Fuck that. He had two lousy weeks to keep his nose clean, and he was determined to do it. Though the strain was getting to him. He had two term papers due, and he’d been using the books he needed to write them to prop up the broken leg on the old bed that had been Ben’s. Jordie had accused him of thinking he could absorb all the facts about multiple personalities (his chosen topic for psychology) by sleeping on them.
Reese figured he knew everything about multiple personalities by osmosis, from living with his mother. But he had to settle down, and with his house the Grand Central of the universe, that was pretty hard to do.
He couldn’t get away from it. Everywhere he went in school, some teacher had a copy of the People magazine, the one with Sam dribbling in the driveway on the cover—the one with the headline that said, “Back…But Not Ben,” and underneath, “The Incredible Odyssey of a Lost Boy.” Some dildo in fourth-hour study hall even asked Reese to fucking autograph it. He did. Taking pity on the kid, he wrote, “Best Wishes, Daffy Dick,” when he by rights should have written something much more blistering. His mom had had a veritable shit hemorrhage when she’d seen Sam’s picture on the cover—even more than she’d had over the first People cover, which Reese still remembered vividly.
He’d heard her yelling downstairs, “What do these people think? That we have no life?”
And his father answering, “Beth, that’s what you used to do for a living….”
Tom, being Mr. Detective Psychiatrist, had of course asked him, a couple of times, “Are you sure you didn’t know it was Ben?” And Reese couldn’t believe it—like, why wouldn’t he have said something? If he had been really sure? Knowing the only thing his parents wanted on the entire earth was to find Ben?
And Tom had said, “Because maybe it wasn’t the only thing you wanted on the entire earth.”
Which was what was frustrating about Tom; he always thought he could trick you into revealing some deep subconscious longing by bringing up something so far out of the ballpark it was on top of a bus heading up Waveland Avenue. Reese, in fact, had thought about it himself, and the only real reason he hadn’t mentioned the red-haired kid to his mother was because it was just too damned ridiculous to think that his long-lost brother lived around the corner. The kid didn’t even really look like he remembered Ben; in fact, he didn’t even remember Ben, not that much.
“I was seven years old, for Christ’s sake,” he’d told Tom in disgust. “What do you remember from when you were seven?”
“I remember that I had a little brother who was three months old, who died of SIDS, and I was the one who found him, and it took me ten years to figure out why I was afraid of going to sleep,” Tom told him.
Trust old Tom to have a big, dramatic answer. Well, that’s why they said shrinks had to be crazy themselves.
And then Tom had started asking him a whole bunch of stuff about how he felt about Cecilia Lockhart, which Reese totally had nothing to say about—I mean, how could you be mad at a crazy lady for something she didn’t even know was wrong?
And when that didn’t get anywhere, Tom had gakked on about how was he feeling about Sam, was he mad at Sam? Reese couldn’t figure why Tom would even ask. Mad? Mad for what?
“For getting all the attention,” Tom said.
“I’m not a kid, Tom,” Reese told him. “I mean, if you lost a kid and hadn’t seen him for nine years, wouldn’t you sort of want to spend all your time with him, and be sort of obsessed with him? It’s pretty natural. Especially if you had this other kid that was—”
Tom had really zeroed in on that. “Another kid who was what, Reese? What?” Reese had shrugged. “What, Reese? Another kid who wasn’t worth being obsessed with?”
“Dr. Kilgore, this psycho crap can get really tedious.”
Tom had laughed then, and asked Reese how he thought it would be if he had to listen to it forty hours a week, coming from his own mouth. And Reese had sort of loosened up then. He’d told Tom he was thinking of becoming a psychologist himself—you didn’t have to get dirty, you didn’t just bury your mistakes like other doctors. Plus, Reese figured that Tom could have paid for a strip mall just with what he’d made off the Cappadoras alone over the years.
They talked about sports, about this idea Reese had that maybe he’d try out for basketball in the fall, finally, junior year being his last chance and all. Tom thought it was a pretty good idea, but Reese wasn’t sure. He wasn’t much of a joiner, and though he did love the game, and had some pretty heavy fantasies about suiting up and actually showing he could do it, he just didn’t know if he could take the boredom of drills and shit.
Nonetheless, he’d been doing a lot of stuff in the driveway, putting up folding chairs from Wedding and dribbling around them until he was sweating like a warthog. Sam would come out there and do it, too. Reese had to admit, the kid was fast in spite of how big he was, and he already knew things it had taken Reese years to learn, like never really letting your palm touch the ball: Sam could dribble so low a snake couldn’t ease under, with those hard, long fingers, just the tips tapping, all control.
Dad would come out, in this suit, and try to play a few points with them—it was just like Grandma Rosie used to say about Grandpa: he looked like an immigrant, mowing the lawn in a sport coat. Dad always tried to get in on it when Sam and Reese were doing something; it never failed to stiffen Sam up, Reese noticed.
But Sam played baseball, too, and practice was starting, so most of the nights Reese dribbled and lobbed and dribbled on his own.
The last few days before school ended, Reese began taking a pumpkin into the deserted gym and trying some things in there. Mostly seeing if his fadeaway jump shot was really as good as it felt in the driveway and on the playground. He’d been lifting weights a little bit, to build up his arms. People didn’t know it, but it took a lot more strength than a regular shot from midcourt, because you were rearing back from the guard, basically weakening your stance, instead of putting all your weight forward. But it could get a much bigger guy off you, and Reese knew that with his size, he was going to have to be able to be dead solid perfect with that and the free throws or he’d have no chance at all. Until he’d started trying to perfect the fadeaway, he’d never understood just how incredible Jordan’s shot really was. And Jordan didn’t have that much height, either. I mean, he had ten inches on Reese, but by NBA standards six feet six was no giant. Some nights, by the time Reese got home, his arms ached. He’d watch Sam and think, That kid’s going to go right up and stuff ’em if he keeps growing like he is now. Was he jealous of Sam’s size? He didn’t think so. It just would have been a whole lot easier if he’d gotten a few more of Mom’s big-Irish genes than Dad’s scrawny wop ones. Look at Uncle Paul. You could float a cat in one of his shoes.
Jealousy. Nervousness. Half the time, Reese realized, he was hanging around after school trying to figure out what he was really feeling about Sam. If nothing else, his years with Tom had taught him that no matter how smart you were, when it came to how you felt about things, you were pretty much always the last to know. The first time he saw Sam, and knew it was Ben, in the counselor’s office while Sam was still in foster care, Reese had almost started to cry, he was so glad. It was like Ben had this light all around him, and he couldn’t believe that if he walked right up to the kid, Ben wouldn’t just grab his arm and start talking about the time the squirrel got stuck in the car engine or the time Ben fell off the end of the long pier at Lake Delavan, or about the tree house in Madison. Even if he remembered the day in the lobby, fuck, he was just so glad Ben wasn’t dead….
But Ben—that is, Sam—had looked Reese right in the face. And he couldn’t have been faking it. He looked like he’d never seen Reese before in his life. “This is your brother,” said the social worker. “This is Vincent.”
The kid had offered to shake hands. “Hi, Vincent,” he’d said, and goddamn if his voice didn’t sound like Ben, that funny, deep, hoarse voice that used to sound so weird out of
a little kid. That was when Reese had wanted to run, to just get away from all of them, this fucked-up unlucky bunch of people who didn’t even recognize each other, any of them. He could be like Horace Greeley or Thoreau or somebody and just head out, and work on the railroad or something. Did people still work on the railroad?
But he’d known, even then, he would never do it. He was too lazy and scared, and that was when he’d started getting irritated with the kid, with his “Yes, ma’ams,” and his table manners and his phobia about germs. It hadn’t taken Reese—or Kerry, for that matter—long to realize that Sam had this psycho-thing that if you breathed on his food, he wouldn’t eat it. And so Vincent got so he could just exhale a little at the dinner table, just as Mom passed Sam his plate, and then Sam would sit there, looking all sick, swallowing like the food was old socks that stuck in his throat. But then Kerry had started doing it, too, and Dad lowered the boom.
The kid was never anything but nice and polite to Reese. Nice and polite and just…in himself. It drove Reese nuts. He had no idea what to do to get to Sam. Sam just didn’t talk.
One time, the kid had come down while Reese was watching Hell Is for Heroes about one o’clock in the morning. Sam sat down, and after about half an hour he had said, suddenly, “So, is that where you got it?”
“What?” Reese had asked.
“Your name.” There was a guy in the movie called Reese. But that didn’t have anything to do with his name, Reese told Sam, and explained the “resale” thing, and the kid was like, well, Vincent’s a good name, too—like Vincent van Gogh. Reese had been pretty shocked, a little kid knowing about Vincent van Gogh.
But what he had said, and he sort of regretted it, was, “Yeah, and he was nuts, too.”
Sam, though, hadn’t seemed to mind. All he’d said was, “But you didn’t cut your ear off. At least not yet.”
A pretty decent kid, in some ways. He never got in your way. It made Reese wonder what it would have been like, having a kid brother; Kerry had always been so little, he couldn’t remember a time he didn’t have to take care of her. Though Tom said that when they grew up, that would “bond” them closer. Like they were covered with some kind of rubber cement.
Go out, reverse, imagine the big blocker, fade back, shoot. Reese did it over and over. Sometimes for an hour or more. He got so he was making it about ninety percent of the time; of course, there was no real defense there, so he was probably giving himself breaks. Between concentrating on the shot and thinking about Sam, he didn’t notice Teeter the day the coach came up behind him, reached over his head, and slapped the ball away.
Reese’s heart felt like he’d been filled with helium. “What…?” he yelled, whirling around. Teeter was built like a mastodon; they said he’d guarded Pistol Pete Maravich back in college, but that was twenty years ago, and now he looked like he’d eaten Pistol Pete and his brother for breakfast. Coach Teeter had to go three hundred pounds dry.
“If it ain’t Cappadora, the terror on the playground,” Teeter said, in that weasly sort of southern voice Reese always associated with drill sergeants in movies. “I been watching you in here, Vince. Going to drop out junior year and try to make the draft?”
“No,” Reese told him, recovering his ball. “I’m just goofing around.”
“Pretty famous guy now,” Teeter said. “Huh?”
“You got me confused with my brother,” Reese told him. What the hell, why piss the guy off? He still hadn’t formally decided not to try out next year.
“All you Cappadoras are famous, right? Maybe that’s why you don’t think you have to show up for school except on alternating Tuesdays during the full moon, eh, Vince?”
Reese said nothing.
“Oh, I forgot,” Teeter went on. “It ain’t Vince. It’s Reeeese. That’s right. Reeeese. Pardon me. So, Reese, you like basketball?”
“I like the game,” Reese said evenly.
“They say you take ’em pretty well out there in the street.”
“I do okay.”
“Wanta try with me?”
“I don’t care,” Reese said. They played a little Make It—Take It. Teeter was still fast, in spite of the poundage, and Reese had to hustle him; the coach also had natural size, so the lay-up was easy for him. But he couldn’t get around Reese’s fadeaway.
Finally, puffing, Teeter said, “You got a pretty fake there.”
Reese was caught off guard. He smiled. “I work hard at it,” he said.
“You thinking of coming out for the team next year?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“You think you could make it?”
“I might try,” Reese said evenly.
“Do you think that the other guys would be willing to put up with all your shit, just because you got one shot?”
Reese felt all the blood pound into his face. The fat fuck. He’d drawn him out, right into the water, and then let him go.
Teeter went on. “I been watching you, Cappadora. Not just in here. You got a chip on your shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore, and you ain’t got the size or the heart to back it up.”
Feeling the curling of his hands, the telltale signal Reese had come to fear, he answered, “I do okay.”
“You do okay, huh?” Teeter stuck his pork face right up next to Reese’s. “You do okay because everybody feels sorry for you. I knew your father growing up, Vince. Nicer guy never walked the earth. Everybody felt like hell, all the shit he went through, and then, what does he get? This runt who thinks his shit don’t stink.”
Teeter waved one broad finger under Reese’s nose. “You got speed and moves. But you come out for my team, you gotta know right then you ain’t no special case. You’ll be the same as the rest of them, maybe a little lower on the scale because you been living your whole life on getting the breaks….”
“I’ve never—” Reese began.
“Come on, Cappadora! You think you’re such a big man, how about acting like it? Are you a big man? Or just a bully?” He scooped up the ball, Reese’s own ball, balancing it in his big ham hands, and bounced it once off Reese’s forehead. Then again. The bridge of Reese’s nose stung like a sonofabitch. His eyes began to run. But he didn’t put up his hands to block Teeter’s attack. Teeter did it again. And again. “Big man, Reese, huh? Wanta go? What’re you going to do now? Can you take it, Cappadora? Or are you just a pussy, deep down?” And he drew back to give the ball a little more punch, but then Reese’s fist came up and he snatched the ball down, almost pulling Teeter off balance.
The big man’s face slackened. And he took a step back. Oh shit, Reese thought, that was the way they all acted. When they saw the look. What did I ever do to you, you fuck? All I was doing was messing around. Maybe trying to do the ordinary thing, just once. And even that got him in the shitter. Reese felt again that ferocious urge to take off, to smash Teeter’s meat nose into his brain and then run, forever, to a place where he didn’t have to carry around every fucking thing he’d ever done or thought like a load of bricks on his back.
“Look,” Reese said, then. “Look, I just—”
“Forget it,” Teeter said, whirling and slouching away. “Your kind of attitude, nobody needs.”
And Reese just stood there, both arms wrapped around his ball, holding it to his chest as tightly as he could, while Teeter flipped off the light switch to the overheads, leaving him in the dark.
Beth
CHAPTER 26
What it seemed like to Beth was watching a tiger in the zoo.
There were times when the animal’s eyes locked on yours, but there was nothing in the contact. You could never be sure whether the tiger was aware of you, individually or at all, or whether you were simply scenery, an unremarkable figment of the landscape. Did a tiger recognize a human being as distant kin, even as alive?
As she watched Sam pace, from the front porch to the back window, followed ceaselessly by Beowulf, she wondered whether he recognized her even as a member of the same
species. His motion was constant, from the moment he got home from school (it took him two weeks to walk in without ringing the doorbell) until he politely, promptly closed his door at night. Even when he sat doing his homework at the kitchen table, his legs bobbed and jittered. Beth wondered if he needed…something—vitamins, sedatives, more milk. In his laboriously printed eight-page dossier on Sam’s traits, George had indicated that his son always displayed a surplus of energy. “He’s like a half-grown puppy,” George had written. “He’ll run and run and run and then he’ll just fall down and sleep, wherever he is.” Beth had seen no evidence of that. Sam’s eyes were puffy, mornings; his sleep was not like that of an eager, healthy little hound.
The social worker called nearly daily. (“It’s probably the first time in her life she ever did anything interesting that didn’t involve five adults having sex with the kid,” Candy had explained.) Sam’s anxiety was natural, she explained. He was experiencing, on some level, the stages of mourning—shock, denial, anger, alienation.
“How do you know?” Beth asked her one afternoon.
“I…I don’t,” the case worker admitted. “I just…guess a kid in that situation would feel that way.”
Beth remembered the kinds of questions the reporters used to ask the myriad experts whose headshots she took for Sunday specials. “What does the research say?” she asked.
“There isn’t any.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think this ever happened before,” said the social worker. “Kids, if they’re kidnapped, either are found right away or pretty much never found. Alive, I should say. I’m sorry, Beth.”
The social worker described the case of a little girl mistakenly given to the wrong parents at the hospital, literally switched at birth. There had been a lot of publicity; hadn’t Beth read about it? Beth made polite noises; she hadn’t read anything about a missing child in more years than she could recall. This child, the social worker went on, was quite well-adjusted in most ways. Good grades. Popular. The way the natural parents found out was that the daughter they believed to be their biological child died from a congenital heart ailment, and blood tests proved she could not have been their child. There was a big probe into hospital records, and it all came out.