In the few instances when I have witnessed a professional baseball game in person, the most exciting moment for me has always been when I step from the walkways of the stadium’s
vendors into the seating area, and, slowly, as if a curtain is rising, the overhanging seats above recede as I walk to my row, and the field, with its white chalk, red soil, and green grass, reveals itself. It’s like entering a new room in a museum not knowing that the painting you are about to see is one you’ve admired many times in reproductions, and it reveals itself to be so much more vivid than you ever thought it could be. So it was, after Calvin Senior and I had purchased our hot dogs and beer, when we entered the seating area itself.
“Wow,” I said.
“Yep. They’re up by three. Must have been some first inning.”
If Calvin Senior had any aesthetic reaction to the stadium, it was well-concealed under the pleasure he took in the game itself. For me the game was a slowly winding-down re-veiling of the beauty initially unveiled by our entering the stadium. But this was because I was constitutionally uninterested in the scores, the tactics, the plays of the game. I knew CJ would have joined him in a higher appreciation of the game and I tried to pay attention to the players, understand who was good and why. Lest I sit there constipated-looking, I injected a comment or two and waited for Calvin Senior to agree or to correct me, the latter occurring more frequently. On the finer points, he patiently explained why I was wrong, but on the fundamentals he couldn’t help but give me a look of complete disbelief, a where-have-you-been-all-this-time look before shifting back into teacher mode. With each comment I dared assay, I knew I was putting myself in greater danger, but I couldn’t help myself—I wanted to help ease his pain a little, help him understand that
he still had a son of sorts, albeit a poor replacement for the one he’d lost.
During the happy seven innings our team was leading, I would hear the crowd cheer, and I would cheer, and he would look at me with a look of unadulterated joy and release, cheering too. He was sharing a sports moment with me. We were bonded as fans. He had found in me that thing he had only shared with CJ. Then the crowd would quiet down and I would stupidly open my mouth and say something to demonstrate that I did not understand the ramifications of a play, and our house of cards would fall. Our talk would resume as it always had, questions like “How’s the manual coming?” and “How’s life with my daughter?” to which I answered “great” and “great,” no further elaboration required, or chitchat about what he called “the good life,” on which he dispensed advice of the “always drink the fancy stuff” variety. Then the crowd would cheer again, and we would get caught up in the moment again, and I would try to say nothing stupid. I would never be the Junior to the Senior. We both knew it, but we couldn’t help trying, our failed attempts at connection the only testament available, the only way to demonstrate our good intentions toward each other. It’s as close as I ever came to having a father.
The other team found a burst of energy near the end and came back; within half an inning their victory was assured. Calvin Senior sulked on the way to the parking lot. Had the loss of the game dragged his mind into other dark places? I tried some conversation.
“Big parking lot.”
He didn’t respond. We weaved through rows of cars. He stopped short.
“You see this car?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Chevy Blazer. CJ’s was silver. Look at this piece of shit.” He put his hand on the hood, turned his face toward me. “You know why they killed CJ, don’t you?”
“I don’t know the details, no.”
“They killed him for his car. Look at all these fucking cars, Owen. Cars are everywhere. This city is stuffed with cars. They killed him so he wouldn’t tell anyone who stole his car. So they could drive around a while longer.”
Killing someone for a car seemed like the most absurd thing in the world right then, like sitting in a mountain lake and killing someone for a sip of water. He turned and continued walking until we reached his sedan. He had positioned it so we could exit the stadium easily without having to sit in too much traffic. We didn’t talk the rest of the way back to his office, where I’d left my car, and I felt as though I had failed in every way as a substitute CJ, as a random person to enjoy a game with, even as a confidant son-in-law, but when Calvin Senior dropped me off—he wasn’t going back to his office—he gave me a big smile and a firm handshake and thanked me for coming with him.
“That was really fun. We’ll do it again,” he said, and I thought that while in substance I had failed, in sentiment I had succeeded. I was slowly becoming, vis-à-vis Calvin Senior, one of the guys, his boy, even.
“I had fun, too,” I said. “And I look forward to learning more next time,” an innocuous phrase by which I somehow, yet again, highlighted the distance between us.
He tried his best to look unfazed. “You bet,” he said.
I headed toward home, but when the turnoff appeared, I didn’t take it. I had to check the PO box. I’d meant to leave it for the next day, but I couldn’t stand the idea of Raven’s response lying there unread all night.
Dear Lily,
Thank you for the picture and the letter. You have made this man less lonely all right! You know what I actually thought the other day? I thought I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if you weren’t there for me to write to. I know I need to keep up my end of the bargain too and tell you some more about my childhood and all that but be patient with me. As you guessed we do talk about it in group and I don’t always want to rehash everything all over again partly because I’m tired of it and partly because it doesn’t do me any good. I know I owe it to you and I end up giving it to them where it does me no good. It would be better to give it to you. The story of my life could find a home in your warm heart. What happens in group is a whole lot of talking and they never quite give you the reason why.
I am living proof that talking about it doesn’t make a difference. I have an idea that we’re like a house and our mouths are like the sprinklers. The heart is a washing machine in that house, tumbling the same stuff
around week after week. You can talk until the front yard is flooded and the washing machine still works the same. I know some people like that. All the talking in the world doesn’t make a difference. Unless you are really into fooling yourself which I’m not.
I’ll tell you something your letter did to me and that was throw me into a fantasy of my own. You got me thinking about the outside again which I’m always thinking about I guess but I don’t really listen to myself usually. So you wrote a double fantasy because after I was done with your letter I pictured myself driving around in my red pickup in an electrician’s uniform with all the tools I would need. I pictured myself leading a normal life with trees in it. Maybe some kids someday. I pictured myself back at home with my tools in the green shed with white trim and fishing in the crick through the ravine behind the house. For once I could slow down and do something like work on the vegetable garden. I picture rows of carrots and turnips and tomatoes down the side of the ravine. So different than this place where even from the yard you can’t see anything. They put us flat in the middle of nowhere. You can’t even see the mountains.
Whatever happens between us Lily take one piece of advice from me: Boredom is a small price to pay for a normal life. I could never handle that boredom when I was younger. Now I would welcome it in a second. My life right now is fear and aggression and routine. I welcome every letter you send me because you and only
you help me dream of a better life. When I am reading or writing our letters I am not in prison but somewhere else. So you can see why I’d rather talk about the future than my past. In here you’re always thinking of the outside and always trying to keep yourself from thinking about it—otherwise you would go insane which I’ve seen happen more than once.
But when you write about the outside I feel like I’m already out and walking with you on that beach. I don’t know why I’m going on and on like this but maybe it’s because of the courage of your letter—maybe I want to match your courage and open my closed-off places to you like you did for me. You said in your letter that I was the first to ever have you like that. When I talk about courage that’s what I mean. I want to be able to write to you and be able to say truthfully no BS that YOU ARE THE FIRST TO HAVE ME THIS WAY except I wouldn’t be writing about my fantasies but the reality of my past. I look forward to doing that Lily I do. Please don’t think any less of me if I can’t find the courage right now. Write back soon.
Yours
Henry
Should I admit that my hands were shaking as I read Raven’s letter in the Mailboxes Store parking lot? The lack of structure, the soul-searching—Raven had let his guard down, and
what’s more, he admitted as much at the end of his letter. He was looking for the courage to open up to Lily. This was a big step forward from his CJ story, which had seemed like a breakthrough at the time. But while before I had been impressed with his garrulous openness, I was now far more impressed with his equally garrulous closedness—because he was struggling. This was no story-dump. This was a man actively testing his own limits—all for Lily. I did not know why he didn’t sign it “love,” but I figured he had come up against his admitted cowardice and had to pull back a bit. He had not mentioned his ex at all, a good sign. Anyone could see that he loved and needed Lily far more at the end of this letter than at the end of the one on which he’d scribbled the four-letters-and-a-comma that had made Lily’s heart soar.
I turned off the dome light, started my car. It was early evening. Patty would be leaving for work soon. There was news on the radio; I switched it off. My headlights had come on automatically. I shut the car off, turned on the dome light, and reread the letter.
He wouldn’t know what to do with himself if I weren’t there to write to, he said. And then he opened up to me, if not the contents of his childhood, then better: the process of his thinking, as it was happening, at the edges of his comfort zone. I was getting closer to the fortress. I read the letter a third time.
Here I must admit a genuine if momentary admiration for Raven as a human being. What he did to CJ was disgusting, and Raven is a reprehensible and disgusting creature who should have been executed for the suffering he inflicted on the Stockings. But we are all bric-a-brac, odds and ends, as I have said twice before,
and for a moment, in that parking lot, I wondered how life would have been if Raven had not decided to go to Diana’s that night, had not shot CJ. Would he have been walking on a beach, working in a garden, fixing a fusebox, watching his children …? Parts of him, behind the disgusting and reprehensible façade, were intelligent and ambitious and not immune to beauty. It was the nature of my mission to elicit those parts, corral them, prop them up, and then destroy them in as cruel a way possible. Sitting in my car in the Mailboxes Store parking lot that night, I wavered an instant, worried that I would not have the mettle to carry it out. To destroy the monster, I would have to destroy what was human in him, and what was human in him I could not help but admire.
I turned on the headlights, followed them home through traffic, considering on the way the various approaches I would take in drafting a response tomorrow, wondering how best to take advantage of this breakthrough, how to burrow my Lily-worm deeper into the dark and dusty chambers of his heart.
The lights were all on when I pulled up in front of our house—Patty was still at home. I pictured her peeking out the front curtains, waiting for me to return before she left for work, wondering why I hadn’t gotten back yet. She had said more than once that the house didn’t feel like a home without me in it, as if I were a coveted piece of furniture, or a pet.
I was in a good mood, though, and I knew she would chalk up the late arrival to my having had a good time with Calvin Senior. So it was with some surprise that I found her sitting on the living room couch, crying, surrounded by boxes and papers. If you’ve been paying any attention whatsoever, you can guess what those papers were, and you can do it in far less time than it took me.
I had walked in focused on Raven and Lily and tomorrow’s work, and despite seeing Patty crying there on the couch, my attention was reluctant to leave those old thoughts behind, and I had to exert my will to focus completely on my wife, who
shouldn’t have been on the couch, shouldn’t have been home, shouldn’t have been crying. Only when I approached her and she scooted away from me did I look to the coffee table for clues to the source of her strange behavior.
Dear Lily
, I saw,
Dear Henry
. And the pages of CJ’s journal I had xeroxed.
“Sweetheart,” I said.
“Get away from me,” Patty said. “No, I mean it. Go over there.” She pointed to the other side of the room.
I tried an endearing look but her face did not soften. I walked over to the credenza and remained as calm as possible.
“Sweetheart,” I repeated.
She winced at the word.
“My research … how did it get out here?”
“Research?” She sobbed. “Jesus, Owen, what are you up to? Where did you get these letters?”
“I can explain.” Here I took a moment to collect my thoughts, wanting to give her a plausible explanation without spilling every last bean. I wanted to tell her just enough. When the end came, I would explain everything, and we would have a good laugh over this misunderstanding. “I’m sorry you had to see this stuff. It wasn’t meant for you to see. Not yet, anyway.”
“Not yet?” She held up some of the letters. “Please, Owen, explain this to me.”
“Have you read the letters?”
“Will you explain where the hell you got this stuff?”
“Have you read the letters?”
She threw the handful of papers onto the table. “As much as I could read before I felt like throwing up. I’ve been going through this stuff all day, Owen. Is this really CJ’s journal?”
“Yes.”