Probation (32 page)

“So you’re suggesting we can read each other’s minds?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Not always,” she says, bringing me back to earth. “I shouldn’t have surprised you, Andy. But I figured if I called ahead you’d make an excuse.”

“See, you can read my mind.”

“I have something of yours I know you’d want and I didn’t want to send it by mail. It’s there. In the bag. Can you get it? I don’t want to wake him.”

I set the bag on my lap.

“Go ahead. It won’t bite you,” she says, encouraging me to fish through the pacifiers and baby spoons in plastic baggies, the disposable diapers, the jars of applesauce and the stuffed sock monkey. I know what it is as soon as I touch the plastic cube. I’d resigned myself to accepting it was gone forever, tossed away with the detritus of my former life. It’s preserved in its pristine state, protected from the elements, snowy white, the ink as fresh as the day it was etched into the cow leather a lifetime ago.

To Andy Nocera, Joe DiMaggio.

“Damn, I don’t believe it. Where did you find it?” I ask.

“It was never lost. It just got forgotten in the…the confusion.”

“There were two of these,” I say wistfully. Forgive me for plagiarizing the great Nabokov this once. There’s no way to describe the effect of a ten-dollar baseball except to admit I’m easily intoxicated by the impossible past.

She blushes and clears her throat, not once, twice—the sure sign she’s embarrassed.

“I have it. I’ll send it to you when I get home.”

“No, no, I want you to keep it,” I say, happier than I should be, thrilled actually, to know she keeps a small reminder of me in the house she shares with her husband and son.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. The least I can do is give you one of my balls.”

She laughs (I knew she would) and the dreaded moment arrives when the violins swell and the lens goes soft focus and we’re meant to fall in each other’s arms and declare eternal love despite the impossible circumstances. But Baby Bradley has an impeccable sense of timing. He knows exactly when to strike up the band.

“Someone’s cranky,” she says, rising from her chair. “I’d give you a hug but I’m a bit encumbered.”

Instead we settle on a chaste kiss on the cheek and a thank-you. I’m sure it’s my imagination but I swear Baby Bradley is giving me the evil eye, warning me to back off.

“I’ll walk you to the car,” I say, hoisting her bag on my shoulder. We make small talk about the weather, comparing last year’s blistering temperatures with the pleasant balminess of this July. A real Mayberry summer we’re having, I observe.

“What is it with men and that show?” She laughs. Obviously Barry and I have something in common.

“Men are only allowed to be sentimental about two things. Their own ten-year-old selves and dead athletes. Them’s the rules,” I say, explaining the Opie factor.

“I can’t believe you’re forty.” She sighs, strapping the baby in his car seat.

“You’re not far behind.”

“Surreal, isn’t it?” she says. “Do you remember when we thought we had all the time in the world?”

“I do.”

“He seems really nice, Andy. I can tell he really loves you.”

I shrug my shoulders, neither admitting nor denying it, and now we do hug, an embrace no different than one I’d share with my mother or sister.

“Don’t fuck this one up,” she says, turning the key in the ignition. “You deserve to be happy.”

My Rolex says it’s 1:45 as her car rolls out of the parking lot and disappears in the traffic. Alice is right: time is slipping away. I find Harold and tell him we need to hit the road if he’s going to see young Mr. Strickland one last time in a Charlotte uniform.

He’s quiet in the car, unusual for him. The radio is off and he doesn’t reach for one of his discs to slip in the player. I know exactly how to cheer him up.

“Hey, I’ve got something to show you. You’re going to love this,” I promise, handing him the baseball cube.

“Is this for real?” he asks, his natural giddiness bubbling through the gloom.

“Absolutely.”

“How did you know Joe DiMaggio?”

“My dad played ball with him once.”

He hands the cube back gingerly as if it’s fragile porcelain that would shatter if he sneezed.

“No shit,” he says, amazed.

“No shit.”

He stares at the road beyond the windshield. He shakes his shoulders and cracks his neck, loosening up, preparing for the crushing disappointment of losing the son of a man who played ball with Joe DiMaggio.

“So,” he says, unable to control the tremor in his voice. “Are you guys getting back together?”

I suppress my natural instinct to laugh because now I finally see what Alice recognized at first glance. Harold really loves me.

“No. No. That’s impossible.”

I can leave it at that or I can remind him that the bundle of joy on Alice’s knee didn’t arrive by FedEx, purchased on eBay. Or I can take the opportunity to make him happy.

“You see, I’m already taken,” I say, squeezing his knee. “So you know where we’re going?”

“Durham,” he says, reaching down to grab my hand.

“And then?”

“What do you mean?”

“After Durham?”

“Home?”

“You know how to get there?”

“The same way we came.”

“Last star to the left, then straight on to Neverland.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you ever read
Peter Pan?”

“I saw the movie. You wanna hear some music?”

“Sure.”

He pops in a Weezer disc, the Blue Album, fast-forwarding to his favorite track. He picks up my hand again, pleading, come on, sing it for me, just the chorus, please, pretty please. What choice do I have but to surrender?

“Woo-ee-oo, I look just like Buddy Holly.”

Yep, things have come full circle.

He plays the track a second time, then a third. He wants to harmonize, but it’s been a long, strange afternoon with hours ahead of us before we roll into Durham. The sun is shining, bugs are splattering on the windshield, and I’m losing a battle with the Sandman as the pine trees and blue skies of North Carolina race by in a blur.

A READING GROUP GUIDE

PROBATION

Tom Mendicino

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

The suggested questions are included to enhance your group’s reading of Tom Mendicino’s
Probation
!

1. How would you describe Andy and Alice’s relationship? What do you think their marriage meant to each of them?
   
2. What qualities of Andy do you think attracted Alice at the beginning of their relationship? What did she continue to see in him that sustained their relationship both throughout their marriage and after their separation and divorce? In the closing chapter, Alice tells Andy he was “a good husband.” Why do you think she would say that?
   
3. Do you think Alice suspected Andy’s infidelities? Was she aware of his attraction to men? Why would she remain in the relationship if she suspected he was gay?
   
4. What would you identify as the critical moment in their marriage?
   
5. In the chapter “Casta diva,” Andy becomes suspicious that Alice began an affair while they were married. Considering his own transgressions, why is Andy so angry at the thought of his wife cheating? Do you think Alice was unfaithful to her husband? Why do you think Alice was willing to forgive Andy? How would you explain her surprising lack of bitterness and anger?
   
6. Why does Andy seem so hostile to his sister at times?
   
7. What are Andy’s mother’s and father’s strengths and weaknesses as parents? How did each of them affect his development?
   
8. How different do you think Andy’s life would have been if he’d gone to college in Chicago?
   
9. Andy is both frustrated and intrigued by the boundaries of his therapeutic relationship with Matt McGinley. Do you think Matt’s being a priest hinders or enhances his ability to break through Andy’s resistance to therapy? Are you curious about the details of Matt’s personal life? Do you think Matt is gay too?
   
10. Why do you think Andy is such a successful salesman—a career he fell into and a job he doesn’t enjoy and seems to disdain?
    
11. Why did Andy intervene in Robert’s crisis? What was his motivation?
    
12. Has Andy fully accepted himself as a gay man by the end of the novel? Does he seem reluctant or hesitant to fully commit to his relationship with Harold? Describe Andy’s life ten years in the future.