We Are Not Ourselves(55)

After a few seconds, his father gestured to a woman in the front who had been taking notes through the chaos.

“Karen,” he said. “Karen? Is that right?”

“Yes, Professor Leary.”

“Karen, if you don’t mind, would you tell me where I left off?”

“You had just finished telling us that the spinal cord serves as a minor reflex center.”

“Okay,” he said. “That’s good. That’s good. Thank you. That’s exactly what I needed. The spinal cord as a reflex center.”

He flipped through the pad furiously. When he had gone through all the pages, he flipped back through them again so hard that it looked like he might rip them off.

“You see,” he said. “I’m tired. I’ve been working hard. And there’s a lot on my mind. In fact, there’s something specific on my mind that’s distracting me, and I hope you’ll forgive me for letting it get in the way today. If you’ll all turn and look, you’ll see my son at the back of the room.”

Connell could feel the blood rush to his cheeks.

“My son came along with me, as you can see,” his father said. “Today is an important day for him.” His father was looking directly at him. “Isn’t it, son?”

He was going to make him talk about the project.

“Yes,” Connell said.

“Today’s his birthday,” his father said.

Everyone was staring at him. It had been almost a month since his birthday. He could see it all: the metal bat, the batting gloves, the high-end tee, the netting, the boxes of balls, the bucket to keep them in; heading out into the cold and the whipping wind after dinner and setting up at the back of the driveway; under the moon, in the quiet of the evening, slamming balls into the net and delighting in the ping produced by a ball squarely struck.

The faces smiled. He heard a volley of clucking. One lady near him asked him how old he was.

“I’m fourteen,” he said.

“Fourteen today,” his father said. “And he’s been such a good kid, waiting for me. You see, we’re going to the Mets game right after this class. Opening Day. And I’ve had that in the back of my mind. I’ve been worried about the traffic. We’re going to be cutting it a little close. So I apologize for not being all here today. Really, if I’m being honest with myself, I should ask you all if you wouldn’t mind if we just ended class early and made up for it next week. I realize some of you have come from far away. Would you forgive me if we canceled today’s class and made it up next time?”

The students looked around at each other. Some grumbled; one man slapped his desk in frustration, yelled “Bullshit!” and walked out. Others shrugged.

“Good. Good. That’s great,” his father said. “Then we’ll end class now.”

They started packing up their stuff. “I’ll draw up a handout explaining in depth what I was going to go through today, and I’ll spend a little time at the beginning of next class taking you through it point by point.” He picked up the briefcase from the floor and began gathering his things. “Thank you all,” he said, over the rustle of bags and jackets. “This is kind of you. I apologize for imposing on your time like this.”

Some of them wished Connell a happy birthday as they left. His father waved them out the door. Connell remained seated until everyone had gone. He walked up to the front of the room. His father stood facing the blackboard, his hands on the chalkwell. Connell could see his shoulders rising and falling.

“I have to pee,” Connell said, though he didn’t really have to.

In the bathroom, he looked in the mirror. He lifted his shirt up, then took it off and flexed with both arms. There was more mass and definition. He brought his fists to his ears and squeezed his muscles like Hulk Hogan. He smiled a big, crazy smile with lots of teeth. He drew close to the mirror, leaned his forehead against it. His breath collected on it and evaporated. He slapped at the little bit of baby fat still on his stomach, hard enough to leave a red mark.

“Go away,” he said. “Go away!” Then he started to worry that someone would walk in on him.

He put his shirt on and went back out. They walked to the car in silence.

“I don’t have tickets to the game,” his father said after they’d been driving awhile. “We can still go. We can try to get in.”

“We don’t have to.”

“It might be hard to get tickets.”

“Yeah.”

“I was thinking we could go watch some planes.”

Connell turned the radio on and the volume up a few clicks. He watched his father’s face for flickers of anger, but his father didn’t seem to notice the change in volume. Connell turned it up even more. His father’s hand shot to the knob.

“That’s too loud,” he said. “Not too loud.”

It was lower now than it had been before he raised it the first time, but he didn’t want to chance it. He looked out the window.

“Hey, Dad?”

“What?”

“What was all that about?”

“I just didn’t feel like teaching today.”

“Why did you say it was my birthday?”

He could see his father’s face reddening, his hands gripping the wheel tighter.