Gil explained.
“Let him in,” said the man in the suit.
“But there’s no kid in here,” said the old man.
“He’ll see that for himself.”
The old man unlocked the gate. Gil went in, walked with them up the ramp and out into the stands. Every seat empty. Fans, players, marine color guard, president of the United States, even the Opening Day bunting-all gone. He made his way down to section BB, seats 3 and 4, just the same, in case Richie had left a note. He hadn’t, or if he had it had been swept up with the popcorn, beer cups, scorecards, icecream wrappers.
“Richie,” Gil called, down the left-field line, out to center, down the right-field line. “Richie, Richie.” The ballpark was silent. The first drops of rain made the infield tarp quiver here and there. Gil turned to find the two men watching him from the walkway above. He mounted the steps, felt their eyes on him all the way.
“Maybe he’s in the can,” Gil said.
“We do a sweep,” replied the man in the suit. “Didn’t you tell him?”
“Sure I told him,” said the oldest man. “You think I don’t know my job after fifty-six years?”
Gil just stood there. The man in the suit glanced down at Gil’s torn pant leg. “That it, then?” he said.
Gil didn’t say anything. The old man said, “That’s it,” for him.
The man in the suit said, “Then show this gentleman out.”
The old man walked Gil to the gate. His mood improved as he swung it open. “Nothing to get stressed about,” he said.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know-uptight,” said the old man. “Happens all the time. Probably went home on his own.”
Would Richie know how? Gil wasn’t sure.
“Or he’s waiting in a burger joint,” the old man said, locking the gate.
That was a thought. Gil stepped quickly into the street, without looking. A big Jeep swerved to avoid him. Gil caught a glimpse of Bobby Rayburn at the wheel, laughing into a car phone.
Gil tried all the restaurants and coffee shops within three blocks of the ballpark. He described Richie to a hot-dog vendor, a street cop, and a woman who might have been a hooker. Then he got into his car and drove up and down the streets around the ballpark. Night fell. Probably went home on his own. Gil turned toward the expressway and Ellen’s. Something dragging under the car scraped pavement all the way.
It was raining hard by the time Gil pulled up at the South Shore triplex. Light shining over the front door, no anxious faces peering from the windows: Gil saw nothing unusual except the big Mercedes parked behind Ellen’s car in the driveway.
He knocked on the door. Footsteps. The door opened. Tim.
Gil blurted it out. “Have you got Richie?”
Tim licked his lips. “Ellen?” he called.
Ellen appeared. Her cheeks flushed at the sight of him. That meant she had Richie-thank God, Gil said to himself, he really thanked God-but he asked anyway.
“Richie here?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Don’t start.”
“Don’t you start. Or do you think you’re the injured party? That would be just your style-feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Where is he?”
“Safely asleep in his bed, no thanks to you.”
“I can explain, Ellen.”
“No one wants to hear it.”
“Richie will.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I owe it to him anyway.”
“No one could repay what you owe. And I said he was asleep.”
“Isn’t it a little early?”
“Not for an exhausted nine-year-old boy. Physically and emotionally exhausted.”
“Then I’ll just go up and have a peek at him.”
“You will not,” Ellen said.
“He’s my son.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“What do you mean by that?” No reply. Gil stepped into the hall. Did Tim really move to block him? Gil brushed past him, brushed past Ellen too.
“Stop,” Ellen said.
Did she really grab his arm, dig her fingernails through his jacket? That wasn’t her at all. What was going on? He shook her off, kept going toward the stairs. As he went past the entrance to the living room, a woman said, “That’s him.”
He glanced in, saw an old couple sitting on the couch, cups and saucers on their laps. Gil recognized the woman: she was still wearing her Harvard cap.
“Just a minute,” the man said, rising. He was tall, square-shouldered, well but modestly dressed: the picture of all those bullshit Yankee virtues. “I don’t believe Ellen wants you in her house.”
“I don’t believe it’s got anything to do with you.” Gil faced the man.
Ellen grabbed his arm again, but she didn’t use her nails this time. “What is wrong with you? You should be down on your knees thanking these people.”
“That’s not necessary,” said the man.
“On the contrary, Judge,” said Tim. “Who knows what could have happened to Richie?”
Gil turned on Tim. Tim had a smile on his face that Gil had never seen before and didn’t like at all. Gil shoved him against the wall. “Not another word,” he said. Then he climbed the stairs.
There were two bedrooms on the second floor. The first, once his and Ellen’s, now Ellen’s alone, or Ellen’s and Tim’s, who cared? The second, Richie’s. The door was open a few inches, the way Richie liked, or at least the way he had liked it when they had all still been together; and the room was dark inside. Gil went in. A shaft of hall light fell across the bed. Richie lay with his face toward the wall.
“Richie?”
No answer.
“Sorry, pal, if you can hear me. I screwed up, big time.”
No answer. Gil had a strong desire to lay his hand on Richie’s shoulder, or rumple his hair, something. But he might wake him, if Richie was indeed sleeping, might even frighten him. Gil shrank from that second thought.
“Richie?”
No answer.
“I…”
Gil stood in Richie’s room, silent. He could hear the boy’s breathing, light and regular; sound asleep. Above him Bobby Rayburn smiled down from the poster, bat resting easily on his shoulder.
Gil wanted something very simple: to lie down on that bed and fall asleep beside his son. The impossible. He had thanked God for Richie’s safety. Gil had never addressed God before, but now that the ice was broken he made a little prayer, or request.
“Give me the whip hand,” he said.
Richie moaned in his sleep.
Suddenly Gil wondered whether Richie had made the majors.
“Richie?”
No answer.
“Did you hear from the coach?”
Richie moaned again.
9
The ophthalmologist was an old Jewish guy with one of those pendants shaped like the Greek letter pi. They sat in the dark and quiet examination room, the ophthalmologist clicking new lenses through the lens machine, Bobby Rayburn peering through them and reporting what he saw in the illuminated square on the far wall.
“E, W, N, T, R, F.”
Click. “And the line that begins with L?”
“L, P, Z, Y, O, A.”
Click. “Possibly the one below?”
“U, B, D, F, C, R.”
Click. “Better or worse?”
“Worse.”
Click. “Better or worse?”
“Better.”
Click. “Better or worse?”
“About the same.”
The ophthalmologist had bright blue eyes. They came closer, gazed through the pupils of Bobby’s eyes and into their depths. A long black hair curled out of the old man’s right nostril. He rolled back his stool, switched on a desk lamp, wrote on a chart. Bobby watched the pen wiggling in the pool of light, then examined the other light sources in the room-the letters on the wall, his Rolex.
“So, Doc-do I need glasses?”
“Glasses?” The ophthalmologist stopped writing. “Only to make a fashion statement. Your vision is perfect. More than perfect-twenty-fifteen in the right eye and even better in the left. Even better. Almost twenty-ten. Such acuity I find only in children, and then seldom. Glasses? You could qualify as an astronaut or a jet pilot or something of that nature, Mr.-” He checked the chart. “-Rayburn.”