Cassie had worked on him about moving to Boston, but that would’ve been settling for the merely second-rate. Choosing the suburbs of Albany and your own childhood home had a perverse grandeur, like an episode in the lives of the great Proustian-Jamesian queer recluses. (Mark’s name for Albany was “Ulan Bator.”) And taking a job in tech support seemed, to Billy, a little like Rimbaud giving up poetry for gunrunning or whatever it was. A very little.
He didn’t bring much from 75th Street besides his clothes, his tapes and CDs, his books — most of them are still in boxes — and his computer. He spread his one decent kilim on the wall-to-wall carpeting in the living room, but the colors clashed; after a week he rolled it up and stuck it in the hall closet. He’s learned to live with wallpaper, and while he took down the intolerable shorescape (lighthouse, dunes, gull on post of jetty) in the master bedroom, he left the snow scene (covered bridge, icy brook, hemlocks) as a tip of the hat to the old man. He also left the denim-and-gingham square dancers in the kitchen, painted on varnished plywood in a Chuck Jones-meets-Thomas Hart Benton manner.
Deke’s been here since Labor Day weekend. That Sunday morning, Cassie’s Porsche-driving druggie boyfriend called in a panic — looking for Mom, actually, forgetting she was dead. If he’d ever known. He said they’d gone to his beach house in Wellfleet, where Cassie, already up for three days on coke and crank, made the mistake of eating these ’shrooms they’d been saving for the right occasion. He’d taken her to the hospital — he was sure Billy would see he’d had no choice — but what was he supposed to do with her kid? The social worker at the hospital was going to put him in foster care, but—
“Where’s Deke now?” Billy said. “Okay, listen, stay right there.”
He woke up Labor Day morning, fried from driving to the Cape and back the day before, and with no more idea than the boyfriend of what to do with a seven-year-old kid. Deke was already up. Billy found him in Cassie’s old room, playing with her Barbies, and decided to take him to a ball game. The Albany-Colonie Diamond Dogs were playing the Adirondack Lumberjacks for the Northeast League championship that afternoon. Billy’s father used to take him to games back when Albany still had a Yankee farm team; Billy found it heartening that these upstarts should be named after a David Bowie song.
Deke was really too young to follow the game — the Diamond Dogs hit two home runs in the bottom of the first, and he missed them both — but he seemed to like the crowd, the bright green grass and the bursts of music and sound effects from the loudspeakers. The Dogs’ cleanup hitter popped a foul ball into the aisle between the grandstand and the bleachers (sound effect of breaking glass), and a crowd of boys ran to chase it down. Deke leaped up, then looked at Billy. “Can I?”
“Just make sure I can see you,” Billy said.
Deke was still scrambling down into the aisle when one of the kids held the ball up as little hands grabbed for it and the crowd applauded. Deke ran halfway over, then turned back to Billy with a stagy shrug and a genuine smile.
By the seventh inning, the Dogs were up eleven to nothing. Billy told Deke about the seventh-inning stretch, and Deke made him sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in his ear to prep him; he claimed he’d never heard it. The Dogs went down one-two-three in the bottom of the eighth, and Billy, wanting to beat the crowd, asked Deke if he’d had enough. No: he wanted to chase more foul balls.
To get out of the parking lot took them all three movements of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto, but Billy had no plan for what to do next anyway. Deke said he was hungry, so that settled that: they went to McDonald’s. On the way home they listened to the Barney tape Deke had carried with him from Boston to Cape Cod and from Cape Cod to here. Predictably namby-pamby — amazing that Cassie, of all people, would give it houseroom — but not without its fascinations. Like that song “The Old Brass Wagon”: was it really a wagon made of brass, like some warrior’s brazen chariot, or just a wagon to haul scrap metal? It seemed folkloristic. The Golden Bough. The Old Brass Wagon. The dying god hauled to his funeral pyre. A harvest thing. The sun was going down on Labor Day. Summer was over.
Billy does the dishes while Deke takes his bath, but he keeps coming in to check, imagining the worst: Deke standing up, slipping, cracking his head, drowning. He’s relieved that he hasn’t found the boy’s narrow nates and teensy penis at all arousing. At the same time, he’s irked with himself for being relieved. Does he assume that straight men reflexively slaver over girl children in their care?
After he’s dried Deke’s soft hair with the hair dryer, they snuggle on the sofa and Billy reads him his nightly trilogy. Tonight Deke chose The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Runaway Bunny and the loathly Bugs Bunny and the Carrot Machine. An all-rabbit program. Billy marvels at how Deke has devised it: a calming, ritualistic opener, then the emotionally heavy stuff — the mother who’ll always come after you and take care of you — and then a farce as the end piece.
After Bugs Bunny overloads the carrot-making machine and blows it up — a not very subtle parable about overreaching — Billy takes Deke by the hand and leads him to bed. “Goodnight and sleep tight.”
Deke lets his head sink into the pillow and looks up at the ceiling. “Good night and sleep tight. Did you know Mommy has Old Maid in her room?”
“No kidding. You know, I’d forgotten about Old Maid. We used to play all the time.”
“Can we play?”
“Sure. How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning. Surest thing you know. That’s what my — what your grandfather used to say. ‘Surest thing y’know.’ He was an epistemologist.”
Deke looks at him. “Mommy said he was a teacher.”
“That was his day job, sure.”
“But what’s a pistemologist?”
“You know.” Billy’s sorry he started this. “Somebody that mows the lawn and stuff. Reads the paper. Shovels snow in the winter.”
“Like you?” Deke’s frowning. He clearly knows there’s something he’s not getting.
“Exactement.” Billy gives him his best imitation of a guileless smile. “Sweet dreams.” Kisses his fingertips, presses them to Deke’s forehead, then hits PLAY on the boom box.
He puts away the dishes, then goes down to the basement and sticks a load of clothes in the washer. He pours himself a finger of Macallan—dernier cru Scotch, Mark called it — and settles in with the Times. Down the hall, Horowitz tinkles away. Deke pipes up for a glass of water; Billy brings him half a glass, holding his breath when he bends close. As if a seven-year-old would detect the smell. Though this one might.
When he finishes what little he reads of the Times anymore, he gets up and vacuums the living room; to keep from feeling like a drudge, he does just one room a day. Then he goes back down and puts the clothes in the dryer, pours another finger of Macallan, brings it into the bedroom and shuts the door. After his father died, his mother had an extension phone put in. Billy’s with his father on this: it’s an indulgence, like a box of bonbons. But he’s gotten to like it, and once in a while, usually after a drink, he’ll lie back on the bed and call somebody he used to know. There’s not much to say about his life anymore except for specialized anecdotes of tech support, so he draws out their stories with questions and quasi-alert reactions. Really. Mm-hm. A No kidding where it seems right.