Rage. When she put a name to that spinning, tearing commotion going on inside her, that was it. Rage. He was her kid. Hers. What right did Bob have to debate whether or not he’d turn him over? What’s more, it was plain that Daniel, sensing a troubled atmosphere, was beginning to be frightened. He began to cry unconvincingly, without conviction, to see if it would get him what he wanted. Which was his mother.
“Hush,” said Bob.
She grabbed for Daniel. Bob held on. His mouth went grim, his eyes narrowed with determination. He pulled, she pulled. Not until Daniel let loose a blood-curdling scream did she let go, throwing up her hands as if they’d been burned. She hadn’t realized what they were doing to the kid. The pressure marks from her fingers stood white on the flesh of his little arms. Bob and Vera stared at each other, panting. She spoke but three words. “I’ll kill you,” is what she said and she meant it. If she’d have had a carving knife in her hands she’d have rammed it clean through him.
Bob had shot her a queer, ugly smile. Vera believed that the strength of what he was feeling had shaken him, just as the strength of what she was feeling had shaken her. The smile was part disgust, part injured feeling, part triumph. “Let’s hear the magic word,” he said. “Then I’ll think of following orders.”
She had been so disturbed and confused, at first she misunderstood. Vera got it into her head he was trying to blackmail her into saying yes to marrying him. But that wasn’t it. All he wanted to hear her say was please. Only please. Please give me my son.
A father dictating at the dinner table, laying down the law. “No dessert until I hear the word please.” Bob the housepainter was waiting for her to say it. Waiting while Daniel screamed his face purple and flopped and snapped in his arms like a fish.
He wanted her to bow down and she couldn’t. Bow down to me and you can have what you want. It was her father all over again and she couldn’t. “You want him so bad,” Vera said, “you can keep him.”
Then she had turned her back on Bob and walked away. She counted her steps while colliding with people in the crowd. “Drunk,” said a woman in disgust when she bumped into her. Vera’s hands trembled uncontrollably. Thirty steps, she told herself. I’ll give myself thirty steps before I turn back. She couldn’t walk a straight line. The tinny, shrieking carousel music behind her seemed to be tossing her from side to side. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.
She heard someone running, a hand on her shoulder jerked her around. “Vera, what’s the matter with you? Are you crazy?” cried Bob, alarmed. He set Daniel down at her feet, the baby stamped his white boots, clutched at her skirt, screamed. His face, shining with tears, looked like a wet plum. Snot was leaking onto his upper lip and slobber onto his chin. When she swept him up into her arms his body burned hers clean through her blouse.
“Lucky for you that you came after me and not me after you,” was all she had said to Bob. It was all that needed to be said. She never saw him again.
“Mickey Mantle? That’s your idea of a ballplayer? Mr. Showboat popping his arsehole swinging for the fence and glory every time he steps in the batter’s box?” Her father’s voice had built to such heights of bogus outrage that it could no longer be ignored. Vera took up the scouring pad and furiously attacked a pot.
Daniel contradicted him. “He bunts. Lots of times he bunts.”
“Sure he bunts, when the count is two and two. That’s when the chicken shit bunts.”
“You won’t say a good word about him just because he’s a Yankee.”
“Leaving aside he’s an asshole – you’re right. But it’s not the Yankees I hate so much as their fans. Ever notice how everybody claims they’re a Yankee fan can’t name five players on the team? All they know about the Yankees is that they’re winners and that’s enough for them. A Yankee fan is generally ignorance tied to no convictions.”
For Vera, it wasn’t enough that these dumb disputes drove her crazy by endlessly running in circles like dogs snapping at their tails; what was worse was that listening to them busy themselves with their nonsense made her feel alone. Sometimes she couldn’t stop herself from butting in with her shiny two bits’ worth, and taking Daniel’s part, even though she knew her help wasn’t appreciated in the least.
“I like the Yankees!” she shouted from the kitchen.
“See?” said the old man. “What’d I say?”
It was difficult to decide what was responsible for Daniel losing his temper, the indignity of his mother intervening on his behalf, or the self-congratulatory and annoying way his grandfather had of delivering insults. “Better to cheer for the Yankees than a bunch of pitiful losers like the Red Sox!” he cried in a choked voice. “Who wants to cheer for a team of losers like them!”
“J do,” announced the old man with some smugness. “Because me, I got a sense of loyalty. A real fan picks and sticks. A genuine fan stands by his team, win or lose, that’s how you know a real fan.”
“Well, you must be a real fan then. Because you’ve got plenty of experience sticking with losers.”
This successful sally prompted his grandfather to return to safer ground. “Mickey Mantle,” he said, pronouncing the name with scornful exaggeration, “isn’t he the cute one, though? Cute enough for them to make a Mickey Mantle doll for little girls, I’d say. They ought to nickname him Mickey Mantle Piece because that’s where he wants to be – up on some mantel where everybody can swoon at the sight of him. Up there nice and high so all the sportswriters can kiss his precious Yankee ass without the inconvenience of bending over to do it. Because you don’t ever want to put a sports-writer to any trouble, he might write something bad about you.”
“Oh, dear,” said Daniel, sensing an advantage, “who’s still mad because Mickey Mantle beat the great Ted Williams out of the ‘56 batting crown?”
For the first time, Vera detected the flavour of genuine anger in her father’s speech. “No, I ain’t mad about that,” he said emphatically. “You know what I’m mad about, it’s the MVP. One thing about the numbers, they don’t lie. So what happened in ’56? A young guy in the prime of life, supposed to herald the Second Coming, beats an old man, thirty-eight years old, out of the batting title by eight-points’ difference in their batting averages. Oh, didn’t he hand that poor old bugger a terrible eight-point whipping! If I had got licked the way Ted Williams got licked, by eight whole points, I don’t know how I’d have been able to live with the shame. I’d have blown my brains out in the clubhouse. Yes, sir. No way else out after a crushing eight-point defeat,” said the old man, relishing his dramatic effects. “Of course,” he added, “it only makes sense that the next year when senile old Williams bats.388 and Mr. Pin-Up hits.365 that the MVP should go to Mickey. That’s only fair. Why, anybody knows that an old fart like Ted Williams had to hit a lot more than twenty-three points better than Mr. Wonderful to earn a little recognition. And I won’t even mention how it’s the sportswriters who vote for the MVP and Williams never hid the fact he thought sportswriters were a big collection of horses’ asses and wouldn’t talk to them. I mean, who gave him the name Terrible Ted? You’re a bright boy, you figure it out, the business of the MVP.” The old man paused significantly. “So I ask you, in all fairness: Who got fucked?”
“Language!” roared Vera.
“Pardon!” His grandfather lowered his voice and leaned toward Daniel confidentially. “So, as I say, these pencil pushers gang up and fuck him. The greatest hitter for power and average the game’s ever seen, fucked over by a bunch of jealous nobodies. But I ask you: What happened last year? Terrible Ted’s back with a vengeance. Numbers don’t lie. Hand the man another batting crown. That’s his revenge on all the press boys who prefer Mr. Oklahoma because he wouldn’t say shit if his mouth was full of it and Ted Williams says what he thinks. What the newspaper men can’t abide in him is that he plays his game, not theirs, and his game is baseball.”