The Forgetting Time(96)
She hadn’t known until that moment how deeply she had cared. She hadn’t expected that at all.
“This is your Aunt Denise, don’t you remember?” Janie said, stepping forward.
“Oh. Hi, Aunt Denise.” He smiled politely, accepting her present and her presence in his life the way a child did, not questioning where she’d come from.
She sat down and cradled the icy water in her two hands as somewhere far away from her Henry introduced himself to Noah, and the child ripped the wrapping from the box in two quick strokes. Inside was Tommy’s old baseball glove.
He pulled it out with a cry—“Hey, a new glove!”—and she took pleasure and pain in his open, uncomplicated glee.
*
They walked to the park. It was a bright day, the air kicking with a bit of wind.
“So. I’ve got one question for you,” Henry said to Noah, as they walked. He turned to the boy with his gravest expression.
“Yeah?” Noah looked up worriedly.
“Mets or Yankees?”
“Mets, all the way!” Noah said.
Henry grinned. “That’s what I wanna hear!” He high-fived the boy. “What do you think about Grandy? Think he can bring it?”
That was all it took, apparently. They talked animatedly about baseball for the rest of the way to the park while Janie and Denise walked quietly side by side. Denise was mute with disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” Janie said, her voice low. “I didn’t know what he would do when he saw you. He doesn’t talk about it anymore, but I didn’t know.… I guess he’s just Noah now.”
They walked on a bit in silence.
“He still likes the things he likes, though,” she continued. “Lizards and baseball and new things, too. You should see what he can make out of Legos. These beautiful buildings.”
“He’s like his mom,” Denise said at last.
Janie blushed, shrugged. “He’s happy.”
They got to the park and found an open stretch, a meadow. An elderly couple walked by arm in arm. A large Hasidic family moved down a path, corralling their children, keeping them from veering too close to the pond at the meadow’s edge. People were feeding the ducks, a frenzy of beaks and crumbs. A girl stood in the grass twirling a Hula-Hoop around and around like someone from another time.
Janie and Denise settled on a blanket under the protective limbs of a large tree and took out containers of oily mozzarella balls and hummus, grapes and carrots and pita chips, weighing down the napkins with the thermoses so they didn’t fly away. They had brought a baseball with them and the glove, and while they set up the picnic Henry and Noah crossed over into the open grass and tossed the baseball back and forth, Henry catching the ball in his bare hand, like he used to do.
Denise watched them. Noah was happy. Denise could see that. It was nice to see him happy, like any child. It was for the best that he had forgotten her, Denise knew that, though knowing didn’t make it hurt any less. She was grateful that nature had righted itself but couldn’t shake off the feeling that something had been taken away from her that might have been precious, if only she’d been able to find a way to make it so.
She leaned back on her elbows under the fluttering green leaves. Henry threw the ball in a steady, relaxed rhythm, his face as friendly and neutral as Noah’s. She realized what she had already known: Henry didn’t believe any more than he ever had but was doing this for her. Because he loved her. The sound of that love was in the thwack of the ball in Tommy’s old mitt, and the sound of her love—for Henry and Tommy and Charlie and Noah—was in the clicking of the wind in the leaves overhead, all of it making a web of sound that caught her and held her in this moment, right here, right now.
She sat back and watched Henry and Noah toss the ball back and forth, back and forth, like fathers and sons and men and boys anywhere, anytime.
“Now let’s see you try a pop-up,” Henry said, and he threw the ball straight up into the sky.
*
Janie wrote to Anderson. She thought it might be useful for him to keep track of what was happening with Noah, in case they did a new edition of his book. Now that normality reigned in her land in all its hectic glory, she liked to remind herself sometimes of where they had been. She and Jerry hadn’t been friends, but they had shared a deeper connection: they were allies. She wrote about Denise and Henry’s visit, giving him all the pertinent data: how much Noah had enjoyed it without recognizing either one of them. She sent the e-mail, and then another one, but he didn’t write her back.
She hoped he was all right. She had seen him only once, when he had stopped by to visit and give her a copy of his book, a few months before he left the country again for good. The reviews of his book had been mixed; some critics had responded to his research by attacking him playfully, as if it was all a misunderstood game of telephone or fraudulence, nothing to take seriously; and others had been interested in his findings but hadn’t known what to make of them. Anderson hadn’t seemed to care, though. He’d been much quieter, and also somehow looser, as if some tight string had been snapped. He was wearing a white shirt with pockets, the kind of thing island people wore. She had mentioned that and he had actually laughed. “That’s true. I’m an island person now,” he’d said.
Janie didn’t want to forget everything that had happened, but she couldn’t help herself. Daily life was too insistent. She was busy with work, the pleasure of creating harmonious spaces, the headache of quibbling clients. To her great surprise and delight, Bob, her erstwhile texting fling, had entered her life, responding to her sheepish text “If you still want to get together, let me know?” with enthusiasm; they had been seeing each other once or twice a week for six months now, long enough for her to begin to believe that it might actually be happening, and to think about (maybe, someday) introducing him to Noah. And, of course, there was Noah to look after: monitoring his homework, handling his dinner and bubble bath (how much pleasure she took now in ordinary life!), keeping up with all the needs of his ever-evolving self. He was getting older. Sometimes, when they were riding their bikes in the park, she let him pull a little bit ahead of her on the path, and as she watched his blond head and narrow back and small pumping legs cycling away from her and around the bend she felt a pang of loss that she knew was only ordinary motherhood.