The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [146]
Schwartz remained at the threshold while Owen stepped into the room. “Hi, guys,” Pella said, glancing up from her book—The Art of Fielding—with an actress’s aplomb.
“Hi,” Schwartz said.
“Good day?”
“Not bad.”
Emboldened by the banality of this exchange, Henry did something he regretted instantly. He spoke: “How’d we do?”
Schwartz glanced at him, then at Pella, then back at Henry. “Buddha,” he said.
“Yes, Michael.”
“Forget to make your bed this morning?”
Owen scrutinized the bed, his lips pressed tightly together, his eyebrows contracted into an expression of total concentration. “It’s possible,” he said after a long moment, nodding gently. “It’s very possible.”
“Mm-hm.” Schwartz pointed toward the nook between Owen’s bed and the mantel. “And is that yours too?”
There in the nook’s convergent shadows lay a rumpled piece of silk or rayon or some other satiny fabric, icy blue in color. Owen gazed at it for a long time, as if willing it to disappear, or at least to become a more ambiguous version of what it so unambiguously happened to be. “No,” he said finally, his voice soft and thoughtful, after it became clear that Schwartz intended to wait for a response. “I suppose not.”
Pella started to speak, but Schwartz waved her off. “I’m not mad,” he said, his voice loud and cracking. “I think you’re a goddamn saint. Coming in here and laying on hands. Laying on mouth. Laying on whatever. I should have sent you sooner.”
“You could have sent somebody else,” Pella said. “Christ, you could have done it yourself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what it means. I don’t have to be the middleman. Mike, Henry. Henry, Mike.”
Owen stepped into the center of the room, held up a hand. “Okay,” he said in his best, most caramelly mediator’s tone. Why don’t we jus—”
“Not you.” Pella glared at Owen. “I know about you.”
Owen looked at her. A flicker of understanding, of consternation, crossed his face, and he subsided to the corner of the room. Henry just stood there, feeling invisible. Maybe that should have been a relief, in the wake of what he’d done, but instead it was making him angry, the way Schwartz and Pella were squared off as if he weren’t even there.
“I’m sorry,” Pella said, her voice changed and soft.
“For what? For fixing everything?” Schwartz shook his head. “No.” His amber eyes were unfocused, vacant, as if he’d gone blind. He turned and walked down the stairs.
57
Mrs. McCallister stood at the beautiful old washbasin in the hallway, the one whose coiled brass tubes, like those of a sackbut or trombone, she kept buffed to a pristine shine. Her thick gray hair was just long enough to be put up in a pencil-spit bun. She poured a capful of white vinegar into the glass coffeepot and swirled it with an elbowy motion as Pella approached. “Ah, bella Pella,” she sang, “wherefore art thou? Where art thy fella?”
Pella had her wicker bag slung over one shoulder and her Westish-insignia backpack slung over the other. Together they contained everything she owned. “You’re in an awfully good mood,” she said. “Is my dad around?”
Mrs. McCallister rolled her eyes toward Affenlight’s office door. “For once,” she said. “My dear, you do have an effect on him. Ever since you arrived he’s been as hyper as my nine-year-old grandson. Can’t focus on anything. I told him I’m going to start putting Ritalin in his applesauce, the way they do for Luke.”
“I’m sure he’ll calm down eventually,” Pella said.
“Of course. And of course it’s wonderful that you’re here. There’s nothing like family.”
“Thank God for that.”
Mrs. McCallister laughed merrily. “You two are lucky to have each other.”
Her dad’s heavy wooden door was shut tight. Pella knocked once. Her dad cracked the door open and peered out, his cell phone tucked between shoulder and chin. Maybe he was talking to Owen—maybe Owen was telling him, in benignly neutral Owen-words, that his daughter