He continued to leaf through the pile. After a series of similar drawings he came upon a ditto that said “I don’t like to do things because …” His sister had listed five things, numbered:
1. I don’t like to go to the beach because there’s see weed.
2. But I don’t like to play with little kids because they jump on you.
3. I don’t like to show my pictures because I don’t like them.
4. I don’t like to get lost in a crowd because some one could take you.
5. I don’t like my dog.
He made a face and turned it over, sitting forward in her chair. He pulled out “Things I Like About Myself”:
I like the way I swim with Lisa.
I like the way I do wheelies.
And I feed the dog.
I like when I play socker.
Halfway down the page, “Things I Don’t Like About Myself”:
I don’t like the way I eat.
My closit is a disaster.
I hate the way my brother looks.
He sat back and shut the drawer, taking the page with him. He got out into the sun in just his shorts, with the page, his dice, and a pencil. He squinted. The leaves on the trees were bright and blinding and the white of the garage forced him to avert his eyes.
His sister was still scraping. Every so often she’d hold the spoon up and examine it critically before resuming. It struck him that she was no happier than he was, and no one would ever know. She volunteered nothing.
“What’re you doing?” he asked, shading his eyes.
“I’m getting it sharper.” She held it up, testing the edge with her thumb.
“Wait’ll they see what you’re doing with the spoon,” he said, sitting down himself a few feet away and spreading the paper out in front of him. Ants were following an invisible track nearby.
“That’s nice,” his father said from the kitchen window. “I got a beautiful yard and my kids play in the driveway.”
“It’s nice and warm,” Biddy said, rolling the dice.
“You can’t sit in the sun in the grass?”
“The grass is wet.”
There was a rattling and a grinding sound from around the house and Simon labored into view, his bicycle wobbling up the driveway as he stood all of his weight on the pedals, one after the other. Something was wrong with the chain and had been wrong with it for weeks, and no one had fixed it for him. He lived a few houses down and was Kristi’s age.
Biddy said hello. Simon ground to a halt, perched high on the pedals, tipping to one side. He just got his foot out to catch his balance, legs spread wide, as the bicycle came down with a little crash on the pavement.
“Hi,” he said.
He stood beside Kristi, watching her. They looked like brother and sister except his hair was still lighter than hers — white, in bright sun — and as fine as Biddy’s. Most people’s blue eyes, Biddy had noticed, were predominantly gray, but Simon’s, like Kristi’s, were blue.
“Get out of the way,” Kristi said. “You’re in the sun.”
Simon moved. He moved when she told him to move. He moved when nearly anyone told him to move. He was a nice kid, and got beat up a good deal.
“Don’t leave your bike all over the driveway,” Kristi said. “My father’ll run it over.”
Simon picked it up and wheeled it onto the grass.
Biddy called him over. “Want to play dice?” he asked.
Simon said no.
“He doesn’t know how,” Kristi said.
Simon looked at him as though he had no excuse.
His father came outside carrying a bucket with an oversized sponge in it. “Hey, Simon. What’s up?”
“Hi,” Simon said.
“Kristi, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, get out of the driveway. You too, Biddy. I’m going to back the car out.”
Simon wandered back to his bike and hunched over it, poking at the chain. Biddy followed. Simon’s fingers edged in on the teeth of the gear sprocket, slipping along black grease. “It sticks or something,” he said in explanation, gazing at it as if it had always stuck and would always stick.
“Want to put some oil on it?” Biddy asked.
“No, my father’ll fix it.” He stood the bike up and got on the seat, wavering. His parents were divorced and he lived with his mother, rarely seeing his father.
“Bye,” he said. “Bye, Kristi.” He pushed, rocking forward toward the handlebars in the effort, grinding his way back down the driveway, and turned out into the street. The front wheel wove its way along from side to side like a dog’s exploring nose.
Biddy’s father paused to watch, slopping soapy water on the vinyl roof of the car. “That poor little son of a bitch,” he said. “All he does is ride up and down the street on that bike.”
“Are we going out tonight, by the way?” his mother called from the house. She was not visible.
“Going out?” His father paused, sweeping the sponge in a dark track across the vinyl. “No. The Game of the Week is on.”
“Wonderful.” Biddy could not place his mother’s voice at all; it might well have been coming from any room on that side of the house. “Terrific. Baseball.”
His father whistled the beginning of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
“All summer I get baseball. We watch baseball. We go to see baseball. We play baseball. We’re in our second childhood here.”
“I realize one game a week is unbearable,” his father said.
His mother appeared at the screen on the porch. “It’s not one game a week. I wish it was. We talk baseball. That’s how we get through to each other. When we do. When do you talk with him anymore?” She flashed a hand at Biddy. “And what do you talk about when you do? ‘Oh, the Orioles pissed that one away.’ He does the same thing now. He doesn’t talk about things when he’s upset. He talks baseball. You’re getting him as crazy as you are.”
“Well, we’re all emotional cripples here.”
His mother turned away from the screen.
His father’s arms had stopped, soap drying in streaks on the car. “And it’s baseball that did it. It’s not normal. Who ever heard of a father and son talking baseball? I think he should learn Sanskrit instead,” he said to the house. “And we should hold weekly discussion groups to go over everything and make sure nothing’s wrong.” He resumed soaping, the only other sound the scraping of Kristi’s spoon on the pavement, the house quiet and giving no indication that anyone inside had heard.
Later that night they watched The Game of the Week. Biddy and his sister were sprawled on the floor with the dog; their parents were in the two big chairs with the lamp between them. It was a small den. His feet went under his father’s chair and his head, his mother complained, was much too close to the television.
The Orioles were leading the Royals in the third inning. Doug DeCinces led off with a long, looping double to right center, and as he slid into second Biddy’s father got up and changed the channel. A young woman hitched up her dress and ran across a railroad yard covered with the bodies of men in gray uniforms. He looked back over his shoulder at his father, waiting for an explanation. But his father only turned to his mother and remarked that it had been a good thing they hadn’t gone out. His mother didn’t respond.
Biddy gave it a few minutes before he finally said, “What is this?”