The Godfather's Revenge (47 page)

Best of all, she was flanked by her children, with her arms around them, but not possessively: it looked, in fact, more like she was gently pushing them toward their father. Mary, on the left, was all coltish exuberance, an eleven-year-old girl in a summer dress, her dark hair meticulously styled, barely able to contain herself. Anthony was on the right, gawky from a recent growth spurt, sulky and insolent-looking from being a thirteen-year-old boy. Although his game wasn’t for a few hours, he was already wearing his baseball uniform—
Wolves
written in red chenille script across his son’s newly broadened chest.

For a giddy moment, Michael wondered what it would take, how it might be possible, to get Kay back, to reassemble his broken family.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Rita said, grabbing him by the knee, startling him. He’d almost forgotten she was there.

“They’re not worth it,” Michael said. “Keep your money. You ready?”

She nodded.

Rita, by comparison with Kay, seemed starved-looking and uselessly pretty. A flamingo to Kay’s lioness.

“You’ll do great,” Michael said.

They got out of the car. Mary sprinted across the lawn to embrace him. Anthony, carrying their suitcases, dutifully walked over and followed suit.

Michael made the introductions. This was no surprise to any of them. They’d all heard about one another and seen pictures. Everything was cordial. Kay stayed back but Michael drew her in, too. What disturbed him, though, was the look of alarm in Kay’s eyes when she sized him up. “You’re looking good, Michael,” she said, without a trace of sarcasm. “Have you lost weight?”

“Kay,” he said, “this is Marguerite Duvall.”

“It’s an honor,” Kay said. “I saw you on Broadway in
Cattle Call.
”

“Call me Rita.”

From his perspective, the woman’s handshake did not seem unduly awkward.

“Yeah,” Anthony said. “It was really great. I loved the burning bordello scene and that one song, the one about Dallas. We talked about doing it in drama club.”

Rita thanked him.

Michael plucked at Anthony’s uniform. The boy flinched, but only slightly. “I thought we were all going out to lunch before the game,” Michael said.

“I get too nervous,” Anthony said. “I can’t eat until after.”

“That’s fine,” Michael said. “We can just get hot dogs or something.”

“You don’t have to go to the game, Dad,” Anthony said.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Anthony looked skeptical.

“It’s fine if you and Mary and Miss Duvall all go and do something else. I may not even play today.”

Michael glanced at Kay, and she gave him a look that let him know he was on his own. “Are you saying you don’t want me there?”

“No, sir.”

Michael had to admire that
sir.
It was both respectful and got its dig in at the same time. It was the sort of thing he’d prided himself on doing at that age, before he grew up and came to understand his father’s greatness.

Just then, the delivery van and the two pickups rolled up. They parked behind the Coupe de Ville, and Al Neri got out of the car to help them. A tractor sputtered toward them as well.

“Oh, my God,” Kay said. “This is a joke, right? You brought Al here?”

Abashed, Al gave her a little wave and went to talk to the man on the tractor.

Anthony seemed to shrink back behind his mother. Suddenly, he looked more like a boy than a man. There was something akin to terror in his eyes.

“Michael,” Kay said, “if you thought you needed Al Neri’s
protection,
then explain to me what you’re doing here? What you’re doing anywhere
near
my children.”

Anthony, his eyes still on Al, took another step back, toward the house.

“Our children, Kay. And it’s not what you think. He came up here to give me a message.”

“He couldn’t have called you?”

“He also came up to help me with this,” Michael said. A lie, but a white one. He was helping now, wasn’t he?

“What’s
this
?” Kay said.

But then the back doors of the trailer opened.

“A
pony
!” Mary shrieked. “Oh, Daddy!”

She threw her arms around him and then ran to the horse.

“Connie had one,” Michael said to Kay.

“Wait,” Kay said. “You just show up here for a visit, and you bring—”

“I called the headmaster,” Michael said. “He said it would be fine to stable it here.”

“You called the headmaster and not me?”

“The fishing boat is for you, Anthony,” Michael said. The man with the tractor was hooking up to the boat trailer now.

Anthony scowled as only a teenage boy can. “I don’t
fish.
”

“You’ll love it,” Rita said. “It is so relaxing, to fish. When I was a girl, my father…”

Rita caught the looks from Kay and Anthony and her voice trailed away.

“You’re giving him a
boat
? Michael, I…” Kay seemed almost to be sputtering for breath.

“Of course you fish,” Michael said to Anthony. “You used to fish with…” He stopped himself. “We can go fishing together, this week, just you and me.”

“You need a license,” Anthony said. “It’s the law.”

“We’ll get the license.”

“If you don’t have a license, it’s poaching.”

“What did I just
say
?” Michael said, and Anthony took another small step back.

Red-faced, Kay pointed at the delivery van.

“Please tell me that whatever it is that’s behind Door Number Three,” she said, “it’s not for me.”

“‘Door Number Three’?” Michael said, confused.

“It comes from a television game show,” said Rita, who, until recently, had a game show herself, though not that one.

“Thank you for your
help,
” Kay said.

The women stared each other down. “You’re very welcome,” Rita said.

Mary was still gamboling around the horse, ecstatic, accompanying it as the groom led it to the stable. Nearly every other girl on campus—other faculty brats, since classes didn’t start for another two weeks—had come wandering out to see it, too. But only girls. It was as if the receipt of a gift pony sent out a high-pitched whistle only girls could hear. Rita took it as an excuse to tag along.

“It’s a pool table,” Michael said to Kay. “It’s a donation to the school, although I was hoping that the kids and I could break it in while we’re here. Do you play, Anthony?”

“Not really.”

“I’ll teach you,” Michael said.

“I guess,” Anthony said, and went to put the suitcases in the car.

“I called the headmaster on this one, too,” Michael told Kay. “He said that the school was already redoing the rec room.”

“News to me.”

“It was his suggestion, Kay. I asked him to mention a few needs, and pool table was on the list. It sort of spoke to me. When I was your age, Anthony,” Michael called to him, “your uncle Fredo and I used to go into the city all the time and play pool. We both got to be pretty good. Made a little money, too.”

Michael caught Kay’s look.

“Give it a rest, Kay. When did you become such a…” Words failed him. It was contagious. “He’s thirteen,” Michael said. “He’s a man.”

Anthony slammed the trunk shut and looked at his father as if he were grateful for the recognition, which had been the effect Michael was hoping for.

“He is a man,” Kay agreed, “but he’s never going to be a man who—”

“Let’s not get into all this, Kay,” Michael said. “All right? If you and I need to talk alone, that’s fine. But otherwise, let’s not.”

Kay took a deep breath. “Forget it,” she said. “Just…forget it.”

“I’ll try,” he said.

She gave him a list of typed instructions—a lesson plan, she joked, but she wasn’t joking. It spelled out all the activities the kids had this week and detailed directions about everything, as if he’d never taken care of his own kids before. She told him she had a carbon copy of the list in case he lost it.

What he was trying not to lose was his cool. Around everyone but his wife and his kids he was unflappable. His ex-wife, rather. It was pathetic how she could get to him, so fast, with so little apparent effort or volition.

How long had it been that he’d wondered about getting back with her?

How goddamned crazy was that impulse?

Kay’s hypocrisy about him using his money and influence to help the school, and help make this visit a nice one—it was a little much, he thought. Kay didn’t need to teach, of course, but she’d been determined to do so. Michael had no quarrel with that. She found it rewarding and so God bless. Trask had, in fact, been her dream job, a place she’d talked about teaching, back in college, when they were still dating. As far as Michael knew, Kay believed she’d gotten this job on her own, and not because of an anonymous donation from the Vito Corleone Foundation. She must have had her suspicions. Her previous experience—she’d taught briefly, right out of college, at a school in her hometown in New Hampshire, and then not at all for twelve years—hardly made her an irresistible candidate for a position at perhaps the best coeducational prep school in the country.

AS THEY WERE MAKING THEIR WAY TO THEIR SEATS
, Michael thought he was aware of furtive whispers from the other parents, but no one had the nerve to come up and introduce himself. Al Neri stayed in his Cadillac, listening to the Yankee/Red Sox game on the car radio. The car was parked beside a pay phone. They sat in the bleachers behind home plate, right next to the concession stand. Michael went to get the hot dogs and sodas himself.

“I saw
Cattle Call,
too,” Mary said to Rita. “Mom said to be sure to remember that no matter how good you were in that play, it doesn’t mean you’re really a prostitute. Isn’t that hilarious?”

“Mmm,” Rita said. “Yes, that’s hilarious.”

“Like I haven’t seen my own brother in plays. Like I haven’t been in them myself. Like I’m a
little kid
who doesn’t know the difference between real and make-believe.”

“Sometimes it’s hard,” Michael said, “for mothers to see their babies grow up.”

Mary didn’t react to this. “Do you like baseball?” she asked Rita.

“I don’t understand it,” Rita said.

“I don’t understand why people like it,” Mary said. “I like to watch my brother play, though. Sometimes. He’s a pretty good player.”

Anthony actually did seem like a pretty good player. Not great, but pretty good. He played third base and—to Michael’s surprise when his son stepped up to the plate the first time—batted left-handed. He was right-handed and, like all third basemen, threw right, too.

He asked Mary if Anthony had always batted left-handed. She said she had no idea.

“Is he a switch-hitter?” Michael asked. “Because the pitcher is a righty.”

“I’m not sure,” Mary said.

Some of the other parents within earshot craned their necks to fish-eye him for this, passing silent judgment, no doubt, on a father who didn’t know how his son batted and everything that implied.

Mary cheered politely for the Wolves, but she had a faraway look in her eye.

“You want to be with that horse,” Rita said, “don’t you?”

“This is OK,” Mary said. “This is fine.”

She leaned over to Michael and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“You didn’t have to do that, Daddy,” she said. “But thank you.”

Michael was too overcome with emotion to talk, and so just returned the kiss and gave her a wink.

The game wasn’t even close. The other team, the Senators, had nicer uniforms and newer equipment, but Anthony’s team, the Wolves, owned them. The Wolves had a couple great players—the shortstop and the catcher—and a solid supporting cast that didn’t make many mistakes and in short order they were ahead by more than ten runs. It was the sort of game anybody would have left early, except that nearly everyone there was somebody’s ride home.

In the last inning, the coach brought Anthony in to pitch. Michael, Rita, and Mary all stood up to applaud, and for no reason Michael could comprehend, several other people in the stands gave them dirty looks. Anthony looked over, too. Michael waved, and—despite himself, no doubt—the boy grinned and gave a barely perceptible little wave back. Michael sat. “That’s my boy,” he said to no one in particular. He didn’t shout it. It was a simple, proud declaration.

Anthony sailed three of his warm-up pitches to the backstop, but he did throw hard.

Another buzz began to sweep over the parents in the bleachers, this one much more pronounced than the one Michael had perceived upon arrival. This one was unambiguously not a figment of his imagination. Almost as a reflex, he looked around and, sure enough, Al Neri had gotten out of the car and was walking toward them. Al stopped and crooked a finger toward Michael. Michael shook his head. He couldn’t leave now, not with Anthony about to pitch. Al frowned and continued toward them.