The Wonders of the Invisible World (6 page)

After supper they carve the pumpkin, Deke drawing the face on it in Magic Marker, Billy doing the actual cutting. He hasn’t done this since he was a kid, when his mother did the actual cutting. They scoop out the seeds in slippery, sticky handfuls and spread them on his mother’s cookie sheet to roast. Just as his mother used to do, probably on the same cookie sheet. (The pie project, thank God, has been forgotten.) Deke’s rendering of the face isn’t much use as a practical guide to cutting, so Billy tries to keep the positions and proportions of eyes, nose and mouth the same while improvising the details. His mother never aspired to more than upside-down triangles for eyes, a right-side-up triangle for the nose and a crescent mouth. Billy now finds he can cut out eyes, leaving half-round pupils in the lower-left corners for a furtive expression, and a snaggletoothed cartoon-hillbilly mouth with irregularly spaced square teeth. He considers a Picasso nose—in profile, to the right of both eyes—but Deke put a pig-style snout in the center, so he’d better play it straight: a pair of round nostrils punched into the space implied by a thin, semicircular incision.

As Billy’s gouging out a hole in the bottom for a candle, the phone rings. This must be Dennis: crap, what to say? Deke runs to pick it up, then cries, “Mommy! We’re making a pumpkin!”

Billy considers it indecent to listen outright; still, he can’t help but hear the conversation dwindle to the usual
Yeah, No, I don’t know
and
Okay.
Finally Deke says, “She wants to talk to you,” and clunks the phone onto the table without even a
Love you too.

“Billy?” Cassie says. “This is breaking my heart.”

“I know.”

“You
don’t
know. Listen, we have to talk.”

“Okay.”

“Well, we can’t talk now. He’s right there, isn’t he?”

“This is true,” Billy says. “How about Monday? You’ve got my work number.”

“God, imagine putting yourself in a position where you’re allowed one phone call a day. I’ve fucked up so badly.”

“Nothing irretrievable.” One call a day: it’s never before occurred to Billy to wonder whom she calls on alternate days. “Except what wasn’t worth retrieving anyway. If you know who I mean. So, you have any idea yet when Betty Ford’s going to get out of that house she’s in?”

“Betty
Ford?
I thought she was dead, for Christ’s—”

“No no no, I mean the Betty Ford
I
know.”

“The Betty—oh.
That
Betty Ford. That’s cute. I don’t know, really, but just from little things they let drop, I’m thinking sooner rather than later. But there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Well, whenever. I’m not going anywhere. Always on the spot. Like Johnny.” It also strikes him that she must be free to call him from work: how could her keepers monitor that? Or do they have her on the honor system?

“You really have been,” Cassie says. “Don’t think I don’t know that I can never, ever repay you—that’s a lot of negatives, isn’t it? I mean, to say a positive thing.”

When Billy finally gets the hole gouged out and a votive candle in it, he burns his goddamn fingers reaching into the pumpkin with a match. He guesses the technique is to light a dinner candle, stick it through the mouth and torch it off that way. But when they turn the lights out, Deke says “Yesss” and Billy has to agree. The thing looks both sly and mind-blown.

“We should have a picture of this,” Billy says, then realizes
he doesn’t own a camera. His mother’s Minolta must be somewhere. Right: he packed it in one of the boxes in the basement. “Tell you what. You want to take a ride to CVS? We can buy one of those disposable cameras.”

“Yay!”

Billy ends up buying two, twenty-four exposures each. Since Halloween’s coming up. Cassie will surely want pictures: otherwise there’d be these undocumented months in her son’s life—though he suspects that before the crash-and-burn Cassie had let the picture-taking slide. On the way out, he shows Deke the Barney costume. “Cool,” Deke says, looking away.

When they get back home, Billy checks the answering machine. No calls.

On Sunday morning, he takes Deke to the Methodist church he and Cassie used to go to with their mother—his craziest bit of behavior yet, though to Deke it must seem no crazier than any of the rest. Sure enough, the 9:30 service still has a children’s choir, and Billy and Deke share a hymnal and try to sing along, Billy moving his finger underneath the words for him. “See?” he whispers. “When those notes go up and down, the tune goes up and down.” Deke nods, either pretending he knows or just humoring him. Wouldn’t Cassie have explained this much? They’ve got a new minister—old Dr. Griffin must be dead by now—about Billy’s age, whose glasses make him look like Philip Larkin. One of those not-queer/not-
not
-queer types. Billy checks the left hand: a wedding ring, for whatever that’s worth. The first word of his sermon is enough for Billy to cross him off:
Hopefully some of you watched last night’s special on the Holocaust
 … If news of this ever gets back to Cassie, look out. In fact, maybe he should tell Deke not to tell her—or would that
just make it stick out more in the kid’s mind? Plus the whole issue of keeping secrets. No, thank you. Too much like queer-uncle behavior.

“So how was that?” he says as they walk down the steps into the sunshine. They’ve gone out a side door to avoid shaking hands with the minister.

“I don’t think kids should sing,” Deke says.

“How come?”

“ ’Cause they stink.”

“Really? I thought they did great.”

“They shouldn’t be allowed.”

What’s
this
about? Billy can’t think what the right response might be; then inspiration kicks in. “Well, adults aren’t always perfect singers either. People sing just because they enjoy it sometimes.” And another inspiration. “What about the kids who sing with Barney? They’re not perfect either, but it’s fun to listen to them.”

“I hate them.”

“Why do you hate them?”

Shrug.

“But you like listening to them.”

Not even a shrug.

They get back in the car and Billy heads for the Howard Johnson’s just off the 787 ramp; he didn’t have time to fix breakfast before they left the house. He stops and buys Sunday papers: the
Times
for himself and the
Times Union
because Deke likes the funnies. The greeter girl—pretty, seemingly too young—leads them to an empty booth. Billy guesses that with his Diamond Dogs cap and nylon bomber jacket he can pass for a divorced dad with weekend custody. If that’s his beau ideal.

Mostly he avoids taking Deke to restaurants, not because of the catamite issue but because the two of them look so alone in the world. The only person either of them has left
is Cassie. Well, Deke does have another grandmother: Vic’s mother, who lives in Provo, Utah. But the extent of her involvement is a hundred-dollar check every Christmas and a card signed
Mammaw,
the alias she devised for herself since Cassie’s mother already had
Grandma.
Billy should probably make overtures: call every week or two, put Deke on. If only for practical reasons. Suppose he had a head-on crash coming home from work: Mrs. Bishop would take Deke that night, but then what?

Deke orders oatmeal and bacon; Billy has oatmeal and a half grapefruit. He cuts a section free, spears it with his fork and holds it out to Deke.

“No way.”

“No,
thank you.
” Because if he’s doing this, he’s damn well going to do it right.

“Oh, yeah,” Deke says.

Billy’s been sneaking looks at the entertainment listings in the
Times Union.
This is already shaping up as a long day, but the movies look either inappropriate or unbearable, and mostly both. “Aha,” he says. “Looks like they’re having a young people’s concert.”

“What’s that?”

“You know, a big concert that’s geared to kids? Somebody usually comes out and talks about the instruments and whatnot. They must have those in Boston, right?” Which Billy flatters himself is a neutral way of asking.

“I don’t know.” Deke clamps his teeth on a piece of bacon and tugs it back and forth.

“Sound like something you’d be up for? Oh. Cool. They’re doing
The Planets
today. That’s this piece of music where each part is about a different planet. You want to check it out?”

“No, thank you,” Deke says, chewing.

“Hmm. Looks like pretty slim pickings otherwise. Our alternative would be just to go home and hang out.”

Deke crams the rest of the bacon into his mouth and nods.

On the way home they stop at the video place and return
Top Hat,
whose plot Deke hadn’t been able to follow, and take out
Star Trek IV,
the whale one. Billy steals a glance over the top of the louvered doors into the back room, where all the covers have bodies with the same shade of tan. He happens to know they stock a few gay videos, in a section called
ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES.
But this will have to be a distant good.

They spend most of the afternoon playing Candyland, during which Billy gets to listen to Tatiana Nikolayeva’s Shostakovich preludes and fugues. God knows what this Shostakovich obsession is about; anyhow, it’ll run its course. He hits the Cherry Pits again and again, and Deke wins three straight games. During the fourth game, Billy starts feeling cooped up—which
couldn’t
have to do with losing at Candyland—and they go out in the yard and toss the little rubber football around. Most of his throws bounce off of Deke, and Deke’s return throws either fall short or go wide. But Billy says “Good arm” and “
That’
s the way” whenever it’s remotely applicable. Then they go back in—Billy checks the answering machine: nothing—and watch
Star Trek IV.
Deke doesn’t follow this one either, but at least it’s in color and feels contemporary. The first week Deke was here, Billy rented a compilation of ’30s farm-animal cartoons: pecking chickens making typewriter sounds, that sort of thing. When he was little he used to love this stuff. After a couple of minutes Deke said, “Do we have to watch this?” What was bizarre was that Billy instantly saw how crude and depressing it was.

Since they had a late breakfast instead of lunch, Billy calls Domino’s and has them deliver a pizza around five. Afterward he gets Deke into the tub and starts straightening up. The actual vacuuming he puts off until Deke’s in bed; it’s the chore that seems the most housewifely, that he most dislikes being
seen at. He still uses his mother’s old Hamilton Beach, a low gray cigar-blimp on casters that whines like a jet engine.

Into p.j.’s, brush teeth. Dry his hair. While he’s picking out his bedtime books, make sure all his stuff’s in his backpack for school tomorrow. And that’s the weekend.

On Monday morning, Billy’s on the phone with some technophobe who’s whining that Windows is defective because when he tries to drag and drop icons on his desktop they won’t stay put. “Okay, go to your
START
button,” he says, and his other line lights up. “Sorry, could you hold just a second?” Dennis, perhaps, at long last? He hits
HOLD,
then 4427.

“Billy?” Cassie. “Listen, I’m in Albany. Can you meet me for lunch?”

“You what? Look, can you hold? Let me get rid of this call.” He hits
HOLD,
then the blinking 4426, and tells the technophobe “a small emergency” has come up and he’ll transfer him to somebody who can help him out. He hits the blinking 4427.

“Cassie?”

“None other.”

“What’s going on?” Crap: he forgot to transfer the guy. “Why aren’t you—”

“They let me have a whaddya-call-it. I have to be back by six-thirty. Poor Billy—I scared the hell out of you, didn’t I? So can we have lunch? There’s something I really need to ask you and it’s, sort of, not for the telephone. Shit, I’m making this sound heavy and it’s really not.”

“Jesus, I wish you’d—sure. Yeah. I mean I’d love to see you.”

“I’ll bet. But really, I’m a lot, lot better. I promise you, this is not going to be painful.”

“I’m just surprised is all. If you’d—”

“I know, I know. Like, how can they let her out if she’s going to go right back to her impulsive behavior?” Billy hears her sigh. “It’s not like that, believe me.”

“So where did you want to meet?”

“Doesn’t matter. Actually, you know where I’d like to go? Now, this
is
crazy. That HoJo’s where we used to go with Mom and Dad.”

“That’s bizarre,” Billy says.

“How so?”

“Because I just—you know, took Deke there.”

“Oh.” Silence. “So. How is he?”

“He’s good.”

“Are you judging me for not asking about him first thing? I can tell you are. Shit. See, I knew that was a mistake. I didn’t want to seem like I was pushing, but I can see how you might think, you know, that I was, like—”

“Don’t tie yourself up in knots. I’m not judging you, and Deke’s doing fine.”

“I.e., better than with me.”

“Well. Better than back
then.
”

“Oh,” she says. “Tough love.”

“You asked. I mean, don’t you think so?”

“No, you’re right,” she says. “See? I’m learning.” She sighs again. “But you’re not impressed.”

“Can we save this?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? But you mean for over lunch. Save the bullshit for over lunch. Because you’re busy at work. Don’t worry, Billy, I’ll be good. Now, what time?”

“What’s good for you?”

“And the hits just keep on coming. What’s good for me. Twelve-thirty. Twelve-thirty is good for me. She says decisively. So I’ll see you then, at HoJo’s?”

“How are you getting there? I mean, how did you get
here
?”

“Rented a car. That’s another thing, I have to return the
car by six o’clock. So you’re covered six ways from Sunday, kiddo.”

Billy has to ask. “Had you planned to try to see Deke?”

“Had I planned, to try, to see Deke. Whew. You put that so beautifully. You really are a word person, Billy. You’re wasting yourself in computers. God, it’s like … No. Short answer: no. That would just be too much. For
everybody
concerned. Don’t you think?”