The Whore's Child (18 page)

SPAGHETTI

They were no sooner seated in Rigazzi’s than Lin’s favorite waitress, the one who enjoyed giving his father a hard time, came over. “I was beginning to think you’d died, Slick,” she said, one hand on an ample hip. “You never come in anymore.”

His father pretended to read the menu. “Well, Jolene, I keep running into people I don’t like,” his father said, indicating the far end of the restaurant where Lin’s Uncle Brian sat eating spaghetti with his family.

“Speaking of which,” Jolene said, “he wants to know if you’d like to join them.”

“Yeah?” his father said. “Tell him I know how much he’d like to spoil my dinner, but I’m not going to let him.”

“I’ll say no such thing,” she assured him.

“Suit yourself,” his father said amiably. “I’ll have the—”

“Rigatoni and sausage,” Jolene finished for him.

“Rigatoni and sausage,” his father confirmed as she wrote it down.

Now she raised an eyebrow in Lin’s direction. When he opened his mouth to speak, she said, “Spaghetti and meatballs,” wrote that down and then snatched the two menus. “I could make other predictions, too, but I’d just depress myself.”

Lin wouldn’t have minded joining his Uncle Brian’s family. His cousin Audrey, who was fifteen, had breasts and was about the prettiest girl Lin had ever seen—so pretty, in fact, that he couldn’t even hold it against her that she’d never spoken a kind word to him. His cousin Mackey, who was two years older, did play Wiffle ball with him, but only on the condition that he got to bat first, which meant in effect that Lin never got to bat at all, since he could never get Mackey out. Uncle Brian’s problem, according to Lin’s father, was that he was a blowhard, and in his own opinion, Mackey was well on his way to becoming another.

“You didn’t know that, did you,” his father said when Jolene was gone.

“Know what?”

“That Howard Christie’s in love with your mother.”

Lin thought about the way the collection basket paused each Sunday after he’d put in the offering envelope.

“You thought he just enjoyed painting houses on the weekend?”

Exactly. That was exactly what Lin had thought. Either that or he enjoyed Lin’s own company.

“Ask him, if you don’t believe me.”

Lin tried to imagine circumstances in which he might ask any such thing, and failed utterly.

“What’d you eat at your grandfather’s?” his father asked after Jolene had brought their salads.

“Steak,” Lin said around a mouthful of iceberg lettuce.

“Figures,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “Your grandmother still drinking?”

“Drinking what?” Though he knew. He’d seen her going back into the kitchen to visit the silver shaker, seen her careful, deliberate gait after dinner, smelled the strange sweetness on her breath when she kissed him good night, the same sweetness he sometimes smelled after his mother listened to Jo Stafford too long.

“Too bad,” his father said. “Of course you’d drink, too, if you were married to Linwood the Third. He still trying to convince your mother to divorce me?”

His father had stopped eating and was watching him. Lin would have liked not to answer, but he knew that wasn’t an option. “He isn’t going to give her money anymore,” he said, immediately smarting at this betrayal of his mother, especially since his father seemed cheered to hear it.

“I figured that’s how she was staying afloat. How’d she take that news?”

But across the restaurant, his aunt had gotten to her feet and headed to the ladies’ room, and Uncle Brian, having finished his meal, also rose and came across the room. He was about the same height as Lin’s father, but otherwise seemed much larger and his face was always purple, as if the top button of his shirt was too tight.

“Hey there, big guy,” he said, offering his huge hand to Lin.

“Stand up when you shake hands,” his father suggested, also rising to his feet. “Your uncle’s big on manners.”

Uncle Brian chuckled pleasantly, as if at a fine joke. Lin was surprised when the two men shook hands, both of them acting like they couldn’t have been more pleased to run into each other.

“You didn’t want to eat with us?” Uncle Brian said, sounding genuinely hurt.

“You were about done, and we were just starting,” Lin’s father explained.

“Would’ve been my treat.”

“Well, big brother”—Lin’s father’s smile got thin—“I may not have as much money as you, but I think I can manage a couple of spaghetti dinners.”

“You ever see anybody as stubborn as your old man?” Uncle Brian wanted to know. But before Lin could respond, he’d already turned back to his brother. “That Bert’s Buick you pulled up in?”

“What of it?”

Uncle Brian held up both hands in surrender. “Nothing. I just heard you were looking for a car, that’s all. Why don’t you let me help you out?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Uncle Brian sighed. “Why does it always have to be this way with you, Tommy, will you tell me that? What the hell did I ever do to you? What did
anybody
ever do to you?”

Jolene arrived with their food then, setting the plates down hard. “If this is going where I think it’s going, then take it outside.”

“You want to go outside, Tommy?” Uncle Brian was saying now. “Is that it?”

His father just grinned back at him. “I only want two things, Brian. I want to sit down and eat my rigatoni, and I want you to go fuck yourself.”

“
Outside,
” Jolene warned, her voice rising now.

“Don’t let your spaghetti get cold,” Lin’s father said. “I’ll be right back.”

Spaghetti was one of Lin’s favorite foods because it was both delicious and thought-provoking. They’d been coming to Rigazzi’s for as long as he could remember, and his father had taught him how to twirl spaghetti on his fork instead of cutting it up. The trick, he’d learned, was to start with just a few strands; otherwise you ended up with a big ball of pasta twine that either wouldn’t fit in your mouth or gagged you when you tried to chew. Even though he now regarded himself as an expert twirler, he still liked it that you couldn’t predict, when you pulled on one strand, which strand on the opposite side of the plate would snake toward your fork through the giant tangle. Even when you’d eaten most of it, you still couldn’t tell what was connected to what. This complexity and surprise was nearly as delicious as the actual taste.

Lin had eaten only a few forkfuls when his cousins suddenly crowded into the booth with him. Mackey arrived first, slipping onto the bench Lin’s father had vacated and flipping up the window’s wooden slats so he could peer outside, leaving his sister to lean across Lin. Her long dark hair brushed his nose, her body so close he could smell whatever it was she was wearing—perfume, maybe, or just girl’s soap.

“They’re fighting,” Audrey whispered, and sure enough, when Lin looked out through the open slats, his father and Uncle Brian were grappling with each other in the parking lot. His father momentarily managed to get him in a headlock, but then Brian backed him into a parked car, hard, breaking his grip.

“Dad’ll kick his ass,” Mackey said confidently, letting the slats fall back into place and heading for the front door. When the door opened, Lin heard a far-off siren, and saw Jolene hang up the phone behind the cash register.

Her brother gone, Audrey slid into the opposite bench and regarded Lin critically. “Fighting is
stupid,
” she said, again peering out through the slats, opening them just wide enough to see through herself. After a minute she let them fall shut again. “The police are here.” When she sighed, her breasts heaved. “What are you looking at?” she said, having caught him.

Lin thought it better not to say.

“How old are you?” she wanted to know, her eyes narrowing.

“Ten.”

“You’re just a kid,” she said contemptuously. “You shouldn’t be interested in things like that.”

He supposed this was true, but said, “Things like what?”

“Like what girls have under their sweaters.” This was an electrifying conversation, but then she went and spoiled it. “You don’t see us going around staring at your zipper, do you?”

Lin could feel the blood rush to his cheeks. Blessedly, his aunt came out of the ladies’ room just then, looking surprised to find their table empty, her daughter sitting with Lin, her husband, son and brother-in-law nowhere in sight.

“Shall I tell my mother where you were looking?” Audrey said.

Lin was about to beg her not to when he was visited by a sudden, mysterious intuition. She wouldn’t tell. She was relishing his discomfort, much as Mackey enjoyed never letting him bat. “Go ahead,” he said, surprising himself. To the best of his recollection, he’d never in his life done anything so bold, and it was thrilling to see immediately that his intuition had been correct. When his aunt arrived at the booth, Audrey said languidly, “Dad and Uncle Tommy are fighting in the parking lot.”

“How absurd,” his aunt said, ignoring Lin entirely. “Your father knows he’s got a bad back. He won’t even be able to straighten up tomorrow.”

In a few minutes Lin’s father slid back into the booth opposite him. He had a split lower lip, and there were a few drops of blood on his shirtfront. “You all done?” his father said, seemingly amazed that his fight had lasted long enough for his son to eat his entire dinner. He stabbed a rigatoni and chewed it thoughtfully, wincing when the tomato sauce stung his cut lip. “You don’t have to tell your mother about this, you know.”

Lin nodded. His father dabbed his swollen lip with a napkin, wincing again, then pushed his plate away and studied him carefully.

“Your cousin Audrey’s sure growing up, isn’t she?” he finally observed, giving Lin a chill.

HATE

Hugo Wentz’s father might have bullied Mr. Christie into making a pitcher of Hugo, but that’s where it ended. Though he attended each game and heckled relentlessly from the stands—“Give the other kids a chance, Coach. You afraid you’ll lose your job?”—Mr. Christie continued to do things his own way. He did not like to put his younger boys in pressure-packed situations where they’d feel terrible if they failed, so he was adamant about not putting Hugo into any game without a cushion, preferably a large one. Being ahead or behind by a dozen runs or more, Lin had noticed, made it a Hugo situation.

Since their confrontation on the first day of practice, the two boys had spoken to each other only once. And the conversation, initiated by Hugo, had been one-sided. “My dad knows your dad from the hotel,” he said, grinning unpleasantly. “My dad
tips
your dad.” Since then, when neither was in the game, they sat on opposite ends of the bench. At first their mutual aversion had been wholly satisfying to Lin, who didn’t want to be associated with a boy so pitifully lacking in baseball skills—who
looked
so little like a baseball player. But as the season wore on he began to suspect that Hugo was equally content with the arrangement. Ever since that first practice when Lin had been struck in the forehead by the grounder, he’d remained timid about any ball hit in his direction, and batters continued to beat easy groundouts because he was afraid to charge the ball. As a result he thought he detected a triumphant curl of Hugo Wentz’s lip. By midsummer he’d even given up his nightly game of snagging line drives in his room since his heroic fantasy was no longer sustainable. Every time he dove recklessly and smothered a hard-hit liner, landing fully extended on his bed, he’d see Hugo’s lip curl and know the truth—that a rubber ball wasn’t a baseball, his soft mattress not a hard-packed infield. It was ironic, of course, that his enemy should be the reason both that he no longer loved baseball and that he didn’t quit. For as long as Hugo remained on the team, he, not Lin, would be regarded as its worst player. The pure joy was gone, though, and when the final game of the season rolled around, Lin was relieved.

American Legion games, usually high-scoring affairs, were seven innings, and it wasn’t until the bottom of the sixth, with a two-run lead, that Lin was inserted as a pinch hitter. The Stop & Shop coach was making similar end-of-season moves, and the boy brought in to pitch to Lin walked him on a full count. By the time the inning was over and Elm Photo took the field, their lead had swollen to four runs. Spirits were running high until Mr. Christie was seen handing the baseball to Hugo Wentz, who started to mope out onto the field without his mitt and had to be called back in for it.

“Bear down now,” his father called out from the bleachers as he warmed up. “Those sissies can’t hit.”

But of course they didn’t have to. Hugo Wentz never had any trouble throwing the ball over the plate during warm-ups, but something happened as soon as a boy stood there with a bat in his hands. You could actually see it happening. The first pitch or two might be close to the strike zone, but after that Hugo’s eyes would glaze over as if he was watching the game on some inner screen that only he could see and which bore little relation to the one being played on the field. His pitches got wilder and wilder, one in the dirt, the next halfway up the backstop. Unless Lin was mistaken, there was for Hugo just one physical reality once he was on the mound: the sound of his father’s voice in the bleachers, a voice that did not take long to grow impatient. Only by plunging deep into something akin to a coma was the boy able to sever that last link with reality.

After loading the bases without throwing a single strike, the coach of the Stop & Shop team called his next batter back to the on-deck circle for a conference, and though he was whispering, it was painfully clear to everyone on both sides of the diamond that his instructions were: Don’t swing.

“He’s got no stick, Hugo,” Mr. Wentz shouted. “Just throw the damn ball over the plate. He couldn’t hit it off a tee.”

Good advice, Lin thought, but Hugo was no longer, strictly speaking, there to hear it, and his next four pitches were even wilder, the last eluding the backstop completely. The runner on third trotted home, the bases still loaded, nobody out. Next batter, same result.

“Go settle him down, Coach,” Mr. Wentz yelled. “Don’t you know anything?”

In fact, Mr. Christie was already on his way to the mound, but when Hugo started to hand him the ball, he refused to take it. Instead he turned the boy around so they faced the outfield, their backs to the stands. “Look here, Hugo,” Mr. Christie said quietly. “I’ll take you out if you want, but I think you can get this man out.”

“I hate him,” Lin heard Hugo Wentz say. “I
hate
him!” And with that he threw the ball down onto the mound so hard that it ricocheted all the way to first base in the air.

Mr. Christie called for the ball, and the first baseman tossed it back. Then the coach handed it back to Hugo. “I want you to throw it just like that,” he said, “except at the catcher’s mitt.”

Hugo accepted the ball reluctantly. “We’ll just lose,” he said.

“That wouldn’t be so bad,” Mr. Christie said. “We’ve lost other games. But if you throw it just like that, like you’re real, real mad, we’ll win. Can you throw it like you’re mad?”

“Christ on a crutch, Hugo, play ball!” his father yelled. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Okay,” Hugo said, taking Lin by surprise. “I can do that.”

Hugo’s next pitch shocked both teams and everyone in the bleachers by bisecting the plate and popping into the catcher’s mitt. The umpire was so dumbfounded that he called it a ball, before correcting himself, and Lin could almost see his brain telling him to actually watch the pitches now, which up to this point hadn’t been necessary. The next pitch was in the exact same spot, and the batter, now with two strikes, stepped out of the box and stared at his coach, who almost imperceptibly shook his head. When the umpire called strike three in an amazed tone of voice, the batter threw his bat in disgust, and to make matters worse, the runner on third, thoroughly disoriented, came trotting home as if the batter had been walked and then was easily tagged out. This rendered the Stop & Shop coach apoplectic, perhaps because he’d just stood there watching and never shouted for the kid to get back to the bag. Just that quickly there were two outs, and Elm Photo’s infield was suddenly full of chatter. “Way to throw strikes, Hugo! One more now! Just like that!”

When he realized that he was the only one on the team not offering encouragement, even Lin joined in, though he was deeply ambivalent about Hugo’s sudden, inexplicable discovery of the strike zone. Of course he hoped Elm Photo would win this last game, but would have been just as content if Hugo came in and lost it singlehandedly. At least in this scenario, Lin himself couldn’t lose the game for his team, which was his greatest fear. Whereas now, if a ball was hit in his direction and he failed to catch it, the winning run might score on
his
error. No one would remember the five batters Hugo had walked, only that Lin Hart had let an easy out skitter between his legs. Worse, it would end the season, giving him no chance of redeeming himself. That the team should rally so excitedly around Hugo Wentz seemed monstrously unfair.

Yet when he heard Hugo Wentz say “I hate him!” Lin felt a sudden kinship he wanted desperately to deny. Though he didn’t hate his father—or anybody, really—the other boy’s enmity registered powerfully, like something rancid on the back of his tongue. Because there were things, Lin realized, that
he
hated, hated so deeply, in fact, that he’d never found the courage to utter them even to himself. Despite never having seen it, he hated his father’s apartment over the barbershop. He hated the fact that adults couldn’t agree on how to do simple things, like keeping the windows open on hot days. He hated his mother playing Jo Stafford over and over, and that dreamy, faraway look in her eye that suggested she’d like nothing better than to follow the wayward wind and leave her whole life, including him, behind. Lately, now that he thought about it, he hated almost everything, even things he’d loved the most, one of which was baseball.

Tasting all this on the back of his tongue, he also realized that he was jealous—could such a thing be possible?—of the pathetic Hugo Wentz, not just because he’d struck a batter out, but because he’d somehow found the courage to acknowledge and express his hatred, and as a direct result had a completely different look about him. Not confidence, exactly. No, he just looked like a boy who’d finally had enough, who preferred to face the firing squad now rather than later. That the batter who now stepped up to the plate was the best hitter on the Stop & Shop team, that he’d already hit two home runs, didn’t even seem to occur to him.

It occurred to Lin, though, because the boy was left-handed, and when he took a slow practice swing, the end of his bat was pointing right at Lin, as if to predict where hell would break loose. As Hugo started his windup, things went into slow motion and Lin Hart found he had the leisure to think a great many thoughts. For instance, that the game didn’t really matter so much, because everything was changing. A year from now his father might be living someplace else. Hadn’t he said from the start that the apartment over the barbershop wasn’t forever? No, he’d insisted it was just until Lin’s mother made up her mind. New York City, he’d hinted more than once, would be a much better place for a bartender. Or maybe his mother would announce tomorrow that they were moving to Connecticut to be closer to Grandma and Grandpa Foster. Maybe that’s why the house was being painted, so it could be sold for a better price. Maybe in another month he’d be in a new school in Connecticut where they had lots of pretty girls even prettier than his cousin, whose hair he could still feel brushing his cheek and whose smell he’d breathed deep within his lungs. He remembered the satisfaction of guessing right about Audrey’s bullying, the pleasure of seeing his bold challenge work according to plan.
That’s
what he was going to be good at, it now dawned on him. He’d be good with girls. His father was. That’s why people called him Slick, and slick was a good thing to be.

Lin had other thoughts, too, and his reverie might have produced a great many other understandings had his thoughts not been interrupted by the sharp crack of a bat.