“It’s beautiful up here. The harbor is full of boats and the water is so still.”
We begin to move again, dropping down.
“Okay,” he says, exhaling. “Okay.”
“Do you want to get out?’
“No. I’ll get used to it.”
“Are you sure? They let kids off all the time if they start freaking out.”
“No. I can do this.”
We circle down and around several times. He keeps his eyes closed. He says he’s sorry a few times. He tries to smile. I can still see the boy in him if I squish up his features, darken his freckles, thicken the hair slightly. When he smiles I see the same square teeth, the gap between the front ones gone. He must have had braces sometime after eighth grade.
Very carefully he leans back in his seat. “I thought you were leaving. I thought you were already gone.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe Berkeley is a little overrated after all.”
“Unlike fried dough and the Tilt-a-Whirl.” He smiles and I see his teeth again, and the gap, even though it’s been closed up.
“Exactly.”
“Seriously, Daley. What happened?” He is squinting, peering out at me through tiny slits.
“Seriously, the chair of the department won’t give me an extension. I had to be there Wednesday or not at all.”
“I thought your father was doing okay.”
“He is. But he needs help getting where he needs to go.”
He doesn’t say anything. I can’t tell what he’s thinking or what he knows about my father. There’s probably a lot I don’t know.
“How long have you been living here?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “A long time.”
“How long?”
“Nearly ten years.”
“Jesus.” I thought he was going to say one or two. Ten years means he dropped out of college. I don’t do a very good job disguising my horror.
He laughs. “I know. I’m Ashing’s own George Willard.”
We read Winesburg, Ohio in eighth grade. I’m smiling, but his eyes are sealed tight now. “So aren’t you going to tell me to get out while I can and follow my dreams?” I say.
“No, I hate advice,” he says, then adds, “Live your life. There. That’s my advice.”
“Are you living your life?”
“No.”
I laugh. “You didn’t have to think very hard for that answer.”
Our compartment stops and swings. Neal groans. People down below are being let off. We will be one of the last.
“I wrote an essay about you in graduate school.” There is something about his eyes being shut that makes me able to speak my thoughts.
“What?”
“You called my chest concave, and I wrote that that moment was my initiation into the world of the male gaze.”
“I never called you concave.” He sounds like he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“Not to my face. But Stacy told me.”
“I didn’t. That’s not what I said.”
“Well, I got an A on the essay.”
Our compartment stops suddenly at the base of the wheel and the man slides open the bolt and swings the little door wide. “Great ride,” Neal says to the man.
We head back toward town. The way he walks beside me, a sort of long bounce, reminds me of his performance in The King and I. There are times I almost think I am not sure of what I absolutely know, I can hear him sing. I laugh out loud.
“What?”
His eyes seem abnormally large now that they are open, and I laugh again.
“Jesus, what?”
“Nothing. Or, rather, too many things.”
“I think I liked it better with my eyes closed.”
“Why?”
“I feel like every time you look at me you’re asking, Why are you here? Why are you here?”
“I’m not. Honestly, I was just thinking about what a good King of Siam you were. That’s all.”
“Same thing.”
When we reach his shop he pulls out keys from his pocket.
“You’re going back to work?”
“I live here. Up top.” He points to a few dark windows on the second floor.
“I thought you lived with your parents.”
“I’m pathetic, but not that pathetic.”
I worry for a moment that he’ll ask me up, but he says good night and disappears into the dark store. A few seconds later a light goes on above, though I can only see the ceiling from where I’m standing. He doesn’t come to the window. I’m not sure why I thought he would. I start walking again. When I pass the sub shop, three teenage girls are coming out, still drinking their sodas.
“C’mon,” the first one says, tugging the next one by the sleeve.
“No!” she says jerking her arm away. “I told you it’s not true.”
“C’mon. He lives right down there. We’ll go ask him and find out.”
“No!” she shrieks as the other begins to run down the sidewalk. The third girl is doubled over laughing. But she is all talk, the first one, and when she gets to Neal’s door she only pretends to knock. Eventually the other two drag her toward the carnival.
My father is outside the church, smoking a cigarette with the man in work pants from the first night. This man looks a little like Garvey, the way he holds his cigarette backward, pinches it between thumb and forefinger, the lit end hidden by his palm. I wave and get in the car. Next to him, my father looks old, his hair no longer sprinkled with gray but an even silver. His stoop is more pronounced, his neck angling away from the back collar of his blazer, leaving a gap. His sidewalk conversation is always jocular; he speaks to people, men and women, as if they are about to go out onto a field. Take it easy, he always says upon leave-taking, take it easy, says the man who has never taken it easy. But right now with this guy my father is listening, nodding gravely, looking up over the top of the library across the street and then saying something serious. They speak for a few minutes after their cigarettes have been pressed out on the walk-way, and then they pat each other on the arm and separate.
My father gets in the car and lets out a long breath.
I start the engine and pull out into the street.
“I tell you, no one’s got it easy, that’s for sure.”
I look at him. There is pain on his face, pain for someone else. My father is feeling compassion.
The dashboard starts beeping.
“What the fuck is that?”
“It wants you to put on your seatbelt, Dad.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Is it going to tell me when to piss, too?”
He leans toward me to snap in the buckle — it’s tricky, you have to go in at just the right angle. He groans, then gets it, then says, “What’s that smell?”
“I don’t know.” The Datsun is old and has lots of smells.
“Food or candy or something.”
“Fried dough?”
“Disgusting. You’re eating that crap before dinner?”
“Two fat slabs of it.”
“Just like your mother,” he says. He’s right. I’d forgotten that. It’s just like her.
We pass Neal’s lit windows, then the carnival. The Ferris wheel makes its big turns. A feeling is pooling inside me, flooding my chest and up into my throat and down the backs of my calves. It’s a minute or so before I recognize it. Happiness.
16
My father plings across the linoleum in his golf spikes. He can’t find his five-iron.
“That goddamn Frank musta swiped it.”
He goes to look in the mudroom again.
“That kid was never any good. I don’t care what kind of snazzy job he has now or how many zeros he gets in his paycheck. He stole my fucking golf club!” He clenches his fists. His face is bright red. The dogs dance around him, misunderstanding his excitement.