When I Found You (41 page)

“Nat?” He heard Carol’s voice from the doorway. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Is Nathan OK?”

“I think so. I hope so. He’s not still in there, though.”

“Oh, Nat.”

“He left sometime in the night.”

“We should call somebody.”

“Who?”

“The lady from the hospice, maybe. She’ll tell us what to do.”

“You call her. OK?”

“OK. I’ll call right now.” She moved toward the bedroom phone.

“From the kitchen, please.”

She stood frozen. Leveled him with a confused look.

“I just need a little more time with him,” Nat said. “Please?”

7 March 1990   

Nat squinted his eyes when the bedroom door opened, letting in light from the hall. Carol stuck her head in and watched Nat for a moment, curled in a fetal position on Nathan’s otherwise empty bed. He watched back, blinking into the light. She looked like an angel, haloed from behind.

“I’m worried about you,” she said.

“I’m OK.”

“Can I come in?”

“Yes.”

She came in and stood over the bed, looking down on him. Nat patted a spot beside him, Nathan’s side, and she lay down facing him.

“Now that Nathan’s gone, do you want me to go home?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“There’s nothing to help with any more.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. So, you’re saying I don’t need any help.”

“Are you going to stay on here at the house?”

“Yeah, he didn’t have any relatives. I mean, not living. So he left everything to me.”

“You’re lucky. You have a house and a little money.”

“I’d rather have Nathan.”

“I know. I know you would, Nat.” An awkward silence.

Then Nat said, “Why do you think he did everything he did for me?”

“I wish you’d had a chance to ask him.”

“I did. Actually. But my timing was a little bit off.”

They lay in silence for a few moments. Nat tried to shake off the feeling of awkwardness caused by her closeness. But it was stubborn. Or maybe he wasn’t trying hard enough.

Carol said, “I have a couple of theories. Want to hear them?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“First off, I think part of it was how much his grandfather did for him. You know his grandfather pretty much raised him after his father died?”

Nat blinked once or twice. “No. I didn’t know that. His father died? When?”

“When he was twelve.”

“How did you know that? I knew Nathan so much better than you. I mean longer. I knew him for so much longer. And I didn’t know that. How did you know that?”

A pause. As if she were waiting for him to figure it out on his own. “I asked him.” Then, rushing past the awkward spot, she said, “So maybe he was doing that thing people do. That thing where they know how it feels to really need help and get it, so they do the same for somebody. Plus … I’m not saying this to criticize him, Nat, you know I’d never do that. But Nathan was an accountant all his life. His first marriage was unhappy. The second ended in divorce. He was nearly fifty when he found you in the woods. Right around that age when people start to wonder if their lives are turning out the way they want them to. I think maybe he just wanted his life to be more.”

“I can understand that. But I can’t understand how I could be the more.”

“Lots of people use helping somebody to make their life feel like more. Look at Mother Theresa. Look how happy she is.”

Nat pulled in a deep, noisy breath of preparation. As if oxygen would soften the sudden jump in his heart rate. “Wait a while and think about what you want to do now. OK? Think whether you want to stay or go.”

“OK. Sure.” A pause. “You have to get up, you know. Sometime.”

“I’ll get up. I just need a little more time.”

“Really? You’ll really get up all on your own? Pretty soon?”

“Yeah. I will. He would have wanted me to, so I will. Pretty soon here I’ll get up and do something that would make him proud.”

“That’s nice. Do you know what it’s going to be yet?”

“I’m thinking.”

“OK. I’ll leave you to think.”

“Thank you,” Nat said.

Ten minutes may have gone by, or it may have been half an hour. It was hard for Nat to judge. But in time he reached for the phone. Pulled the receiver off its cradle on the bedside table without getting up. Without moving much.

He dialed a number he still knew by heart.

“Hello?” An old woman’s voice. Startlingly old. Did it even sound familiar to him?

“Gamma?”

A long, weighted silence. She couldn’t very well ask who was calling. She had to know. That one word said it all. Maybe she was just too taken aback to answer.

“Gamma, it’s me. Nat.”

8 March 1990   

Nat stepped into the gym around eight o’clock in the evening. Everybody had gone home except Danny. Which was hardly a surprise. Nat had planned it that way quite purposely.

Danny was pounding a heavy bag, his back to Nat. Nat knew Danny must have heard the door swing shut. But he did not turn around. Man, he was one big kid. Working out with just his trunks on, he looked close to a heavyweight already. And probably no more than fourteen. Not much more, anyway.

“Danny.”

“What you want, Nat?” Still without turning around. Without missing a punch. No wonder Little Manny kept saying Danny reminded him of Nat.

“My name is Nathan, actually.”

Danny stopped punching. Held the bag a moment and looked over his shoulder. “Well, I know that,” he said. “But you go by Nat.”

“Not any more. Now I go by Nathan.”

“Oh, so now I lose points because I didn’t know that, when how could I know?”

“I’m not upset. I’m just telling you.”

“Doesn’t that make it more confusing with the older Nathan?”

“The older Nathan is gone now. He died.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Nat. I mean, Nathan. That’s too bad.”

“Yeah,” Nat said. “I’m sorry, too. Come on, get in the ring with me. I want to see what you can do.”

Nat walked over to the equipment shelves and took down a pair of mitts. When he turned back, Danny hadn’t moved. He just stood there next to the bag, gloved fists hanging at his sides. Staring at Nat.

“What?” Nat asked.

“I been hanging around here the better part of two years and you ain’t wanted to see what I can do.”

“Well, tonight I do.” Nat stepped through the ropes and into the ring.

Danny seemed to chew that over for another few seconds. Then he shrugged and ducked through the ropes. He waited patiently while Nat put the mitts on, raised them to position and gave the word.

“OK. Hit me.”

Danny began sparring gently. Too gently. Technically, his punches looked good. But they felt too easy on Nat’s mitts. As if Danny were treating him like fine bone china.

“Know what your problem is?” Nat asked.

Danny stopped punching. Stood still in the ring, hands frozen in position. As though someone had punched
him
. His face soft. Too nice, Nat thought. Too sweet a kid. At least, for this business.

“As a fighter?”

“Yeah. As a fighter.”

“Didn’t think I
had
a problem. Little Manny thinks I’m good.”

“You want to hear my opinion or not?”

Danny’s arms fell to his sides. “OK. What’s my problem?”

“Passion.”

‘Passion?”

“Yes. Passion. As in, where’s yours?”

“I thought passion was like … a thing between a guy and his girlfriend.”

“That’s just one kind of passion and it’s not the kind I’m talking about. I’m talking about emotion. Fire. Anger. That’s it!” Nat shouted, and Danny jumped as if someone had fired off a gun next to his ear. “That’s what’s missing. Anger.”

“Who’m I supposed to be mad at?”

“Has to be somebody. What about me? I refused to train you.”

“That’s up to you. You don’t gotta work for free.”

“It didn’t make you mad?”

“No. I just don’t like you much.”

“OK, let’s try this another way. Who would you be mad at if you
were
the kind of guy to get mad?”

Danny tried to scratch his nose with one glove, but gave up quickly. “My dad, I guess. For taking off before I was born. And my mom. ‘Cause when she left me at my grandma’s she said she’d be back in just a few weeks, and we’d live together again. But she only came back one summer and a couple weekends, and we ain’t lived together since.”

“Ha. You call that a sad story? My mother could have dumped me at my grandmother’s house, but instead she left me in the woods under a pile of leaves. To die. In October.”

Danny rocked his head back in disbelief. “Why you standing here, then?”

“Just luck. Nathan was out hunting with his dog, and the dog sniffed me out before I could freeze all the way to death.”

“You feeding me shit?”

Nat raised his right mitt as if in a court of law. “God’s honest truth. I’ve got the newspaper clipping to prove it.”

Danny stared down at the mat for a beat or two. Then he looked Nat right in the eye. “OK. So your story sadder’n mine. OK. But my story still my story. I mean … even if somebody else got it worse. What I got was bad enough. You know?”

Nat took two steps in. Stood almost nose to nose with the boy. Raised his mitts again. “Then why don’t you … get …” He geared up every ounce of volume he had in him. “Mad!”

Danny hit him with a powerful shot to the right mitt. Nat, who still wasn’t a hundred per cent steady on his feet, ended up on his back, his head thumping hard on the mat.

He looked up into Danny’s terrified face.

“Nat! You OK? Did I hurt you?”

“I’m fine, kid. I’m not a raw egg.”

“Little Manny said you gotta be careful with your head.”

“That’s just the right side here. Back of my head is just as hard as anybody’s. Harder than most. You want to back off a little so I can get up?”

Danny took a step back and held out an arm to Nat. “I know how to get up on my own,” Nat said. He rolled over and rose to his feet.

“You sure you’re OK? I’m sorry, Nat. I mean, Nathan.”

“Do
not
be sorry.
Never
be sorry for your anger in the ring. Now, that was good just then. Show me some more of that.”

31 December 1999   

The minute Nat stepped out of the elevator and into the hotel lobby, he spotted Danny in the crowd. It wasn’t difficult. First of all, he was a good head taller than anybody around him. Secondly, he had sighted Nat and was hopping up and down like a little kid, waving his arms wildly.

“I want to go with
you
, Nathan,” Danny said the minute Nat caught up to him. He stood in a pack of trainers and managers and promoters, all of whom turned their eyes on Nat when Danny spoke.

“What? We’re not all going in one limo?”

Vick, one of Danny’s two managers, said, “They sent two limos. There’re nine of us, so they sent two. I thought we could’ve squeezed in …”

“Or we could have gotten reservations at the Mandalay,” Nat said, “and not bothered with limos at all.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Vick said. “And if things were different they wouldn’t be the same.”