Heft (21 page)

I think of dropping out. I think of Gerard Kane, if he’d still want me if I did.

Then I think of Matt Barnaby going to Lindsay’s house this past weekend. Or calling her up. Saying, Lindsay, I have to tell you something that you might not want to hear.

And Lindsay going, Oh, what is it?

And Matt going, Well, it’s about Kel.

And Lindsay going, Oh no, is he OK?

And Matt going, Well, yeah, he’s OK. But listen, he did something really fucked up. I thought you’d want to be the first to hear about it. Because I care about you as a friend.

The bastard the bastard.

My knuckles are swollen. The knuckles of my right hand. My throwing hand. The upper hand on the bat.

I want to tell Lindsay something important.

I’m on a long stretch of empty road. The gas pedal beneath my right foot is pleasantly resistant. I step on it harder. The old engine of my old car roars in complaint.

And then I see the lights behind me, fifty yards back, then twenty five, then ten. Flashing blue lights.

The cop is young. Twenty-five maybe. He has orange eyebrows and at the base of his cap I can see short orange hair.

In a hurry, he says, when he comes to my window. Rain is coming down on his blue hat and his blue coat.

I shrug.

Do you know why I pulled you over? he asks.

For speeding, I say.

Sixty-five in a thirty-five, says the cop, and raises and lowers his eyebrows slowly.

And your left taillight is broken too, he says.

And! he says, looking at the sticker on my windshield: It looks like this car was due for an inspection in
August
?

He shakes his head back and forth slowly.

He asks for my license and registration and I give both to him after some rummaging around.

He looks at the registration. Who’s Charlene Keller, he asks.

My mother, I say.

Does she know you have her car?

I nod. I can’t speak.

OK, says the cop, stay put while I run these.

The street he’s pulled me over on is a pretty one. There’s a horse farm to my right and I watch a woman open and close a fence behind her and call to one of them. The blanketed horse comes to her and she clips a leash-thing onto his face-thing and then the two of them walk toward the barn.

While the cop is gone I think about doing crazy things. Starting the car up and peeling out. Trying to lose him on some backstreets. Driving to my mother’s house and parking behind it and going inside it and never coming out again. Like her. Or: Jumping out of the car. Hiding in the woods. Hiding in the hayloft of the horse farm. Begging for shelter from the woman leading the horse.

He comes back before I can do anything and asks me to step out of the car, then asks me to face it, and then asks me to put my hands behind my back, and then puts handcuffs on my wrists, and tells me—I swear he’s nervous when he says it, it’s probably his first time doing this—that he has to take me in. That there’s a call out for me. That I’m wanted for assault. He tells me my rights.

I swear I don’t even care. I sort of relax. I sort of feel relieved.

What about my car, I say.

We’ll take care of it, he says. We’ll tow it.

The redheaded Pells cop is making conversation with me.

So you go to the high school here, says the cop.

I don’t respond.

I went to Pells too, says the cop.

He looks at me in the rearview.

—Who do you have for English?

I don’t respond.

The car is warm inside and my nose starts running. I sniff once, twice. But I can’t get at my nose and a quick string of snot runs down my mouth and chin. My throat tightens. I feel like I have finally been found out: like all of the years I have spent in Pells Landing have been leading up to this one moment. I want to cry but I don’t.

When we arrive at the station he can no longer avoid looking at me.

He takes my elbow gently and we walk through the pretty front door of the Pells Landing Police Station, which is made of red brick and looks new and unused.

The woman at the front desk looks horrified.

Hi, Wendy, he says, as we walk past her. I think in his voice there is a hint of pride that he has captured somebody.

Through swinging doors. They take my cell phone from me. I am to be photographed by a man with a mustache.

Can I please wipe my damn nose, I say quietly, and the redheaded cop finally undoes my cuffs and walks me into the bathroom and watches as I put rough brown paper towels up to my face.

When I’m done in the bathroom the man takes my picture. My name is on a clipboard in front of me. Not Kel. My real name that no one calls me.

I am the only person in the station who doesn’t work there. No one says anything to me.

The cop finally leads me to a room that looks like a break room. A hard and heavy wooden table with three chairs around it. He sits me down in one.

You’re gonna have to hang out here for a while, he says.

On his way out he points to the mirrored wall that is certainly a window on the other side, as if to say:
We’re watching you.

Then he locks the door behind him.

• • •

I
look at myself in the two-way mirror. The bags under my eyes
are green indentations. My cheeks are empty. My beard is a man’s beard, almost, for the first time. I put up my hood again and then lower it slowly.

The clock on the wall says that it is two o’clock, which means that practice will start soon and that I will miss it. If he has not heard already Coach will say Where’s Kel? and Trevor and Cossy and Kramer and Peters and all of my friends will look at each other with false concern and then one of them will step forward and solemnly tell Coach what I did to Matt Barnaby.
And then he just took off running.

A half hour goes by.

An hour.

At a quarter to three I remember the envelope in my back pocket and I take it out. I put it on the table before me. I smooth it with my fists.

Kelly.
My mother’s bubbly handwriting. As if she were a girl.

I imagine her writing it. Drunk as she ever was. The paper coming in and out of focus. Her hand shaking and slipping. I wonder if she took the pills before or after. I remember her writing letters with a dictionary on the table next to her when I was little. For when she had to look up spellings.

I’m not letting myself read it while she’s alive. It is not right to. I was not meant to. It is a superstition that I cannot shake.

•

At three-thirty the door opens again and in walks a man, older than the cop who nabbed me, more sure of himself.

His badge says that he is Officer Connor. He looks tired and he looks like he feels bad for me. He has a gray mustache like Gerard Kane. I like him. I wonder if he has sons of his own, if he takes them to their baseball games.

Son, he says, pulling out a chair from the table. He grunts with the effort of sitting down. I’m Officer Connor.

I’m Kel, I say.

Now what exactly did you do, he says.

In the back of my mind I wonder if I should have a lawyer. It’s what they do on TV shows, get lawyers. But I know I have no money so I don’t think I can have one.

I have no reason to hide anything and in fact feel like maybe I want to go to jail, because everything bad has happened to me in the past week and nothing good. Baseball is the only thing I care about and now I have no one to tell about it.

I punched Matt Barnaby in his face, I say.

Who’s Matt Barnaby? asks the officer.

The kid I punched, I say.

Hmmm, says Officer Connor. OK.

He scratches his head. And then you left school?

Yup, I say.

And you were going thirty miles over the speed limit when Officer Talifaris apprehended you, he says.

Yup, I say.

And your right taillight was broken and your inspection sticker was from August, he says.

Left, I say.

Left what?

Left taillight, I say.

He pauses and looks at me.

Where are you from, son? he asks.

Yonkers, I say.

Oh, yeah? Whereabouts?

Southwest, I say.

He raises his eyebrows. Southeast, he says, pointing to himself. Right off McLean.

He looks at me without saying anything for a long time. He looks like all of my friends’ fathers, the ones from Yonkers. I want him to like me and respect me, to think that I am a good kid.

How come you go to school in Pells? he asks gently.

My mom— I start, but it’s too much. I shake my head and then shake it some more.

He nods at my mother’s letter which I am clutching with both hands.

What do you have there? he asks.

Nothing, I say, but my voice cracks and suddenly I can tell what’s coming. Nothing, I say again, steadier. Don’t cry, I think, you just can’t cry.

Look, he says. Where are your parents?

Nowhere, I say.

They’ll find out eventually, he says. Might as well get it over with.

Nowhere, nowhere, I say.

I won’t cry. I stop it in my throat and hold it there like a fist.
Nowhere,
I say one more time.

And after that I don’t talk.

Kel, says Officer Connor. Kel.

I want him to like me. I say nothing.

OK, he says, showing me his palms.

As he’s leaving, he says, Did you get a chance to call anyone?

I shake my head.

Hang on, he says, and he comes back a moment later with a portable phone.

It’s always a pay phone in the movies. A quarter for the pay phone.

Make it quick, he says on his way out.

I look at the phone. I have no one to call. I don’t want to call anyone. I call Dr. Moscot’s office. I’ve memorized the number.

Hello? says the woman who answers the phone.

Hi, I say. It’s Charlene Keller’s son. Is Dr. Moscot there?

Oh, hi, says the woman. I’m so sorry about your mother.

I pause. I pause.

When Dr. Moscot comes on the phone I already know in my heart what has happened. But I do not want him to say it.

We’ve been trying to get ahold of you, he says.

Well I haven’t had my phone, I say.

Kel, says Dr. Moscot, and I say, Wait.

Kel, says Dr. Moscot.

Hang on a second, I say.

I’m very sorry to tell you this, says Dr. Moscot.

This is what it feels like,
I keep thinking.
For so many years I’ve been wondering.

When he hangs up I feel frozen and I keep the phone to my ear until I hear the dial tone. Then I lower it gently to the table.

There is nothing left to do but open her letter. There is nothing left to do but take one finger and poke it into the top right corner of the envelope and drag it downward slowly as I can.

• • •

Dear Kel

I’m so sorry honey. I don’t ever want to hurt you or anything. I love you with all my heart and soul.

Kelly you might be mad at me but I am real sick and I think you know that’s true, have been for a long time now. Its

There’s others things to

When gramma and gramps died you were little and I was all by my self. Had no one in the world to help me. Now I don’t’ want you blaming yourself for any of this now or ever down your life, this is me doing this and always have been . . . this is a coward thing to do I know but listen

I truely think you will be better off. Listen you can do whatever it is that you like in your life with no worry for your mom, is she sick, is she drunk, etc etc

You can do great things, you’re a baseball star aready, but Kel please go to college, I didn’t

And look at me

Now Kel I have to tell you something hard that I should tell you a long time ago. Your dad isn’t’ who you think he is. Kel Keller just a boy who married me when I was scared and pregnant and too young to know right from right. Told me he wd raise you as his own son if I never told you otherwise. Or our families. Call you by his own name. Then let us go when you were little. And I couldn’t tell dad and mom.

And I was always scared to tell you this but now I have something good to tell you: your dad is man named Arthur Opp. The one who sent me letters you remember. There you go, you always asked me were you named after him and I used to say no. But this was lie. He’s a good man, very smart and got a lot of class. He’ll tell you our story. He’s very smart and got a lot of class. If I was smarter as a kid I would have done everything I could to keep him around. He is living in Brooklyn and I spoken to him

But you call him when you’re ready. He s expecting a call from you. He’ll take care of you I know it.

Kelly I love you, I’m sorry, I’ll see you someday, we’ll all be together

Mom.

Other Arthur

• • •

• • •

T
he first time I ever sat down to eat without the intention of
stopping, I was nine years old. It was just after Easter. I was far too old for an Easter-egg hunt, especially a solo one, but that was the spring my father left, & that, therefore, was the spring my mother was very set on pretending everything was normal, & so after church on Easter Sunday she had walked into the house with me & said “Look, Arthur, the Easter Bunny has left presents all over the house for you!” Dutifully I roamed from room to room, looking behind drapes & under cushions, & dutifully my mother took several photographs on a camera that my father had left behind. Those pictures made their way into one of the photo albums that now live upstairs. I was already pudgy, & in them I look absurd: an overgrown boy wearing short pants & knee socks, holding a beribboned basket meant for a girl.