The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [30]
“That’s for sure,” Martin responded eagerly. At this age, because he was adopted, he liked to acknowledge the influence of his parents, as if he were no different from any other kid. That he even resembled them in some ways—e.g., his blue eyes were very much like Jane’s and he often wore the same serious and intense expression as Hank—also made him happy, and sometimes he liked to surprise people with the truth of his adoption, as if to prove a point about it not making a difference.
AS MARTIN GREW older and detected a growing tension between Hank and Jane—albeit one, in keeping with the mores of Cedar Village, they were not inclined to display—he began to hope that he would not end up like them after all. Except, already more similar to them than he realized, he did not directly address the issue but rather exploited it, particularly after he tried out for and made Pittsburgh’s most elite “travel team,” the Royal Travelers, which took him—and Hank—out of town quite a bit more than Jane would have wanted. On any given weekend beginning in the winter of sixth grade, Martin found himself in Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, Chicago, Philadelphia, or any other city within a seven- or eight-hour radius from Pittsburgh. While this traveling entailed many hours in the car, most of which he spent either reading or goofing around with other kids on his team, he liked the sense of escape that came with it—although from exactly whom or what was not a question he was yet asking—so that he inevitably felt let down when he and his father pulled into the driveway on Sunday night.
One Christmas break, when he was fourteen, his team made the finals of a tournament in Buffalo, which meant that he had to skip a Prokofiev ballet—something “cultural,” as his mother liked to say—Jane was planning to take him to with his sister. At the hotel, Martin overheard his father on the phone in a relatively heated discussion with his wife: “This is a big tournament, and thanks to Marty, we’re doing a lot better than expected. We beat the Junior Sabres, honey! Do you really think it’s fair to ask him to leave now?”
Martin was struck by the way circumstances so often contrived to make things as difficult as possible; it was almost as if he had known this would happen the second his mother had ordered the tickets a few months earlier, even though the tournament had not yet been on the calendar. While it pained Martin to picture his mother on the other end of the line, he also didn’t want to leave, and he appreciated his father’s ability to deal with a thorny situation.
This admiration lasted until they were in the car on their way to the rink a few minutes later, and Hank tried to joke about it. “So, I guess you’re disappointed you won’t be able to see all those pretty little ladies prancing around onstage?”
Martin found himself incapable of playing along. “What if I told you that they’re incredibly limber?” he responded in an ironic tone meant to downplay the lack of irony. “Or that I actually like Prokofiev?” The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted it: any loyalty to Jane aside, defending ballet was a tricky proposition for a fourteen-year-old hockey player—even if he was a goalie, of whom some eccentricity was expected and for whom limberness was a necessity—particularly one who was not totally unaware of his ambivalence toward girls and everything that implied. In effect, he had drawn into sharp relief a difference between himself and his father, but one he could view only with discomfort.
Given that Martin—at least at the time—could barely appreciate his need to employ these conversational hedges, they were completely lost on Hank. “Well, let’s just say that anything’s better than opera,” Hank offered. “All those nuts running around screaming their heads off really give me a headache.”
“That is stupid,” Martin agreed, now deciding to take a different tack