Slide - Kyle Beachy [47]
“My mom left.”
I thought about this for a second and spooned more dessert into my mouth. Yogurt had plain. There was also vanilla, but it was a flavor.
“I say girlfriend only out of habit, by the way.”
“How do you know if she is or not?” he asked.
“I think it has to do with the way two people talk to each other.”
“Maybe you have a picture of her in your wallet? That's another way to tell.”
I didn't think I did, but I found one wedged behind my driver's license from a hike we took one spring at Lake Tahoe. Corners torn, colors slightly faded, Audrey with a boot up on a stump, leaning over to tie her laces. I had gone psst and taken the picture before she looked all the way up, so her eyes were focused on a spot just below the camera. Ian took it and held it at arm's length in front of him.
“She's pointy” he said.
“Pointy.”
“Well, she's not fuzzy.”
I thought about this. “I suppose if those are the two options, then no. She's not fuzzy.”
I glanced down at Audrey's picture. Those green eyes, tiny circular fields of grass, and the subtle galaxy of freckle just below. Her hair up, I loved it up, exposing that seamless path from chin to ear, elliptical curve of neck. Here they were, Exhibits A through like F, immortalized in handy carry-along dimensions.
“Dad says I have to stop talking about Mom. That talking about her won't bring her back so why bother.”
I was not qualified for this. One at a time the enormous SUVs on either side of my own backed out of their spots, immediately replaced by more enormous SUVs. Ian held the paper cup of custard in one hand, little plastic spoon in the other. Tiny spoon. He'd grabbed one of the mini taster spoons from somewhere, potentially the ground.
“It's not your fault,” I said.
“Never said it was my fault. I know it's not my fault.”
A parade of silent moments while we finished the custard. Surely there was more I should have said. Families arrived and departed: white families dressed in every color of the spectrum. A van, a lot like mine from work except with windows, parked nearby, Hope Eternal Church painted across its side.
Ian said, “It's not permanent. It's just right now we don't know when she'll come back. But not knowing when, I mean, doesn't mean it won't happen. Sometimes I forget when a TV show comes on and when it does I'm like, oh yeah! This show.”
My custard had melted into a pool of off-white goo. Ian scraped the last bits of apple syrup from the bottom of his cup. I threw both cups away and we got into my car.
“Shit! Why are the seats so hot?”
“That's the downside of leather.”
We drove back to Waldwick Drive listening to one of St. Louis's four classic-rock stations, songs filling what would otherwise have been a nauseating silence. Time was running out. I racked my brain for a fact, some niblet of wisdom to share with this kid whose mother had disappeared. One hundred twenty thousand dollars spent on my education—I should have had facts to spare, wheelbarrows full of excess knowledge.
“I never met a problem frozen custard couldn't fix.”
I heard the kid's laughter like a bag of popcorn, lighter than you expect. He laughed through the better part of the instrumental intro to Boston's “Foreplay/Longtime,” then stopped abruptly and told me I was crazy.
When we pulled up to the end of the dirt path to his short house with peeling paint, Ian pushed open his door and hopped to the ground.
“I can hit too,” he said.
“Good. Hitting is important.”
“I have a line-drive swing. I go with the pitch. I pull the ball, I go the other way. I don't have a power swing.”
“The second you start to overswing, you know what you're going to have?”
“Yeah.”
“A handful of pop-outs. Power comes from technique. Good. I'm glad to hear that.”
He had closed the door and was standing now on the running-board step, elbows on the window. Time passed. I wasn't sure what was supposed to happen.
“So next time you go to a batting cage, maybe you could come by here and I'll go with you.”
I was