Heft (27 page)

Then he looks alarmed. Your last name still Keller?

I nod.

Kel Keller, he says. Back to shaking his head and grinning.

I’ve just noticed that part of his ear is missing. The left earlobe, as if he were a dog who lost a fight. He fingers it absentmindedly.

How’d you find me? he asks.

Google, I say.

Google,
says the other Kel. Jesus. I can’t even begin.

He puts the beer to his mouth and tilts it for too long, until it must be almost gone. Suddenly I wonder if he’s the one that did it to my mother. Got her drinking. Taught her how to.

You in school? he asks.

Almost done, I say.

—Gonna go to college? Gonna work?

Don’t know yet, I say. And then for some reason I want to tell him—it’s the rage in me that wants to—about baseball, about what I can have if I want it.

I play ball, I say.

Baseball! he says.

I nod.

You was always good, he says, and it’s the first time he has acknowledged having memories of me. He must have millions. He must think about me. He must.

Are you my father?
is echoing inside my head.
Dad, Mom is dead. Mom is dead, Dad.

We used to have a catch in the backyard. Remember that? he asks.

No, I say. I’m lying.

—You don’t?

I don’t remember anything, I say, and he looks hurt, or else I am making it up.

—You any good?

I got the Mets looking at me, I say.

—No shit.

—I have a private practice this month with a recruiter.

On the 10th. With Gerard Kane and his clipboard and his sunglasses hanging around his neck. It occurs to me that I should eat, that I should practice, that I should find my strength someplace.

You grew up big, says the other Kel. You haven’t changed much. Hair’s darker. You was white-headed as a kid.

He puts his flat palm three feet from the ground.

Mets, huh? he says. Good thing we got you started early, I guess. Too bad it ain’t the Yanks, though.

The Yanks.
But your things,
I want to say. It occurs to me that the box in the basement could belong to anyone. Believing the Mets things were his was very possibly a fantasy of my childhood.

Now I am waiting for him to apologize to me. If he is my father he will apologize to me, or offer an explanation, an excuse.

How is she? he finally says, and because I want to shock him I tell him, She’s dead.

—No kidding.

She’s dead, I say again, and it’s the third time I’ve said it and the first time I’ve meant it: that she’s gone, my mother is gone, I cannot ask her anything or tell her anything ever again.

Sorry to hear that, says the other Kel. That’s a damn shame for you.

I shrug.

—Recently?

—Yeah.

She was a good lady, he says pensively. Now I’m gonna get emotional. You know I knew her from the time she was a girl.

He drains the beer, crushes the can, and tosses it on the floor.

When we was in school, he says, I wasn’t good at anything. Not anything. And she was always nice to me, always had a nice thing to say to everybody when they needed it.

So you got anyone left? he asks.

Nope, I say.

Me neither, he says. Makes you feel any better.

Then he says, I guess. I guess you found me for a reason?

I freeze. I don’t know what to say.

—You wanna know anything about her? You wanna ax me something? I’ll tell you.

I say, No—it’s not—

She loved you, he says. I remember how much she loved you. There wasn’t anyone else she cared for.

It is not what I want to hear and I turn my head away sharply and look out the window.

How come you left? I ask him.

He breathes out hard. Well, he says. That’s a tough one. I guess I got the bug to travel, and then I got the bug to be—my age, which was only a little older than you right now, you know?

I say nothing. It is not enough. I would not have left me.

Did you ever live in Arizona? I ask him.

He laughs loudly.

For about five minutes, he says. Too damn hot out there.

Then his face changes, as if he’s realized something.

You’re not mine, he says. Oh, Jesus. She must of told you you’re not mine?

I breathe out. I realize I have been holding my breath.

She never did? he asks. She really never did?

No, she did, I say. She told me all that.

He clutches his heart, laughing now. Jesus, you scared me, he says. Thought I was gonna have to break your heart.

He opens a new beer. How’d she die? he asks me.

She—had cancer, I say.

—Sorry to hear that. Took my mother too.

He walks across the room and sits on a ragged black couch.

It was partly my fault, he says.

—What?

—Her telling you I was your dad.

I say nothing.

—I told her—before we got married, I told her—Charlene, if you have that baby it’ll be mine too. I’ll be supporting it. She was pregnant already. She probably told you.

I nod. I will not betray my mother to this man.

—We told both our parents it was mine and everything. Jesus. We were kids.

Yeah, I say. It is all I can think of to say.

—She was smart. She was in school. Going to college at night. Her parents were helping her and they stopped helping her when they found out. Told me she was my responsibility now. And we didn’t have the money.

He looks at me. You know I did want kids, he says. Pains me that I never had any.

He laughs. Hey, never too late, I guess, he says.

I have to ask him but it takes all of my strength to. I swallow it like something bitter.

—There’s something she never told me.

—What’s that?

—She never told me who my real dad was before she died.

He laughs, loudly, one time.

—Ain’t that a trip. Never told me either!

He sips his beer and shakes his head some more. Never would tell me. But I loved her so I took her back. She was funny, wasn’t she? he asks me. She was an odd duck, but I loved her. Never met anyone like her again.

We was broken up when she got pregnant, he says. In case you were wondering. Hadn’t seen her in a year.

I want to leave. Every part of me wants to leave. My right knee is jogging the way it does in class. I look around his apartment. If he knew the places I’ve been. If he could see Trevor’s house or Lindsay’s house for one minute. He wouldn’t believe the school I go to. He wouldn’t possibly believe the friends I have. And their parents who love me.

Before I get up I ask him, Have you ever heard of Arthur Opp?

He squints some more. Arthur
Opp
? he says. Arthur Opp. Nope. Never have.

Then he says, Is that who you’re named after?

I don’t know, I say. I think so.

She never would tell me, he said. I was the one called you Kel. I told her Arthur was a bad name for a kid. I got Francis, he says. I know how it is.

When I tell him I have to leave he says Hang on a second, and he goes to a little table by his unmade bed. He opens it and reaches his hand way in and then comes out with an envelope.

He takes out money from it. A hundred-dollar bill.

Take, he says, walking over to me. Go ahead.

I can’t, I say, and he says, Please. Please take it. G’wan.

So I take it, and stuff it in my pocket. I take it without saying thank you and then I walk out the door and down the stairs, letting the door slam shut behind me.

• • •

L
ast night the girl called her parents. I heard her even though
she was all the way upstairs. She was shouting at them in Spanish. I wished I could speak it. Her voice came out in hurt waves. The conversation was not long.

Whatever she was saying, it sounded very angry & very tearful. I imagine it was about JBL.

I tiptoed to the base of the stairs to listen harder & I swear I heard her say his name. Ma
ma,
she kept saying. Ma
ma.

Like her baby one day will say to her.

Is it wrong of me to say that I hope she stays? I want the best for her: I want her to be happy. But since she has been here life has opened for me like a flower & I feel I could be content with her forever. I want to meet her child. I want to be in its life. I asked her last night about buying things for the baby, a crib or some clothing or diapers, & she looked at me strangely & said Don’t worry about it.

Instantly I felt absurd. How could I think. How could I say that.

This morning she went out for a walk & did not ask me if I would come. I wouldn’t have anyway—the last one was very hard for me & today every part of me aches—but it would have been nice to be asked.

When she was not back after an hour I began to watch for her out the window & I saw that she was talking to Suzanne Dale, whose three boys were buzzing about them as well. Suzanne had the baby on her hip & I saw Yolanda ask to hold him. When she took him in her arms her face changed: it became softer, & I saw she would be a good mother.

When the girl came in again I pretended to be reading.

She sat down across from me.

“Nice walk?” I asked her, very casual.

“Yup,” said Yolanda.

Then she said “Suzanne told me about your dad.”

My heart pounded.

“What did she tell you?” I asked her.

“About your father.”

“I see,” I said. I closed my book very gently. I cannot even remember what it was. I may have been holding it upside down.

“He’s famous,” said the girl.

I looked her in the face. She is very very lovely, even more so with the baby now. I think it is bringing out in her something wise & ancient. She put a hand under her chin. “You don’t like to talk about it,” she said.

“He is quite famous,” I said.

“You don’t talk to him?” said Yolanda.

“I do not,” I said.

“I don’t blame you,” said Yolanda, and here she rolled her eyes as if to say
Parents,
which would normally have been charming.

“He is an old man now,” I said.

“How old?”

“I suppose—eighty-four,” I said.

“Old,” Yolanda agreed. “Where does he live?”

“I believe he lives in London,” I said. “The last I read.”

Yolanda pondered this. She made a little
hmm,
and sank back in her chair.

“What happened to your mom?” she said at length.

But I could not bear it anymore, & I remembered once again the pleasure of solitude, & I remembered why I had chosen it years ago.

“Bedtime for me,” I said.

“You’re bad,” said Yolanda.

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re bad,” said the girl again, & I knew what she meant.

I wished I had something in my hands to hold. I wished I had something warm to hold & drink from. A mug of tea. With cream and sugar. I felt that would help me.

She had opened something in me. I was bleeding.

Listen, I wanted to say to her.

I wanted to say to her, Yolanda: This is the house I grew up in. I left it for years. I went to college. I went to graduate school. Far away from here, in places as pastoral as a dream. Massachusetts, Vermont. I met Marty. I thought I would never come back.

I turned twenty-six. I had no parents, but I still had the house—empty then. I took a job in Manhattan and I had no other place to live. So I returned. I came back to it to find an inch of dust on every surface. Dust in clumps. And all the things my mother left behind, and, longer ago, my father, were still there—my mother never removed his things. Their outdated clothing, their books, my mother’s cigarette case, the ancient cigarettes inside.
ACO,
her initials, inscribed upon it. I opened it. I tried to smoke one but it was too old. The kitchen was empty: I had cleaned it out before I left, mustered inside myself some adolescent reserve of strength and responsibility. I had cleaned it out completely. But their plates were in the cabinets, still. My mother’s plates that she had chosen when they were first married. The towels and sheets were in the linen closet. The things of my father’s that she had saved, sentimentally, pathetically. His reading glasses, stowed in a drawer. It was a house for ghosts. My mother said it and it was true. Every picture still hung on the wall. There were photo albums in the library. There were rugs rolled up in a corner. The neighborhood was different.

I got a new television. I filled the kitchen with food. I convinced Marty to move in with me and then to rent the top floor of Marie Spencer’s house, next door. Things were cheap then. Apartments were so cheap. You wouldn’t believe it. She lived there for the rest of her life. I slept in the room that was once my parents’. In their bed. I bought new sheets for it. When I had company—I had company in those days, I had quite a few friends—they gasped when they came in at the beauty of my house. All of us were hippies, all of them were poor. Marty was over all the time. We both got jobs at the same university. First she and then I. She recommended me. I thanked her. It was her pleasure, she said.

I taught for almost twenty years. I had a job & I was normal. I used to go to concerts. I used to go to movies.

I met Charlene & fell in love with Charlene & then Charlene disappeared. I used to wander. I used to go for long walks all around the neighborhood, even late at night. I used to lie on the floor, spread out like a starfish, & gaze at the ceiling of my huge empty home & wonder why I had been chosen for the life I was living. Why I was chosen to be so alone. For a while, in my forties, I used to think I would marry Marty & we would have children. We got along so well. But I never once asked her for a date. She told me she was in love with a woman. Hilda. Who left her without a thought, who broke her heart. The women who were meant for me never seemed to know it. They were there and then gone. More people in my life have died than I believe is fair. About this, about everything, I used to wonder why, why, why. I used to feel things would certainly change someday. I used to wonder when they would.

I suppose I had been silent for quite some time.