Slide - Kyle Beachy [117]
I could see him there, Edsel, in dark slacks and a white button-down shirt, a tie, they would require a tie. He would be man of the times, lewd and powerful, built like an oak. In the morning he would board his train, groggy-eyed and swaying, one hand on the head-high railing for support, among the writers and designers, students and teachers, the lonely and strung out, the nervous and confident cheats and priests and lawmen in blue, lawyers and lawyers and bankers. A downtown train that would sift passengers as it rumbled on ancient tracks, growing more financial, more singularly aimed with each stop, until those who disembarked were near uniform in their devotion to capital. Edsel among his rightful kith, exuberant and insatiable.
We began walking to the bridge. You could still smell the paint they'd used to cover the old rusty I-beams, bright blue, and the new plastic of safety railing and fence. We stopped at the back end of the rows of folding chairs, facing a temporary stage just beyond the bridge's halfway mark. A woman at the microphone was speaking about the value of recreational trails for a thriving city body. A red ribbon stretched between two metal poles in front of her. Stuart and I stood along the southern railing at the bridge's defining quirk, a twenty-two-degree kink designed to help boats align themselves on their way downriver.
I turned to Stuart and said that it was going to be okay. He squinted back at me.
“With Marianne, I mean.”
“You're right. Thank you. Her thing is—-Jesus, man, what happened to your face?”
The official record would show that I had been beaten by a crazed, anonymous batting-cage patron. One broken nose and much bruising, deep bruising. Swelling and overwhelming tenderness across my face and chest. I saw my friend's hand on the railing, gap of bright blue where a finger was missing. Living through the trials that defined who we were, my face and its fragile smile. I said I'd tell him about it some other time, and he nodded.
The seats were full, at least a hundred people here along with a small press corps. Richard sat on stage, flanked by several men I recognized for their demeanor of local power. I spotted my mother along the aisle in the front row. She had gotten a haircut, so now instead of bushy it looked darker, straighter, harder. I loved her for diving so brazenly into this realm of bodily control. My father was as I would remember him: forceful and static, a man forever occupying the middle of his element.
He was looking at me, my father, up there among these round-faced men of local celebrity these powerhouses of law and finance and regional clout. The mayor and the current district attorney. Each with his own narrative of ascension. Former Senator Dunleavy stood at the microphone, bald and iconic, philanthropist and heir to massive old wealth. The man sitting to my father's left was a St. Louis native, Washington University Business School grad. Mark, I thought, Mark something, who had spent much of his career in New York before returning here to the Midwest as St. Louis Hoorayl‘s chief financial officer. These men on stage. Mark leaning now to say something into my father's ear while my father held our eye contact. Mark who had been convinced to come here, at least partially, by a hearty meal around my family's smudgeless glass dining-room table. To leave his position at Hoedecker and Cohen, a serious handshake upon agreement. A hearty slow-motion smile from them both now. Hoedecker and Cohen. My father's gaze still fixed, sailing over the