Before the Fall(95)

A floorboard pops in the hall as Doug shifts his weight. Scott sits up and stares at the doorknob, a dim copper ball in the darkness. What will he do if it turns? If Doug enters drunk, ready for a fight?

Breathe. Again.

Somewhere the air conditioner’s compressor kicks on, and the low duct thrust of forced air breaks the spell. The house is just a house again. Scott listens as Doug walks down the hall to the bedroom.

He exhales slowly, realizing he’s been holding his breath.

In the morning, he takes the boy out looking for rocks to skip. They scour the grounds of the riverbank, looking for flat, smooth stones—Scott in his city shoes and the boy in little pants and a little shirt, each shoe smaller than Scott’s hand. He shows the boy how to stand, cockeyed to the water, and sidearm projectiles across the surface. For a long time the boy can’t do it. He furrows his brow and tries over and over, clearly frustrated, but refusing to give up. He chews his tongue inside his closed mouth and makes a working sound, half song, half drone, selecting his stones carefully. The first time he gets a two-hopper, he jumps in the air and claps his hands.

“Nice, buddy,” Scott tells him.

Energized, the boy runs off to collect more stones. They are on a thin strip of brambly bank on the edge of the woods at a wide bend in the Hudson. The morning sun is behind them, blockaded by trees, on the rise, its first rays cresting the far shore. Scott sits on his heels and puts his hand in the moving water. It is cool and clear, and for a moment he wonders if he will ever go swimming again, ever fly on another plane. He can smell silt in the air and somewhere a tinge of cut grass. He is aware of his body as a body, muscles engaged, blood flowing. Around him, unseen birds call to each other without urgency, just a steady interchange of heckle and woop.

The boy throws another stone, laughing.

Is this how healing starts?

Last night Eleanor came into the living room to tell him he had a call. Scott was on his knees, playing trucks with the boy.

Who would be calling me here?

“She said her name was Layla,” Eleanor said.

Scott got to his feet, went into the kitchen.

“How did you know I was here?” he asked.

“Sweetie,” she said, “what else is money for?”

Her voice dropped, moving to a more intimate octave.

“Tell me you’re coming back soon,” she said. “I’m spending, like, all my time on the third floor sitting inside your painting. It’s so good. Did I tell you I’ve been to that farmers market? When I was a kid. My dad had a place on the Vineyard. I grew up eating ice cream in that courtyard. It’s eerie. The first time I ever handled cash was to go buy peaches from Mr. Coselli. I was six.”

“I’m with the boy now,” Scott told her. “He needs me—I think. I don’t know. Kids. Psychology. Maybe I’m just in the way.”

Through the phone, Scott heard Layla take a sip of something.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve got buyers lined up for every painting you make in the next ten years. I’m talking to the Tate later about mounting a solo show this winter. Your rep sent me the slides. They’re breathtaking.”

These words, once so coveted, were Chinese to him now.

“I have to go,” he told her.

“Hold on,” she said, purring, “don’t just run. I miss you.”

“What’s going on?” he asked. “In your mind. With us.”

“Let’s go to Greece,” she told him. “There’s a little house on a cliff I own through, like, six shell companies. Nobody knows a thing. Complete mystery. We could lie in the sun and eat oysters. Dance after dark. Wait till the dust clears. I know I should be coy with you, but I’ve never met anyone whose attention is harder to get. Even when we’re together it’s like we’re in the same place, but different years.”

After he hung up, Scott found JJ had moved to the desk in the living room. He was using Eleanor’s computer, playing an educational game, moving letter tiles.

“Hey, buddy.”

The boy didn’t look up. Scott pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. He watched the boy drag the letter B onto a matching square. Above it a cartoon bug sat on a leaf. The boy dragged the U, then the G.

“Do you mind if I—” said Scott. “Could I—”

He reached for the mouse, moved the cursor. He didn’t own a computer himself, but he had spent enough time watching people on laptops in coffee shops to understand what to do, he thought.

“How do I—” he asked, after a moment, more to himself than the boy, “—search for something?”

The boy took the mouse. Concentrating, chewing his tongue, he opened a browser window, went to Google, then gave the mouse back to Scott.

“Great,” said Scott. “Thanks.”

He typed Dwo—then stopped, not knowing the spelling. He erased the word, then typed, Red Sox, video, longest at bat, hit ENTER. The page loaded. Scott clicked on a video link. The boy showed him how to maximize the window. He felt like a caveman staring into the sun.

“You can—it’s okay to watch I think,” he told the boy, then hit PLAY. Onscreen the video began. The quality was pixilated, the colors saturated, as if—rather than record the game the normal way—the poster had filmed their own television screen. Scott imagined that, a man sitting in his living room filming a baseball game on TV, creating a game within a game, the image of an image.