helped him get a couple of jobs….”
“And what’s their problem with him?” I asked. “Is it that he accepts their help but refuses to put out?”
Randall didn’t reply. I had my answer.
“Well,” Frank said, “I think it’s obvious he’d put out for Danny, since he gave him his number.”
“Danny isn’t interested,” I said.
Randall snorted. “Thad says he’s a scared little twenty-one-year-old who pretends he’s seen it all and done it all. He’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Nevada. He might be cute, but Thad assured me I was better off staying far, far away from him.” He gave me a pair of very big eyes. “And I’d suggest the same thing to you, Danny.”
I saluted him.
It was time to go. The sun was becoming unbearable. My armpits were wet, and I could feel the bridge of my nose starting to burn. It was time for us humans to retreat into our air-conditioned hiding places and not emerge again until after sunset, when we might wade into our pools or sit under the misters on our decks, gazing up into the purple sky.
“You know,” Frank said as we walked to the car, his joints stiff from sitting so long, “maybe I ought to start jogging. I’ll get up early in the morning, before it gets too hot.”
I gave him a look. “Jogging?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’m out of shape. I’ll firm up a bit, and then we can go hiking again.”
“It’s okay, Frank.”
He stopped walking and looked at me. Randall was ahead of us, rolling down the windows of the car and running the air conditioner full blast so the interior could cool off. I held Frank’s eyes. In many ways they barely resembled the eyes I had known for so long. The lashes had gone gray, and the whites of his eyes were perpetually bloodshot. But the color of his eyes had never changed. They were still as green as they’d been that night on Santa Monica Boulevard when I’d run out of the bar, chasing after him, worried I’d never see this beautiful, mysterious stranger again.
“Danny,” Frank said, and he was holding my gaze as tenderly as he ever had. “You know that when I look at the mountains, I see Becky, too.”
I managed a smile but said nothing. As always, Frank understood.
Yes, Becky was always there—not just in the mountains, but in everything I saw, everything I heard, everything I felt—and Frank, dear Frank, knew this. That was the way it always was this time of year, when August turned into September, when the late summer sun was at its peak, and lesson plans were being made, and schools were opening their doors, and parents worried about sending their children off into the world, and young boys did their best to pretend that they were brave.
EAST HARTFORD
The rattle of the garage door startled me. I was on my bed, engrossed in the latest issue of Action Comics—Superman and Green Arrow—when I heard the unmistakable sound of my father’s return from work. I slid off the bed and headed into the hallway, pausing at the top of the stairs, my hand resting on the banister.
“Becky isn’t with you?” I heard my mother asking from the kitchen.
“No,” my father said. “Should she be?”
I began to descend the stairs slowly.
The first thing I noticed was that Mom had gone ahead and hung the HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign, anyway. I sighed. The cake was now frosted, placed in the center of the table, my name spelled out in M&M’s. Six places were set around the table, adorned with blue plastic plates, American flag napkins, and the wrapped Hershey’s Kisses. By now the curlers were out of Mom’s hair, which had flipped up like Mary Tyler Moore’s on the old Dick Van Dyke Show. She had changed into a pink plaid pantsuit and pink high heels.
“Well,” Mom was huffing, “it’s almost four! Becky was supposed to be back here by now with the balloons!”
“Maybe the balloons weren’t ready,” Dad was saying as he set his briefcase down on the counter.
“For crying out loud, the balloons were already paid for! I went down and paid for them myself yesterday! She drove me down there, for God’s sake! They were all ready and set to be picked up.”
“I don’t know, Peggy, she—”
Nana had come into the kitchen, beaming at Dad. “Sebby,” she said.
“Mommy, that’s Tony,” Aunt Patsy corrected, behind her as ever.
“Hello, Ma,” Dad said, leaning in to give his mother a kiss.
Anthony Sebastian Fortunato, better known as Tony, except when his mother got him confused with her dead husband and called him Sebby. Dad was a real estate salesman, living on commissions, which were sometimes very good for long stretches of time and sometimes very bad for even longer. His brown tie was loosened and his shirt collar open, his jacket apparently left in the car. Armpit stains showed through his thin yellow poplin short-sleeved shirt.
“Hey, Danny,” Dad said. “How’s it feel to be fourteen?”
“Same as it did to be thirteen,” I lied, and I think my father knew. Dad could read stuff like that, where Mom was simply clueless. He just gave me a smile that seemed to say it all.
“She’s got to be with Chipper,” Mom was saying. “She’s been spending entirely too much time with him.”
“I just saw Chipper come home,” I said. It felt good to be able to offer some real information. “Becky wasn’t with him.”
“Then where the hell is she?” The vein on my mother’s forehead was pulsing, the way it always did when she got really anxious.
“Peggy, calm down.” Dad was unknotting his tie and sliding it out from under his collar. “She’s probably with Karen or Pam. She’ll be here. Becky’s good for her word.”
“Well, this place needs balloons,” Mom said, the vein still throbbing. “What kind of a birthday party doesn’t have balloons?”
“I’m too old for balloons,” I said.
“You’re not too old! I’m too old! You’re having balloons, Danny, and that’s it!”
“Okay, okay.”
The doorbell rang. It was the first of the guests. I hoped it would be Katie, but it was Desmond Drysdale, red haired and freckled, the only boy I’d invited, the only boy I was really friends with, in fact, if anyone could really be friends with Desmond. Desmond was a comic book fanatic, which was where we connected. But while I liked my comics, I just couldn’t grasp the depth of Desmond’s passion. Over his bed he’d mounted—safely preserved in acetate and held within a plastic container—a rare mint edition of Silver Surfer Number 1. Previously, that place of honor had been occupied by a crucifix.
Next to arrive was Theresa Kyrwinski, tall and gangly, followed by Theresa Dudek, with the lazy eye. The phone rang suddenly: Joanne Amenta’s mother calling to say that Joanne had a stomach bug and so she wouldn’t be coming. Mom breathed fire through her clenched grin as she gave the news to the rest of the party: “What a shame for poor Joanne to get a stomach bug so quickly that they weren’t able to call and let me know earlier so I wouldn’t have wasted time wrapping Hershey’s Kisses for her.”
Finally, at exactly one minute to four, came Katie.
“Sorry,” she said, trudging up the walk, a present under her arm. “I tried to get here sooner but—”
“Whatever,” I said, annoyed.
Katie went on. “My mother took me to the mall after Sears, and we—”
“I said whatever.”
But I couldn’t stay mad at Katie. This might be the last time I saw her.