Raising Jake Part 5

My heart drops. Jake never, ever talks about this. He doesn't expect me to comment on it, or respond to it. But I do, and I surprise myself in the way I do it.

"I learned it when my mother died," I say softly.

"How old were you?"

"Your age."

Jake stops walking, sets the sack down, and stares at me. "Dad. I'm sorry."

"What are you sorry about? You knew my mother was dead."

"Yeah, but I didn't know you were so young young when she died." when she died."

"I was young, all right. So was she. It was tough."

At last, we are talking about my childhood. It's a h.e.l.l of a conversation to be having in broad daylight, in the middle of Broadway. This is the sort of thing people talk about in soft voices in the wee hours of the morning, just before the sun comes up. Jake is practically shouting at me, to be heard over the beeping alerts from a pastry delivery truck that's backing up.

"What did she die of?"

"Heart attack. I've told you this, haven't I?"

"Never! We've never talked about it!"

The beeping stops as the truck settles into a delivery bay. My heart is pounding. On top of everything else that's happening today, it seems ridiculous to be talking about a woman who died more than thirty years ago, but that's what we're doing, and I know that my son won't let it go.

"I thought you knew about my mother," I manage to say. Jake shakes his head.

"Dad," he says, "the truth is, you've hardly told me anything anything about your life. You don't like to leave many footprints, do you?" about your life. You don't like to leave many footprints, do you?"

"What the h.e.l.l does that mean?" that mean?"

"You travel light. You don't even have anything to pack up at work. One lousy notebook, after twenty-nine years! Look at all this c.r.a.p I'm carrying, from just a few weeks in school!"

"Pick it up and let's get going."

This isn't going to be easy. Jake wants to know things, and I want to know things. Right now we're both holding our cards close to our chests, but it's early. Very early. We've got a whole weekend to get 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 talk to each other, for once, and not be afraid of anything." 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, splas.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.t.ton 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 s.h.i.+t, 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 compet.i.tive 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 a.s.sume."

"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 gla.s.ses?-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 the tug on the line, the twitch of the pole.

But all that goes out the window when you get divorced and move out. You're not a fisherman anymore. You're a cop on a tight schedule, resorting to the least effective communication technique there is-good old Q & A.

Jake does not answer my question. I ask him again, softly this time: "Why'd you quit?"

He smiles at me in a strange way, a blend of pity and sympathy. "Is this part of your 'Let's talk about everything, let's not be afraid of anything' plan?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Because if it is..." He pauses, drains the last inch of beer down his throat. "If it is, I could use another beer."

I get us two more Rocks. It's not yet four o'clock in the afternoon, and my seventeen-year-old son and I are on our second round. In the little bit of time that we've been home, that magical narrow beam of light has begun to shrink with the turning of the world. Suddenly the light vanishes completely, and just like that the house is back to its old shadowy self.

Jake feels the jolt of it, too. He looks out the darkened window and says, "It's like an eclipse."

I hand him a fresh beer and return to the little bed. My hand is shaking so much that I almost chip a tooth, lifting my bottle to my lips. I've already asked my question twice, and I'm not going to ask it a third time. He knows what I'm waiting for, and at last he responds, at the end of a long, leisurely yawn.

"Well," Jake begins, "it's not as if it's because I was afraid afraid to compete." to compete."

"I never thought you were. I saw every game you ever played, and you always wanted the ball."

"Yeah." He chuckles. "I wanted it too badly. Remember the time I stole the basketball from my own teammate?"

"Jesus, that was funny."

"He didn't think so. The coach didn't think so, either."

It actually happened, at a game on the Upper West Side. Jake was maybe twelve years old at the time, playing on a team with mostly black and Hispanic kids. It was a local league, a far cry from the white-bread private school team he also played for.

The star of the team was Eduardo, a lanky Puerto Rican who had all the tools-speed, shooting ability, the works. But he never pa.s.sed the ball, ever, so once he had it his teammates might as well have sat on the bench and waited for him to do whatever the h.e.l.l he planned to do.

Jake just got tired of it. One day, as Eduardo stood there bouncing the ball while glaring down five opponents, Jake slipped behind him, stole the ball, dribbled to the hoop, and scored a layup.

The whole gym exploded in applause and laughter. Eduardo stood stunned for a moment, then ran to Jake, fists flying. The ref and the coach grabbed him before he could land any punches, and then Eduardo was tossed from the game for unsportsmanlike conduct. In the history of that league, I'm sure it was the first and only time a kid ever got bounced from a game for unsportsmanlike conduct against a teammate.

I laugh out loud at the memory of it, and hoist my bottle toward Jake.

"Here's to Eduardo," I say, taking a pull. "Wonder whatever happened to that kid?"

"He's dead, Dad."

The shock of it hits me like a mallet to the back of my skull-shock over the news, shock over my son's casual tone.