The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [71]
“Nothing,” said Affenlight hastily. “Just a little reading material.”
“May I?” Genevieve clearly was one of those people who didn’t mind touching other people. Before Affenlight could twist away, she reached behind his lapel and extracted the book. “Owen, look—Walt Whitman. Your favorite.”
“Whitman’s not my favorite,” Owen said. “Too gay.”
“Oh, stop,” said Genevieve, with a wave of her book-holding arm. Affenlight thought about snatching the book back, but it was way too late. “You used to love Whitman.”
“Sure, when I was twelve.” Owen glanced at Affenlight. “Whitman appeals to the newly gay. He’s like a gateway drug.”
“I’m sure he appeals to all kinds of people,” Genevieve said. “He’s the poet of democracy.”
The unhurt corner of Owen’s mouth turned upward in a smile. “Is that what they’re calling it now?”
Affenlight needed a cigarette more than he ever had when he smoked half a pack a day. What year did they finally ban smoking in hospitals? What happened if you did it anyway? He both did and didn’t want Owen to figure him out—like that dirty picture on Owen’s laptop, the possibility of being figured out made things more real, more thrilling and terrifying—but what he certainly did not want was for Owen to figure him out in front of his mother. Affenlight was glad that Genevieve had said what she said about the poet of democracy; otherwise he would have said it, or something like it, and felt like a fool.
“All through high school you loved Whitman,” Genevieve said. “What’s the one about the tree? The oak tree?” She opened the book and began to scan the table of contents.
“Please, put that thing away,” said Owen as if it were a soiled diaper. He coughed and, avoiding as well as possible the blood-stiffened, drug-slackened side of his mouth, began carefully to declaim the poem: “I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, / All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches…”
Affenlight’s heart grew calm at the sound of Owen’s voice reciting the familiar words. So much of one’s life was spent reading; it made sense not to do it alone. And he’d always loved the poem, admired in the narrator exactly what the narrator admires in the oak tree—manifest independence—even while the narrator insists on his thorough dependence on his friends.
Halfway through, Owen broke off. “Bah,” he said. “My head.”
Affenlight couldn’t help himself. He cleared his throat and picked up where Owen left off, stumbling over only the phrase “manly love.” “For all that,” he concluded, unable to keep from shifting into a slightly higher oratorical gear, “and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space, / Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near, / I know very well I could not.”
“Bravo,” cheered Genevieve. She handed Affenlight his book.
Affenlight smiled sheepishly. He felt both good and exposed. He wondered briefly about the precise etymology of the word flush: you flushed when you were happy and exhilarated, you flushed when you were humiliated, and you flushed a bird from cover before you shot it. He looked at Owen to see if he could see what Owen thought of his recitation, but Owen’s eyes were closed, not in a sleepy way but like Sherlock Holmes at the opera, ears alert, a gentle smile on his lips.
“Well,” said Affenlight, “I suppose I’d better be off. Pella and I will see you tonight.”
“What a lovely name.” Genevieve clasped Affenlight’s hands warmly in farewell. “Who knows, O? Maybe this Pella Affenlight will turn out to be your ideal woman. She certainly has a dashing enough father.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Owen said, eyes still closed. “It hurts my face.”
23
There were no more than two hundred people in the Opentoe ballpark, players and scouts included, but they made a lot of noise. They stood and stomped the