‘The Intelligent Investor’ by Benjamin Graham.”

Without thinking, she typed The Intelligent Investor into her computer.

“We have ‘The Intelligent Investor’ by Benjamin Graham as well. Same section; business and finance.”

“Oh, no thanks. I have the Graham book already so I’m all set with that one.”

“I see,” She looked over my shoulders and then turned her attention my way, for the first time taking a measure of me with her green eyes and librarian glasses. What did she see I wondered? I wore a Lillehammer Olympics tee-shirt, tan cargo shorts, brown metal glasses and simple white sneakers. A light brown backpack with a little green snake embroidered on the side was draped over my left shoulder. My short hair had not been combed since Gee was born so it stuck out at various angles. When it grew long I looked like Don King. Now, though, it was short. I was fit and tanned from our recent trip to the Caribbean. Probably not much to look at but I suspect I looked happy. I was. As she eyed me I tried a smirk. She already had smirks; she wasn’t buying.

She nodded thoughtfully, “Ok, well, you know what? Why don’t I go grab the book for you so you can keep an eye on your kids, OK?”

“Ah, wow, yeah, that would be great. Just great. So, yes, thank you very much.”

“Please wait here. I’ll ring you up when I return.”

She left as the gentleman behind me sighed. I turned and watched DJ pull a second book from the shelf. Gee was on the floor engrossed in the Barbados book. She was old enough to remember Barbados.

Green eyes returned, handing me the book. “Is this it?”

Her fingers lingered as she handed me the only guide to a winning investment strategy I would ever need. Her fingers were tan and strong looking, tipped with a French manicure. I flipped over the book and nodded, “Yup, you got it. Thank you. And I like your nails.”

She smirked before going into transaction mode, activating the register next to her station, “Step over here please and I’ll ring you up. Cash or credit?”

“Oh, cash please. I’m not really into credit cards, ya know?”

Her actions came to a stop and she rested her French manicured fingers on the counter top in front of the register. Standing on the lift she was still taller than me. She leaned forward just a bit as a Cheshire cat smile formed across her face. She smelled of strawberry; and of expectations. A faint latticework of very attractive tan lines appeared along the corners of her eyes. She appeared prettier than when I first saw her. She peeked over her glasses as if looking over a divide, “Hmm… so let me get this straight. Sloan, sold your company, investment books and now no credit card. Well, you don’t look the part but I guess it’s safe to say you must be kinda rich or something, huh?”

In one motion I tilted my face to the left, leading with my chin to point over my shoulder towards Gee and DJ before turning back to green eyes. I gave her another shrug, “Well, I have those two; and they’re healthy and happy and I love them and, when they’re in school I know their spelling words, so, yeah, I guess you could say I’m pretty rich.”

“No I meant…” She stopped midsentence and looked away; at something outside the store.

A longer than usual moment passed between us before she returned her gaze to me.

Starting with a smirk, she broke into a full smile, the first of our exchange, “Well then, I guess I’m pretty rich too.” She became even prettier.

I gave her my last shrug, “I guess you are.”

“Dad, you’re so boring. So boring. You need wine for a toast! You know; wine! Come on, a toast! To us!”

I grabbed my Coke with ice, raising it from the table to clink away in our circle of glasses; one wine, one Coke and two pineapple drinks. We drank.

Liz beamed, “To another vacation together.”

Vacations are sacred to Liz. Slivers of heaven placed upon a pedestal, they span a distance measured in hours away from home. Because she spent so much time away, first in medical school, then as a resident and now as a physician, she focuses mightily on crafting perfect vacations. They are her release, her escape.

Periodically pressure from work builds up inside Liz, like a Champagne bottle, nearing an explosive state. With a bottle of Champagne the cork might be popped to release pressure. With Liz a vacation is required to release this internal accumulation. As a result of this cycle of work, pressure, release our children have been to more countries and on more flights than I had in my first 40 years. Until age 16, when I boarded a Delta flight from Newark en route to a three day hockey tournament in Atlanta with a lid jammed down the front of my Sasson jeans, I had never been on a plane.

Our current vacation, like many of our vacation ideas, was born from the stress associated with a buildup of Liz’s internal pressure. I stood by and watched that pressure squeeze my Liz against the inside of a bottle formed in the shape of her skull. I waited for the explosion.

“I need to get away, Beasley. To decompress. You don’t understand, I just need to go somewhere and relax.”

“Ah, yeah, Liz I do understand. Every six months or so you get so wound up you explode. And, you know, you put this pressure on yourself by choosing to work long hours. And now you want to cram a vacation into your week off. How ‘bout just resting at home and letting your mind decompress? We go away all the time. Relax. Do nothing for a change.”

She folded her arms and simmered, “I need to get away.”

I pushed back, “Wait, I know, how ‘bout this? How about we not think that maybe I have client meetings scheduled for that week, the week you have off. And, hey, let’s assume I’ll pay for it, right? How’s that? Fair? There ya go. We’re all set. Now let’s go on a vacation.”

I had positioned myself on the wrong side of the cork.

“God damn it, Beasley, what’s your problem. My god, we’ll split the stupid costs so don’t be such a jerk, alright? Why? Why are you such a jerk about this stuff, huh? This is about me being under pressure you can’t imagine and me needing a vacation. You just don’t get it, do you?”

“No, Liz, I guess my simple god damn life of getting the kids up and ready for school and pushing my company forward and making sure I come up with a honking payroll every month and making sure we satisfy all our clients is just me jerking off, right? Right?”

As if in a stream my momentum carried me, “Ya know, Liz, all that pressure? Well, it comes from inside your head, not outside. You create the need for this vacation thing. And, ya know what? You shouldn’t need a vacation to escape your life. That’s what you don’t get, Liz. I mean, come on, Liz, from what I see, it’s not work, it’s you.”

She stared straight through me. “You don’t get it, Liz. You don’t. Is this gonna continue for the rest of your life?”

“Beasley, you’re the one that doesn’t get it. You have no idea. No idea what I face every day. I give up. I give up pushing against you. Just tell me, are we going or not? I have to book a flight.”

She was right on that count. I didn’t know what it was like to tell someone they had ovarian cancer or that their pregnancy was at risk or, after 20 years of faithful marriage they had been exposed to a SDD, the only source of which they would come to realize was a cheating husband. Pressure was something we handled differently. I used to tip a few, or maybe a few dozen, to relieve pressure. Now, I just got belligerent and pushed against those around me. Liz, well, she builds up pressure until she explodes. And now she was exploding.

I tired of pushing. Why was I on this side of the cork, anyway? It wasn’t worth the fight so I shrugged and stepped away. As escapes go, vacations are not a bad alternative. It could be worse. She could be a shopaholic or an alcoholic. And if history was any guide, I’ll end up enjoying the vacation anyway. So why continue? This was a pattern I was not going to change.

“Fine, Liz, fine. Oh, and I truly don’t give a crap where we go, Liz. You pick. I’ll be just as happy here in our house as anywhere. So pick a place and we’ll go.”

And so we went. And here we were.

That round behind us, our four glasses knocked against each other once more over the table. Liz’s wine spilled on the white linen, spreading like a Caribbean sunrise. Save for my fleeting glance we paid the blossoming red stain no mind.

Looking over her pineapple concoction, our teen daughter, Gee, probed for a vacation treat, “Hey, mom, can I try your wine? Please?”

She waited an instant before landing a well-timed follow-up, “What’s it like? It’s so red. Is it any good?”

“Sure, Gee. It’s a Bordeaux from France. And, Oh. My. God. It’s delicious. It’s utterly wonderful.”

Liz pulled her shoulders up, towards her ears in a smile plucked from early childhood, “So, so good. I love it. I just love it.” She was in heaven.

Before Liz passed the glass to Gee she explained how to proceed, “Smell it first, then sip it. It’s a Left Bank wine. This one’s an older one. You enjoy the smell first and then turn your attention to the sensation of the wine as you taste it. It’s heavenly, Gee.”

Liz swirled her glass and took a small sip.

I had no idea what she was talking about except I knew ‘older’ sounded more expensive.

Liz leaned towards Gee, “These wines are really concentrated. They’re stored in a wine cellar for years before serving. The tannins give it an, I guess you’d say, an almost bitter taste. It’s so strong. So good. Here, Gee. Here you go. Try it.” She passed the glass to Gee.

I watched as Liz’s sure fingers unwound from the stem of the glass and Gee’s delicate digits methodically filled the vacancies left by each of Liz’s fingers. A silent symphony of movement unfolded before me. As if an experienced spider gracefully retreated from a position of poise at the edge of her silky domain she allowed her baby a turn minding the web. Liz’s fingers slipped back one after the other as Gee’s took their place in a movement of elegance lasting but a moment.

Gee sipped the wine and puckered her lips into a screwed contortion. She squeezed her eyes shut, “Ugh, too, too… I don’t know what it is… Too tart or something. Too tart! How can you like this stuff? How can you even drink it?” She shuddered.

Gee’s arm lurched towards Liz as she sought to place as much distance as possible between the glass and her lips. A single drop fell from the glass held at the tip of Gee’s extended arm, adding an offspring to our tablecloth’s red sunrise. The young dot grew, seemingly trying to catch up with the existing red splash. Liz smiled as she retrieved her wine.

“It’s an acquired taste, Gee.” As she spoke she placed her free hand on the table, sliding forward to tug at one of Gee’s spider-leg pinkies, “This one, well this wine is considered more of a masculine wine. So, I guess it kinda makes sense that…”

Before Liz could finish, DJ jumped in, “Let me try, mom. It sounds pretty good. I’ll just take a sip or something. Ya know, like, just a sip, OK? ”

Liz looked up at me then held the glass out to DJ.

I smiled, “DJ, you can try it, but remember buddy, you’ve gotta be careful when you drink. I’m tell’n you, you’ve got our family’s addictive personality gene and…”

He grabbed for the glass, looking more like a lurching dragonfly trying to plow its way through a web than an elegant young spider sliding into a position of grace, “I know dad, I know. I have to watch out with alcohol so I don’t become an alcoholic or something. You already told me that. Like a million times.”

He reached for the wine but Liz pulled back her glass, keeping an even distance between her drink and our 12 year old’s grasping hand. It was as if a taut string existed between his grabbing fingers and the wine. The distance remained constant and the dragonfly was forced to adjust his path as the savvy spider kept her silky string tight. He wobbled as he tried mightily to balance himself on that invisible string connecting childhood with adulthood.

“Listen to your dad, DJ. My dad was an alcoholic and, well, he died because of it. And your dad’s grandparents were too. Both of Grandpa Dick’s parents struggled with alcohol. This is serious business, DJ. Can you handle being grown-up about this?”

He nodded assent.

“And, well, if you wanna learn to drink responsibly you have to understand that it’s up to you to be careful about drinking, all right? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’

He folded his arms in the space between his plate and the edge of the table, exposing his milk-white skin. While Liz and Gee looked like light chocolate natives after just a few days in the sun, DJ took after me. His whiter than white skin blended in with the tablecloth. Matching the two red stains on the linen, two swatches of sunburn, one big and one small, marked his forearms, spots we apparently missed when applying sunblock.

“I know mom, I know. I’m not stupid, ya know. I get it. Now, can I have some? Please?”

I jumped back in, “DJ, it’s not about being stupid. Come on now. You know what I’m gonna say. We’re a family of patterns, of cycles that we have to watch. My father never had a drink in his whole life and you know why? Because his mom and dad were such drunks. When I was a kid, younger than you, I used to go to their apartment in the Bronx and they never even smiled. They just sat there in their stiff backed chairs and drank themselves into an angry stupor. Ya know, my dad told me when he was a kid his mom and dad got so drunk they wouldn’t even remember if they fed him.”

I pointed to my Coke, “See this? I drink this to keep my distance. ‘Cause I have the same gene as my grandparents.” I stretched my Casper the Friendly Ghost forearm across the table and placed it next to his still folded arms. Our three white limbs lined up like a row of fallen candle pins. I nodded at our milky arms, “And look at this; don’t think you don’t have the same genes as me, my little buddy. The same as me. And the same genes as my grandparents. And ya know, with this gene, I fall into patterns and, well, can get addicted to stuff in a snap.”

I snapped my fingers close to his ear before he could swat my hand away.

“And,” I said pointing first to DJ and then Gee, “it’s in you too. It’s in both of you; you DJ and you, Gee.”

I reached back across our little table, trying to tussle DJ’s hair. He was too quick this time and pulled back, putting his arm up perpendicular to the table in a defensive move.

“Ya know the thing inside you that makes you want to never stop playing video games, or seems to force you to eat a whole box of crackers in one sitting, or makes you crave bread and salsa or even helps you concentrate on karate so much that you get your black belt before you’re 10, well that’s the gene. It’s mixed in with a gene that makes you more likely to get addicted to alcohol. And, believe me, you do not want that, buddy. You do not want that.”

Gee, the facilitator, waded into our conversation, looking first at DJ, then me, “It’s true, DJ. But we can handle it, dad. We can.”

Oblivious to Gee’s parry, DJ stared straight through me, with a ‘WTF, is it lecture time?’ look on his face.

“Ya know, when I was a teenager and then in my first year of college, I drank every day. Every day. And when you’re drunk you can miss an awful lot. You can miss life. And life is not something that you want to miss.”

Looking for a precedent to pull out at a later date, Gee probed, “How old were you, dad? You know, when you, when you started drinking?”

“Nice try kiddo. I’m tell’n you Gee, you’re gonna be a psychiatrist or a gold shield detective or, who knows, maybe an investment banker or some artist that touches peoples souls when you get older. You always know where to probe; how to focus on a point of interest. You’re good. You’re good.”

“Let’s just say I was older than you. And I drank just about every day for, like, three years. And even after I went back to college and cut back to just drinking on the weekends I still got drunk when I went out with my buddies; for probably 10 years or so.” I looked over Gee’s shoulder, out the window at the slipping sun, “That was a long time ago. A lifetime ago.”

I looked from Gee to DJ and back to Gee, “Neither of you want that.”

“Why’d you stop, dad? Why’d you stop drinking? And, if you drank so much, well then how come, how come I never saw you drunk, huh?”

DJ jumped in, “Yeah, dad, I’ve never even seen you get ‘tipsy’, you know like mom does on vacation?”

Liz feigned indignation, before dramatically placing her hands on her hips, “Hey, now, wait a minute here! Two drinks is my limit! And I work hard for my wine! So there!”

We laughed before Gee continued, “How come dad? How come you don’t drink anymore?”

Liz rested her glass on the table. Her hair was pulled back tight in a ponytail accenting her features. She was dark and her big eyes rested on podium-like cheek bones. They twinkled as she watched me, perhaps thinking of a similar conversation she may or may not have had with her hard drinking dad some 30 to 35 years ago. My eyes moved from her eyes to her lips. I thought that I wanted to kiss her.

Then I thought of the last time I was drunk. Gee was almost 16 now so it had to be, well, I guess 15 years ago. Liz was still in medical school then and I had just been promoted to Director within the group at GE, a level far above my capabilities; a level offering two or three years of unrelenting professional pain and pressure requiring periodic release. This weekend, like so many weekends, Liz had to leave on a Sunday morning to meet lab partners at the BU library. She had to be there by 8AM and would return to us in 12 hours.

DJ had yet to be born. In those days it was me and Gee spending entire weekends together while Liz was off studying. Usually, I liked those days. We went to the park up the block from Davis Square, visited art galleries and museums, walked the bike path, grabbed a snack for Gee and coffee for me at Au Bon Bain and, when we returned home, Gee napped. We’d cap the day with a Disney movie on the VCR or I’d swing Gee around in my arms as we danced to the B-52s or Art of Noise in our little apartment’s even littler living room. We had fun on those days. As we couldn’t afford to go anywhere those days were our mini-vacations.

Last evening though, while Liz stayed home studying, I escaped with Tony to celebrate my most recent results at work. After a string of losses, my office had finally made forecast for the first time in months. Last night I celebrated, not my victory but, my lack of defeat. And so it was that this morning Liz had to shake me in an attempt to raise me from my stupor. First gently, then harder to confirm I was alive and ready to spend the day with Gee, “Hey, Bease. Hey. I’m heading to the library now. I have to be there by eight, alright? I have to go. Gee’s awake. I gave her a bottle already.”

I withdrew my hands from under the pillow and groped at the air around me, trying to push back the increasing weight on my pounding head. Slowly an invisible ribbon twisted around my head squeezing any remaining liquid from my skull. The pressure too great, my head caved in as I tried to speak, only to muster an open mouthed cough. I smelled smoke as I pulled a long brown hair from my mouth. Liz was speaking but as if from a time far away.

“Man, you stink. You smell like the Cantab. I guess you had a rough night with Tony, huh? How much did you drink?”

I covered my eyes. “It was. We ah, we did kamikazes. I ah, I ah, I stopped counting when we hit double digits. Oh, man, my head is frigg’n crushed. Crushed. What time is it? What’s Gee doing?” I leaned over the side of the bed and let some drool slip from my mouth onto the blanket. Liz watched in disgust. I tried to touch the floor but couldn’t reach. “Where’s Gee?”

“It’s just after seven and listen kamikaze man, I’m taking the car, OK? Gee’s still in her crib. Don’t let her stay there too long, alright. Come on. Get up. Get moving, OK?”

Liz not so thoughtfully increased the volume on the baby monitor and placed it by my ear, allowing me to better hear little Gee jabber away at her favorite stuffed bear named, for whatever reason, Pooconkee. I had no idea what she was saying. Gibberish poured from both Liz and Gee as their words just seemed to float above my head like a swarm of bees before melding into a single sharp stinger, a stinger which proceeded to pierce my forehead and deposit molten metal into my broken skull cavity. A wave of pain passed through me like a convulsion. I was gonna puke.

Like a beaten boxer struggling to rise from the mat, I staggered from the bed towards the bathroom. Liz politely stepped aside and I nearly made it to the toilet before a tsunami of dry heaves hit me. I fell to the yellowed linoleum floor, heaving bile and spittle into the toilet. My head throbbed with each dry heave. I placed my arms across the toilet seat and rested my head there.

Liz followed me to the bathroom. It was dark. “Nice one, Bease. Nice. Ya know this is not good for you, this drinking. Not good. Stuff like this ends in tears.” I remained still, resting on the toilet.

“Here. When you’re finished puking take three Motrin and sip down this glass of water. I gotta go. The water will help you.” Liz’s next eight footsteps fell like sandbags on my head as she made her way to the door. The anvil dropped as she slammed the heavy wooden door before heading out.

“Oh my fucking god,” I wailed, “My head. My fucking head.”

I sipped at the water gingerly, hoping to keep a mouthful down.

The phone rang, “What the fuck?” Like Frankenstein I lurched forward with both arms stretched out, grasping to shut that goddamn ringing.

It hurt when I walked.

“Hell, hell, hello?”

“Bease, it’s me, Tony. Dude, I am messed up. Are you hungover, too? I’m a wreck, man. A fuck’n wreck. Hey, listen, is my car at your house or somethin’? Please say yes.”

“Hold on.” I let go of the phone and it fell to the floor, adding to the pain inside my head. I went to the front door and pulled back the old yellow curtain. Oh, god! Pain. Brightness. Pain. I let the curtain fall back to its dormant position; the painless position.

It hurt when I used my eyes.

Gee started to yell, “Dad-dee! Dad-dee! DAD-Dee!”

I squinted and pulled the curtain back just enough to see outside. Yup, there was Tony’s red Acura. Seemed undamaged.

I returned to the phone and, finding it on the floor, slowly bent down before falling to my knees. I placed both palms on the floor to steady myself. The worn wooden floor was cool to the touch. I picked up the phone.

“Yeah, dude. Your car’s outside. It’s fine. Don’t you remember? We took a cab from the Cantab to here and then you took it home.”

“No, I don’t remember leaving. I do remember someone trying to take my shirt off. So, we didn’t drive, huh?”

“No numb nuts, we’re too grown up for that shit. Your car’s fine. Listen, I gotta get going with Gee. And assuming I don’t fuck’n die here I’ll be at Paulina park by, what the hell time is it, shit, by nine. Maybe I’ll see ya there? Man, I thought drinking was supposed to wash away my pain?”

“Well, you weren’t feel’n any pain last night, I’ll tell you that. Wait, what’d you ask? Oh yeah, I’m too fucked up to go out, Bease. I’ll try to make it but, man, I doubt it. I’m going back to bed, Bease. Watch my car for me, alright? Thanks, man. I, I gotta go puke.”

Click.

I returned to the bathroom, found the glass of water Liz had prepared and raised it to my lips. Softly I sipped. I looked into the mirror. My eyes were blood red and my hair looked like Don King’s. I watched as my reflection ran a finger over my cracked lips.

It hurt when I used my hands.

I took another sip, monitoring my progress in the mirror as I did so. Water slipped from the side of my mouth. A single drop made its way down my neck and fell to my white t-shirt, upon impact spreading in the shape of a darker than expected sunset. Weird. Hey, my t-shirt was torn. How the hell did that happen?

The first sips of water stayed down. So far so good. My head pounded as I wrestled with the hungover-person-proof Motrin bottle. After popping the top I grabbed three orange pills, plucking them out one at a time. I let them roll around in my hand for a moment before dropping them into my cotton mouth. Then, ever so slowly, I filled the front of my mouth with water. Like a pelican holding three precious fish I tilted my head back and swallowed. I was dizzy and grabbed the sink with both hands, hoping to avoid a second tsunami of dry heaves.

“Dad-dee! Dad-dee!”

The Motrin stayed down, though my head continued to pound. I took a last look in the mirror and sighed. My reflection stuck his tongue out at me as I turned to make my way to Gee’s room.

She beamed when I entered. She was standing in her crib. First she jumped up and down, then she rocked back and forth as she squeezed the crib railing. She stopped and thrust both arms out towards me in what could have been a pretty good imitation of my earlier Frankenstein walk, “Up! Up!”

“Hello, Ms. Early Bird. How are you today?”

It hurt when I talked.

“Up!”

“Gee I’m a bit groggy this morning so we’ll take it a little slow before we head out this morning, OK.”

Before I could take my baby steps across the room to scoop her up, she turned back towards her pillow and bent down to pick up Pooconkee the bear. With Pooconkee in hand she returned to the rail.

“Up!”

Gently, I bent over and scooped her in my arms. I squeezed her against my chest. She smelled like Johnson’s baby shampoo. I smelled like a bar.

And, great, her diaper was full. I could probably survive a pee but if I had to change a poop I was a dead man. I’d probably puke all over the place; right in front of Gee.

Shifting her to my right arm, I grabbed the changing mat, a couple of diapers and the wipes before retreating to the living room. I set up on the couch so I could kneel on the cool hardwood floor while I changed her.

Pee, wonderful pee. Thank you, universe.

My head continued to pound as Gee lay on her back on the changing mat. Old fashioned egg beaters slipped through each ear and made short work of my remaining brain. I held my breath and, in turn, made short work of the diaper. Gee twisted Pooconkee back and forth above her head. While I changed Gee, I noticed my left hand was cut across the knuckles. How the hell did that happen?

Still kneeling, I tossed the diaper towards the Diaper-Genie, not bothering to stuff it into the plastic temple of dirty diapers. Mission accomplished I slowly placed Gee on the floor with Pooconkee. With bear in tow she crawled towards the throw rug and, once there, began a cycle of hugging, then extending Pooconkee to arm’s length, examining the bear then repeating. She was happy.

I was a mess.

After a couple of Pooconkee cycles of hug, extend, examine, I determined she wasn’t going to make a move for the diaper lying on the floor next to the Diaper-Genie. I rolled backwards from my kneeling position, resting my butt on my heels before sliding to my side and dropping to the floor. As elegant as a sack of potatoes. My head continued to throb. I realized my right knee hurt too.

It hurt when I lied down.

I pressed my face against the cool wooden floor, the chill dampening some of the pounding inside my head. I lie there like a beached whale; like a big white whale waiting for Greenpeace to rescue me with a dose of water and Motrin big enough for a whale. I lie there thinking of how I could probably survive if I didn’t move for, oh, say an hour or so. I lie there still.

After less than a minute of hug, extend, examine, Gee grew tired of Pooconkee and cast her gaze towards me.

I flogged a hand at her in a halfhearted wave. With one eye smushed against the cool floor I watched helplessly as she dropped the bear and crawled towards me. She was fast and made her way across the floor to take up a position within a foot of the beached whale.

“Up! Up, daddy. Up!” I smiled a crooked smile, “Just a few more minutes, Gee. Let’s play rest and just rest for a few more minutes, OK wonderful?”

She crawled the remaining distance, placed both hands on my head and began to yank my hair. Rhythmically she repeated a cycle; hold, yank, hold yank, hold yank. Her little fingers became entangled in the web of my Don King-like hair. She continued and I was helpless to protest.

It hurt when my hair was pulled.

Placing one hand on those tiny yanking hands of Gee’s I gently pulled her spider-like fingers from my hair, “That’s enough of that Gee. That’s enough.”

I rolled over to see her looking down at me with Liz’s eyes. We stared at each other for an indeterminate length of time. However long it was, though, it was long enough.

I held Gee’s little hand, “Remember this moment, Gee. Remember it ‘cause this is the last time you’ll ever see anything like this; the last time.”

Liz cleared her throat, “Bease, Gee asked you a question.”

“Ah, Earth to dad, over. Are you still with us, dad? Over.”

At the sound of Gee’s teenage voice, I returned to the table.

“You didn’t answer me, dad. So, why? Why’d you stop? Why’d you stop drinking?”

I reached across the table and took her spider leg fingers, “Because of you, Gee. Because of you.”

I put the little sheet of paper down on my well-worn Crate & Barrel desktop. The letter was type written with a raised logo across the masthead and now featured some newly formed bumps scattered across the bottom of the page. I flattened it out on the desk, gently smoothing it with the palms of my hands.

I sat still and reread it. This time more slowly as I searched for, and discovered, the unwritten words and emotions squeezed between typed words. I got the feeling this was not the sort of thing he wrote quickly. He had crafted these words with care and tied his note to the shaft of time’s arrow; the sharp end of which was dipped in the open heart of a man standing on the doorstep of winter. A man eager to take aim with his words, he pulled back and released an arrow laden with unvarnished thoughts, arcing it across time. It hit its mark, passing through me and landing on my desk. I wiped my eyes.

I finished, lingering with a finger on his proud signature. From my seat at the desk I craned my neck upwards and stared at the clock as it drummed away seconds in slow motion.

DJ came into the room, “Hey. What’s up?”

I nodded.

“What’s a matter, dad? Everything OK?”

I pulled my sleeve across my eyes, “Yeah. Yeah, DJ. I’m fine. I just got, I got a pretty nice letter from a friend of my dad’s. You, you remember when we went the World Series game against Colorado and…”

He jumped in, rattling off a staccato response, “Oh man, do I! Of course I remember. We crushed them! Crushed them! 13 to one, man. 13 to one! And, remember how Pedroia led off with a homer over the Green Monster? Boom! Game over. And then, and then, remember even before the game, when the jets flew over us in the bleachers. You could see the blue flames, man! It was like, you could feel them above us. And ‘Bleacher Guy’? Remember the guy who kept chanting at everything that happened around us. Whad’he call that guy next to us with the green visor? Oh yeah, how could I forget, Visor Guy!”

He started pumping his arms up and down, mimicking the words of our chanter, “’Visor Guy! Visor Guy! Visor Guy!’ He was crazy. And, who was, who was that pitching?”

He didn’t wait for my answer, “Oh yeah, Beckett. It was Beckett. And he struck out the side in the first. Man, that was so cool. So cool. How could I forget that, huh?”

Caught up in his excitement, I jumped in, “And the ‘K’ Men? Remember those guys holding up all the ‘K’s behind us; one for each Beckett strikeout? Now they were crazy. And I remember after Pedroia hit his homer you grabbed my arm and said, “This could be the best night of my life!” I think I probably remember every detail about that game but that’s the part I remember most.”

“Yeah, that was awesome, dad. Awesome.”

“And well, remember how I told you how I couldn’t help but get you and Gee the tickets for the Series, even though they were too expensive for us? Remember I told you about the guy that, gosh in 1973, gave me and my brother tickets to the Mets – A’s World Series when I was a kid?”

“Oh, yeah, your dad’s buddy. I remember. The guy you bought the hat for. How long did it take you to find that thing? You couldn’t decide, remember?”

“Yeah, I guess I wanted just the right one. Well, when I sent him the hat I wrote a letter too, thanking him for providing me with one of my most wonderful childhood memories and for planting the seed for the game we went to, which just so happened, turned out to be one of the best nights of my adult life, with you and Gee.”

He rolled his eyes, “Kinda corny, dad; kinda corny. Well, did he get it? Did he email you or write you back or something?”

“Yeah, he wrote me back and he, well, he told me some nice stuff about my dad I didn’t know about.”

I looked up at the clock. Had it stopped? “Didn’t know. And I, well, I’m kinda blow away by how he said it.”

“Whad’he say?”

“It’s in this little letter, here.” I smoothed my hands once more over the slip of paper, still trying to flatten out the little circles that had bubbled up when I read it the first time. “All packed into a half sheet of paper. You want to read it? It’s kinda personal.”

“Sure, dad. Wait, though. What’d you say to him? Can I see what you wrote? You know: what you said to him?”

“Yeah, wait, I typed it up in Word. Let me find it.”

I talked as I sat there searching through My Documents, “And just think. All I did was put pen to paper, so to speak, and write him a letter. And, and what do I get in return? Something from probably way deep inside him. It’s like, I just wrote this letter and in return he gave me something better than words; something I suspect was neatly folded up and tucked away long ago, just waiting for the chance to be launched across time. Ah-ha, yes! Here it is. Here you go, buddy. Go ahead and read it.”

November 18, 2007

Beasley Kinkade

I shrugged, “Not my best writing but, ya know, I just wanted to let him know how much he, well, how much his kindness from so long ago meant and, well, basically planted the seed for that awesome night we had at Fenway last month.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Did what hurt, DJ?”

“You know, the ah, the a letter. When I came in you were like sad or something. Like, what it said hurt you.”

“Come here.” I pulled him into a hug.

After first resisting DJ rested his head on my shoulder. One, two three seconds slowly clicked away on the clock above us as I held him close. By the clock’s fourth click he grew restless, fidgeted and pulled back.

I smiled and answered, “It didn’t hurt. In fact it felt pretty good. Kinda like the beginning of that hug. You know, before you got bored of me and pulled away like a little tough guy. Kinda like a warm feeling delivered from the past, traveling through time and, as if perfectly aimed, it landed right here in this room with us.”

He looked up at the clock now clicking away at normal speed, “When’s karate?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, “Do I have time for… hey, will you help me with something before karate?”

“Yeah, sure. We have plenty of time; like an hour or so before we have to head out. Why, what do you want to do?”

He cocked his left fist in front of his face, holding an imaginary bow. He took aim, tilting his head to the side and tried his best to close one eye. Settling on a target, he pulled back and released an invisible arrow, before breaking into a smile, “Write someone a letter.”

Protected by a hoodie and doing his best to pull away from his mother’s embrace, the preteen’s shoulders moved up and down in a silent drum beat. From this distance I couldn’t hear him. I could, however, see the rhythm of his movements; as if observing a scene from afar. As if watching stock video on the evening news accompanying a well groomed anchorman’s delivery of a story, a story of loss. I looked away from too private a moment and tried to take comfort in the routine the newscaster might enjoy.

Perhaps, before delivering the story, the newscaster looked towards the camera’s bright lights peering past lingering childhood insecurities in a search for assurance, “How’s my tie? Straight? Should I purse my lips at the end, at the end of my delivery? Do I look burdened?” Then arching his powdered neck towards his producer, as if seeking a father’s final approval, “What do you think?”

“You look fine,” the producer whispers into his clip-on mike.

In the distance words come into focus, “In five, four three, two, yes.”

Looking away from the producer’s blessing the anchor responds to the camera’s red torch and glides into performance. Drawing a wise breath, he droops just the right amount and delivers a perfectly packaged glimpse of sorrow.

I return my gaze to the boy; that poor boy. He was closer than a newscast; much closer. I watched from far away and, if possible, felt myself break a little more.

We had started the day at 6AM, filtering towards the peer on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. Poor in circumstance but rich in grief, the families were gently searched, processed and instructed to board the ferry. Once on the ferry families huddled for comfort, some looking over the rails towards the future, others curled together in the seats. As I looked about those sitting, I couldn’t help but notice nearly every family appeared to be accompanied by an empty seat, a seat reserved for someone from the past; for some missing piece. Exiles from the comfort of previous lives together we struggled to find footing in a new world with an empty seat.

Upon arrival at our new world, our group of incomplete families departed and lurched forward towards a beacon of smoke. We made our way through various chokepoints and checkpoints towards a phalanx of blue uniforms.

Each family had been assigned a representative from FDNY. I marveled as every family, mine included, greedily pulled their assigned FDNY liaison into their orbit, assigning him the role of the missing piece.

The lieutenant assigned to us, FDNY LT. Sullivan, knew my dad. As he introduced himself he removed his hat. We took turns hugging. My sisters both took turns crying into his dress jacket. As he pulled away I watched my sisters’ tears cling to his lapel as if too scared to move. Gathering their strength, those tears deciding not to hold on and they began to roll down the dark blue uniform, gaining speed and lunging towards the earth.

He stood back, looking from person to person, methodically searching our eyes and wringing his hands, “When I saw you’s was coming, I asked, I asked if I could be with you and your family.” He stepped forward and held both my mom’s hands, “Ma’am your husband, he, he uh…” He stammered. “Oh man, let me catch my breath. Sorry, I can’t, I’m tryin’ ta breathe here. I’m so, so sorry for your loss, ma’am. So very sorry.” Without changing expression mom released tears. They traveled a short distance before joining my sisters’ tears in a leap to what I imagined could only be their death.

Still holding mom’s hands he looked around before continuing, “He, he was right here with us. They saved so many, so, so many. And, I, I ah well I knew him from Steam and OEM.” His mild eyes welled up. He stepped back and wiped his cheek. Mom stood firm, first gliding her hand up to squeeze his arm, then pulling him into a hug. So very tired, we fell around the two of them in a huddled mass, crying together. Looking down, I saw black dots blink into existence around my feet. They lasted a few moments and then, as if taking a breadth before a dive into the dirt, faded away.

We separated as I squeezed mom’s hand. Sullivan pulled in a breadth and smiled, for a moment almost content, “He was a great man, your husband. We worked many an incident together, many a long night.”

He smiled into the distance, into the past, before returning to us. He wore the expression the newscaster strived for, “The last I saw him, he was over there, at Command. They was set up there,” he said pointing toward a two story mound of rubble, “and when, when…” He trailed off. “Well, then we lost contact…” His voice floated away, joining the smoke around us. He was gone again. Then, jerked back to the present he stiffened his shoulders, “Please this way.” Mom feigned a smile as we joined others walking towards a destination marked by a pile. She squeezed my hand with all her might as her lower lip quivered. She released a second salvo of tears. They disappeared quickly into the earth below.

LT. Sullivan led us forward with the others.

In the distance the workers came into focus. Grayed out by smoke and appearing like immigrants in an old black and white photo standing at the golden gates of a slaughter house, the workers slowly stopped their scavenging for treasure. They now stood as ghosts, staring at the tempest tossed. Watching us.

Our huddle of families could not help but slow to a stop and stare back. We stood as one, like a jellyfish recently made homeless on a sea-washed beach.

As hundreds of workers stopped in their tracks; stopping cranes, leashing dogs, resting shovels and holstering walkie-talkies comfort’s maiden, silence, returned in a graceful bow. They watched us come to our standstill as if watching a background video on the nightly news supporting the story, the story of loss. Like me, however, they were closer than a newscast.

Then as one, as if choreographed, they removed their helmets, each man staring at us, mixing tears with the dirt on their sleeves.

After sharing this gift of silence our group moved forward. We came upon an opening in the wretched refuse of this place and silence was joined by bagpipes. Mimicking the foreign sounds first let loose on this island by those seeking succor over a century ago, her cries bounced off the wounded buildings surrounding us. The wails mixing with smoke as the buildings stood firm, like cliffs gouged in battle.

We crept past a final protective ring consisting of a chain link fence manned by armored personnel with automatic weapons. On the ground thousands of black rat traps stood vigil around the site. The children stepped over the traps, staring at the rubble and listening to the call of the bagpipes. Catching site of the traps the centers of every family huddle waivered. All around me the mothers broke out in tears.

We arrived at the site and formed into a large circle, with FDNY leaders in the center. The bagpipes let out their last echo.

Losing my train of thought I realized a Chaplain spoke. “… and your loved ones ran towards…” was all I heard. His words blended into a murmur as the workers on the pile slowly returned to task, probing and searching on behalf of the families they spied from afar. I floated away, up into the smoke, until DJ tugged at my arm, pulling me back.

Following DJ’s extended finger I focused on the boy. He was sobbing. Around our circle many sets of shoulders moved in such a motion; like pistons on an assembly line of tears. They were all crying as the individual parts of our circle rhythmically produced tears, depositing them one at a time onto this spot.

I closed my eyes hoping to contribute my own tears to the volley. None came.

I wanted to add to this production line of tears thinking, perhaps, if those workers don’t find our missing, our tears will. Crafted individually and at great cost, they take flight from lashes, and chins and cheeks and lapels and dive gracefully towards the earth, embracing the dirt in the form of those tiny black dots.

Our circle of families worked nonstop, pounding out tears and releasing salvo after salvo in search and embrace missions. We worked on behalf of each other, not caring who our tears were to find.

“Go where fingers and shovels can’t go. Dive deep to find someone, some small piece of a loved one and let some part of me deliver this final embrace wrapped with care in a tear.”

I watched the small storm of tears form into black dots before they took a last breath and vanished below the surface.

“No, we can’t embrace you again, or tell you one last time we love you, but some small part of us – of me – will find you. Some small piece of me, poured from a circle of blackened teapots, will find you. We tilt and pour servings from broken spouts, serving a last dream of going where our injured hearts and digging fingers cannot, to say something we wished we had said earlier, perhaps on that morning before you left.”

Leaping forward then rooting through the earth these tears shall wind their way to some distant piece of you, buried perhaps a hundred feet below and mixed with glass and beam and concrete and the former routine of daily life, whispering, “I’m here with you. I’m with you now and, yes, I love you.”

DJ persisted, leaning forward and pointing to a second boy somewhere between DJ’s age and that of the preteen, “Look! So is he. He’s cry-ing too, daddy. They’re all cry-ing!”

I turned my attention from the circle of families, and cupped the back of his head with my hand, “I know, wonderful, I know. He’s crying because he’s sad.” I bent down to join DJ’s two year old view of the world. I pulled him close and whispered, “He lost his daddy. He’s sad because, somewhere around here, he lost his dad.”

“These men,” I turned and pointed to the men crawling into voids and pulling rocks off the pile like lines of ants digging into mounds of earth, “well, these men are looking for his dad; for all the dads. And he’s crying because he’s so sad. He’s sending, we’re all sending, tears to find his dad. To say a final ‘I love you’ to his dad.”

Focusing on a specific portion of my comment, DJ asked, “Where? Where’d his dad go?”

Before I could answer, Gee stepped forward, blocking my view of the boy. She had been listening to our budding conversation. Like the boy, she was crying, yearning to breathe free of sobs, sucking in air as her tears leapt towards their journey, “I’m sad, too da.., daddy. I miss. I miss him.”

I pulled her forward. She pushed her head into my shoulder, nearly toppling me over into the dirt. I rebalanced myself, settling on a kneeling position in the dirt in front of my children. I held Gee against me as Liz looked down, stroking Gee’s long brown hair.

I squeezed Liz’s hand, forgetting the fight we’d had early this morning when getting the kids ready for this journey. At 5AM we had broken into a heated exchange. I looked up to see her crying. Her tears fell first on Gee and then on the dry earth, joining the search for fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, and sons and daughters.

Throughout our journey to this place, Liz had been stoic. She lost her dad when she was 10 and her mom was forced to leave their Caribbean island in search of a future. A newly minted widow, Liz’s mom brought three small girls, no skills, save for the will to struggle for a future, and enough money for maybe a couple of months to this new world.

Cast from her Caribbean home that newly minted widow brought my future wife, a woman whom, over three years of painfully trying as an adult, as my wife, never gave in to my urgings to check the nationality box labeled “Foreign” when completing her medical school applications.

I had pushed her. “Liz, you’re from another country, check the frigg’n box. Check this one!” I urged, stabbing my finger onto the application. “You’re from the Caribbean. Just say so. You’ve been trying to get into medical school for years. Just check it. It’ll help get you into school, god dammit.” We had broken into heated exchanges again and again as I persisted. “Liz, come on, it’s a fact. Just check the god damned box.”

“Stop it! I’m an American now. My God, don’t you get it? I live here. I’m from here now. This is my country, Beasley. Just leave me the hell alone and let me decide who I am.”

My wife, the mother of two. My wife, the doctor. My wife, the surgeon. She had decided for herself. And she had decided to love me and love my parents and now this loss was I imagine more painful for Liz than for me as it dug deep into her past. I saw her jaw muscles clench as tears let lose. Like my mom, she was too tough to sob.

DJ poked my cheek with his index finger, “Why aren’t you crying, daddy? You’re dad’s here.” Annoyed at his poke to my face, I grabbed his finger and then, thinking twice, gave it a little squeeze and pulled his hand away from my cheek, holding it. I pulled Gee and DJ together so they faced me as I knelt before them. I whispered, “I wanna cry, but I guess I have no right to cry here. Look around you. Look at all these people. Over there. And over there. Look around, at all these kids your age or, maybe a little older or maybe even a little younger.”

Dutifully they looked around, before returning their gaze to me. “Of all these people in this circle, our family is, by far, the luckiest. I am the luckiest. We found my dad, up there.” They followed my finger as I pointed towards the destroyed atrium. “Almost all these people, all these kids – kids just like you – well, they, they don’t even know what happened to their dads. They never found them. These workers around us are looking but I don’t think they’ll ever find them. Ever. So, I guess that means they’re still here somewhere, mixed with this, this dirt and rubble.”

I rubbed my hand in the dirt, making sure not to disturb the black dots preparing for a final mission. Drawing up my dirty hand I presented my palm. I leaned in and whispered, “They’re here, mixed in this dirt. In here could be the tiniest pieces of their dads. That’s why they’re crying.”

“And, well, ya know, my dad was older. I got to have my life with him and he got to see me grow up and fall in love and have you two. And, he ah, he taught me to drive. And he gave me advice when I fell in love with your mom and he, ah, he told me stories like about when he was a little boy. These kids, well, they won’t have that like I did with my dad or like you’re gonna with me.”

DJ scrunched his eyebrows, struggling to understand.

At six Gee was capable of coming to grips with the situation and the context of our loss and the context of loss to those around us, “Will they forget, them, daddy? Will they forget their dads when they’re older?”

“Oh, Gee, I hope not, I really, really hope not. But ya know, when you lose someone, they’re not all the way gone. Pieces of you stay behind; some are here in the earth and some are here, in your heart,” Softly, like a wisp of smoke, I touched Gee’s and DJ’s chests. I moved my hands up, stroking their hair, “and here; in what you learned from them, in all your memories. And sometimes, well, sometimes you remember them like movies, or sometimes like pictures and sometimes it’s like you remember a story someone told you. Like the stories I tell you.”

DJ began to cry, “What if you die and then, what, what if I forget you?”

Gee joined in, “I don’t want to forget you or mom. What if I do forget?”

I leaned in close, smoothing the edge with a smile, “Well, how ‘bout this; since I can’t cry, well then I’ll use the tears inside me to make stories. They’ll form black dots on paper and dive deep to find a buried piece of me. OK? So, when you’re growing up, when you’re getting bigger, I’ll write down stories and then you can search through them to see a little piece of me any time you want, OK? ”

I looked up at Liz, “And mom, well mom’ll take pictures ‘cause she’s really good at taking pictures. I’ll write down my stories, even the private things or the ones I won’t want you to know about until after you’re all grown up. And it will be like a secret and, when you’re older and grown up, I’ll leave them for you to find somewhere. And you can search for them and find a piece of me. So you won’t forget. Alright?”

They nodded. Gee stared at me, “Ok daddy, you write the stories on paper and we’ll read them when we’re grownups. And I’ll read them to DJ if he can’t read yet, OK?”

“Deal. I’ll start today and, someday, you can read them and you can find a piece of me.

Grabbing the railing, mom leaned over, stretching towards us to get a better look at what was going on in the neighbor’s driveway, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Beasley! Is that my hamper in the driveway? Is it? Tell me right now young man. What in Joseph’s name are you doing with my hamper? And, and where the hell are my clothes?”

“Mom, I caught some fish, look. The brook flooded and…”

She exploded, “Fish! Fish? Are you telling me there’s a dirty fish in my hamper?”

My friends were silent. They knew a goner when they saw one. Trying to tone down the screaming I attempted to slow my words and reason. “Two fish, Mom. They were trapped. When the brook flooded. And they got stuck. I saved them.” Given my mom’s devotion to the Church, I went for broke, “Like Jesus. He had two fish.”

She leaned back and glared, first speaking slowly then incrementally raising her voice so the final words fell upon the driveway like a tidal wave, “I see. Like Jesus. Perhaps then you can go get a couple of loaves of bread, invite some more of your Godforsaken friends to stand around my hamper and then you can feed the entire neighborhood! Why not? How ‘bout it, Beasley?”

I returned to silence. William stepped forward and poked one of the 18” fish with a stick. The fish swirled about in a circle opening its mouth gulping for freedom as William bravely joined the conversation, “I don’t think so, Mrs. Kinkade. It has something gross, something swollen, on its side. No one is gonna want to eat this guy.”

She stamped her foot so hard, bees scattered from under the porch. “Where are my clothes?”

All eyes turned towards me. They wore sympathy. “Ah, uh, don’t worry they’re not in here, mom. I uh, I uh, dumped them in the basement.”

Mom stormed down the steps and tore her apron off throwing it on the grass as she marched across the lawn. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t spied us from her kitchen window across from the LeBlanc’s driveway. I shook my head. “I shouda known better,” I mumbled.

It was from this same window she had watched the LeBlanc family move from Canada into the neighboring house just over a year ago. Minding her business in the kitchen she smiled as the moving truck and family station wagon disgorged the neighbor’s belongings and the neighborhood’s newest kids, Mario and William. She watched as they ran into our yard to try out our Sears swing set. Before mom made it to the back door to say hello, my brother KJ and I had dropped our street hockey gear, bolted from the driveway and pulled the benevolent boys off the swings, throwing them to the ground. The two new neighboring moms met over the tangle of their fighting children, with mom finally peeling me off a wailing Canadian by the hair and throwing me to the ground, gasping for breath like my new fish and staring at me in horror.

Today she wore the same look as she stormed across the yard towards her hamper. KJ and the two Canadian brothers stepped back leaving me alone with my fish and her hamper. I didn’t want to meet the same misfortune as John the Baptist so I stepped behind the fish hoping they would save me. I doubted it.

The hamper was an old plastic diaper bin, capable of holding 25 gallons or so. Mom used it for whites and “delicates” as she called them. After William and I had discovered the trapped fish in the flooded brook this morning I ran home to find a five gallon paint bucket to scoop up the flailing fish with the intent of dumping them into our bathtub upstairs. When investigating the tub, I noticed the plastic hamper in the nearby closet. Thinking quickly I grabbed it, ran to the basement and dumped all the whites and underwear on the floor next to the old Sears washing machine.

Empty hamper in hand, William and I ran back to our friend the brook to turn fish into pets. With the recent rains the brook flooded, surging violently. Normally, the brook was a peaceful babbling stream no more than a foot deep. Meandering along the bottom of a small ravine parallel to The Boulevard, a relatively busy two lane street running through our neighborhood, the brook was our dear friend.

We loved the brook and spent hours in her company. We played within a one block span framed by two low-slung concrete overpasses under which the brook flowed. With water at a normal level we removed our Keds to creep under the two street bridges, yelling to create echoes, splashing each other with the biggest rocks we could find and peeing in private because we were having too much fun to go home just to use the bathroom. Under these two bridges darkness rested; I imagined this was where night slept during the day. The only noise was the periodic hum of traffic from the street above and the murmur of the brook at our feet. Save for our yelling and splashing, it was peaceful.

The upstream bridge offered a place of shelter, of rest. Walking upstream, I could touch the ceiling under the bridge and quietly walk to the midpoint, where a thick black cast iron pipe crossed the brook about two feet above the water. On hot days we slipped under the bridge and sprawled across the cool pipe listening in silence to water below and the passerby and traffic above.

The downstream bridge presented an end point. As opposed to a welcoming pipe on which children would find peace, the second bridge covered a rusted chain link fence built across the stream. Under the bridge, the fence collected rubbish and floating branches from the brook before allowing the filtered stream to exit the far end of the bridge into a private area bound by the backyards of a line of nice houses.

The men from the DPW periodically visited the second bridge to clear out debris captured by the fence under the bridge. “This is the stupidest thing I ever saw,” I heard the foreman complain the first time I saw them there. “They put a fuck’n fence under a bridge just so those folks,” he said as he jerked his head downstream, “don’t have to look at garbage. Stupid, man. Just stupid.” Finally noticing me, the foreman asked, “You live downstream, kid?”

“No, I live up the hill, that way,” I said pointing. “Hey can I help you guys?”

“Just stay away from this fence kid. I don’t wanna be fishing you outta here too. This brook, when it rains, she can turn on you.” I stared blankly, having never thought of the brook as a she.

“Hey, kid, on second thought, you can help me; by running home and getting us some beers. That’ll help.” The guys were still laughing as I ran the two blocks, cutting through yards to make it home in a search for beer. Finding none in our house, I returned with a six pack of Cokes for the guys, “Hey Mister, I couldn’t find beer so I got this for you.” They left a Coke for me and let me watch. The next time, after I said I couldn’t get any more soda because my dad smacked me for snatching his Cokes, they let me help.

And I remained on good terms with the brook for years. Across her span of open stream we floated model boats, built damns and constructed stone bridges, played war among the rocks, attempted unsuccessfully to jump the stream on our bikes like Evel Knievel and, in winter we used the banks for cover as we pelted passing cars on the Boulevard with snowballs.

Today the brook was angry. Engorged with overflow, she smelled like dirt and sewage, belching out brown water from under the first bridge, greedily snatching away the banks from her neighbors, the bushes and plants, before rudely jamming herself under the second bridge; the bridge with the fence. Usually above her reach, the archway of tree branches and limbs were curtly slapped away as they tried to dip their curious fingers into her newly formed rapids.

Returning to the brook to catch fish with the hamper, William and I could not help but stare. The brook’s normal gurgling and bubbling sounds were replaced by a rush of water and the periodic cracking of branches. As we stared a log burst from under the first bridge, lurching past us and, slamming into the side of the second bridge, splintering before disappearing under into the darkness.

I grabbed William’s arm, “Whoa! Did you see that! That thing shattered, man. That was so cool. I bet the fence got it! Let’s get more stuff to throw in,” I urged, nodding towards the upstream bridge.

Without answering, William began scrounging for sticks and branches. I laid the hamper down by the edge of the road as we walked up and down the Boulevard looking for crap to toss in. I found some good sized tree branches but William won the search as he came upon a cracked 2 by 4 and a waterlogged tennis ball.

“Come on,” he yelled, “To tha bridge!” William helped me drag an oversized tree limb towards the first bridge. A couple of cars slowed to investigate as we pulled the branch to the bridge. We caught our breath before shoving it up onto the three foot concrete wall overlooking the brook. “Ready?” I shouted over the roar below.

“Wait,” William hollered over the rapids. “Let me throw the ball in first.” I gave him the thumbs up as he placed the lonely ball in the middle of the thick concrete wall. Slowly it rolled forward before plopping into the rapids and disappearing.

He held his hands up in victory then pointed downstream, “Look; down there. Holy shit, man! It was under water that whole time. Like a commie submarine. It’s going… under the bridge. Outrageous, man! Outrageous. Let’s do your log.”

We rolled the limb towards the edge of the wall preparing it for a final ride. A car slowed to a stop directly behind us, piercing our private world, “You kids, be careful now, OK? You stay up here and away from that water. Understand?”

Startled, I turned. I wanted to tell the old guy to fuck off but held my tongue, “We’re cool, man. Thanks.” He continued to idle his car as I turned to William, “Let’s just do this.” William joined me as I started to count, “One, two, three!”

We shoved the limb over the edge. It hit the torrent below and was sucked forward, flipping end over end before shooting straight down the middle of the brook, smacking overhead limbs from its path. We leaned forward, straining to follow the limb before it finally disappeared under the second bridge. “Fuck’n A, man. So cool! So cool!” William slapped my back, “That was totally cool, man.”

I turned to our interloper, “Mister, did you see that? Got anything you want to chuck in here, Mister?” Put off by our hysteria and assured we were just tossing branches over the side, he drove away. We lobbed everything within reach over the edge as our imaginations were swept away by the power of the angry brook. With nothing left within reach we stood, staring at the rapids.

“Oh shit, man. Shit! We forgot the fish! Fuck’n A!” William followed me as I ran to the last known location of the fish. They were still there, stuck in what we called a whirlpool; a dead end formed by a series of rocks and the forward pressure of the current.

Retrieving the hamper from the side of the road we slowly slid down the bank, feet first, towards the water. With the banks wet with spray, we struggled to control our slide, could not stop and ended up standing in the little rotating whirlpool. No harm done. Along the side, the rapids were not overwhelming. “I got ‘em, Bease. Give me that hamper thing.” I tossed the hamper to William as he tried to scoop up a fish without success. “Let me try.” I slipped in next to William. By now we were knee deep in the side pocket of water. The fish were a good 18 inches or so and did not follow instructions well. Frustrated, I tried to punch the nearest fish, lost my balance and fell down drenching myself. William burst out laughing.

“Help me up, Will. Man, my mom’s gonna kill me now.”

Shaking his head he pulled me up. Realizing the fish did not want to be caught we finally tilted the hamper on its side with the open end facing upstream so it partially filled with water. We waited and eventually first one, then two, ugly fish simply floated into the hamper. Turning it right side we secured our new pets and tried to lug the water-filled hamper up the bank.

“Ugh, Bease, Andre the Giant couldn’t lift this thing. It’s way too heavy man. Way too heavy.”

We tilted the hamper against the bank and drained as much water as possible. With the fish trying to wriggle out, I yelled at William, “Hold him, down, Willy. Come on, they’re gonna get away.”

“I’m not touching that thing! It’s gross, Bease. Look at it!”

The fish were gross. They looked beaten. Scratches ran across their stripes. “You’re a big pussy,” I yelled as I grabbed a fish and shoved him under water. He quickly squirmed from my grasp but not before we had dumped enough water to make the hamper manageable. “Come on, help me carry this thing.”

We carried the hamper across the Boulevard and up the street before tiring. We ended up dragging it up the sidewalk and across lawns, gauging scratches matching those on the fish into the bottom of the hamper. “If my mom asks, just say those scratches were already there, OK?” Knowing that fish tale was not going to fly William nodded anyway.

We made it to the driveway and used the hose on the side of William’s house to fill the hamper the rest of the way. “There, that’ll make ‘em happy, huh?” As our brothers joined us we formed a little circle around the fish, watching them swim in circles. We tossed out ideas regarding what the fish were thinking.

“Where are we, man?”

“Is this Heaven?”

“Where’s my family? Where are my babies?”

“How do we get outa here?”

“I’m scared.”

“Do you think they’ll eat us?

“We’re fucked.”

“Thank God we’re outa that crazy brook, man. We’re saved.”

Our bantering lasted about two minutes before mom slammed the kitchen door into the wooden hand railing, silencing us.

“Oh boy.”

I positioned the hamper and our two fish between me and mom. On the other side of the hamper, she jerked to a stop, placed both hands on her hips and screamed. “My God. They, they, they… they’re disgusting; utterly disgusting.” Her head seemed to move in a small circle as the pair circled her hamper. “I. Am. Furious.”

Without warning she wound up and cracked me in the side of the head. “Get these fish out of my hamper and clean it immediately. I want you to scrub this thing with bleach. Understand?”

I didn’t flinch. Being reminded later by your friends that you flinched was as bad as getting hit. I put my hand up to my left cheek. It was warm were mom caught me. “Mom, wha, what’s your problem. They’re just fish. They’re just fish.”

“Get them out of my hamper. Now!”

“What should I do with them, then, huh? Throw ‘em in the street? Eat em?”

William shook his head back and forth, “I don’t think so, Bease.”

Mom’s head moved like that of a predator, “Zip it, William.”

Turning to me she summarized a likely scenario in my immediate future. “I am going inside the house to get my clothing off the floor and into the wash and then, when I come back out here, the only thing I better see is the back of your head as you scrub the inside of this hamper. Now move!”

Breaking his silence, KJ, shrugged. “I’m outa here.” Sensing a no win situation he and William’s brother turned and walked away.

“Fine, then. I’ll toss them back in the brook. See if I care if they die, mom! See if I care!”

I started dragging away the hamper, stopping as mom started screaming again. “You’re ruining my hamper dragging it across the gravel. Oh my God, just pick it up and get outa here!” William jumped to my aid as we waddled up the driveway and then down the street with the hamper, periodically dumping water to lighten our load.

From a distance we heard the brook. Like my mom she was still angry, roaring at us from a distance. William started to the upstream bridge but I stopped him, pulling him downstream, “Let’s dump them downstream. I don’t want ‘em smashin’ against the bridge like our log or stuck in the fence under there, ya know.”

William shrugged and we continued the final steps of our waddle. Approaching the second bridge, we heaved the hamper up on the wall and slowly poured our friends over the far side, introducing them to the downstream portion of the brook.

“Go swim with the rich folks, fishes.” We watched for a moment and then lost them as they scurried away just under the boiling surface.

“I was right,” William suggested.

Confused, I stopped looking for the fish and turned towards William, “’Bout what? What are you talk’n about?”

“We’re saved.’ That’s what they were thinking. ‘We’re saved.”

We stood for a moment before I wheeled and turned, “Willy, follow me.”

I marched upstream to the first bridge with William following right behind me. “Look, I’m goin’ in. I’ll be like Apollo splashing down and you be the SS Ticonderoga pulling me out of the water if I need ya, OK?”

“The what? I don’t know, Bease. Those branches got smashed up pretty bad. I wouldn’t.”

Ignoring William’s trepidation I stopped at the wall of the upstream ridge.

“Look, I’m not going near that thing,” I said nodding my chin towards the second bridge. “I’ll jump off in the hamper from here, maybe a little closer to the side, and push myself towards the banks where the fish were. I’ll land in the little whirlpool; by where we just were. Yeah, and if I’m goin’ too fast I’ll use my arms to paddle over to you. And in the worst, super-worse, case, I’ll just grab onto the branches ‘till you pull me out. You know, like how they get the astronauts when they splash down. You fish me out.”

William grabbed the hamper, “Don’t. Just don’t do it, man. Look at her. Look how angry she is. What do ya think she’ll do if you jump on top of her like this? She’ll be as mad as your mom. Madder.”

I yanked the hamper back, “Give me the fuck’n hamper. I’m going in. Now. Just do me a favor and get over there.” I saddled up onto the wall and slipped my feet into the hamper, encasing my legs. My heart leaped as I tottered back and forth before grabbing the edge to steady myself. “Whoa, that was close!” I feigned a smile as I looked down at the screaming brown water. She was angry. Again, a car slowed to a stop on the road behind me. “Hey kid, get off a there. You’re gonna get killed. Get off.”

I twisted around, “I’m fine, Mister. Come on, I got a friend right there.” The guy shut off the car and watched me as I turned to William, gave him the astronaut’s thumbs up and slid off the slide towards the rapids 5-6 feet below.

With me standing tall in my 25 gallon capsule, the bottom of the hamper slammed into the rapids as if hitting concrete. My legs collapsed as I buckled down with the force of the impact. The hamper lurched out from under me and I smacked my head against the foot of the concrete bridge before falling into the water. It was freezing. Like a shot, I was sucked forward. Mission failure.

The last thing I saw before going under was my mom’s hamper hurtling downstream, jerking like a tumbleweed in an old fashion movie across the top of the rapids.

Roaring brown currents filled my ears. I went under. Out of control, I somersaulted underwater, trying to protect my head from the rocks below. I scraped along the bottom, catching my shirt on something. It tore open. Trying to breath I sucked in her brown rapids. My chest convulsed as water spewed from my mouth, returning it to its rightful place. My eyes stayed open the whole time as I tried to grab towards the lighter brown water rolling above me. I hit a large rock and was thrown upwards, breaking the surface.

“Beasley!”

I stayed up, gasping as I bolted past William. Terrified, I tried to jam my feet into the rocks along the bottom. I couldn’t feel bottom. I tried to yell and swallowed water, “Hel-ap!”

Coughing violently, I fought to keep my head up as the second bridge raced towards me. I looked up just in time to see the hamper crash into the edge of the concrete, fold in half and disappear under the bridge. The brook had mom’s hamper.

I grabbed wildly towards the archway of branches as they reached towards me from above. Deferring to the wishes of the angry brook the branches let slip through my fingers. Gasping, I thought to myself, “Oh my God, I’m going go under, gonna hit the fence. Please. Oh, God.”

I tried to pull myself towards the bank and lunged for a downed limb spanning a portion of the brook. My feet pulled forward as if sucked by a vacuum. I held my arms up to try and hook the limb, hitting my face hard, harder than my mom had hit me, and grabbing tight. I saw stars. My feet continued to pull downstream, tugged forward by the brook’s greed. She was mad and she was gonna make me pay. My face pushed against the limb as I kept trying to hook my arms around it. My legs felt warm and I couldn’t tell if I peed my pants. I guess it didn’t matter now. I craned my neck, pushing my chin harder into the limb, trying everything to resist her pull. I slipped. Slowly I scraped against the bark, cutting my chin, then my lip. I held on, squeezing.

From below her surface the brook pulled me. From behind she poured freezing water down my torn shirt. I felt her fingers grabbing me from below, groping for my legs, now horizontal with the top of the water. She shoved me from behind as my chin pulled away from the bark and I went under. I saw the brown swirl jumping over me, getting darker and wearing me down. Inviting me to give in. My arms burned as she continued to claw at me.

“Just hold on. Just, hold on. Someone. Someone will come. Someone’s gotta see me. Maybe the DPW guys? Oh man, what if no one sees me? What if they pull me from the fence?”

In the distance, perhaps in the past, I heard yelling. Screams mixed with the roar of the current. I couldn’t tell if it was mom or the brook. I couldn’t tell.

I pulled my face up and sucked in my last breath. I tasted blood. And dirt. My hands were raw and started to slip.

I tried to dig my fingers into the bark, “Just hold on. Just hold on.”

“Oh man, this can’t be it. It just can’t be. I’m just a kid; I, I wanna grow up. I wanna be someone.”

I closed my eyes as I went under one last time, thinking, “I never kissed a girl.”

I felt clawing at my neck, at my hair; pulling me by the collar, by the sleeve. I couldn’t hold any longer.

“I’m not. I’m not gonna… not gonna say it. I, I…”

Finally, I ran out of breath. Gagging, I drew in a mouthful of brook.

She had me. I opened my eyes to see flickers of sunlight darting through the angry brown surface, forming shapes, like dancing triangles, just above my face, reaching towards me. I felt her embrace.

I let go.

“But dad, I have to finish my flower.”

As a child Gee was a picky eater. Perhaps it’s a first born thing; not used to eating what remains after older siblings snatch first dibs at the kitchen table. In the not too distant past breakfast was a bit of a challenge. Then, for some reason now unknown to me, I started presenting the kids’ breakfast fruit in patterns; in familiar form.

Splayed across the plastic children’s plate orange slices might be positioned into a smile while a strawberry formed a nose. Blueberries sprung to life as eyes. It varied. This morning eight skinny apple slices blossomed into a circle of flower petals while a less than straight line of raspberries acted as our upward-reaching stem. After an initial prompt Gee worked her way up the raspberry stem and knocked off the apple slices, petal by petal.

“Gee, let’s toss the rest of your flower in a baggie and head to school.”

I didn’t wait for a response as I leaned over to kiss the top of her head. She wore her Catholic school uniform and my best effort at a Pebbles Flintstone ponytail of hair spraying her hair upwards. More often than not one of the teachers at school took pity on Gee’s hairstyle and returned Gee with a beautiful ponytail. This morning my kiss lingered as I smelled Gee’s hair. I squeezed my eyes shut and held back tears.

Straightening up and turning towards Gee’s school bag, I pinched my eyes between my index finger and thumb. I squeezed until pain ran ahead of the steady pace of sadness. Black and silver stars appeared. I lost my balance for a moment as I reached for the bag.

Recovering, I focused on logistics, “Put your shoes on, Gee. OK?”

“We already put them on during breakfast, daddy. I’m already ready!” She scrunched her eyebrows at me. “Are you still sleepy or something, daddy?”

I forced a smile, “Let’s go.”

We held hands as we scooted down the front steps towards the car. It was mid-September and the New England air had turned cool. I wished I’d given Gee more than her blue school sweater. Above us, the sky was silent.

“Are you cold, Gee? I can go back upstairs and get your jacket.”

She shook her head and kept walking to the car. We hopped in.

“How do we look, Gee?” She leaned forward, craning her neck to and fro as she peeked past my seat looking for traffic. “We’re good.”

We pulled out in silence.

Like my mom, Gee had a finely tuned emotional antenna. She sensed I was struggling.

She probed. “Can you tell me a Jacquo Panalese story? The one when he’s in the circus with Doody Bear?” She waited for a response. I stared ahead as I drove.

“Are you too sad to tell a story, daddy?”

I shook off my stupor, responding, “I am Gee. I don’t think I can make up a story with you this morning. I’m too sad thinking about Grandpa Dick; and about Grandma Pat.” I wiped my eyes. “It’s been a couple of days now and we still can’t find him, Gee. So, yeah, I’m sad; really, really sad.”

I watched her as she looked at me through the rear view mirror. She glanced away, to look out her window at passing homes. Though Liz and I kept the kids up to date I wondered if Gee really understood what had happened to her grandfather.

I caught her eye again, “Gee do you understand what happened to Grandpa Dick? Do you know why we’re looking for him?”

“I know why you’re sad, daddy. ‘Cause the building fell on him and because, well, now he’s in Heaven.” I nodded and pushed forward another smile, “I’m afraid you’re right. You know I love you Gee.” She nodded and looked out the window before catching my eye again in the rear view mirror.

“Dad, ya know he’s not at the building anymore.” I slowed down as I turned to her. She held my gaze. I reached back and squeezed her hand as the car behind us leaned on the horn. I winked at her and returned to driving.

We pulled up to school, parked illegally and walked to the door holding hands. I reached down to kiss Gee and she grabbed my neck in both arms, squeezing me, “He’s in Heaven, daddy. He’s in Heaven.”

We hugged for longer than usual before I let her go. She turned and marched into school.

I returned to the car and sat there, imagining what might have happened to my dad after the building stopped falling.

I imagined my father to be initially upset at finding himself separated from his scattering colleagues and I got to thinking about my father’s conversation with his God upon entering Heaven…

I suspect that once he realized he was no longer running from the collapsing North Tower he’d grow to be upset, demanding answers, railing to the silence filling the space around him.

“My God, what… what am I doing here? Why am I here? This, this, isn’t right! It’s wrong. It’s all wrong! I’m not finished. People need me. Why now? Why?”

Finally screaming, “Why am I here, Goddammit?”

God would have likely startled my father as He smiled softly and asked, “Dick, you do not remember our agreement do you?

Many, many years ago, I asked for a volunteer to tirelessly lead men by example and, Dick, you accepted My offer.”

God would have continued, “I stated to you, Dick, I need someone that will never become famous, never be rich, and never have an easy time as he leads and protects the men and women of his community not from a desk, but from the trenches and the front lines.

Dick, I said I need someone that will live the values I honor, even though those values; loyalty, dedication, integrity and selflessness, will be considered outdated and ill-fitting to more fashionable values such as wealth, power, and fame.

I told you that, as a young boy, you were to be raised in a house devoid of affection, never to hear the words, ‘I love you’ from your mother or your father. Never. And, in that house when the whip shall come down, when the only thing you want to do is run and curl up and hide, I will not let you. You will have to stay and protect your brother and sister, learning early to place your back between others and the whip.

And though you will be raised in a house where love is dear you will have to learn to build a home where love shall take root.

Throughout your life you will struggle with the words, but I will force you to try, and to plant the seeds of love so those seeds may bloom as flowers among your children and your grandchildren.

I explained I need someone with the raw talent and drive to succeed, but I will force you to work as a child to earn enough money to attend a prep school where you will thrive. I need someone that will have to earn a scholarship in order to continue his education, and someone that will have to work full time while pursuing an advanced degree.

Dick, I asked for a volunteer capable of tirelessly, quietly, and successfully battling skin cancer for over 20 years and I stated you will not be allowed to ask for help, ask for sympathy, or ask for recognition of the challenges posed by your battle. Yours will be a silent fight.”

I suspect God would have gone on and said, “I asked for someone that will truly fall in love once – just once – in his life and in exchange I will let you remain with that one woman and love that same woman for over 40 years.

I said you will have to support your family as a young adult by working two jobs in addition to your full time work with Con Ed. You will deliver mail-order blankets in the Bronx and you will work with children at night for the NY City Board of Education to save enough to afford the down payment and mortgage for a house that will become your home for over 30 years.

And once you acquire this house, you will have to welcome children other than your own into your home – children needing a place to stay for days, weeks, and even months.

And I will introduce you to children who have lost their fathers and are seeking guidance. And you will have to stop what you are doing and make time and become involved in their lives – and love them as you love your own children.

I told you I need someone to visit 107th Street every week for over 10 years to quietly, thanklessly, take care of an elderly aunt, chauffeuring her about, buying groceries, and making sure she is safe. However, for that 10 year period, you will never be thanked by your aunt and your reward will be nothing more than the inner knowledge of knowing that what you did was right.

I need someone capable of working with a compassionate, skilled, medical staff responsible for treating and healing burn victims at the Cornell Burn Center but upon meeting them you will be required to make the Center in which they work more capable and better funded than when you found it.

I said I need someone capable of rising through the ranks of a Fortune 500 company but before doing so, you will have to start your career as a steelworker walking the beams on the George Washington Bridge’s lower level so you may fully understand the demanding daily requirements of the men and women in the field.

I wanted someone capable of working with the leaders and decision-makers at this company, however you will be required to treat everyone as your equal, regardless of their rank or position. You will be required to see the potential in every man – not as an ally or prop used to support your agenda but as an individual worthy of your attention, your care and your respect.”

God would have continued explaining, “I require someone I may introduce to thousands and thousands of people, yet I won’t let you view them or categorize them by color, religion race, or income. You will have to treat everyone you meet with dignity and, upon meeting each person and getting to know him or her, you will have to ask yourself ‘how can I help this person gain a better station in life?’

I need someone to work tirelessly for the safety and wellbeing of the men and women within your company regardless of the personal or professional costs. You will have to put the safety and education of your coworkers before your personal success. And you will measure your success not by your title or your income, but by the success of those around you.

And even if you do this, I will not let you become President of the company you will eventually give your life for while serving but I will let you become the mayor of Con Ed, as recognized by the respect of your coworkers – union and non-union alike.

I will let you earn the right to work among the bravest men and women in our nation, New York’s HazMat personnel and New York City’s firefighters, and allow you to be welcomed into their brotherhood, but you will have to protect them and leave them safer and better cared for through years of training and preparation.

And working alongside the Firefighters, your Con Ed coworkers and the city’s police department, I will require you to respond – immediately – when your city needs you; without respite and for years on end. You will wear a beeper and when your city needs you they will track you down and call you directly and you will respond; regardless of your location. They will track you down and you will respond from Boston, from Chicago, from El Paso, from British Columbia and from the arms of your sleeping wife, Patricia, in your home.

In turn, though, when you are lost and on your last assignment for Me, you will receive thousands, literally thousands of messages a day, from as far away as France, Japan and Turkey, from friends, coworkers, relatives, family and even strangers, seeking to help you…for they have heard of you and know Whom you have served, with each message they send asking, “What is your location? Are you OK?”

You will not be famous and your race will never be over. But you will be admired and respected by all you meet and all who hear of you.

Dick, I said, if you accept my call, I will let you experience a life bathed in love and passion for what you do and I will allow you to do what you love to do, literally, up to the moment of your death.

However, I shall choose that moment.

You will go through your professional life, telling everyone you meet you will ‘see them on the big job’ but when the big job comes, I shall snatch you away and leave the job for those you have trained; responding and then rebuilding the city you served without you.

Do you remember, Dick?

I said I would take you back if, and only if, you met My demands and that in return I would give you 66 years to experience life on earth; to prepare your family, your company, your community and your city for this challenge.

This was the agreement, Dick. And you accepted it.

And now, I can say without reservation you have kept your end of the bargain.

Welcome to Heaven, Dick. Welcome home.”

“Sure, Wonderful, sure. Let me think of one…”

Well, I had been sleeping and I dreamt something was touching my face, like a mosquito. So I tried to swat it away. It stopped for a moment but the feeling didn’t go away. Slowly, it floated back to me like a feather, like a memory softly landing on my cheek. I rolled over annoyed and the light slid through the blinds catching me, forcing me awake. It wasn’t a mosquito or a feather; it was my mom, sitting on my bed, stroking my face. The girls were at early morning swim lessons and my dad had taken my brother KJ to one of his traveling all-star baseball games. Mom had let me sleep late, waking me by sitting on my bed with a cup of tea and stroking my face.

I caught her eye. She smiled and I continued.

“Hey, what time is it?” Mom’s smile broadened and, without speaking, she offered her tea. I propped up on an elbow to take a few sips before plopping backwards as she quickly pulled the tea away. She gave me a scolding glance as she managed the sway of the tea. It didn’t last long, “Careful, Bease.” The smile returned, seeping across her lips.

I had stayed up late watching a Yankee game on TV and was still tired. I rolled over on my stomach, jamming my head under the pillow.

Softly, mom started scratching my back. Her finger tips gently lolled back and forth across my shoulders as she silently sipped her tea. Her nails were sharpened to red points. Not so long ago I had asked why she cut them that way; to sharp points. “So I can scratch my son’s back better, that’s why.”

The hum of the air conditioner and the sound of her tiny sips accompanied the soft scratching noise. She finished by writing a note on my back with her index finger and then pulled the pillow off my head. She leaned forward to kiss my cheek, whispering, “You can see what I wrote in the mirror.” I listened as her footsteps moved down the stairs soon swallowed by the noise of the AC.

I followed a couple of minutes later, stopping in the bathroom to pee. As I washed my hands I twisted in front of the bathroom mirror trying to make out the message mom left on my back. I tried both sides, turning and arcing my chin over my shoulder. Lots of loops and red swirls and what looked like the top of a circle. I couldn’t read it.

I went downstairs to find mom standing in front of the kitchen sink, filling the teapot and looking out the window, “Mom, what is it? What’d you write on my back?” She didn’t turn from the window, “It’s something you already know, Beasley. I don’t even have to tell you. You know it.”

“Study? Don’t fight? What? What’d you write?”

She turned her head slightly before returning to the window, “You already know it. Now have a seat.”

I could tell she was happy.

Taking my seat in the corner of the kitchen, I started in on my Quisp cereal. The kitchen seemed bigger without everyone else. I looked around. The room was filled with smoke and the scent of bacon. My eyes rested on mom’s back. She turned to face me, “Just you and me this morning, kiddo. The place seems bigger without KJ and the girls, doesn’t it?” I nodded. Her white Emerson radio played AM music. Mom hummed along, every now and then turning towards me with a flourish as she fixed breakfast to the beat of the music.

She cooked my favorite, Pirate’s eye eggs, by tearing a whole in a slice of Wonder Bread, placing the bread in a butter soaked pan and then breaking the egg into the hole. Flipped over once or twice the resulting combination resembled a pirate’s eye with a patch over it. Mom continued to cook as I plowed through my breakfast of four such eggs, bacon, cereal and orange juice. I waited for an opportunity and, as mom returned to the sink, I scooped an entire spoonful of sugar from the sugar bowl and jammed it into my mouth. Silently crunching the sugar between my teeth until it turned to a gooey syrup. Swallowing, I licked my lips and asked if I could watch TV.

Still facing the sink, mom’s head turned slightly towards me. I saw a small smile curve up the corner of her mouth. She ignored my question. “Do you want some tea, Beasley?”

I nodded. Though she didn’t turn to catch my response she filled the teapot at the sink again and placed the water on the stove. She turned and smoothed her apron before joining me at the table.

“It’s too nice to be inside watching the boob tube, Beasley. Today’s a perfect summer day. You should be outside enjoying it.”

“Yeah, I know mom but Kimba the White Lion‘s on. You know I love Kimba.”

She rested her elbows on the table and laced her fingers together, creating a support for her chin. She rested her chin on her finger archway. Her brown hair formed two long inward arching curls around her white face. Her red lipstick popped, drawing your attention to her mouth. She had long black eyelashes that rose up and down like handheld fans made of leaves from the Amazon. She was pretty. A few freckles peeked across her small nose, a nose my sisters wished they had inherited.

“Beasley, do you know how much you love Kimba?” I nodded. “Well, think of a thousand times that amount and, well, that’s how much I love you.” She broke her lattice work of fingers and reached across the table to touch my cheek with her extended fingers. They were long, ending in the red nails. They matched her lips. Slowly her fingers floated up to my mess of curly hair. Quickly they became tangled. She shook her head, “My God, Beasley, when was the last time you combed your hair?”

I shrugged, “Before school one day, I guess.”

She burst out laughing.

“Before school! School ended weeks ago, Beasley! My God. My messy little boy, what am I going to do with you, huh? Go get me a…” She stopped herself. “No, you just stay here with me and be my messy little boy, OK? School! Good Lord.” She was enjoying herself. “My goodness, Beasley, do you think there are any squirrels in that hair of yours? Maybe a bird’s nest? Huh, what’s up there in that mop of yours? Let me take a look.” She leaned forward and started probing my hair, searching for animals. Quickly, she moved her hands down under my chin and started tickling me.

We heard steps on the stairs leading up to the back porch. Hard pounding steps on the stairs usually carried an adult complaining about the behavior of me or KJ. The result was silent nods from mom or dad, apologies to the adult and a thrashing of the individual responsible for the complaint. Today’s steps were quick. Quick steps on the porch were the steps of friends. A series of light raps followed on the back door. Mom had stopped tickling me and stood, stepping towards me, squeezing my head against her stomach. She turned to the kitchen door, “Come in.” Stan entered as I not so subtly pushed away from mom’s embrace. She made a show of it, “Stan, tell Bease it’s OK for his mom to hug him, will you? It’s not so bad is it?”

Stan shrugged.

“Did you eat, honey? Do you want some breakfast?’

“No thank you, Mrs. Kinkade. I had breakfast.” Thinking better of it he stuck his big nose up towards the ceiling, then scanned the room, “Gosh, it smells good in here. I’ll have some bacon if that’s OK.” Mom handed him a plate and he crunched away. “Oh yeah, can Beasley play today?”

She turned to me, “Well Beasley, can you?”

“Yeah, that’d be great. Can I go out now, mom?

“Of course, honey. Be back by lunch. And if you’re gonna leave the neighborhood stop by and tell me, OK?”

I got up to bolt. She grabbed my arm, pulling me into a hug. I hugged her back as quickly as possible. “Have fun. Oh, and Beasley, when I’m at the sink and looking out the window I can see your reflection in the glass. Ya now, if you eat sugar like that you’ll get worms.”

“Mom, I, I … I didn’t eat sugar.”

“Beasley, I see you in my window. No more, got it?”

“Um, OK. Come on Stan, let’s go. Thanks for breakfast mom.”

Liberated from my mom’s love, Stan and I roamed the neighborhood on our bikes, looking for things to use on our fort. We headed for a construction site a few blocks away. Slowing as we approached, we began to prowl back and forth, making ever decreasing loops on our bikes in front of the new house. No one was there. Riding up the curb and behind the house we jumped off our bikes, tossing them in the dirt. We climbed on piles of wood and peeked in windows. Walking around what was to be the garage we found piles of lumber, cinder blocks and digging tools. I pulled back a big blue tarp and a roll of window screening fell to the ground. I kicked it towards our bikes and then, nonchalantly, scooped it up. With Stan riding ahead of me on the lookout for cars, we returned home.

We went straight to the fort, tucked in the far corner of my backyard. The fort was a work in progress, always changing and always expanding. Cobbled together with lumber found around the neighborhood and extra 2 x 4s from my dad’s porch expansion project, the fort consisted of three floors. The center floor was our private hangout, protected by a hatch from the first floor and a hatch leading to the roof, which we liberally referred to as the third floor.

We were in need of a window as we were forced to peek through cracks to gain a sense of what was happening outside our sanctuary. Banging out a couple of planks from the second floor, we started nailing the new screening in place. We folded it over on itself a couple of times to create a thick mesh, letting light, but not curious eyes, join us. The fort was our refuge and we did not want prying eyes peeking in. Task complete, we sat in the fort drinking from a stash of Coke bottles we had stashed there. We took turns looking for neighbors to spy on.

Stan pressed his face against the screen, “Whoa, look at all the bumble bees by your kitchen window, Bease. I can see ‘em from here. They’re huge.” He turned to me. “That’s a lot of ammo, Beasley. A lot of ammo.”

“Are you challenging me, Beasley Kinkade?” I asked in mock seriousness. “Are you asking me to throw bees?”

“Let’s do it,” said Stan. “me vs. you, Kinkade. Let’s go.”

We climbed down from the second floor and cautiously approached the rhododendron bush under the kitchen window. The bushes ran along the side of our red house with the biggest blossoming below mom’s window. The bees roamed the airspace around the bush, landing, doing their thing and leaping up into the airborne crowd. Like miniature flashbulbs going off at a Yankees game, tiny spots of sunlight flicked on and off as the light periodically caught the bees’ wings. Busy at their tasks they paid us no mind. We crept forward, entering the bubble of their airborne crowd.

About eight feet above the rhododendron bush, mom’s head periodically bounced across the kitchen window. The window was cranked all the way open. We could hear cabinets banging shut and water rushing as she washed dishes in the kitchen. The radio was turned up and every now and then we could hear her singing or humming along with a song. Though a far better cook than singer she allowed herself to bounce around the room following the music. I could smell a cake baking in the oven. With no one else in the house she enjoyed her private time. The open window allowed pieces of my uninterrupted mom to spill out into the yard.

“Ready to throw bees, Bease?” He laughed at his own joke. When he saw I wasn’t laughing along with him he followed my eyes up to the kitchen window, “Your mom’s funny, huh? Whatever she’s cooking it smells great. Hey, think I can eat dinner over your house tonight? That smells like a cake.”

Unaware of her audience below, mom’s head bopped back and forth above us.

I watched her, seeing if she would turn towards me.

Drawn back to reality I looked around. “Yeah, hold on, I need a second here. Yeah, dinner will be great. My mom won’t mind. That is if you’re not crying like a baby from getting stung.”

Steeling myself for the bee fight I held my arms out to measure the distance from the rhododendron. “You’re too close,” I protested.

Stan extended his arms to confirm he was starting from the required arm’s length from the bush. “Chicken,” he chided me. “Ready now?” I nodded.

Together we counted, “One. Two. Three. Go!”

On queue and without sound we both stepped towards the bush, eyeing potential projectiles. Stan went to grab for a bee but jerked his hand away as it became alarmed. I worked more slowly, finding a bee on the edge of a purple flower. My hand slid towards the bee. I peeked at Stan. He was looking for a suitable bee. Looking back to the flower, my bee was unmoved. I wrapped my hand around him, pulling my arm back in one fluid motion. I felt the bee’s wings go wild in my hand as I flung it in Stan’s direction. He dove to the ground as the furious bee looked to dole out some punishment. Stan rolled away, crushing some of mom’s yellow marigolds. I quickly searched for another bee.

The trick to throwing bees is to hold your hand as loose as possible to avoid crushing the bee. If a bee feels like you’re going to crush it, you are in for a painful sting. The bee wants to get away, not fight; a lesson learned through dozens of failed bee throws.

Finding a second bee, I grabbed it and whipped it at Stan. It hit his chest as he backpedalled flailing his arms. The bee retreated in a series of sharp zigs and zags.

Overall bee activity kicked up a notch as their flights became more agitated. Their bubble expanded as they sensed intruders within.

Jumping up, Stan lurched to the bush, grabbed at a flower and pulled his arm back to bean me with a bee. I dove to the ground as he threw a handful of air towards me. Oldest trick in the book and I fell for it. With me climbing up from the ground Stan took his time, found a bee and hit me directly in the face. I fell backwards as Stan threw his hands up in triumph. No sting but a direct hit. He probed for a perfect bee to finish me off. I collected myself and hunted for a bee. Silently our arms moved back and forth as we raced against each other, lunging for a knockout bee without success.

I found my bee and turned to acquire my target. Stan had stopped and was just staring up at the window. The music was louder now and mom was belting out the words to Horse with No Name in the window. We could just see her head, perfectly framed in the window. She spun and twirled, tilting her face up the sky as she worked at the sink and sang.

Stan looked at me as we worked to contain our laughter. Without thinking I released my bee. Stan bent over laughing and I tried to mute my embarrassed laughter by covering my mouth. “Mom, hey, mom, we can hear you, ya know! We can hear ya singing.”

She was lost in her little slice of heaven.

Eyes closed she continued to sing along. “In the desert you can remember your name, ‘cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain..”

Stan started clapping to the music as we both jumped into the chorus, “La la, la, lalalala. La la, la la…” Connected through the window, we belted out our duet with mom bouncing and singing eight feet overhead.

The bees swarmed in confusion. We ignored them as we started dancing as well. They obliged our turn towards benevolence by not stinging us. Perhaps they liked our song.

After working our one-sided duet through a number of chorus’s mom finally glanced outside and saw us singing along and dancing to her song. She froze as we burst out laughing and applauded her. She pulled back from the window before regaining her composure. She returned to the window blushing, “OK, smart alecs, how long have you been watching me?”

I jumped into the chorus, “La la, la lalalala…” Stan joined in. We slowly turned in little circles, shaking our butts and dancing as the song continued to pour into the yard below.

She covered her mouth with both hands, enjoying the moment.

Mom noticed Stan and I were not alone in the yard. “My God boys, there are bees everywhere. What the heck are you doing out there?”

“You mean besides singing along with you, mom?” Just throwing bees.”

“For the love of Pete! You didn’t let me hug you but you’ll throw bumble bees at each other? Are you off your rockers? Get in here before you get yourselves stung. Come on, I just finished making chocolate icing for your dad’s cake. You guys can lick the bowl.”

We left the bees to their devices. I ran ahead of Stan, making my way up the stairs and into the kitchen before him. Mom was at the sink. The same sun reflecting off the bees’ wings pierced through her kitchen window. Her face lanced into the sunlight like a ship’s bow; curving the light around her and filling the kitchen. Before Stan made his way into the room I grabbed my mom and hugged her. I whispered, “I love you, mom,” pulling away just as Stan joined us.

As I finished telling Gee my story, her eyebrows scrunched down into seriousness, “You threw bees at each other? That’s crazy, daddy. Really, really crazy. Didn’t you get stung? Didn’t those bees sting you? And, hey, how old were you, anyway.”

I smiled back, “I was a little older than you, Gee. And, yes, sometimes we got stung, but not so often. The trick was to be gentle and not to squeeze the little guys. You may only be six but if you squeezed a bee, even a little, he’d get scared and sting you. Best to be gentle. Actually, I guess its best you don’t even try it, OK.”

Gee was rule oriented and assured me, “I won’t daddy. Believe me, I am not gonna be throwing bees like you and your friends did when you were little.”

She took a measure of me then asked, “Dad, scratch my back please?” Not waiting for an answer she fell backwards and rolled over on her stomach.

I put my coffee on the night table next to her bed and started to scratch her shoulders. I leaned forward and, as I heard the air conditioner kick in, a message nearly 30 years old slowly came into focus.