Ask Again, Yes (20 page)

No other school had offered him the chance to come out without a single dollar of debt. When a few weeks went by and he still hadn’t responded, they offered him a living stipend on top.

“Sorry?” George said on the night Peter explained it to him, and put down his knife and fork. He was taking a date to a seven fifteen movie and had rushed in from work to the shower and then to heat up the brick of lasagna he’d gotten from the deli for him and Peter to share. Peter was looking forward to being alone in the apartment. This woman was great, George had said hurriedly as he buttoned his shirt, but she was an EMT and her only free nights were Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Peter tried to tell him through the bathroom door, and again while he was getting dressed, but George was distracted, too rushed. Finally they sat down and Peter tried once more.

“Are you telling me that somebody has given you a full scholarship to a college and I’m only hearing about it now?”

Peter shrugged. “I’m really sorry but can you take a day off? They want an adult with me. Coach Bell would come but it’s a Division Three school and I know I’d be putting him out. They’ve set it up so I sleep in a dorm with a guy from the track team, but I can give you some of my summer money for a hotel.”

“Peter. I can pay for a hotel room, for God’s sake. You worry too much, you know that? So you’re that good? I guess I should have gone to one of your meets. When did you take the SATs?”

Two days later, as the rest of the kids at Dutch Kills were hustling to homeroom, George and Peter set off in George’s fifteen-year-old Ford Fiesta that leaked oil all the way down the New Jersey Turnpike. George had gotten new clothes for the trip, and at McDonald’s he made a show
of tucking napkins all around his collar and spreading them over his lap. Peter wore one of the collared shirts he always wore to school, but George asked if maybe he shouldn’t put a sweater over it, to look more collegiate. Two and a half hours later they came upon a long wooded road that ended at the iron gate that marked the entrance to Elliott College.

Together, George and Peter walked from the parking lot to the admissions office, where a young woman greeted them and offered them refreshments—“Thanks, honey,” George said when she brought out a plate of fruit and cookies—and told them all about the school’s core requirements, some of which Peter could place out of thanks to AP scores. Peter shot George a brief look of apology but George was rapt and didn’t appear the least bit bored. When they finished up in admissions, the same young woman walked them over to the track, where the middle-distance coach was waiting for them.

“George Stanhope,” George said, and extended his hand before immediately stepping back behind Peter. “As you can see I don’t do much running.” Coach invited both of them to his office, but George waved them off. “I’ll take a look around,” he said, “and leave you to it. Peter, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He read a plaque about the football team while they walked off. Once they disappeared inside the field house, George headed over to make small talk with a security guard, ask a few questions of his own. Were they nice kids, mostly, from what the man had seen? Were there any regular kids or all silver spoons? The guard said there were a lot of weirdos but they were nice enough, mostly. As for him, the pay was the same as anyplace despite all the college’s bragging about fair wages, and if he got his chance, he was going to take a job in Toms River, get closer to the ocean.

“How was it?” George asked when Peter got in the car the next morning. George had pulled up to the stadium a bit early, had watched Peter
stretching in a circle of kids just that little bit older than he was. He watched them pull off their sweaty clothes in the cold November air and root through their bags to find dry ones that looked exactly the same, which they pulled over their heads as they talked. Peter was alabaster white, George could see, but stronger looking than he seemed with his shirt on. Finally, Peter broke away from the circle and jogged over to George’s car looking entirely like himself—warm-up pants, his old turtleneck, his cheeks apple red. George wondered for the first time if Peter had had any fun in high school. It had all sped by so quickly. Never once had he come in late, or come home drunk, or brought a girl home. Didn’t kids smoke anymore? Didn’t they cut class? When Peter used a dish, he washed it. When he used the last of the toilet paper, he went down to the store and bought more. Sometimes he let his heap of dirty clothes get too big—and Jesus did they stink sometimes—but the one time George teased him about it Peter looked so embarrassed and George felt terrible. He went up to the Laundromat that very night with his drawstring laundry bag and a book, insisting that had been his plan all along. He hadn’t known a thing about laundry when he first moved in, but George had shown him, and the women at the Laundromat had shown him, and now he could treat and soak and press and fold like a 1950s housewife. George wondered if he still felt like a guest in the apartment or if he’d come to think of it as his home. He’d never even asked to put up a poster or a picture. It struck George now that he should have told him it was okay anyway, just in case.

“It was fun,” Peter said, tossing his bag on the back seat. He’d stayed with a group of sophomore runners, and he’d gotten the same impression he’d gotten at all the schools he visited, that the students were performing for him a little. These particular students spent part of the night talking about a time the year before when they’d all gotten drunk and shaved their heads. They’d asked Peter his best times, about where he’d placed in sectionals, at states. When they heard his times, they grew quiet. One asked why the hell he was thinking about running for Elliott.

“But,” Peter said as George merged into traffic, “I think maybe I should stay in New York. It was fun for a night, but I was thinking I might take a year or two off before college. Figure out all the financial stuff.”

He thought—though he’d not mentioned it to anyone yet, not Coach Bell, not Ms. Carcara—that he could work with the ironworkers for a year or two, bank the money, and then go to a top school without having to take on so many loans.

George was quiet for a long time. He wondered if it was about the boy’s mother. Peter hadn’t seen her since she was moved upstate. Anne didn’t want to see him, but George could tell that the boy didn’t know she’d made it official, that she’d refused to put her son’s name down on the list of visitors. In fact, she didn’t put a single name on the list. George didn’t know whether he should just tell him now or wait until he made plans to go, and then either talk him out of going or drive him up there so he’d be with him when he got turned away. The Capital District Psychiatric Center had stricter protocols, was run much more like a prison than the hospital in Westchester had been. Maybe it comforted Peter in some way to live in the same state as she did, even if he didn’t see her. Then George wondered if it was him Peter worried about, that he’d be lonely or something. He tried to think about how he’d see this decision from where Peter was standing, that maybe to a kid who’d been dealt the cards Peter had it was more important to stay put in a place—who knew? At eighteen a boy can only see forward, and can’t imagine looking back. Then George thought of his brother and felt rage settle in his body. For years now he’d been scrolling through his memories to find evidence that Brian was capable of this titanic degree of selfishness. At the exact moment the boy needed him most, he’d looked at a picture of a golf course and taken off.

The cornfields and peach orchards of central New Jersey rolled out behind them in the rearview mirror. Peter, who hadn’t been expecting an answer anyway, stared out the window with his chin on his fist.

By the time George spoke, they’d wound through all the local roads and were merging onto the parkway. “Hey, Peter, I’m not your father. I know that. But in my humble opinion, you don’t take a chance like this, then you’re a real dummy.” George had just started worrying about college, believing all that didn’t get decided until the end of senior year. Here it was only fall. He’d been meaning to tell Peter that he’d help him however he could, but when he talked to the accountant the union used to organize retirement benefits, just for a little advice, it seemed like the only practical help he could give Peter was to cosign for a loan. And, privately, George knew that probably wouldn’t be possible, not with his credit. He’d been chipping away at it, doing all the things he should have done years earlier so that Brenda would have stayed, but it wouldn’t happen soon enough to help Peter.

Peter felt the blood rush to his cheeks.

“What?”

“Are you a smart kid, Pete? Like all these people say you are? Or are you dum-dum?”

“Are you really asking?”

“Which are you?”

“I’m a smart kid?”

“Yeah you are. Now use the brain God gave you.”

ten

I
T WAS FRANCIS WHO
decided they should have a party. All in one week the cold ended and the heat began and they talked as they did every year about how that’s not the way the seasons used to work. The day he thought of a party they’d opened the windows of the house to let the air in and ended up keeping them open while they slept. Kate went to school in a sweatshirt on a Monday and by Friday she was wearing some thin thing with straps as narrow as shoelaces, and he asked her if it was meant for under another shirt, like a—but he got caught up on the word
bra
and she knew it, cracked a wide, delighted grin.

“It’s a tank top, Dad,” she said. “It’s fine.”

“It doesn’t seem like enough,” he said, but she was still laughing and didn’t listen. He was too busy to notice these things with Natalie and Sara, but now he was not busy. It was like he’d stepped through a hinged door, and on one side his life was made up of rushing, rushing, rushing: to get in the shower, to run a razor down his cheeks, to get a cup of coffee, through traffic, through paperwork, to a meeting, to another meeting, looking for a parking spot, arguing down the telephone, back into the car, out to find a perp, out to make an arrest, back into the car,
back to the coffeepot, over and over and over. And now there was mostly silence, the flap of a bird going by in the morning, the rumble of the garbage truck making rounds, the tulips he’d planted as bulbs before Halloween now pushing through the hard earth like a row of green blades.

The party would be for Lena, really, though he suggested it for Kate’s graduation. “You?” Lena said. “You, Francis Gleeson, are suggesting a party?” She seemed astonished, like he’d suggested a walk on the moon, and he wondered if all along he’d been a grumpier person than he realized. They could invite everyone, he said, all the girls’ friends, all of Jefferson Street, the people they knew from St. Bart’s, the people at the small, local insurance company where Lena had been working full-time since the start of Kate’s senior year. They could get a tent if weather was too much of a worry. They’d invite far more people than could fit in the house, and that would be half the fun of it. Something about sending Kate off to college felt to him like the beginning of a new time—better or worse was still to be seen—but it would also be like a big thank-you, he said, for the meals people brought and the help they gave and all the well wishes that had come his way over recent years.

“We have thanked them,” Lena said, studying him as was her habit now. “I would never have left it this long.” She didn’t often ask if he was feeling okay anymore, but the question was always there. “But I’d love to have a party. You’re sure? It’ll be expensive.”

“I’m sure. Invite everyone.”

They hadn’t slept together in going on two years, and before that had been before he was hurt: another two years. He was home enough now to know this was the sort of thing discussed with an air of tragedy on daytime talk shows, but he couldn’t find a way to bring it up to her unless he blurted it out over dinner or while they were watching the news, and that would only make everything worse. And anyway, the time for bringing it up had passed. Once, he’d gotten up out of his chair and walked over to the couch where she was reading, and pulled the book out of her hands. Before, that’s all it would have taken. But now, she’d
looked up at him in confusion. “Are you okay?” she’d asked, reaching up for him to hand the book back to her. So he gave it back. Two years was a bewildering length of time to think about in total, but it had slipped by day by day, week by week, month by month, until the time piled up and they got used to it. He’d never been a man who kept track of these things. They’d always just fallen into sex before, sometimes a few days in a row, sometimes not for a whole week, but it never mattered because they were always searching for ways back to each other. That last time, they’d been in their bedroom, morning, the girls at school, Francis sitting on the edge of the bed, Lena crouched at his feet. She’d been helping him with his socks because two years ago he still got spells of dizziness whenever he bent over—it was most likely the drugs, the doctors said, not something about his brain that hadn’t recovered. She’d put her hand on his thigh to steady herself and he’d drawn her up, drawn her closer. He put one hand on her warm neck, the other on the sliver of skin between the top of her skirt and the hem of her sweater. The longer he kept his hand on her bare skin, the more he remembered his old life, and for a few minutes it felt as if he could will himself back to that life, stroke by stroke, push by push. She made herself do it, he could feel it, but he didn’t care. She didn’t kiss him like she used to. She didn’t touch his face. She just reached under her skirt, pulled down her underwear, and carefully, gingerly crawled forward so that she was on top of him. There was nothing to be afraid of, he told her then, but she’d gotten so used to caring for him and worrying about him that it reminded him of what she’d been like when the girls were toddlers, when she spent her days clearing paths, following them up the stairs.

He hadn’t seen her fully naked since before he was shot. She’d begun changing in the bathroom. In the cooler months, she climbed into bed each night in head-to-toe plaid, her face scrubbed clean. In the summer she wore a T-shirt that came nearly to her knees. She was considerate, more considerate than she used to be. Now, she’d never ask for the light to read by if she thought he might be drifting off to sleep.