Slide - Kyle Beachy [63]
The scene had been branded, indelibly, into my consciousness. Sportsman's Park, the tasteless burger, more empty bottles than I would have predicted. The news had been shared. Marriage. Trouble. I listened. What other details of note? Table? Hands around beer? I imagined my mother hunched over a fund-raising centerpiece or candle fixture. I doubted there had been much controversy over who was to give me the news. Of course my father. When I looked back at the screen, the ball game had returned. The Braves were switching pitchers. Some time passed. My father was apparently finished speaking.
“Should we get the check?”
“I love your mother very much.”
“Me too.”
“And I have never, ever in the course of thirty-three years committed any real indiscretion. Not one single indiscreet moment in all those years. Moments. And things are going to be okay. You have to remember that. I have to remember that. We are all going to come out of this thing okay.” He spun the dregs of his beer around in the bottle. “I have to use the john.”
He stood from the table and I felt two overwhelming desires. The first was to pay for this meal with money I had earned delivering water. The second was to get myself immediately and carelessly laid.
“This is going to sound horrible,” I said when the waitress brought the bill. “I don't say this sort of thing ever.”
“Right.” She stuck both hands into her apron.
“Do I know you? You went to my high school.”
“Don't think so. You go to Kirkwood?” She chewed gum, snapped it.
“You have a sister, then. She's my age and went to Ladue.”
“I have a brother named Andrew.”
Andrew,” I said.
“Unless you're calling Andrew a girl, which is enough to get you messed up pretty good.”
I sat at the table and looked upward into the eyes of this young woman in the waiter's apron. I did not know her, nor would I ever.
“My parents are getting a divorce,” I said.
“Oh. Sorry. Do you need change?”
I left her twenty-five percent and met my father by the front door. Outside, stars dim and cicadas deafening, we walked silently to the car. I caught myself patting jeans for cigarettes. When he didn't go immediately for keys, we stood on opposite sides of the Datsun.
“You sure you don't want me to drive?”
“I'm fine to drive.”
We were both looking at the dent.
“I haven't driven the Z in years,” I said. “I'd be happy to.” “We had the same number of beers, you and I. Me.” He ducked into the car and reached over to unlock my door. The Datsun growled as it accelerated back toward home. I turned on the radio and scanned the AM band. The old, beloved radio broadcaster mumbled, There was one out, now there are two.
five
how even to respond when so natural a fact, a truth thus far assumed and treated as obvious, is exposed as a fake. When the fact becomes fragile, suddenly from out of the sky contingent? I changed subjects and made myself creatively scarce. Days were covered; I developed new appreciation for the morning's stack of papers, rich with instruction. Go here, do this. No matter that the stack came from Dennis, that bitch of a man with his pockmarks and bitter distaste for any and all people of color. I went down the list, completing the tasks at hand.
When I got there, Ian Worpley was watering the yard with a garden hose. Thumb over the spout to make a spray, he was shirtless and barefoot, standing on the path and turning a slow circle, waving the hose as he spun. When he completed the rotation he set the hose down and approached the van. I met him on the sidewalk.
“Finished early today,” I said. “Thought maybe you'd want to go on an adventure.”
“Adventure?”
“In the van.”
“Where?”
I hadn't thought this through. It was too hot for the batting cage, too hot to stand and water dead grass. Too hot for stasis. Ian began to circle the van and I followed him.