The Deep End of the Ocean

  “Vincent,” said Beth, then. “You will keep an…” Reese saw the look his dad gave her then, as if even he couldn’t believe she could be that stupid. But it was already almost out; Reese knew what she was going to say. He shrugged and let the door bang shut behind them.

  It was colder outside than it looked. Especially for late spring. The kid was wearing just a flannel; Reese was glad he had his leather. He shrugged it up onto his shoulders, as always feeling the momentary surge of joy it gave him. It moved like another, tougher skin. He took out a butt, examined the angle of the view from the window—he could see his dad, but his dad had his back to him. Not worth it.

  “So,” he said to the kid, carefully replacing his cigarette and folding the pack. “Was the guy here this morning?”

  “The guy?” said the kid, not tracking.

  “The guy, the guy—the guy who was your stepfather—George What’s-His-Name,” Reese said.

  “He came to the foster-parent place real early,” said the kid. “He didn’t want to come here.”

  “So how does it feel to be a celebrity, Ben?” Reese asked. “Mug on the front page. Major miracle on Menard Street…” The kid gave Reese another measuring look. He thinks I really want to know, Reese thought. What a deef.

  “Actually, it’s kind of sickening,” said the kid. “I mean, all these days, the past two weeks, the psychologist is saying, ‘So, you must be having a lot of feelings about all this.’…How can you have feelings about something you didn’t even know was going on?”

  “Is this, like, your permanent counselor now?”

  “Permanent?” They walked over onto the concrete and Reese propped his foot on one of the baby swings.

  “Take a clue here, Ben,” he said. “You have now entered the counseling zone. This is the champion mental-health consumer family you will be living with here. My mom and dad off and on go to marriage counseling, and she used to go to grief counseling, and Kerry goes to, like, drawing counseling, and I myself hold the world’s record in my age cohort for consecutive visits to a shrink….”

  “Why? What’s wrong with you?”

  Reese kicked the swing.

  “Nothing. Nothing has to be wrong with you. It’s just…school shit. And so forth. It’s mainly my dad who thinks I’m this major fuckoff.”

  “And what about your mom?”

  “You’ve met my mom.”

  “Well…” said the kid, turning away, which Reese didn’t want.

  “No, my mom isn’t like this bad person or anything. She’s just like…‘Ground control to Beth Cappadora,’ you know? She doesn’t get stuff half the time, or you think she doesn’t.” Reese sighed. “Anyhoo, I wish we had a car.”

  “You don’t have a car?” said the kid.

  “No, but a car is a thing you can always have if you want.”

  “What do you mean?” the kid asked him.

  “I mean, a car is just there…for you….”

  “You steal cars?”

  “No, I don’t steal cars. But you can borrow a car, no harm, not much foul, you know what I mean.”

  “That’s just a kind of stealing.”

  “Well, I want to know that I flourished in my youth,” said Reese. The kid looked around him, like he was trying to find a cop or something. Shit, thought Reese, next topic.

  “So what do you do?” he asked the kid.

  “Do? I don’t do anything,” said the kid.

  “I mean, like, what do you do?” The kid’s gray eyes widened then, and Reese, staring at him, almost lost his train of thought, the kid looked—

  “I play ball.”

  “B-ball?” The kid nodded, and walked over onto one of the scarred concrete courts where two black Bulls signature balls nodded together under a bush. The other deefs kept kicking the tetherball, shuffling away from Reese’s approach like herd animals.

  “You any good?” Reese called, going after one of the balls.

  “I play city league,” said the kid. “Traveling squad. First string.”

  “Traveling squad?” cooed Reese. “Oh, my goodness.”

  “Look, I’m in sixth grade. The other kids are in ninth, okay? It’s the height.”

  “Though where you got that…”

  “Whatever.”

  “Wanta shoot some. Play Horse?” The kid shrugged. His hands were big; Reese watched him spin and fondle the ball, like it was a pet, before he dribbled—then, release, drop, release, drop. The kid had seriously big hands, and—Reese looked down—feet to match.

  They took positions, pretty far back—After all, Reese thought, he’s first string traveling squad. He watched the kid shoot—looked like an old Olympic basketball video—squared up, with the follow-through down the wrists to a fingertip flip. Good little kiddie, thought Reese, plays by the book.

  Size didn’t matter much here; the kid was as heavy as Reese was, and all but an inch as tall. Reese took a step back, one-armed it. “Nothing but net,” he said.

  The kid stepped back, took the ball, and matched it, no problem.

  “Free-throw line,” said Reese, and bricked one off the back of the iron. It went wide.

  “My turn,” said the kid happily. He stood up in that old-fashioned way, and Reese saw his face change: he had one of those faces that told you he was only doing what he was doing—not revising the names of people on his permanent shit list or anything else. He was right there. Reese could tell before the ball left the kid’s fingertips that it was good.

  And so Reese zipped his jacket to get rid of the flapping pockets, balanced the ball on one hand, and zeroed in. He missed again.

  “That’s h,” yelled the kid, who stood beside Reese and drained one without seeming to even set it up.

  Reese heard that fat bastard Teeter, the basketball coach at school, who also taught P.E., saying, “It’s a mental thing with you, Cappadora. You’re about one taco short of a combination plate about half the time. If you could just think about what you’re doing…” He tried to look through the shot, but he could feel it go wrong the minute it took flight.

  “That’s o,” the kid said again, with pure joy.

  “I let you,” said Reese, dribbling down the lane—he leapt and finger-rolled it in. “Net this, bozo.”

  “We’re playing Horse.”

  “You did okay standing still, huh, First String?”

  “I can take you,” the kid said evenly.

  Reese drove for the basket again, skipping onto the paint, looking for the sweet spot of his driveway nights—boom. “Okay, buddy, ready to go downtown?”

  The kid was confused. “What are the rules?”

  “I don’t play in city rec, my man.” Reese drove again, missed his lay-up, and spun as the ball flirted off the far side of the hoop.

  “Is this Make It—Take It or what?”

  “Your ball, rookie,” said Reese. He didn’t have to name the game, though clearly the game would have been Make It—Take It if he’d nailed the last shot.

  “To what? To what?” said the kid, dribbling absently. “To eleven?”

  “Just play,” Reese told him. And the kid checked the ball, then made as if to dribble left, but instead dropped right three steps and set up for a shot off the board. “Count it!” he cried, and tossed the ball to Reese, murmuring, “Check.”

  Reese ignored him and lined up at the top of the key. The kid seemed to be measuring him, wondering how to slide, avoiding Reese’s eyes. Then Reese cut right, leading with his dominant hand and bouncing the ball slightly too high. Reese thought he could anticipate the kid, so he kept on coming. He knocked the ball off the kid’s thigh, recovered it at the top of the key, shot, and missed, with the ball bouncing off the rim. But Reese slipped for the board, got his balance, and tipped it in easily over the kid’s extended arm.

  “Who are you?” Reese asked him then, dribbling, panting.

  “I’m Grant Hill.”

  “I’m Pippen.”

  “Okay.” They played in earnest then,
with Reese holding on to the lead, the kid repeating the score after each basket. Then Reese aired one and the kid boxed out, grabbed the rebound, took it back, and drove for the lay up. “That’s evens up,” said the kid. Reese lined up. When the kid came in, he turned, feinted, and raised an elbow. The kid stumbled.

  “Sor-ree,” Reese said, grabbing the ball.

  “You fouled,” said the kid.

  “This ain’t the YWCA, Ben,” Reese said.

  “It’s not Ben.”

  “Okay…Ben,” Reese mumbled, driving past the kid toward the baseline. But the kid shifted his position—he had a way of sliding more than running, it was hard to follow—stepping in to take the charge. Reese struggled for concentration; he was chasing the ball, not moving with it, damn it, so he drove hard right at the kid, leading with his left arm and whacking the kid across the bridge of his nose. The kid kept his head, but Reese could see his eyes water, and then, as Reese went up for the shot, his eyes still on the kid’s face, this look, this look of fear…he looked like Ben, who would not even slide down the plastic slide into the six-inch-deep wading pool unless he, his brother, stood there with open arms. That same wide-open look, right across the bones of his cheeks. Scared. Game. Coming. Ben, Reese thought…and in the instant of lost concentration, the kid batted the ball away; and both of them ran for the corner where the ball bounced. If he went for it, Reese saw the kid would fall out of bounds. The kid had no options. He had to just dive. The ball hit Reese’s leg hard and out of bounds.

  “Christ!” Reese winced. It hadn’t nicked him where it mattered, but groin was groin; it was close enough. “You dumb shit.”

  “You did it,” said the kid. “And it’s my ball.”

  He took it, went left, and laid it in with a reverse lay-up that put his body between Reese’s arms and the ball. Two. “I’m up now,” said the kid to Reese, who was bent over, sucking air, while the kid was breathing like he was asleep. “What’s it to? Twenty-one now?” The kid was excited. He almost laughed.

  “Just play,” said Reese.

  “Go to twenty-one…Vinnie?” said the kid. He said it way soft, but Reese heard it and drew back, gathering, the way he had in the moments before a dozen fights, a hundred. He took the ball and dribbled around the back court, giving himself some time, raising up for a long jump shot. Sweetness.

  “You see that in rec league, Ben?”

  “Yep,” said the kid. “In girls’.” And the kid took the ball, driving right, but Reese knew his moves now, and simply spun on his heel left and stiffed him with both arms. The kid was caught under the chin and went down, off the court and into the trampled dirt, his leg doubled under him, his lip bloody.

  “Shit,” Reese said. “I didn’t mean—” But at that moment his father barreled into him like a snowplow, knocking Reese flat on his can on the concrete, with a pain that shot up his tailbone and would have made him scream if he hadn’t bit down.

  “You little shit!” said Pat. He reached up and yanked off his tie. “You bully!”

  “Jesus Christ, Dad!” Reese said, struggling to stand.

  “I’m all right,” said the kid.

  “Are you hurt…Sam?” Pat asked him, pulling out his handkerchief. The kid waved him away, staring over Pat’s shoulder at Reese.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

  “Can you go a day—this one day—without trying to hurt something?” Reese saw his dad’s eyes crinkle in pain. Oh, shit. Was that sad pain or heart pain? Oh, shit, Reese thought.

  Beth came out of the growing shadows under the overhang of the county building. “What happened?” she asked. “What happened to him?”

  “We were playing ball is all,” Reese muttered.

  “It’s okay,” Sam said desperately. But Beth gave Reese the look she gave him once a year, like she was really seeing him or something, before she reached out to touch Sam’s arm. She ran her hands over him as if she was patting him down for weapons.

  “Nothing broken?” she said in her little metal voice, her I’m-just-so-fine voice, her school voice.

  They put Reese in the front seat with Beth. Dad sat in back with the kid. Nobody even mentioned going to get Kerry from Grandma’s place. At Benno’s the pizza they ordered sat there, grease hardening in ridges like a relief map. The kid ate two pieces, carefully picking off the pepperoni, which Reese’s father absently speared off the plate with a fork and ate himself. Reese watched his dad; Pat was sweating heavily, as if he’d been running. He hoovered the Coke in.

  “Eat something, Vincent,” said Beth. She should get a T-shirt that said this, Reese thought. So he made a game of seeing how long he could chew a single bite, watching Beth watch him, her own mouth moving in synchrony. If Reese made a monkey face, would his mother do it, too? The thought made him grin.

  The kid looked up then, and asked, “Can I have some milk?”

  As his father waved for the waiter, Reese asked, “You drink milk with pizza?”

  They all stared at him, as if he’d told the kid to go fuck a tree. Reese got up and went into the john, where he messed with his hair and washed his face. He was drying off when Pat stuck his head in and said, “Let’s go.”

  Dvok, thought Reese, lying back on his bed—his lumpy good bed; they’d bought a new one for young Sam, didn’t even attempt to take this one back. The Largo from the “New World.” Excellent choice for a slight case of jits. He cranked it, wondering if he could levitate soundlessly simply from the vibrations out of the headphones. When he got up to get a glass of water and to change to his oldest Metallica CD, he heard Beth down the hall in the kid’s room.

  “Do you want a light?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t sleep with a light,” said the kid.

  “This must feel very strange to you.” The kid didn’t answer. “You want a blanket?” Wow, Mom, thought Reese, it’s only frigging May. Right through the bathroom wall, when he went in, Reese could feel Beth touching the kid; she couldn’t keep her hands off him, though he noticed, every time they saw Sam in the last week, she always drew back before she touched, as if the kid was hot.

  “Saturday tomorrow,” called his dad, coming up the hall. “You want to take in a game?”

  “Okay,” said the kid.

  Father city, thought Reese. Yep. Going to take a lot of games, though, Dad. Lot of catch-up to play this season. He ran into Pat when he opened the bathroom door. His dad looked as if he were ready to have a talk; Reese tensed. But Pat only leaned against the frame of the door.

  “Vincenzo,” Dad said, and Reese felt his throat close. “Please, please…”

  He heard their bedroom door shut. Mom would be in tranquo-land now; he could drive a front-loader up on the porch and she’d maybe turn over. His dad, he wasn’t sure; his dad might stalk around some. And sure enough, Reese heard his parents’ mattress sigh and the jingle of Pat’s change as he put his pants back on. The Metallica was making Reese even more jumpy. He got up and rummaged around until he found the African sax guy whose name he could never remember. There, he thought, laying one hand exactly parallel with the other along the sides of his hips. Nothing strenuous. Drift….

  Didn’t work. Needed Puccini maybe. He rummaged again.

  Reese woke up in the dark. His father must have turned out the light. Turning, he felt under his back the familiar lump. Over the years, Reese had occasionally tried to figure out what the constant body pressure was morphing Ben’s red bunny into looking exactly like. He thought sometimes it looked like a tadpole now, except for the one remaining ear. Easing up, careful not to press his groaning bladder, Reese pulled it out from under the bottom sheet. One eye. A humped, fat shape, in places its red plush worn nearly transparent pink. Embryo, though Reese now. That’s it. Igor the Embryo.

  Still carrying the formless thing, Reese got up to pee, and put the red bunny down on the sink. His father was snoring, the strangled choke that drove Reese nuts. The one that made him breathe along with Pat until sleep drove him under. It was aft
er he shut off the water that he heard the sound.

  Kerry? But Kerry was at Grandma Rosie’s. Reese walked down the hall, keeping close to the wall, and toed open the door where the kid, Sam, slept.

  He was asleep, or at least his eyes were shut. Reese stepped closer. Sam was lying on his back with his arms thrown out, sleeping that kid-sleep where you go down so hard you drool. Reese looked for eye movements. The kid was zonked. Then, Reese opened his hand and let the chafed red shape of the bunny Igor fall next to the bed. But as he turned to walk out, he heard the kid groan. Sam’s arm came up over his face and he said, “No. I just don’t…no…”

  Did he mean “I don’t know”? Or was he trying to stop something? The kid moaned again.

  Reese sprinted for the door—what if the kid woke up? But Sam rolled over and again, this time softly, he said, “Oh, no.”

  There was a space between the door and the opening to the closet. Reese leaned against the wall and slid down soundlessly. He folded his arms over his raised knees and adjusted his eyes to the dark. If he strained, he could see the hands on the clock face above Sam’s dresser.

  It was three a.m. So. Maybe three hours. Reese had gone without blinking longer. Anyone with training could watch that long. It was just…Reese leaned forward, his chin on his arms. You couldn’t tell…. But then the kid tossed once again, the upper part of his body shifting into a shaft of light from the street lamp on the corner. There.

  Reese relaxed. He could see his face.

  Reese

  CHAPTER 25

  June 1994

  For a dime, Reese would have bagged the last couple of weeks of school. But he figured that all he needed to do was get his dad on edge, and his brand-new driver’s license would be folded six ways and stuck where the sun didn’t shine in about five minutes flat. Dad was still Dad—in fact, he was extra-jovial Dad now that the sainted Sam was actually living under his roof—but he wasn’t going to tolerate anything that would kick back on “the family.” Reese could picture the headlines: “Miracle on Menard Street: Regaining a Son and Losing Another?”