labeled hooks, and a bolt lock on the interior door.
Alexander went back up to the second floor, finally entering Jamie’s room to pull the shade down and turn on a light against the falling dusk. There, on Jamie’s hastily-made bed, was his baseball glove, a Nationals logo ball in the pocket. By his bed was a tiny framed photograph of just Barry and Jamie—Barry wearing a suit and a shiny grin, Jamie looking serious in his team jersey and cap.
It seemed almost as if Barry was deceased, memories of his dutiful fatherhood reverentially kept intact, a shrine to his perpetual absence. Barry was a gentle and kind father; Alexander had seen it. Rachel was quick to defend his parenting, his most endearing attribute. But Barry was such an absentee, Alexander knew, flighty and secretive in his world of business travel, inaccessible even to his oldest friends. Rachel had confided her fears of late that Barry had some secret life, “another wife and kids tucked away in Jersey like that guy Charles Kuralt had.” She’d said she felt marooned, despairing of the wait for the return of a once amiable stranger.
Alexander lay back and thought of Barry flying on that corporate plane to nowhere. Peddling technology to the Chinese, brokering some Korean telecom deal. He was angry now—angry with Barry, angry that he still hadn’t heard from the man seven hours after his wife had nearly been killed. He was angry at the shadowy figures exacting vengeance, making some idiotic statement by blowing people up on a Washington street corner. Mostly, as he lay there on his ten-year-old godson’s pillow, Alexander was angry with himself. He was angry for the reserve he had allowed to grow thick like a hedge about him.
Why should a simple walk down an elementary school hallway make me feel like an alien? He wondered how he had come to feel so estranged from such a normal family routine.
As Alexander ruminated on Barry’s failings—and his own—his thoughts drifted to his father. His father, tossing the ball with him by the outfield fence amidst the soft morning promise of a Sunday game. His father the grinder. His father, sweaty in the tunnel of the Fresno stadium, spitting tobacco juice, toweling off after a shower and another loss. His father, ever stoic, never cursing, as he laced up his spikes for another game played in the minor leagues.
The rhythms of trial and failure were so much a part of his memories. With Mom at his side, driving, and his three sisters in back of the old Chevy station wagon, Alexander had ridden up and down Highway 99 year after year to watch Dad. Through Fresno and Modesto, Stockton and Sacramento, Pop had shuffled, from the Oaks to the Kings, to the Bees and the River Pilots. They would eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sing Motown songs on the radio, driving the potholed route his father had followed in the vain effort to make it to the big leagues, before a dead arm and a fondness for Gallo jug wine extinguished the dream.
It was after dark when Alexander awoke with a start. Jamie, quite motionless, regarded him with sad eyes as he stood over him. Evidently, he had been there for some time.
“We lost.” It was all the boy said.
E VENING AT THE OASIS
T here was a series of calming eddies in Rachel’s memories, gently swirling pools into which the flow of time became diverted. Once immersed pieces floated to the surface, presented for re-evaluation. These recollections held clues from a past that had seemed too rushed. She could examine them, as a geologist would a slice of sedimentary rock, experiencing the moments once more, learning anew. Invariably during these reflections, she returned to that last fall together at Stanford, to that shared life before things became so terribly complicated.
It was late in the evening, she recalled this time, and they had been blowing off steam with one of their Friday drinking games. They were settled in at a gritty little beer and burger joint on El
Alexander went back up to the second floor, finally entering Jamie’s room to pull the shade down and turn on a light against the falling dusk. There, on Jamie’s hastily-made bed, was his baseball glove, a Nationals logo ball in the pocket. By his bed was a tiny framed photograph of just Barry and Jamie—Barry wearing a suit and a shiny grin, Jamie looking serious in his team jersey and cap.
It seemed almost as if Barry was deceased, memories of his dutiful fatherhood reverentially kept intact, a shrine to his perpetual absence. Barry was a gentle and kind father; Alexander had seen it. Rachel was quick to defend his parenting, his most endearing attribute. But Barry was such an absentee, Alexander knew, flighty and secretive in his world of business travel, inaccessible even to his oldest friends. Rachel had confided her fears of late that Barry had some secret life, “another wife and kids tucked away in Jersey like that guy Charles Kuralt had.” She’d said she felt marooned, despairing of the wait for the return of a once amiable stranger.
Alexander lay back and thought of Barry flying on that corporate plane to nowhere. Peddling technology to the Chinese, brokering some Korean telecom deal. He was angry now—angry with Barry, angry that he still hadn’t heard from the man seven hours after his wife had nearly been killed. He was angry at the shadowy figures exacting vengeance, making some idiotic statement by blowing people up on a Washington street corner. Mostly, as he lay there on his ten-year-old godson’s pillow, Alexander was angry with himself. He was angry for the reserve he had allowed to grow thick like a hedge about him.
Why should a simple walk down an elementary school hallway make me feel like an alien? He wondered how he had come to feel so estranged from such a normal family routine.
As Alexander ruminated on Barry’s failings—and his own—his thoughts drifted to his father. His father, tossing the ball with him by the outfield fence amidst the soft morning promise of a Sunday game. His father the grinder. His father, sweaty in the tunnel of the Fresno stadium, spitting tobacco juice, toweling off after a shower and another loss. His father, ever stoic, never cursing, as he laced up his spikes for another game played in the minor leagues.
The rhythms of trial and failure were so much a part of his memories. With Mom at his side, driving, and his three sisters in back of the old Chevy station wagon, Alexander had ridden up and down Highway 99 year after year to watch Dad. Through Fresno and Modesto, Stockton and Sacramento, Pop had shuffled, from the Oaks to the Kings, to the Bees and the River Pilots. They would eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sing Motown songs on the radio, driving the potholed route his father had followed in the vain effort to make it to the big leagues, before a dead arm and a fondness for Gallo jug wine extinguished the dream.
It was after dark when Alexander awoke with a start. Jamie, quite motionless, regarded him with sad eyes as he stood over him. Evidently, he had been there for some time.
“We lost.” It was all the boy said.
E VENING AT THE OASIS
T here was a series of calming eddies in Rachel’s memories, gently swirling pools into which the flow of time became diverted. Once immersed pieces floated to the surface, presented for re-evaluation. These recollections held clues from a past that had seemed too rushed. She could examine them, as a geologist would a slice of sedimentary rock, experiencing the moments once more, learning anew. Invariably during these reflections, she returned to that last fall together at Stanford, to that shared life before things became so terribly complicated.
It was late in the evening, she recalled this time, and they had been blowing off steam with one of their Friday drinking games. They were settled in at a gritty little beer and burger joint on El
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