by Dana Cann
She looked at Amanda, and made her eyes big.
“He wasn’t one of them,” Amanda said.
“I was going to ask.” Mary Beth tried on a smile but Amanda was serious.
Mary Beth glanced over her shoulder toward the top of the hill to make sure no more bicyclists—imagined or real—had been summoned by Amanda’s thoughts. They were alone again.
“Who were they, then,” Mary Beth asked, “these kids who wanted to see your chickens?”
“Kids from around here.”
“But your house isn’t here.”
“It was my grandma’s house.”
“It’s not here.”
“Not anymore.”
Mary Beth had retreated into interrogation mode. She needed to be more careful. She waited, but Amanda waited, too. Mary Beth counted in her head, one to ten, then she asked, “Where’s your mom?”
“Dead.” Amanda nearly interrupted her, as though she’d anticipated the question. “They’re all dead.”
“The kids who came to look at the chickens?”
“I don’t know about them.”
“And the chickens?”
“Chickens don’t live that long.”
Mary Beth wasn’t sure what she was doing. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“What are you sorry about?”
It was a question, but Mary Beth heard it as an accusation. She had a lot to be sorry about. Maybe that was the point, or maybe it wasn’t. “I’m sorry that they’re all dead,” she said finally.
Amanda watched her. Then her eyes softened and lost focus. Mary Beth remembered the frogs that sang from the puddles in the woods behind her childhood home. All she had to do was sit with them and they sang. When she wasn’t there they’d sing anyway.
“Why here?” she said.
Amanda blinked.
“Why don’t you come see me at my house?”
“I like it here.”
Mary Beth took a moment. The green leaves at the tops of the trees were sun-dappled. Bugs flew in shafts of light. “Me too.”
A bird was singing—doo-eee, doo-eee. Then a breath. Doo-eee, doo-eee, doo-eee. The song had been playing, verse after verse, for a while, she realized. She only now noticed.
“I don’t know what happened to me,” Amanda said.
Mary Beth watched the girl.
“In case you’re wondering.”
“I was,” Mary Beth said, though she wasn’t sure what, exactly, Amanda thought Mary Beth might have been wondering.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Amanda said.
The bird sang. Then again.
“It’s sad, I guess, but it doesn’t feel sad. It doesn’t feel anything.” Amanda shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“Amanda, I don’t understand what you’re—”
“What happens to people in the woods?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Bad things.”
“Amanda, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m a ghost. Boo!”
“A ghost.” Mary Beth braced herself.
“What’d you think?” Amanda stuck out her tongue, though not actually at Mary Beth.
“I don’t know what I think.”
“I’m talking about dying, silly.”
The bird had stopped singing. There was a time to talk and a time to listen. “Okay,” she said.
“What happens to people in the woods?”
Mary Beth was thinking violent acts, abductions and rapes and stranglings and mutilations, Amber Alerts and senseless gang initiations, the savage stuff of cable and Internet news, of media drawn to the sensational. She was thinking about strangers and loved ones, homeless men and runaway teens, the lone guy on the mountain bike riding the sheltered trails, the floodplains between developments and towns, the rare remote corners of suburbia. She was thinking about people. Instead, she said, “A bear?”
“There was no bear. I’d see a bear. Or hear one or smell one!” Amanda wore an expression of disbelief, as though she’d just discovered that the adult across from her was the most ridiculous adult she’d ever encountered in her brief life and afterlife.
Mary Beth shrugged, a go-figure gesture.
“I was there,” Amanda said, “and then I wasn’t.” She paused. “In the woods.” She looked directly at Mary Beth, who nodded.
“I get it,” she said.
“It didn’t hurt.”
“Maybe a tree fell on you.” Mary Beth looked up, where the branches reached the sky. “Or a big limb.”
The air was fixed, the green leaves still like a photo. All these hours they’d sat together in the woods and nothing had happened.
“Was there a storm?” Mary Beth asked.
“No.”
Trucks flipped on highways. Lightning struck beaches.
“Were you alone?”
“I don’t think so.” Amanda squinched her eyes. “No, I think I was.”
She was unreliable, of course, a child. It happened long ago. Who was to say she was real, actually here?
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“What doesn’t matter?”
“That I’m dead.”
This was life: you’re here. And this was death: you’re not. And then you’re here again, haunting some stranger. And none of it matters. Mary Beth waited. The bird was gone.
“How do you know?” Mary Beth asked.
“Know what?” Amanda wrinkled her nose.
“That you’re dead. You’re sitting here with me,” she said, “and I’m alive.”
She expected Amanda to demonstrate—to disappear and reappear, change shapes or stir the air. Some ghostly trick. Instead, she sat on her end of the fallen tree, looking bored.
“Where does the dad go?” she asked, after a time.
“Which dad?”
“The dad who lives with you. Catherine’s dad.”
“Gil. His name is Gil.”
“Where does he go?”
“He goes to work. He takes a train into the city.”
“Oh.”
“Come see us at the house,” Mary Beth said.
“I do.”
“Let us see you.”
“I do that, too.”
“I’ve never—”
“The dad does.”
“Really!” Mary Beth thought about Gil. What did she actually know about his days? Sometimes, after work, he lay with her in their dark bedroom. It was a way to express his grief, perhaps. To lie with her in solidarity. Sometimes they spoke, inconsequential words, while the pauses and the sighs and the expressions on their faces, if they could be discerned in the dim light, said the opposite. Their circumstances were extreme, perhaps unique. But as a couple, engaged in the inconsequential-word dance, they weren’t unique. You didn’t need to lose a child to lose a marriage. Still, they had lost a child. Or it was she who had, in the active, culpable sense of the verb, when she’d nosed the front wheel of the jogging stroller onto Lyttondale Avenue and caught the jaws of the painted bumper, the teeth of the fast car’s grille. Gil had lost a child, too. It just wasn’t his fault. But now, she realized in a dizzying revelation, they’d found one, each of them, separately and together. Amanda.
“Show yourself to me,” Mary Beth said. “Show yourself to us.” It was a statement, a demand, something a mother might say to her daughter. She hadn’t said please, though pleading was in her tone. She wasn’t used to giving orders. And she knew that Amanda, on the receiving end of such orders, could simply vanish. There was no balance between them. Mary Beth needed Amanda more than Amanda needed Mary Beth. Or so it seemed. She made as stern a face as she could muster, in hopes that Amanda would notice.
“I live here.” Amanda tapped her fingertip to the tree bark beneath where her ankles were crossed. They were back to square one. Nothing had happened. Worse, they were back to zero, as, in the next moment, Amanda was gone, vanished, though not like in a B movie or a TV show, where the air goes wavy like water. Rather, Mary Beth blinked, one mome
nt in a near-infinite continuum of endless moments, and when she opened her eyes, the space Amanda had occupied on her end of the fallen tree was empty.
Mary Beth considered calling out. Instead, she sighed. She thought of Gil, his presence in their bedroom, his head next to hers, backs turned to one another, close enough to feel the heat from each other’s body. Silence was better. She reached into her bag and retrieved her water bottle, some crackers with peanut butter, and she ate and drank and concentrated on being a quiet presence. When the crackers were gone and she was still alone, she heaved herself off the fallen tree to climb the hill to the field at the edge of the School on the Ridge, to Amos Avenue, and the long downhill home.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The sun waned while the humidity waxed, and the air, which had crept all day across inland swamps and seas of asphalt, stalled and smothered Manhattan. Jen’s window unit rattled in its casing and waged a losing battle. There was something about changing the filter, instructions, a note that the management company had sent her months ago. It was probably somewhere among the stacks of paper on her dining table. Now summer was half over. She dragged a floor fan in front of the air conditioner to give the dribble of cool air a boost. She sat in front of both—the air conditioner and the fan—and pulled the hair off the back of her neck and held it in a fist.
Unease had been building, along with the heat, all week. She felt it in the pit of her stomach—a seed taking root, with shoots growing up and out, tendrils threading through her ribs, grazing and then clutching her heart, and now spilling up through her shoulders and down her arms. It was dread that she felt. She tried to identify its source. She made a list in her head, each possibility: work, friends, drugs, money.
Was she lonely? She definitely was. Did she want to use? She hoped not to, which wasn’t, of course, the same as not wanting to, and, as she constructed this distinction in her head, the urge shaped by her habit became that much greater. It was a combination of loneliness and urgency, she decided, that was turning the little propeller in her stomach, the one that brought her disquiet. Then another thought came unbidden, surfaced suddenly from the dark recesses inside her: she was wasting her life. And, with that thought, the tendrils growing inside her blossomed. She’d found the source of her bother.
The apartment walls were close, radiating the cumulative heat of the day. Escape was required—a public place with real air conditioning, a central unit forcing cool air through wide vents. She’d need to cop or find a friend who had.
Friend. The word brought a new round of unease. She had many friends. She’d once had more. Here was a truth of getting older: friends decreased in number and stature. They dived deeper into the drug world and drowned, or they quit and got out of the pool. The rest, like Jen, treaded water in the deep end. She wished to tread closer to the side, which meant using less. It was Wednesday. She’d hoped to wait until Saturday.
She opened her phone. There were no messages. She checked her contacts—Amy, Jane, Nick, Larry, Gordon, Ferko. Jen clicked this last name, and sent him a text: what’s up?
He’d become, over the past few weeks, an enthusiastic user, and demonstrated a willingness to leave work early to accommodate her schedule. He insisted that work was slow, though Jen had her doubts. She knew people in M&A. It was never slow. Look at the deal flow, Ferko had told her last week, when she’d questioned him, and she might have checked it—the deal flow—if she knew how or cared enough to do so. Aluminum prices were near record levels. That was the only indicator she needed that the world was busy.
She awaited his reply. The fan was working, sort of, blowing a bit of cool air from the weak vent into the room. She felt it on her arms and legs and the place on her neck where her hair usually fell. Her urge was becoming chronic. She contemplated a backup. Amy was always up for something. Jen’s phone said it was 4:25. She’d give Ferko until 4:27 before moving on. But then her phone rang. Ferko.
“Hey!” she said.
“What’s up?”
“That’s what I asked you.”
“I’m playing softball.”
Jen had no response. She wasn’t sure if she’d heard him right. Finally, with nothing else to say, she asked, “What?”
“Softball. I’m playing. My boss’s team.”
“You don’t play softball.”
“How would you know?”
“Do you?”
“I’m putting you on speaker. I’m tying my shoes.”
“Your spikes?”
“Sneakers. And you’re right. I don’t play. But tonight I am. I’ve been asked to.” The quality of the sound had changed. His voice went thin. There was noise in the background.
“I suspect I’m being set up,” he said. “That’s what people do here. If they’re not working with you, they’re working against you.”
“Sounds like fun.” Jen calculated in her mind how long it would take to play a game of softball, when he’d be free. “You’re playing now?” she asked.
“Five thirty.” A shuffling in the background, then the noise disappeared. The quality of sound had changed back. He was on the handset again. “Tomorrow?” he asked.
“Maybe.” It was important that she not reveal the crisis that had prompted her text. Her stomach—the dread that blossomed there—had settled for now. She could bear tonight on her own. It was better that way. If she were to continue to tread water, to do so closer to the side of the pool, she’d need to toughen and find a way to use less. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said. “Hit a homer.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ferko did a hurdle stretch in foul territory while the rest of Prauer’s softball team, the Large Caps, paired up and played catch, one guy standing on the third-base line and another in the outfield. Ferko wore jeans and tennis shoes and a too-large white T-shirt with the Large Caps logo. George Cosler had recruited Ferko and procured the shirt from a box of extras in his office, then customized it—name and number—with sections of blue electrical tape.
“Zero?” Ferko asked when he saw the number Cosler had given him.
Cosler shrugged his big shoulders. “It’s available.”
“You don’t want me,” Ferko said.
“I don’t want you,” Cosler confirmed, then paused, perhaps for effect. “But I need you.”
When Ferko didn’t respond, Cosler said, “Vacations. Everyone’s out. Or else they’re unavailable.”
Ferko had his doubts. “What about Lisa?”
“It’s a men’s league.” He dropped the shirt on Ferko’s desk. “Besides, I told Bill we had you. He likes the idea.”
The Large Caps, as in a certain class of equity investment, were composed of a bunch of bankers and restructuring advisers who’d played baseball in high school and college. Cosler was one. Ferko was not. There was a win streak at stake. In fact, the Caps had never lost a game. Five years. The hardware was perched on the credenza above where Helen, the receptionist, sat in the Riverfront lobby. Cosler had a Word file on his computer with a single letter—W—in three-hundred-point font, bold. The morning after each win he printed the file on a single sheet of paper, trimmed it with scissors, and taped it to the next space across the top of the wall. Like the wallpaper border in a nursery. Or the fans at Yankee Stadium who counted strikeouts with Ks.
Ferko had played baseball as a kid in Edgefield, some intramural softball in college. Now, prostrate in his hurdle stretch, he delayed the inevitable—seeing what was left of his candy arm. His teammates had started their warm-ups close enough to each other, but then had moved back some distance. Then they’d moved back again, and now the softballs were zipping across great expanses, glove to glove, with machinelike accuracy and efficiency. Prauer was throwing with Pete Johnston, who, according to Cosler, had played beyond high school and college—professionally, up to AA in the Phillies’ farm system. They were hucking it pretty good. And Cosler, paired up with Alan Friedman, a partner at Forten Banneker, Prauer’s house firm. Then there were the interns
—four on the field now—Prauer hired each summer based, it seemed, on the athleticism demonstrated on their resumes.
Ferko’s legs were stretched. His throwing arm—not so much. It was too late now, given the intimidating distances his teammates were throwing. Plus, he was the ninth man, with no one to pair up with.
He stood, relieved to find a familiar face on the opposing team, firing bullets from shortstop to first base. Long hair. Tan face and arms. Greg Fletcher. Ferko jogged out to say hello.
“Gaylord?” Greg fired the ball to the first baseman.
“You still got it,” Ferko said, meaning Greg’s arm.
Greg caught the return throw and, in one smooth motion, flipped the ball with his glove to Ferko, who caught it in his bare hands. (He’d left his glove—Cosler’s backup glove, actually—on the grass flattened by the hurdle stretches.) Now Ferko wrapped his fingers around a softball, weighing its heft, noting its size, for the first time in, perhaps, fifteen years.
Greg pointed at first base, an invitation for Ferko to show Greg what he had. It wasn’t a long throw, as softball throws go, but Ferko wasn’t going to try it now. The Large Caps had brought it in, had collected around the bench beyond the third-base line. They were watching Ferko with Greg Fletcher—Cosler and Prauer and Lisa Becker, too, who’d shown up in her jogging clothes, carrying a water bottle, which she now dragged across her forehead before twisting the cap and tipping the contents into her mouth. Ferko flipped the ball to Greg, who caught it in his throwing hand and, in one smooth motion, launched it back to first.
“I didn’t peg you for fast-pitch,” Greg said, and it took Ferko a moment to register what he meant. Sure enough, the pitcher for Greg’s team had taken the mound for warm-ups and was windmilling darts from the rubber over the plate, where the catcher squatted in full gear. Ferko had known on some deeper level what a game with the Large Caps would entail. Now it became apparent. This wasn’t intramural softball, where the pitches were lobbed like horseshoes, or even fourth-grade baseball in the Bergen County rec league, where half the kids played because their fathers wanted them to. This wasn’t for fun. The speed of the pitches would dictate the speed the runners ran the bases and the speed of the game. The catcher would back up first base, the center fielder second base, the left fielder third base. Et cetera. Runners would take leads and steal bases. There were cutoff men to hit, situational defenses. He’d suspected, of course, that his recruitment by Cosler had been for derision. Now he was sure of it. He was the ninth man. He’d been picked last. It was Edgefield Elementary all over again. But he’d learned how to survive, to blend in, to limit his mistakes to those that wouldn’t cost Prauer the game. At least, Ferko hoped that was the case. Now the Caps donned batting helmets, swung bats. So he jogged back to the bench, where Prauer was waiting.
