Charles Baxter - The Feast of Love

“I never stole anything. Really.”

“Okay.” He waited. “I know that was what you said. Well, you got your story and I got mine. Difference of opinion. I guess everybody’s got a story, right?” He waited for me to agree with him, and when I didn’t, he said, “Anyhow Oscar’s gone. Poor kid. I guess I was angry at him way too much.”

“That’s right.”

“I was so surprised and done in by events that I pretty much got dead drunk when you asked me for help on the funeral arrangements. I don’t know what got into me, what I done or said. The devils, I guess. I got a problem with the devils, I can tell you right now. Sorry I couldn’t do more. A kid his age, he was too young to have a heart attack. You told me where you put his ashes, but you’ll have to tell me again. I blacked out on everything after he died.”

“In Saginaw Forest,” I said, lying to him.

“That’s a pretty place, I been there. Well, now he’s dead, Oscar might do the trees some good, the way he did you. He was a handful. And sometimes he sure acted too smart with me. That boy was constant trouble.”

“He did me some good,” I said. “He was the best person I ever knew.” I could have hung up, but I didn’t. “Yes,” I said. “He was.”

“Well, is that a fact? I’m sure glad. You know, Oscar was so often a terror, and when he wasn’t a terror, he couldn’t be moved off the sofa. The drugs did that to him. They made him lazy, and then he had a mouth on him when I’d get on him. We had quite a household. Between us, it was like a war, so I’d make myself scarce, and when I was around, he could be as mean as my own daddy had been. ‘Course I miss him. You always miss your children.”

“Yes,” I said.

“It must be there was a side to him I almost never saw. I was mostly proud of him when he was running. That boy could run the relay as fast as anything, and that was when I was happy to claim him as my own. But so much of the rest of the time, I just had to put up with him and his drugs and troublemaking and his smart mouth, but like I say, maybe there’s another side to matters and I’d like to hear your side. You probably saw things I never saw. You got a side?”

“Yes,” I said. “I have a side.”

“Well, see, that’s just what I’m saying. You got a side. You’ve got a story. You probably got a story about Oscar. You probably know something about him that even I never got me no idea of.”

“Probably.”

“So what I was thinking was, you should tell me your side, since I want to hear it so much, with my son dead and gone and his ashes in Saginaw Forest.” The Bat waited, and all at once I thought I had caught his drift. “We oughta you and me meet face to face, so you can tell me your side,” he said, as if thinking it over. “I want to hear about Oscar from you.”

There was a long pause in there, while I waited. “What’re you suggesting, Mr. Metzger?”

“You mean I’m not being clear? I sure thought I was. Goddamn if I’m confusing you. I was kinda hoping you’d invite me over that apartment of yours.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe a restaurant’d be better.”

“You want to come over here?” he asked. “It’s kinda dusty. I’d have to clean up and mostly I’m too tired at the end of the day to do that.” He sighed. “I could, I guess. Okay, you’re invited.”

“No. I’d rather not come over there.”

“Well we got ourselves an impasse, then,” he said. “I don’t want to go to a restaurant, myself. I don’t ever do that. So we’ve got a failure of the meeting of minds.”

“I know what we’ll do,” I said. “I just had an idea. Why don’t you come over here and meet my parents? I’ll invite them, too. You know, like how the in-laws meet when their kids get married? The grandparents, now. Just ’cause Oscar’s dead doesn’t change that. What d’you think?”

I had outfoxed him and he knew it. “It’s your side I want to hear, not theirs,” he said, all of a sudden somber.

“You’ll get mine and theirs.”

“I was never much for relatives,” the Bat said, “of the conversational variety.”

“But that’s what I am.”

“Oh all right,” he said angrily, like I’d been beating him at a game. “Invite your parents if you want to. Sure, I’d be happy to meet them.”

I had sudden shooting pains in my stomach, which the Bat was causing just by talking to me.

“So,” he said. “When should I come? How about tonight?”

“I have to work,” I said. “It’s too soon.”

“You don’t think much of me, do you?” he asked me suddenly, a question I wasn’t about to answer.

“You’re fine,” I said. “I don’t think of you one way or another.”

He cleared his throat, an awful sound. “Sorry,” he said. “I got this thing caught in my throat. So, how about Saturday night?”

“Well, I’ll call my parents and then call you back.”

“You do that. I will wait right here by the telephone for that callback from you.”

I called my parents, reached my mom, who was overjoyed that I was inviting her and delighted to be meeting Oscar’s father, and I called the Bat again. So as a plan it was accomplished.

I bought bags of potato chips, and pop, and beer, and some potato salad, and hamburgers, and the hamburger buns, and the ketchup and relish and pickles. Good-time food. It wasn’t a picnic but I figured picnic food would put everybody into a better disposition and help them get along with one another.

I guess I should have been afraid, but it didn’t occur to me to be, with my parents there.

That night it snowed, this being December, and I’d invited my parents early, but they didn’t come when they were supposed to. I kept checking my watch as I buttered the buns. It was one of those best-laid-plans deals. When the phone rang, sure enough, it was my dad saying they had slid off the road and had to call a tow truck, and they’d be there eventually, but they were going to be late. “Delayed” was the word he used. And had I seen the snow, my dad asked, how it was coming down?

That was about when I heard the Bat’s knock on the door. With this building, there’s a front door that’s supposed to be locked, but no one ever keeps it locked, they’ve always got bricks propped against it. Anyone can get in. Anyone did. And he was knocking at my door right now.

No point in looking through the peephole. You didn’t need Mrs. Maggaroulian to tell you what was on the other side. The only thing was, when I opened the door, he didn’t look bad or mean, but more like a loser standing in line at the unemployment office, humbled, ready to ask the passers-by for a quarter.

He had a layer of snow on his head. Snow was on his shoes. And he was, all over again, small. I kept expecting Oscar’s father to look like Oscar, but instead he was a miniature, shorter than me, and the only feature Oscar’d got from him was a sort of cheekbone thing, which, for a second, made me homesick for my late husband. The Bat was holding a tallboy, and he didn’t look sure of himself. Carrying a beer? What had happened to his promise to swear off the alcohol? He was half-smiling, almost panting with the effort of it, wearing a jacket, a wrinkled necktie, and snowy shoes.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi there, daughter.” His voice rasped and rattled. He moved from foot to foot. “You gonna invite me in?”

“Sure,” I said. I helped him out of his jacket and hung it in the closet. He kept his cap on. I turned around and walked back toward where the three chairs were and the hideabed. I heard him following me. He let out this cough that went on and on and sounded like the end of the world. I sat down in one of the chairs and waited for the coughing event to cease. Finally it did.