Tom Mendicino - Probation

“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.

The late Mark Harris and the late Jerre Mangione were the first writers to encourage me to follow in their footsteps. Elaine Scarry was exceptionally generous and supportive and deserves all the accolades she has gone on to achieve.

Nick Street, Joe Pittman, and Lawrence Schimel were willing to put me into print.

Judith Stern, since 1994 and counting.

Brian Corbett, Mark McCloud, L.W.B., Sharon Sorokin James, Lori Biondi, and Cheryl Radenz all contributed to making this possible.

Mitchell Waters has been steadfast throughout, and John Scognamiglio ought to be on a Publisher’s Row Mount Rushmore with Perkins and Robbins and Maxwell.

The family in this work of fiction are pikers compared to my parents and sister when it comes to unconditional love.

And, finally, to Nick Ifft, for better or worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health and, thirty years later, till death do us part.