Kathryn and Patty glanced at each other, then looked to Billy. He shrugged. Ray’s presence did not seem essential to their happiness this morning. As if in answer to the logical follow-up, Brian padded into the kitchen in his footie pajamas, his cheeks plump and rosy with the fullness of sleep. He climbed into his mother’s lap and snuggled close, clinging like a baby koala bear in the bush.
You want some juice?
No.
Cereal?
No.
You just want to sit with Mommy for a while.
Yes.
His presence had the effect of settling everyone down. He stared and stared at Billy, not so much out of curiosity, it seemed, as in witness, as if channeling some ancient gravity. Billy’s beret in particular seemed to hold his attention. As long as he didn’t start with the whys they would be okay, Billy thought. Denise poured more coffee for him. Kathryn cleared away his plate. The clock on the microwave was two minutes faster than the stove clock, which was in turn a minute faster than the wall clock, and every time you looked at one you had to look at the others in a never-ending quest for congruity. It was awful, watching those clocks. One by one they sequenced to 7:00 and beyond, then Kathryn was hissing “shit” under her breath. From the kitchen they could look through the dining room and out the front window, where a black Lincoln Town Car was pulling into the driveway.
A small melee erupted. Kathryn took off down the hall for the front door. Denise turned to the sink and just bawled. Somehow Brian ended up in Billy’s arms, so he was right there in the middle when Billy hugged his weeping mother, Billy purposely blurring his senses as he leaned in because it was just too much, the crying, the bleakness, the whole tragic vibe, but at least Brian was there to muffle some of the shock. “Bye, Mom,” Billy whispered, then he was moving down the hall with Brian in his arms, Patty following so close she kept clipping his heels. Out in the driveway Kathryn was helping the driver load Billy’s gear in the trunk.
“Take care of yourself,” Patty said on the porch. She was a teary, phlegmy spongeball of hiccups and sobs. “Don’t do anything crazy. Just get your butt home.”
Billy took a last sniff of his nephew’s head, rich with notes of spring grass and warm homemade bread, and handed him back to Patty. A scumbled three-way hug ensued.
“You tell him,” Billy murmured to his sister in the clutch, “if I’m not around you tell him, I said don’t ever join the Army.”
Kathryn was waiting at the car. She was crying, and laughing at herself for crying, outdone by the sheer unmitigated suck of it all. Later he would recall the scrabbling action in her hug, as if she were sliding down a cliff face and clawing for purchase. She shut the door behind him and stepped back, then tossed off a windmilling cartoon salute. Billy could not have been more spent if he’d just run a marathon. It felt like organ failure, like his face was melting, but the car was backing down the driveway and the worst was over. Kathryn waved from the yard as the Town Car pulled away. Patty was waving from the porch with Brian slung to her hip, and behind them, thinned out by the glare of the storm door, Ray was watching from his chair. Billy cursed to himself and leaned back in his seat. The Town Car gathered speed. So his father made an appearance, what was he supposed to do with that?
“You want some music?” the driver asked. He was a heavyset black man, pushing sixty. A thick lip of flesh spilled over his suit collar.
Billy said no thanks. They went several blocks before the driver spoke again. “Hard on the families,” he said in a lilting preacher’s voice. “But something wrong if it weren’t, I guess.” He glanced at Billy in the rearview. “Sure you don’t want some music?”
Billy said he was sure.
WE ARE ALL AMERICANS HERE
BILLY IS THINKING IF you took every person he’s ever known in his life and added up the sum total of their wealth, this presumably grand number would still pale in comparison to the stupendous net worth of Norman Oglesby, or “Norm” as he’s known to the media, friends, colleagues, legions of Cowboys fans, and the even mightier legions of Cowboys haters who for whatever reason — his smug, kiss-my-ass arrogance, say, or his flaunting of the whole America’s Team shtick, or his willingness to whore out the Cowboys brand to everything from toasters to tulip bulbs — despise the man’s guts even as they’re forced to admit his genius for turning serious bucks. Norm. The Normster. Nahm. He figures prominently in the fantasy lives of fans everywhere, the antagonist in endless imagined arguments and the medium for all manner of secret wish fulfillment. For days Sykes has been rehearsing his big moment with fuck Norm this and fuck Norm that, gon’ give my boy Norm boocoo shit for dealing Tresbnoski, like, hey, what the fuck, Norm! You trade your all-world linebacker for steroids on a stick? But when it’s Sykes’s turn to meet the Cowboys owner, he rolls over and does a shameless bitch flop.
“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” he says in hushed, reverent tones. “I just want you to know, I’ve been a huge Cowboys fan my entire life.”
“Well it’s my honor to meet you, Specialist Sykes,” Norm rips right back. “I’ve been a huge fan of the United States Army for my entire life!”
The crowd gives up a big round of applause. Hooah, Norm! They are in a large bare room deep inside the stadium’s bowels, a chilly space with concrete walls and cheap all-weather carpet that wicks the cold up through the floor in a palpable draft. Bravo has been brought here for an intimate meet-and-greet with the Cowboys brass and selected guests, perhaps two hundred people have gathered with many family units on display, as is surely right and fitting on this Thanksgiving Day. It’s a class crowd, the men dressed in coats and ties, the women spiff in tailored suits with matching shoes and purses, though some of the hipper, edgier set make a winter fashion statement with skintight leathers and long fur coats. They could be the congregation of the richest church in town, Our Anorexic Lady of the Upscale Honky Bling; the only people of color here are the waitstaff and several gregarious former players, fan favorites from yesteryear who invested wisely and kept their noses clean. Billy and Mango appreciate that best behavior is called for at this top-shelf event, and thanks to Hector’s primo herb they are close to losing it. It is next to impossible not to bust up laughing and if they do no telling where it will end. An elderly priest with a lisp almost sets them off, then a lady whose hair resembles an exploded poodle. They are in that perilous state of stoned paranoia where surely everyone sees they’ve been toking up, which is terrifying and just the funniest thing ever.
“Be cool,” they hiss at each other, giggling like deranged asthmatics. Think of something horrible — rectal bleeding, sucking chest wounds, tapeworms dangling from your nose.
“Okay, how do I look?”
“Fucked up.”
They’re whispering out the sides of their mouths.
“How about now?”
“Still fucked up.”
Billy boots Mango with a behind-the-back crossover kick, Mango sends a quick jab to Billy’s ribs, and they furtively cuff each other until Dime gives them a look. It has the feel of a high-speed spinout, the whhheeee-hai! of serious G’s plus awareness that it’s probably going to turn out badly, but when Norm & Co. approach for the big introduction it is time to square up and get straight for real.
Norm. It is Himself in the flesh. So much of life consists of inertia and drift, the brief savory or sour of any particular day tends to blur into the next so that it all becomes one big flavorless wad. There are so few moments you can point to and say, Yes, that was historic, greatness happened that day, and evidently this is supposed to be one of those moments because photographers and video cams follow Norm’s every move. He glows, which isn’t to say he’s a handsome man but rather shimmers with high-wattage celebrity, and therein lies the problem, the brain struggles to match the media version to the actual man who looks taller than the preformed mental image, or maybe broader, older, pinker, younger, the two versions miscongrue in some crucial sense which makes it all a little unreal, and anyway Billy is freaking. He has met the president himself, but if nerves are any measure this is a bigger deal, a greater challenge to his fluid definition of self. Meeting famous people is a touchy business. Will he be enhanced by the coming encounter? Affirmed? Diminished? Yesterday he asked Dime, What do I say to him? Dime snorted. You don’t have to say shit, Billy, Norm’ll do all the talking. Just say yes sir and no sir and laugh when he makes a funny, that’s all you have to do.