We Are Not Ourselves(56)

“Don’t you think I know my own son’s birthday? It’s March thirteenth!” His father took a deep breath. “I just wanted everything to go perfectly. I wanted you to have good material for your project.”

“You seemed confused.”

“I was fine!” he shouted. “That’s the end of it! I wanted things to go well while you were there. I’ve never had you in the classroom with me before. End of discussion!”

The pitch in his voice rose along with the volume, and his words became a kind of shrieking. Then he stopped and his breathing settled down.

“I didn’t want to be cooped up inside today,” he said.

They drove in silence.

“I’m sorry about your project,” he said. “Maybe you can come back and watch me sometime.”

“It’s all right,” Connell said. “I can make it up. I already know what kind of teacher you are. You teach me every day.”

They drove back to Queens, heading to the strip of grass they’d come to call their own, along a road that led to LaGuardia Airport. When they parked, his father turned to him.

“Can you do me a favor? Can you not tell your mother about this?”

“Coming here?”

“No. The other thing.”

“Sure. Sure.”

“She won’t understand it the way you do.”

They walked to the fence near one of the landing strips. In the distance, Connell could see planes coming in in a line, separated by long intervals. Planes took off around them; engines roared. They stood there dwarfed by arrivals and departures. His father’s arm was around him, and his own fingers clung to the chain-link fence.

They listened to the game on the way back. When they got home, instead of putting a record on and breaking out the headphones, his father put the game on the radio and they sat on the couch listening to it. The Mets beat the Phillies by a run, Gooden throwing eight solid innings and Franco nailing down the save.

? ? ?

He thought about telling his mother how weird it had been, but so much about his father was weird that it was hard to say where the weirdness began and ended. It wasn’t a generation gap so much as a chasm that had opened up and swallowed a whole lifetime. Instead of hanging out with the flower children, his father had haunted laboratories and listened to Bing Crosby. He loved foreign languages and corny puns. How often, when Connell reached for another helping at breakfast, did his father stop his hand and ask him in mock earnest if one egg wasn’t un oeuf?

Who could forget the events of that past Thanksgiving? They went to the Coakleys. The Coakleys used to live a few blocks away in a three-family house like their own; now they lived on Long Island, in a house with plush carpets and a low-lit den that had a couch on all sides and a large television perfect for watching the game. Cindy Coakley had been his mother’s friend since first grade at St. Sebastian’s.

His parents were getting ready in their bedroom. Connell was lying on his bed reading. The radio was on in the living room; his parents must have thought he was out there listening to it, because his mother started laughing in a girlish way that made him feel as if he was hearing something he wasn’t supposed to be hearing. He crept to his door.

“Oh, Ed,” he heard her say. “Don’t do it!”

“Why not? I think it’s a great idea.”

“It’s a terrible idea,” she said, but the delight in her voice said otherwise. “I insist—no, I demand—that you not do this.”

“I’m doing it,” he said. “Here I go.”

“Ed!” she squealed. “That’s brand new!”

It wasn’t strange to hear them laughing, but this was different; this was playful. Around him they laughed like parents, with a certain restraint. He had never heard his mother sound so young.

“How does that look?” his father asked.

“You are not going to show that to anybody. Do you hear me?”

“You’re afraid the women won’t be able to handle it,” he said. “You think they’ll swoon.”

A few seconds passed in silence. He went right up to their closed door, his heart pounding in his chest. He heard some muffled sounds.

“We don’t have time,” his mother said, but she sounded as if she was saying they had all the time in the world.

She made little moaning noises. Connell’s blood ran cold. He had never seen them kiss on the lips, and yet there they were, kissing and doing God knew what else. He thought of all the times he’d watched Jack Coakley pull Cindy to him in brute affection, the times he’d silently urged his father to sweep his mother up in his arms in front of everyone.

“We’d better get going,” his mother said. He heard the sound of the zipper on her dress.

“Maybe I’ll give Jack a laugh. He needs a laugh.”

Connell dashed back to his room. When his parents emerged, he watched for some sign of the mischief he had heard them discussing, but there was nothing.

They drove in a pleasant silence to the Northern State Parkway and the Coakleys. The men watched football in the den while the women talked and transferred food from pots to serving dishes. The dining room table was set with good silver and wineglasses, salt and pepper in sterling silver shakers, and two layers of tablecloths. As everyone trickled in, Connell was already at the table, looking forward to the painful bloat about to overtake him. After the meal, he would sit on the couch with the rest of the men and pat his swollen belly, burping quietly.