Raising Jake. Charlie CarilloЧитать онлайн книгу.
through, and anything can happen.
He manages to get the sack on his shoulder. It’s obviously heavy and unwieldy.
“You need help with that?”
“I’m fine, Dad.”
“I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“Forget it. I just thought we were going to talk to each other, for once, and not be afraid of anything.”
“We will, I swear. But let’s get home first, okay?”
Jake doesn’t want to take a cab, and he doesn’t want to take turns carrying the sack. It’s nearly a mile to my place and he carries it every step of the way, including the four rickety flights of stairs to my three-hundred-square-foot studio apartment.
CHAPTER FIVE
I’m hardly ever home at this hour, and for a moment I’m startled by the light. The rays of the sun are lasering through a narrow gap between two buildings across the street, splashing the place with a brightness I’ve never seen here. If the place were to go up for rent, this would be the hour to show it to prospective tenants.
It’s not much but it’s neat and clean, if only because it’s too small to let it go sloppy. It would sink my soul to walk in and see laundry on the floor, or dishes in the sink, so before I leave for work each morning (Work? Remember work?) I always give it a once-over: wash the dishes, make the bed, hang the towels, sweep the kitchen floor. These are my stations of the cross, so to speak.
The room has a platform bed and a captain’s bed, both of which I bought when my marriage broke up. Jake used to take the captain’s bed whenever he slept over, but now I give him the bigger one, since he’s grown to be taller and rangier than me. He sleeps spread wide, like a starfish, and I sleep fetal, so it works out.
It’s a good thing I had a son. I can’t imagine how the sleeping arrangements would have worked with a teenage daughter.
He sets his sack down and says, “You’ve got messages.” The red light on my phone machine is winking away. I hit the button and an electronic voice informs me that I’ve got twenty-two messages.
I start listening to them. They’re all from people at the newspaper, offering condolences and incredulity over what has happened. There’s a pathetic rhythm to these calls, and about halfway through them I start deleting them after listening to just the first few words:
“I can’t believe—”
“I’m so sorry—”
“No way they can—”
Jake laughs at what I’m doing. “Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” he suggests. “Some of them might be job offers.”
“No such luck. All these people want is for me to call back with the gory details of what happened.”
I continue deleting the messages after one or two words. Within minutes all the messages are gone, and the message machine light is back to its steady red glow as the electronic voice says, “You have listened to your last message.”
I turn to my son. “Beer?”
“Why not?”
We’ve been drinking beer together for about a year. He’s under age, of course, but all I’m trying to do is demystify alcohol for him. I take two Rolling Rocks from the refrigerator, toss one to him. He flops on the big bed, I flop on the little one. Upstairs, I hear the whine of a vacuum cleaner, a sound I’ve never heard here before. Like I said, I’m never home at this hour. We pop open the beers and take long gulps.
“Dad.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m a little scared of how Mom is going to react.”
“I thought you had a plan.”
“I do, but I know she’s going to flip out anyway.”
“Maybe not. After all, this is a double punch, me losing my job and you getting kicked out of school. She might be too overloaded to react at all.”
I am full of shit, of course. What happened to me won’t even amount to a blip on his mother’s radar, except as to how it might affect my child support payments. She’s always had contempt for my work but respect for the check, which puts her in the unique position of having to hope I hang on to a job that in her eyes benefits the world not even slightly.
A gleam catches my eye from the windowsill—it’s the afternoon sun glinting off one of Jake’s Little League Baseball trophies. There’s also a basketball trophy and a couple of medals for running, hanging from ribbons on the wall. He was some athlete, my kid, but a few years ago he just lost interest in competitive sports, or so he said. These days it’s just pickup soccer or basketball games after school—or as he puts it, “Nothing involving a uniform.”
Come to think of it, those games are gone, too. You can’t do after-school sports if you’re not in school.
I was never much of an athlete myself, so it always both puzzled and delighted me to be the father of a star. There’s a lot to it, hauling the kid to games and practices all over the place, and then one day it’s all over and you can’t help wondering if any of it meant anything.
“I can’t believe you still have my trophies.”
Apparently that gleam of light hit Jake in the eye, too.
“Of course I still have them. They’ve always been on the windowsill. What did you think I’d do, throw them away?”
“Of course not. I’m just a little surprised that they’re still on display.”
“Why?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Excuse me, but you’re not even old enough to use the term ‘a long time ago.’”
“Funny.”
“Your ‘long time ago’ is my yesterday.”
“It wasn’t yesterday. I was ten years old when I won that baseball trophy.”
“Do you remember what it was for?”
“Baseball, I assume.”
“Very good. But not just that. Look.”
I get up and get the trophy. With my thumb I rub the dust off the little tarnished plate in front of the trophy, which says ROOKIE OF THE YEAR. I bring it to show Jake, who’s now lying there with one hand behind his head and the other clenched around the Rolling Rock, which rests on his chest. His mother should see him now.
He squints to read it—Jesus, could he need glasses?—then grins and rolls his eyes.
“Rookie of the year. Yeah, I remember. I had such promise back then.”
“You were a good player.”
“I was all right.”
“You were more than that.”
“Dad. Calm down.”
I put the trophy back in its place, return to the little bed. On a normal father-son weekend I wouldn’t ask what I’m about to ask, but we said good-bye to normal hours ago.
“Jake,” I say, “Why’d you quit?”
“Baseball?”
“All of it. All the sports.”
I can feel my heart pounding. I’m going about it awkwardly, but you lose your subtle communication techniques when you’re a divorced father. Back when I lived with Jake I knew what was going on in his life just by being there. The casual comment, the look on his face, the whatever it was that was bugging him eventually came to light, and I could wait for it. That’s the beauty of being there. You’re a fisherman with all the time in the world, awaiting