The Deep End of the Ocean

  “And did she ever see the father she thought was her real father again? The man she grew up with?” asked Beth. “Do they have contact?”

  “Er…yes,” said the social worker. “Actually, she still lives with him. She didn’t want to return to the natural parents, and a judge ruled in her favor. But then she…”

  “What?”

  “Changed her mind.”

  “Oh.”

  “And went back to her real…er…first family.”

  “Oh,” said Beth.

  “But she was much older, a teenager, and the circumstances…” The social worker’s voice trailed off.

  The circumstances in their house were so different, Beth sometimes felt they were all strangers brought together to act in a play without rehearsal.

  As vigorously as Beth resisted it on the first Saturday, the family began arriving before any of them were even awake. Angelo. How could she close the door on Angelo? And he could not have done better; he didn’t leap on Sam and crush him, though Beth knew he must have wanted with every beat of his straining, mechanically charged old heart to do just that. He sat, tears streaming down his face, and told Sam about the frescoes at Wedding in the Old Neighborhood. “They look down on the matrimonio, the wedding. Each one of them is one of the operas, Ben,” he said.

  “It’s Sam, Ange,” Beth reminded him softly.

  “Sam, of course. This is a good, strong name, Sam. I am an old man, Sam, and foolish,” said Angelo. “But let me tell you. In the one, it is La Bohème, the face of Rodolfo, the artist made the face from a picture of your papa, of my son, Patrick. And do you know Menotti? Amahl and the Night Visitors?”

  Sam, to Beth’s astonishment, nodded. “I saw it at school, on the big TV,” he said.

  “The little boy? With the crutch?”

  “Yes?”

  “That is you, Ben…Sam. That is you. The little boy is you.”

  “Cool,” said Sam. “Can I see it?” Angelo looked up at Beth, his faded eyes brimming.

  “Soon,” said Beth. “Let him settle down a little, Ange.” She hadn’t insisted for nothing that no one except her, Pat and the kids visit Sam at first. Now, on his first real full day home, she could feel Sam’s fragile shell giving way, feel his confusion. She wanted to stand and motion for everyone to leave. But it would have been like trying to divert a river.

  “Who’s Reese?” Sam asked then.

  “Reese,” Angelo said. “Ah. Of course. He is Pinkerton, in Madama Butterfly. A bad man, unfortunately. I told Vincent, make another choice. So he chose Don Giovanni, a worse man! So, we left it be Pinkerton.”

  “Lot of walls,” Sam commented.

  “Lot of walls?” Angelo bellowed. “You should see it. This is a big place, Sam!” He turned his head as Tree came in. “And your auntie, she is the mama in Amahl. She is your mama on the walls.”

  “Ben,” Tree said, kneeling, holding out her arms. Looking at Beth all the while, Sam walked into them, uncertainly, and Tree burst into tears. “Oh, Ben. Oh my God.” Poor kid, thought Beth; she wanted to hang a sign around his neck that said “The Name Is Sam.”

  And so it went, the same scene, over and over, all weekend and into the week. By the simple sight of him, everyone, Paul, Bick, her father, seemed driven to attitudes of penance, of worship, as if he were a vision in a grotto instead of a twelve-year-old with badly scabbed knees.

  After hugging him, holding him at arm’s length and hugging him again, Bill thanked Sam for coming home while his grandfather was still alive to see it.

  “You’re welcome,” Sam replied gently. “Are you sick?”

  “No, no,” Bill told him, heartily. “No, I’m not sick. Don’t you worry. I’m just so happy, son.”

  “I’m your uncle,” Bick told Sam eagerly. “And you were named after me. They call me Bick, but my real name is Benjamin.” And without waiting for Sam to open his mouth, Bick asked, “Do you remember me? Do you remember the time I pulled you out of Lake Delavan…?”

  If anything was accomplished by all of it, Beth thought later, it was the fact that Sam, hopelessly confused and exhausted, desperate to give appropriate responses to questions for which he had no answers, began to hang close to Beth’s side or, if she was out of the room, to follow Reese wherever he went. As the living room filled with a teeming crowd of neighbors and family, police, and the occasional reporter who slipped in grinning brilliantly and continued to grin, protesting innocence, while being ejected, Beth watched Sam and Reese dig mitts out of the garage, lock the gate, and wordlessly begin fastball catch in the yard.

  They would get to maybe three apiece and then another pilgrim would arrive. Another blessing, another profession of amazement, another pronunciation. Rachelle. Aunt Angela. Charley Two’s daughter and his son. The Bonaventuras. The Rooneys and the Reillys. Recently retired Chief Bastokovitch from Parkside. Paul’s best friend, Hank.

  Barbara Kelliher and her two daughters.

  Barbara, who for some reason was the only face that caused Beth to blubber like a fool—Barbara, her neat cheerleader’s haircut still pert and suspiciously chestnut-brown against over-pink cheeks, her Chanel still preceding her into a room, who had known Beth only slightly in high school but who had decided, on the basis of something Beth could only understand as the same quality of resolve that once made Barbara able to smile and raise a fist cheerfully while doing Chinese splits, to simply suspend her own life and rush chivalrously to the defense of Beth’s. Beth caught her around the waist and would not let go; and after a moment of shocked resistance, Barbara returned Beth’s embrace, and began to rock her, rocking her as a mother rocks a baby on her hip.

  When Beth’s sobs subsided to hiccoughs, Barbara asked to see Ben. Beth went to the window to call him.

  “No,” Barbara told her. “Just let him be. Just let me watch him a moment.” She turned to Beth as Ben spun to grab a high fly. “It’s you he looks like,” she said.

  Sam fell asleep on a lawn chair, still holding a rubbery slice of pizza about eight o’clock that night. Beth had to help him up to bed and at nine the next morning was still heavily, soddenly asleep. Beth hated to haul him out, but Rosie and Angelo had arranged and paid for a special mass at Immaculata. Pat insisted all of them go, and go humbly, and was already arguing with Vincent about the condition of his chinos before Beth had had her first cup of coffee.

  Blocks from the church, Beth already noticed a kind of electricity in the streets, an extra stillness only enhanced by the presence of more than the usual number of cars, nose to tail, even blocking driveways. It felt like an Easter or Fourth of July morning, a concealed and unaccustomed bustle belied by the absence of workday traffic. When they turned off Suffolk Avenue onto the boulevard, even Vincent gasped. The street in front of the church was blocked at both ends and clogged with satellite trucks and a welter of police squads—from a dozen villages and the city of Chicago, from the state—all with hood lights flashing, the concussion of rotating spots and floods creating a sort of artificial sunrise. On both sides of the plastic-tape cordon, whole families stood craning over the heads of reporters, knocking over sawhorses. “There must be a thousand people,” Vincent breathed, his voice almost childish with awe.

  As it turned out, the Cappadoras could park nowhere near the entrance; and they had to fight their way to the door of the church as the bells tolled for eleven o’clock mass. None of the assembled crowds seemed even to recognize them until they were on the threshold of the foyer door. Beth was almost disappointed on behalf of the press; something in the nature of this was making them expect to see a little red-haired boy, led by beatific young parents, instead of a bleary-eyed adolescent with his baseball cap ruefully turned backwards, flanked by short, dark, nearly identical men (one young, one middle-aged, neither beaming), a nondescript graying brunette in ill-fitting clothes, and a strawberry-blond girl in a miniskirt and tights. What truly stunned Beth was the fact that the church somehow was filled not with leakage from the curious throngs ou
tside but with faces she recognized. Every face was lifted entire from her past and Pat’s. What kind of screening process could have accounted for the uniformity of it? You rarely knew every face even at a family wedding. Who had been the arbiter? Who had known enough to let only the insiders pass? Beth later learned that, in fact, there had been no gatekeeper; somehow, those who knew they should enter had done so, and, with the exception of reporters, those who knew they should only look on had not tried to do more.

  As Beth and Pat walked up the aisle with the children to where Rosie, Angelo, Bill, and Bick stood, with Paul and Sheilah behind them, dressed in night-class finery and holding open seats in the first pew, they passed dozens of outstretched hands and lifted, tearful faces. Classmates and neighbors; Candy, of course, as well as cops Beth had never seen out of uniform, even many who’d long since transferred to other departments; a whole contingent of Madison friends: Laurie, of course, with her husband and children, and Rob and Annie Maltese, but others, too—the blind man on the corner who had given Ben and Vincent Life Savers when Beth strolled them around the block with their Big Wheels a generation ago, and Linda, the waitress from Cappadora’s.

  The opening hymn was “Amazing Grace,” and Father Cleary, who had known Beth and Pat all their lives, lost no time in forging the link. “We meet today in the midst of what the Church calendar refers to as ‘ordinary time,’” he said. “That is, we are not in the wake of or anticipating one of the great festivals of our liturgical tradition. But clearly, there are indications, including the fact that all the seats are filled”—self-conscious laughter—“that this is not an ordinary occasion; it is in fact a festival that celebrates not only the reaffirmation of our faith—and, as some of you may not recall, we do this every Sunday—” more laughter—“but of the power of faith and the mercy of God, which surpasses all our poor power to understand or estimate. Today, we celebrate, as we did in song, the mercy of God as symbolized by the homecoming of a child who was once lost, but now is found.” Father Cleary coughed, once, nervously, and Beth forgave him for his obvious awareness of the cameras, and his ambivalence; she wondered if he’d set the VCR in the rectory to tape the noon news.

  “We celebrate,” Father Cleary continued, “the presence among us, in its wholeness, of the Cappadora and Kerry families, families with long roots in this Church, this school, this community, whose tragic loss nine years ago was a sorrow from afar for people all over the world, but a personal sorrow for those of us who have known Rose and Angelo and Bill and Evelyn, and Pat and Beth—children I baptized on a couple of fine Sundays some years ago. As you all know, their son Ben was taken from them nine years ago, when he was only three—and, by what can only be called a modern-day miracle, returned to them just weeks ago, not maimed, not torn, but healthy and whole.

  “I will not ask the Cappadoras to stand, not only because you all know them well, but because they have already stood too much scrutiny, too much examination of their personal Calvary. But I will ask you to join with them today in their gratitude and their faith, faith that sustained them, which never wavered when the faith of those less strong would surely have collapsed, to welcome, with them, the return of Ben—” he stopped, glanced down, then looked up, straight into Beth’s face—“of Sam Karras Cappadora”—Beth felt Sam, next to her, straighten his shoulders—“to his family and to our family of worship.

  “Though not every celebration of the Eucharist at Immaculata is televised on worldwide TV,” he continued, over yet another appreciative ripple, “we have made the decision to allow a certain level of media today in our sanctuary, because we wish to allow those who cannot be here to share today in this community of worship, in this festival that reaffirms the strength of a community, and its heart…. And we are asked to remind all of you that Angelo and Patrick Cappadora and their families invite you to a luncheon at Wedding in the Old Neighborhood, 628 Diversey Street, Chicago, Illinois, immediately following the service, and that it is the hope of the family that each and all of you will attend. Maps are available on a table in the baptistery. And now we wish to begin this festival, in ordinary time, by saying, The Lord is with you.”

  “And also with you,” the crowd murmured as one.

  “Lift up your hearts,” Father Cleary commanded, in his old but still sonorous voice.

  Beth did not know what made her look over her shoulder—a rustle of sound at the back of the church? Simple discomfort with the beginning of the liturgy, which she, lapsed and lacking, had to struggle to follow?

  But she did look, and just to the left of the aisle, small in his pinstriped blue suit, stood George Karras. From a distance of thirty yards, Beth could feel his agonized unease, the effort it took for him to stand still, without straining at his tie or shooting his cuffs. She did not think about it very long. Had she stopped to think, she might have thought of a dozen things that would have stopped her from moving—the media possibilities, the imagined wrath of various Cappadoras, even the clutch of pity and dismay at her own stomach.

  She got up, eyes turning speculatively to follow her, and walked quietly to the back of the church and extended her hand, which George, gulping in humiliation and relief, took. She led him back, toward the first pew, and it was only as she neared the family, the last few feet, that she dared to look up—and it was Sam’s face she saw, turned on her and George, with a look she had never seen on it before.

  It was, she later guessed, joy.

  Reese

  CHAPTER 27

  Pleading a sudden urge to spend a few hours alone, loosening up and practicing, Reese gave it his best try, getting out of going to the restaurant for the big hooha lunch after church.

  After all, he reasoned, his dad didn’t know anything about what had happened at school with Teeter, that fat bastard; so in Dad’s mind, Reese was still toying with the idea of going out for the basketball team next fall. And Reese was content to let Dad think that, as long as it lasted. Wherever the hell he was really going, Dad seemed to assume he was at the rec center or somewhere, doing drills. “Working on the free throws?” Dad would ask him every so often, just to prove that, even though no one else in North America knew there was a kid in the whole Cappadora family besides Sam, his dad at least still knew Reese existed.

  “Sure, Dad,” Reese would say. “Workin’ on ’em.”

  “’Cause you know, the team that gets the free throws wins the game,” his dad would say. “And height doesn’t count for tick on the free-throw line.”

  “Right, Dad,” Reese would agree. Dad would look all content then. Just the mention of Reese doing anything “constructive,” as his dad put it, got everyone off Reese’s case. Which was fine by him.

  But he should have known better than to pull the old sports hole card today; it was actually fairly stupid, given that tryouts were a half-season away anyhow. There was no way he was going to get out of playing his part in the goddamned manger scene. When Reese brought it up, Dad gave him one look, and it wasn’t a “Please, Vincenzo,” look, either. It was a “Don’t screw with me” look, and there was no use arguing. Dad could be as stubborn as a pit bull when it came to some things, and it was for damn sure that one of them was the full-out “Aren’t we happy” treatment for the benefit of the masses.

  In fact, Reese felt damned sorry for Sam, who looked like his underwear was about six sizes too small, and he only looked worse outside the church after that poor little guy George gave him a kiss on the forehead and told him he wouldn’t “bother the family” at the party. Dumb shit. Didn’t he know the kid already felt like a piece of crap for leaving his father? George was an adult, and he could have managed to come down there and have a sausage sandwich if it would make Sam feel better.

  On the other hand, Uncle Joey and a couple of the others had been standing around outside the church doing the Italian hand-jive, and that could only mean they were talking about the nerve of that guy showing up at the mass at all—they were the Cappadoras! Whatever else he was, George was t
hat bitch’s husband! Probably George had a good idea of what might happen if Joey got a few Seven and Sevens in him downtown. Uncle Joey was pretty decent, generally, but he was a hothead—as were, Reese realized, about sixty-five percent of all the adult men he knew.

  As they all piled into the car, dodging yelling reporters, Reese reflected that some of it, to tell the truth, wasn’t all bad. The media thing was ultra-boring, though some of the guys, even Jordie, had this totally kidlike idea that being in the newspaper would make you feel important or something. The good part was that Heather Bergman and about five of her equally foxticular friends had decided to become his mother hens over the past couple of weeks. The other girls were okay, but the way Heather’s blunt-cut blond hair moved at the exact level of her lips when she turned her head could transform Reese into one giant bulge in about fifteen seconds. And before all this, she’d been like, “Cappadora, that little hood.” Now it was, “I never knew you were so sensitive, I never knew you went through all this….” Where had she been living, Zaire? Last week, as they’d walked home from the library, after what had been for Reese a fairly agonizing two hours of trying to remember Civil War dates while inhaling the smell that seemed to come from the hollow directly below the scooped neck of Heather’s jersey, he’d managed to back her (and she wasn’t protesting) against the wall of the unfinished library addition, and in the course of making out for maybe twenty minutes, he had not exactly felt her up, but his forearms had made definite contact when she’d thought he was just touching her cheek with his hands.