Gods of Wood and Stone

by Mark Di Ionno

Yeah, mister, who? This was his fucking town, he wasn’t going to explain himself. Fuck these kids.

  “Forget it,” Grudeck said as he turned up Stacy’s walk. She was standing behind the glass-and-brushed-aluminum storm door, with decorative “M” across the center, smiling at the scene. She saw the throw and saw the kids laugh, but hadn’t heard the exchange.

  “Look at you . . . still the most popular kid on the block,” she said.

  “Uh, oh. Yeah,” Grudeck said, handing her the flowers.

  “You going to sign autographs?” she asked, then kissed him ever so briefly on the cheek. A cousin kiss, Grudeck thought.

  Grudeck didn’t answer and stepped inside.

  He filled the frame of the foyer, ducking to avoid a lantern that hung from the stucco arch. He scanned the living room; paintings dominated the vibrant pastel walls. A home decorated to accentuate the art. On one sunny yellow wall was a giant lavender lily, painted on four canvases like pieces of a puzzle that hung a foot from one another.

  The light green wall held a light brown bowl of orange fruit: tangerines, tangelos, clementines, navels, all detailed but cottony. The pink wall held a carnival scene, with the neon colors of the Ferris wheel and carousel softened and understated.

  “Are these yours?” Grudeck asked.

  “Oh . . . yeah, I still paint,” she said.

  Maybe I should paint, Grudeck thought. Do something different.

  “They’re beautiful. Really,” Grudeck said. He searched for something else to say, but stood there, feeling stupid and unschooled, in art and everything else. For the second time in two minutes he felt clumsy and lost. In my own fucking town.

  He moved into the room and saw the Mission-style console filled with photographs. Most were of the boy. What was his name again?

  Some were school pictures, from cute in kindergarten to the awkward middle school years (mouth gripped to conceal braces) to the handsome young man sitting confidently for his high school portrait. There was a junior high graduation, where he was flanked by both parents. The estrangement was fresh and tension was apparent. Stacy’s smile seemed forced. The ex didn’t bother. Weak chin. Sandy hair. Wire-rimmed lawyer glasses. Grudeck tried not to look too long.

  Others were clearly Stacy’s work, with the boy shaded in the same contrasting light she cast Grudeck in some thirty years earlier. In one, her son was in a baseball uniform, kneeling on deck, bat slung over shoulder. Warrior waiting his turn.

  “He plays baseball?” Grudeck said, picking up the frame.

  “Wayne,” Stacy said, knowing Grudeck had forgotten. “Yes, he does. Believe it or not, he’s pretty good.”

  “Why wouldn’t he be? We’re a baseball town,” Grudeck said. “We were, anyway.”

  “They do okay,” she said. “It’s not like the old days.”

  “What is?” Grudeck asked. “But, hey, if you want, I can give him some pointers.”

  Stacy let that one hang in the air, and Grudeck wanted to snatch it back. Too fast, too forward. Now, too late.

  “Well, you know, if he was interested,” Grudeck finally managed.

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  He put the picture down.

  Interspersed with Wayne Jr. were pictures of Stacy’s parents, from their Korean War–era wedding—him in dress Army greens, her in a white wedding dress—to very recent Thanksgivings and Christmases, and other Milo family celebrations, Stacy always at their shoulder. Grudeck suddenly thought of his own townhouse, neutral walls bare except for a few plaques and an ink illustration of the club’s main mansion that came with the place. Not a nonsports picture of him. No pictures of his parents. All those years.

  Toward the back of the console were a few photos of Stacy, through the years. Angelic in Holy Communion white. Sullen and dark-eyed in her Union High graduation portrait, maroon tassel hanging from ivory mortarboard. Smiling and beautiful, in the scarlet and black robe of Rutgers, standing between proud parents. Beaming but tired, holding her newborn in a blue blanket. In a black one-piece stretched out on the sand, sunglasses on, a Kodak moment from the Jersey Shore. One hand up, as if to block the shot, her mouth frozen in objection.

  Grudeck picked it up.

  “Stacy with the beautiful facey,” he said.

  “Stop. Wayne Junior took that one,” Stacy said. “That’s the only reason it’s there.”

  “You were gorgeous. Really,” Grudeck said, then caught himself. “Are gorgeous.”

  He looked at her face and, in that moment, saw all of her in it; the little girl, the high school sweetheart, the young mother, the woman she was now and would be. He wanted to hold her head in his hands, to pull her close and kiss her. A kiss not to make up for lost time, but to gently brush lips with all those faces of Stacy.

  “Was. Maybe,” she said.

  “No. Was, and are, and will be,” said Grudeck, in an unchecked romantic blurt.

  It caught her by surprise. She reached and rubbed his triceps, the way friendly women do sometimes.

  * * *

  THEY WERE GOING TO DINNER at the club, and he told her to bundle up.

  “We’ll open up the sun roof,” he said. “You know, it’ll be like all that Beach Boys stuff we never had in high school.”

  He turned out of Union, this way and that, and started the climb up Route 78 toward the Hobart Gap, which split the millionaire sections of Summit and Short Hills.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t move up here,” she said as they drove through.

  “Too close. I wanted to buy my folks a house up here, but they wouldn’t leave Union.”

  “I know. I couldn’t get my parents to move until Mom broke her hip. Then they had to have one floor,” Stacy said. “They’re down in Bricktown, in one of those Leisure Village places. They love it. My father said, ‘I wish we did this ten years ago.’ I was like, ‘I wish you did, too.’ ”

  She tightened her scarf as the car picked up speed.

  “If you’re cold . . . ,” Grudeck started.

  “No, it’s fine. Fun. It’s good to get out.”

  Grudeck reached over and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back and, like, thirty years just came off the clock. There was no pain in his hand, as he gunned it through both ridges of the Watchungs.

  At the club, he guided Stacy through the dining room, nodding and shaking hands—“The mayor,” she said out of the side of her mouth—but he got a corner table and put his back to everyone, to discourage them from interrupting. Mostly, he wanted to avoid the Joanie MacIntoshes of the club. Stacy would pick up on it, no matter how quick and superficial the pleasantries.

  “So,” Stacy asked, after the waiter opened a bottle of house Merlot. “Why am I here?”

  “You asking me or yourself?” Grudeck asked.

  She laughed, and it was so abrupt and genuine, Grudeck again wanted to just . . . just . . . love her.

  “Both, I guess,” she said. “But you go first.”

  “I don’t know, Stacy,” Grudeck began. “The life I’ve led . . . I’ve been away a long time. Sometimes I feel so . . . unattached, I guess. And you were always somebody I felt attached to.”

  “Me? Jesus, Joe, we haven’t talked in almost thirty years,” she said with a facetious wave. “And please don’t tell me you dreamed about me all those long, lonely nights on the road. I think we both know better.”

  “No, I mean, back then . . . back then, I felt like you were somebody . . . I don’t know how to explain it . . . somebody that really knew me. The real me.”

  Her eyes searched his face. He knew she was looking for sincerity.

  “It’s true,” he added. “I felt closer to you than anybody back then. Maybe ever.”

  She shook her head in exaggerated disbelief, then laughed.

  “Stop it, will you,” she said. “Me, the closest? But when you left, that was that. Not a call, not a letter. Please.”

  She said this without anger or bitterness; it was more of a don’t-bullshit-me statement of fa
ct. Still, Grudeck felt compelled to say, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not like I was hurt or even disappointed. I didn’t expect anything from you. You moved on, and the truth is I was right behind you. I never gave it that much thought. I liked you, yeah, but when you left, I knew you were gone. Even when I heard you were home in the winters, I knew you were gone.”

  “All those years . . .” Grudeck said absently.

  “And in all those years and, I’m sure, all those girls, there was never anybody, anybody else you got close to?” Stacy asked.

  “No, not really.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. The years, they just went by, and I was always on the road. Like I said, I was kind of . . .”

  “Detached? Alienated?”

  “Yeah. Those are good words.”

  “By choice?”

  “It’s hard to explain. When you’re famous . . . I guess I thought that’s all anybody cared about.” Grudeck fumbled with his dinner napkin, folding it in geometric patterns. “Yeah, so I guess I was, I don’t know, careful.”

  “Or closed off?”

  “Maybe.” He paused and gave this some thought. She was right, he was closed off. Yeah, he racked up numbers. But in the end, nothing amounted to nothing.

  “All I know is you were different,” he said. “When we used to have conversations like this, I felt I could tell you the truth about things.”

  But there was one thing he knew he’d never tell her. The night in Syracuse. He thought about it just as the word truth came out of his mouth.

  Stacy searched his face, in that third-degree way, which made him feel strangely transparent and guilty, like she was certain he was lying. What do they call it? Women’s intuition.

  “I rarely use men and truth in the same sentence,” she said. “Remember, I was married for twenty years.”

  “You can bullshit the fans, but you can’t bullshit the players,” Grudeck said with a small laugh. “But I’m being honest. You were always different to me. Special.”

  The skepticism showed on Stacy’s face. Was this just another line? But then, why her, when he had a roomful of country club blondes? Maybe he was sincere. But so what? Thirty years, and his inability to directly articulate his feelings made her feel he hadn’t changed much since high school. Worse—and she felt guilty about this—she was a little put off by him feeling sorry for himself. This was a guy who had every advantage in life. Who should have had everything. And now that he didn’t, she thought, he’s over there pouting, looking for something from me. Me, single mother, with a kid and aging parents, scraping by.

  Want to know the feeling of being alone? she was tempted to say.

  Instead, she said, “My God. You’re lonely,” and regretted the way it came out. Incredulous. Hard, with a touch of not-my-problem inflection, like she didn’t need another boy in her life.

  Grudeck tried to dismiss it.

  “Lonely sounds . . . what? . . . so pathetic,” he said. “Maybe I’m just tired of . . .”

  “Being alone?”

  “Being me.”

  “I guess I’m missing something,” Stacy said. “It seems like you got exactly the life you wanted. And I’m having a hard time believing the one thing you didn’t get was me, if that’s where you’re going with this.”

  “I’m not saying that, not exactly,” he said, embarrassed now. “And I’m not complaining, it’s just that something is missing and I’m not sure what.”

  He was quiet then. There was so much to say and he didn’t know how to say any of it. Same thing with the goddamn speech. Everything was in his head, cloudy and unformed.

  After a few moments, Stacy broke the silence.

  “Joe,” she said. “You never did ask me why I’m here.”

  * * *

  STACY MILO KNEW THIS MUCH about herself, as far back as high school: her own ego wouldn’t allow her to stand in someone’s shadow, and no one’s shadow was larger than Joey Grudeck’s. She liked him fine, when they were alone. He surprised her with his sensitivity, at times, and he could be very sweet. She always felt the kid just needed someone to talk to, just like now. In those times, when they were alone in his father’s car, at the empty football field with the stars out overhead, the night he first kissed her on the Caldwell porch, and she thought, Maybe I should . . .

  But in daylight, when the other boys and girls hung on him, he reverted to the big jock. And then she knew she couldn’t, wouldn’t, hang on.

  She got a glimpse of the detachment he spoke about at dinner, thirty years earlier. When he was surrounded by other kids, a distance crept in. She knew if she joined that company, she would end up on that side of Joe’s wall. She knew she was different. The question for her was always this: Could he pull himself away and be just him with just her? He answered it when he left. Now he was back, searching for something he’d lost along the way.

  She didn’t believe it was her. It was him. It was himself he’d lost.

  “So, why are you here?” he asked.

  “I guess I was curious about how you turned out,” she said. “And I was curious about why you asked me. Now I know.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s enough. What, you want more?”

  “Yeah, a little. At least admit that you like me. A little.”

  Stacy laughed and reached out to pat his hand.

  “My God, Joe, haven’t you had your ego stroked enough in your life?”

  “Yeah. Maybe just not by the right people,” he said, and turned his hand over to squeeze hers again.

  “Okay, I like you. There, I said it. You happy?”

  “Happier,” Grudeck said, and realized he was.

  They were both quiet for a moment. Stacy broke the awkwardness.

  “I guess there’s one more thing,” Stacy said. “The night at St. Joe’s, I saw you before you saw me. You came out and snuck into that dark corner. You looked sad. More than that, you looked uncomfortable in your own skin. I could see it, even in the dark. I wondered how long that was going on. Then when you came up to me, and kissed me, I sensed you needed something. Maybe just a friend. Or like you said, someone who never cared that you were ‘Joey Grudeck.’ So . . . what is that thing?”

  Grudeck fumbled more with the napkin.

  “I’m not sure. But, see, I have to give this speech. For the Hall of Fame. And I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s really bugging me.”

  “Why?”

  “Most are just bullshit. I want mine to be different. True.”

  “How?”

  “It’s hard to explain . . . but the guy from the Hall of Fame said their motto is ‘Connecting Generations.’ It got me thinking. Who do I connect with? Who knows anything about me off the field? Truth is, the whole time I was playing—even now, too—there were always things that bugged me, but nobody ever talked about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like everything. The fans. Other players—the assholes, I mean. Autograph dealers. The reporters, hundreds of them, up your ass every minute. Steroids. I took stuff, too, just to compete, toward the end, when I started wearing down. But it wasn’t banned then, so technically, I never cheated. I guess what I’m trying to say is the fun went out.”

  “So say that,” she said. And made it sound so simple.

  After dinner they walked out to the golf course, along cart roads to avoid sprinklers. The mist was illuminated under towers of halogen lights that lit the driving range and practice greens like day, and muted colors of the spectrum danced in the air. Grudeck looked up into the lights and closed his eyes, like a beachgoer facing the sun.

  “I used to love stepping out onto the field at night,” he said. “All that light. You could feel the warmth. And beyond, the sky was so dark. Pitch black. In springtime, and fall, those lights took the chill out of the night. In summer, they energized you, like they burned off all the humidity and made the night clear. All those years, I never had a bad night under those lig
hts. It was when I walked away, out from underneath them . . . it was the stuff away from the lights that made me hate the game, sometimes made me hate myself.”

  The word Syracuse came to the top of his throat, but he swallowed it before it escaped.

  Stacy thought of the irony: the man felt most comfortable and emotionally safest when glaringly exposed to the public.

  She began to say that, when he abruptly turned to face her.

  “Will you help me with my speech?”

  She agreed. “Sure. I think your idea is great, Joe, to talk about things nobody sees.”

  She could work with him and see where it all went. Maybe they did have something, something that got lost way back when. Whatever he was looking for, maybe she could help ground him. And if they found a future in their past, well, whatever. Maybe she could do that, she thought, because his shadow was shrinking. He said so himself.

  “How do you want to do it?” he asked.

  “We’ll sit down a couple of times, we’ll just talk. You tell me things, tell me the stories. The more you talk, I’ve found, the clearer things get,” she said. “Don’t worry, Joe. We’ll figure it out.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Horace knocked, waited a few seconds for Michael to answer. When he didn’t, Horace opened the door enough to peek in.

  Michael was stretched out, filling almost the length of the mattress. He was headed toward Horace’s height, and seeing him suddenly dwarf his childhood bed made Horace think how fast it was coming. He held a gadget in his hands, his thumbs working as fast as a banjo player’s. He was propped up on a few pillows, to see a game on his flat-screen TV. Horace saw players moving, and it took an instant for him to realize it wasn’t a live game, but a digital version. On his chest was his cell phone, wired to his ears, and Horace could hear the tinny music coming from it, even as the animated sounds of crowd noise and players woofing one another blared from the TV.

  “Michael . . . Michael,” Horace said, loud enough the second time to get his attention.

  “Dad! What up?” Michael said, not taking his eyes off the game.

  “Nothing . . . I just wanted to talk.”