David Gates: The Wonders of the Invisible World

Deke’s been here since Labor Day weekend. That Sunday morning, Cassie’s Porsche-driving druggie boyfriend called in a panic — looking for Mom, actually, forgetting she was dead. If he’d ever known. He said they’d gone to his beach house in Wellfleet, where Cassie, already up for three days on coke and crank, made the mistake of eating these ’shrooms they’d been saving for the right occasion. He’d taken her to the hospital — he was sure Billy would see he’d had no choice — but what was he supposed to do with her kid? The social worker at the hospital was going to put him in foster care, but—

“Where’s Deke now?” Billy said. “Okay, listen, stay right there.”

He woke up Labor Day morning, fried from driving to the Cape and back the day before, and with no more idea than the boyfriend of what to do with a seven-year-old kid. Deke was already up. Billy found him in Cassie’s old room, playing with her Barbies, and decided to take him to a ball game. The Albany-Colonie Diamond Dogs were playing the Adirondack Lumberjacks for the Northeast League championship that afternoon. Billy’s father used to take him to games back when Albany still had a Yankee farm team; Billy found it heartening that these upstarts should be named after a David Bowie song.

Deke was really too young to follow the game — the Diamond Dogs hit two home runs in the bottom of the first, and he missed them both — but he seemed to like the crowd, the bright green grass and the bursts of music and sound effects from the loudspeakers. The Dogs’ cleanup hitter popped a foul ball into the aisle between the grandstand and the bleachers (sound effect of breaking glass), and a crowd of boys ran to chase it down. Deke leaped up, then looked at Billy. “Can I?”

“Just make sure I can see you,” Billy said.

Deke was still scrambling down into the aisle when one of the kids held the ball up as little hands grabbed for it and the crowd applauded. Deke ran halfway over, then turned back to Billy with a stagy shrug and a genuine smile.

By the seventh inning, the Dogs were up eleven to nothing. Billy told Deke about the seventh-inning stretch, and Deke made him sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in his ear to prep him; he claimed he’d never heard it. The Dogs went down one-two-three in the bottom of the eighth, and Billy, wanting to beat the crowd, asked Deke if he’d had enough. No: he wanted to chase more foul balls.

To get out of the parking lot took them all three movements of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto, but Billy had no plan for what to do next anyway. Deke said he was hungry, so that settled that: they went to McDonald’s. On the way home they listened to the Barney tape Deke had carried with him from Boston to Cape Cod and from Cape Cod to here. Predictably namby-pamby — amazing that Cassie, of all people, would give it houseroom — but not without its fascinations. Like that song “The Old Brass Wagon”: was it really a wagon made of brass, like some warrior’s brazen chariot, or just a wagon to haul scrap metal? It seemed folkloristic. The Golden Bough. The Old Brass Wagon. The dying god hauled to his funeral pyre. A harvest thing. The sun was going down on Labor Day. Summer was over.

Billy does the dishes while Deke takes his bath, but he keeps coming in to check, imagining the worst: Deke standing up, slipping, cracking his head, drowning. He’s relieved that he hasn’t found the boy’s narrow nates and teensy penis at all arousing. At the same time, he’s irked with himself for being relieved. Does he assume that straight men reflexively slaver over girl children in their care?

After he’s dried Deke’s soft hair with the hair dryer, they snuggle on the sofa and Billy reads him his nightly trilogy. Tonight Deke chose The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Runaway Bunny and the loathly Bugs Bunny and the Carrot Machine. An all-rabbit program. Billy marvels at how Deke has devised it: a calming, ritualistic opener, then the emotionally heavy stuff — the mother who’ll always come after you and take care of you — and then a farce as the end piece.

After Bugs Bunny overloads the carrot-making machine and blows it up — a not very subtle parable about overreaching — Billy takes Deke by the hand and leads him to bed. “Goodnight and sleep tight.”

Deke lets his head sink into the pillow and looks up at the ceiling. “Good night and sleep tight. Did you know Mommy has Old Maid in her room?”

“No kidding. You know, I’d forgotten about Old Maid. We used to play all the time.”

“Can we play?”

“Sure. How about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow morning. ”

“Tomorrow morning. Surest thing you know. That’s what my — what your grandfather used to say. ‘Surest thing y’know.’ He was an epistemologist.”

Deke looks at him. “Mommy said he was a teacher.”

“That was his day job, sure.”

“But what’s a pistemologist?”

“ You know.” Billy’s sorry he started this. “Somebody that mows the lawn and stuff. Reads the paper. Shovels snow in the winter.”

“Like you?” Deke’s frowning. He clearly knows there’s something he’s not getting.

“ Exactement. ” Billy gives him his best imitation of a guileless smile. “Sweet dreams.” Kisses his fingertips, presses them to Deke’s forehead, then hits PLAYon the boom box.

He puts away the dishes, then goes down to the basement and sticks a load of clothes in the washer. He pours himself a finger of Macallan— dernier cru Scotch, Mark called it — and settles in with the Times. Down the hall, Horowitz tinkles away. Deke pipes up for a glass of water; Billy brings him half a glass, holding his breath when he bends close. As if a seven-year-old would detect the smell. Though this one might.

When he finishes what little he reads of the Times anymore, he gets up and vacuums the living room; to keep from feeling like a drudge, he does just one room a day. Then he goes back down and puts the clothes in the dryer, pours another finger of Macallan, brings it into the bedroom and shuts the door. After his father died, his mother had an extension phone put in. Billy’s with his father on this: it’s an indulgence, like a box of bonbons. But he’s gotten to like it, and once in a while, usually after a drink, he’ll lie back on the bed and call somebody he used to know. There’s not much to say about his life anymore except for specialized anecdotes of tech support, so he draws out their stories with questions and quasi-alert reactions. Really. Mm-hm . A No kidding where it seems right.

He takes off his shoes, stacks the two pillows and stretches out on top of the covers with his chin jammed into his breast-bone. Solid comfort. He looks up Dennis’s office number just to make sure, punches it in and gets the voicemail, then waits for the tone and tells Dennis he’s probably surprised to hear from him but he just has a question. Then, thinking how that must sound, says, “Nothing heavy.” If Dennis calls back, he’ll think up a question. Mark’s name for Dennis was “Miss Monica,” because of his dark hair and smooth cheeks and what he pretended to imagine were Dennis’s preferences. Mark’s snottiness about him was part of the attraction. But so was Dennis’s sheer good looks. Mark wasn’t exactly the Adonis of the Western world. Neither is Billy.

He creeps in, in stocking feet, to check on Deke. Sound asleep. When he hits STOPin the middle of the Waltz in A minor, he can hear the dryer humming in the basement. He hits REWIND,to get set for tomorrow night. Back in his bedroom, he locks the door and pulls out the magazine he keeps under the mattress and resorts to a couple of nights a week. He finishes off, cleans up, knocks back the Macallan, then goes down and gets the clothes out of the dryer. He’s folding Deke’s narrow blue jeans when it strikes him that he’s insane to run such a risk. If I should die before I wake. Well, not so much that. But if one of these days Deke, who’s into everything, should be exploring around and find Fuckbuddies —or, worse yet, if Deke and his friend should find it on their playdate. No, thank you. He could sneak it out of the house in the morning, folded in the Times. But what if he should die before he wakes?