Chicago (22 page)

*   *   *

The White Sox, having after going 62–38 from April through July, and leading the league by five games at one point, went 27–32 the rest of the way, and slid to third behind the Kansas City Royals and the Texas Rangers. They finished the season at home with three games against the Seattle Mariners, first with a Saturday doubleheader at which the announced attendance was something like five thousand (although the librettist, who was there, told me later that the actual attendance was half that, and there were so few fans in the park you could clearly hear the players chatting on the field), and then with a final Sunday afternoon game, on October 2.

Five of us from the building went to the game, feeling that we ought to salute the great season, and the end of summer: me, Edward, Denesh, the librettist, and Azad, who was allowed to accompany us if he finished his chores beforehand, which he did. We took the train down to the park, expecting to find another sparse crowd, but to our pleased surprise there were a lot of people streaming through the gates, smiling and laughing; even the beer vendors, usually taciturn and suspicious, were smiling and chatty, and Edward pointed out to me that the ticket-takers and security guards were deliberately ignoring small boys hopping the stiles and teenagers crowding in suddenly behind ticketholders before the gate could click shut. You had the distinct feeling that no one there that day particularly cared if the Sox beat the Mariners, or even felt bad about how the season had slipped away in August and September; certainly I didn't hear anyone say
swoon
or
slump
or
choke
that day, or afterward, come to think of it. Maybe it says something about the low expectations of seasoned White Sox fans, but the overall mood among the fans (and the players too, it seemed) was delight in a terrific year, and in a colorful and engaging team that for most of the season had been the best in the west—an alluring phrase that certainly had not been spoken much by Sox fans over the years.

I'd guess there were twenty thousand fans there that day, and the Sox lost 3–2, and Richie Zisk and Oscar Gamble both went hitless, and Chet Lemon didn't even get to bat, entering the game only as a pinch runner, but still it was one of the best games ever. The ushers let you sit anywhere you wanted, on this last day, and we went all the way down to the third-base box seats, using Azad's wide-eyed joy as an excuse to claim great seats right on the railing. It was clear and cold and the Sox third-baseman Eric Soderholm hit a home run (his twenty-fifth of the year) and everyone had a ball. When the game ended there was a sweet moment when everyone in the park stood up and applauded for what seemed like ten minutes but probably was two or three. Usually when a game ends the players trot off the field briskly with their heads down, probably thinking of girls or beer, but this time the Sox players all came back out of the dugout and applauded the fans, and then a dozen or so walked around the edges of the field shaking hands with fans and chatting and signing autographs. Oscar Gamble signed an autograph for Azad, which I would bet he still has, probably carefully framed, and Richie Zisk shook hands with the librettist, who said something to him that made Richie laugh.

I watched all this with pleasure, feeling some swirl of affection for my friends and the fans and the players and the team and the park and the city and the terrific fading summer; and then I noticed that Edward was missing. Before I could even mention it to my companions, though, Edward jumped the railing from the field, holding, of all things, a baseball bat, which he presented to Denesh as a replacement for his beloved cricket bat. On the way home on the train I asked Edward how exactly he obtained the bat, but he pretended that the crowd of happy fans in the car was making too much noise for him to hear properly, which made me grin and stop asking questions. All the way home little kids on the train came over to Denesh and asked if they could touch the bat, just like kids ask if they can pet your dog. He said yes of course and almost every kid touched it like it was holy or loaded with sunlight or something like that.

*   *   *

After that terrific unforgettable White Sox season ended on October 2, the papers were immediately filled with stories about the Bears; one day I measured the coverage in the
Sun-Times
alone and counted six full pages about the Bears, one page total about the hockey Blackhawks and the basketball Bulls, one page total about horse racing at Arlington, half a page about other sports in toto, and a guest column by the legendary sportswriter Irv Kupcinet, buried in the opinion pages, about the White Sox, who had drawn more than a million fans to the South Side for the first time in many years—a feat that Irv, a veteran conspiracist, thought had been overlooked because of the fascist nature of “the professional gladiatorial assault and battery now miscalled ‘football,' as if a word coined to describe the autumnal American version of rugby, traditionally played by boys on chilly oak-lined fields until they achieve the age of reason, could be applied to the deliberate and premeditated acts of militaristic ferocity, without even the excuse of national defense or international policing,” and indeed “the only excuse for ‘pro football,' the sole motivating force for such untrammeled violence and mayhem, the be-all-and-end-all, is money, cold and impersonal and hauled to the bank through the sea of mud and blood on the gridiron, regardless of the damaged bodies and minds of the men who years from now will not even be able to remember that once they played a boys' game gone terribly bad.”

I was vaguely curious about the Bears, and interested to see their great running back Walter Payton, the best player in the game that year, and I thought it might be a classic Chicago experience to attend a game at Soldier Field, but Edward refused point-blank to accompany me, no one else in our building or at work seemed interested, and I found that going alone was not an appetizing prospect—somehow it seemed that you could go alone to a baseball game, and fit in, but going alone to a football game seemed odd—football games were for going in packs and gangs, and apparently heavy drinking was required. Finally I even asked Mr Pawlowsky if he wanted to go.

“I do not,” he said, “and I can tell you, if you have not already asked, that Edward almost certainly will not go. We are not much for football, at any level, and you have seen him laughing over hockey. Both of those sports entail much armor and smashing, although there is of course grace and creativity evident occasionally. I suppose that is what interests some of their fans, the ones who are not watching to see if indeed there will be blood or possibly someone losing an arm. Did I tell you that Miss Elminides received letters from the bank and the city that all is well? The Third Awkwardness is over, I think. The point of sport is grace and creativity, isn't it? Against obstacles—opponents playing defense, weather, weariness. Much of what is said about the value of sport is nonsense but some things are deeply true. Probably being on a team teaches you something about humility and camaraderie. At least you hope so. Being in the Navy taught me about camaraderie, among other things, like organized foolishness. But also a sort of grim courage. I never saw a Nazi but I understood why we took up arms against them. Someone has to stand up when the time comes. Edward teaches me that also. You remember the incident with the Gaylords. There are many more stories like that. I think I should ask Miss Elminides on a date. Perhaps to dinner at a restaurant. We cannot always dine on the roof. Myself I was never much for sports but I understand people enjoying them as theater—the
narrative
of a game, the moments of tension and release, the communal energy. My brother Paul loved sports for that reason. He never cared about the score but only how well the game was played. Edward believes there are moments in life when you must take chances that seem mad and that one of those moments is approaching for me with Miss Elminides. He suggests sooner than later. Yet I am old and she is young. What if she says no? Then we would never be friends again the same way. What if she says yes because she feels indebted or sorry for me? Where would we live? What about Edward? I am more than fifty years old and set in my ways and have nearly nothing in the way of bank accounts and pension funds. What would we live on? A man cannot ask a woman to share his life if there is nothing to live on. That would be selfish. That sort of thing is for the movies and not for Miss Elminides. And what if she says no? What then? Would I have to leave the building so as not to make her uncomfortable? God forbid she would be uncomfortable. I would never in a million years make her uncomfortable. The very question would make her uncomfortable, wouldn't it? So then why would I ask such a question? The last thing I wish to do is make her uncomfortable. She has had enough discomfort this year to last a lifetime. I have the utmost faith in Edward's judgment, but for the first time in our relationship I am moved to question it. Or is it the case that he is right and I am cutting things too fine? You cannot be a clerk all your life, as my commanding officer in the Navy said to me once. I think he meant that I was too careful, too cautious, too meticulous. But how can you be too meticulous? Things break down and need to be repaired. Things are always declining toward decay and someone has to be sensible and fix them. Who will fix things if I don't? You have no advice for me whatsoever? I have come to trust your judgment also, you know, young as you are. But you have not leapt into love either, have you? Not that I know about. Haven't you wanted to? Have you not had the opportunity? The subject hasn't come up in our conversations but you are young and strong, your whole career opening as we watch with pleasure—haven't you thought about asking a question for which you have no idea of her answer? Haven't you?”

*   *   *

I spent a lot of time on the roof
that
night, I can tell you. Edward came up at one point to see if I was okay but after a while he went back down, as he saw that I was wrestling with a private matter. He must have communicated my unrest to Mr Pawlowsky, for he came up at about midnight, draped in his Navy blanket, and set up a lawn chair next to where I was sprawled out staring at the sky.

“Note the constellation Horologium,” he said after a while. “The pendulum clock. Like many constellations, hard to discern and puzzlingly named, in this case by a Frenchman named Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, who identified some ten thousand stars and named fourteen constellations. I think he did not see so well and often I am at a bit of a loss to see the shapes he saw. Still and all, a remarkable man. Traveled all the way from France to southern Africa to see stars better. You have to admire the courage to do something that everyone else would think silly. He spent one solid year there charting what he saw every night, including what he called nebulous objects. You and I are both charting nebulous subjects, are we not?”

At which point I told him about the girl from Wyoming, and how she had moved to Boston to take a job, and she had invited me to move to Boston also, without any promises but with promise, so to speak. I told him that I had dated various girls briefly in the past few years, and much enjoyed their company, although in all cases their company did not last more than a few months, as the problem seemed to be that I could not get as fully and intricately interested in them as they wished a young man would, which they discovered slowly, and which annoyed them, and which led to seething dissolution. I told him that I was intrigued by the Wyoming girl, but that I could not honestly say that I was in love with her, or entranced, or overwhelmed, or anything like that, and that while one part of me wanted to be cool and adventurous and sail away to Boston to see what might happen, the rest of me thought that was crazy talk, because here I had a job I found increasingly absorbing, and a city I had come to love, and all I could say honestly of this girl was that she was intriguing in a way no other girls had been for me, but what sort of basis was that for uprooting a life? And most of all, more important than the job or the city, I had
friends
here, unexpected friends, friends of two species, friends I would miss terribly, friends who had been so gentle and generous to me from the moment I had walked up the stone steps of the building, friends who had shown me endless subtle aspects of the city and its denizens, friends whom I admired immensely for their grace and dignity and intellect and tenderness …

At which point I couldn't talk anymore because I couldn't get any words past the sudden rhinoceros in my chest and throat.

Neither of us said anything for a while. Over on Halsted Street I heard police sirens for a couple of minutes, fading away to the north. Somewhere out on the lake a tanker blew its foghorn, although there wasn't any fog; maybe it was warning another ship of its presence. I saw one nighthawk, and then two, and then four. Nighthawks have a sort of buzzing sharp whistle that once you identify it you can pick it out of a welter of sounds at night even if you can't see them whizzing after insects in the dark. People mistake them for bats but once you see their slicing loopy flight (not the zigzag flutter of bats) and hear their brief piercing whistle you know them and like them and look for them when you are sprawled on the roof too filled with feelings to speak.

“I am going to ask Miss Elminides to dinner at a restaurant,” Mr Pawlowsky said quietly, “during which I am going to ask her to come to an understanding.”

This caught me by surprise and I said
what?

“I have been too cautious and careful in life, perhaps,” he continued. “I don't know why. Not timid, exactly, but careful. Judicious. In many ways this has been a good thing. I have not hurt anyone with reckless and careless and selfish behavior, that I know of. But I have perhaps been too … careful. For a long time I thought this was a virtue in a careless world but maybe it was more like a polite vice. Edward has indicated his feelings about this and I believe he is correct. The fact is that I have deep feelings for Miss Elminides. I do not know how to express them articulately. I am no journalist. But I want to
be
with her all the time. I want to wake up next to her and fall asleep next to her and cook for her and negotiate decisions where we don't see eye to eye at
all.
I want to walk with her and maybe even travel. Yes, travel. I don't want to live on different floors anymore. I want to be standing next to her when bad news or good news comes. I don't want to analyze things constantly anymore and weigh my reactions thoughtfully. I want to laugh and cry and argue and watch movies and leave notes under her coffee cup and pinned to the bathroom mirror. I don't want to lay out pros and cons on pieces of paper and tabulate the results. I want to come to an understanding that we will be confused together. Perhaps she will not
want
to come to an understanding, which would be awful, but I am going to ask. I am going to ask tomorrow. Or tonight, given that today is now tomorrow.”