Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

Your child scrapes his knee; you bleed. If he is sick, you leave early from the office. Hot Wheels racers and official casino playing cards made a flu-ridden third-grader feel better. Sci-fi action figures took care of a fourth-grader. These days, little less than an all-access pass to a Hollywood movie convention prompted a reaction. The kid had the latest computer systems and all their hardware attachments. His room was plastered with promotional posters from championship fights. He must have had five different Runnin’ Rebels basketball T's (all oversize), as well as a set of UNLV team sweats (so large that Lincoln could fit into them), an official reversible game-day jersey (a goddamn tent), and each style of sneaker the Runnin’ Rebels had worn during their last three seasons — the most expensive of which, naturally, the boy had immediately outgrown. Newell had an official leather basketball autographed by the members of UNLV's national championship team. He had a limited edition ball commemorating the legendary coach's final season. How the kid had turned into such a basketball fan, Lincoln had no idea. One of the neighborhood brats? Someone from school? Like getting hit by lightning in the middle of a snowstorm, it had been a shock impossible for Lincoln to prepare for, a freak of nature that provided no reason to change his daily attitude, and that also made him see things a little differently. Almost overnight, it seemed his stouthearted hotshot was leaping up, jumping to smack the top of every doorway as if it were a backboard, immersing himself in the slang and styles of a game very different from the one dear to Lincoln's heart. And again Lincoln went along. Three separate times during the previous winter, he had been larger than any tender feelings he might have nursed, and had cashed in favors at work, exchanging them for tickets his department used for entertaining prospective clients.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas's men's basketball program had come to prominence in the seventies, thanks to a charismatic, if somewhat schlumpy, balding coach named Jerry Tarkanian. Nicknamed Tark the Shark for his habit of sucking on moistened towels during games (they kept his throat moist enough to allow him to yell at players and referees), Tarkanian was infamous for recruiting players with disreputable pasts and superhuman leaping abilities. By the late eighties UNLV had become a national powerhouse, and in 1991 destroyed Duke for the national championship. Soon after, when several of his players were photographed in a hot tub with a noted mob figure, Tarkanian came on the short end of a fight for power with university administrators, and was forced to resign. In the years since, coaches had come and gone as if they were dieting fads, and the program had never completely recovered. But if visiting celebrities no longer could be found courtside, sitting in what infamously had been called Gucci Row, Rebels basketball remained an event of local glamour. About the only way to get a pair of season tickets in nosebleed seats was to endow a chair to the school's fledgling philosophy department. Even for games against conference doormats, a pair of lower-deck seats represented something more than a coup.

“You're spoiling him,” Lorraine complained. “He needs a father, not a friend.” And: “Why don't you ever take ME?”

Was he supposed to disregard the joyous energy with which Newell had decked himself in scarlet and gray? Ignore the expectant banter as they'd sat in pregame traffic and listened to sports radio call-in? What was the point of connections if not to bring a father and son together? What was the point of money if not to make your child smile?

An executive order put the kid's hyperactivity diet on hold for a night. A couple of limp and steamed weenies were procured at four fifty a pop. Medium-size boxes of imitation-butter-soaked popcorn-shaped Styrofoam came at three fifty a shot. Another eight for watered-down Cokes. Ten for generic game programs with the visiting team's roster stapled inside. Before a lounge lizard had finished butchering the national anthem — in one particularly galling case, before Lincoln and Newell had successfully made it from the concession stand to their section — Newell had spotted kids from school. With a quick wave the boy had receded into the stadium crowd, disappearing as if he'd never been by his father's side. Yep, each one of those three supposed bonding experiences, those father-son outings, had ended up with Lincoln alone, near the bottom of a half-empty sold-out arena, watching with relative disinterest as UNLV phoned in the results, the Rebels registering uninspiring victories in contests that were neither as competitive nor as entertaining as trying to brush all the cat hairs off your suit jacket. Lincoln's knees would incessantly bang against the back of the seat in front of him and he'd pound more than a few ten-dollar buckets of watered-down hops, then set the empties onto the chair that his kid was supposed to be occupying. He'd apologize to the guy whose back he kept kneeing, engage in small talk with one or two others around him, and pay special attention to the players he knew to be his son's favorites. Inevitably, by the middle of the second half, the white Rebel players would be mopping the floor with the other team's starters. Time-out would commence on the court and the UNLV student band would strike up “Dixie” and the crowd would respond with a swelling pride, and the female cheerleaders would cartwheel from the sidelines and into the proceedings, their vented little skirts flipping up. Lincoln always stopped trading business cards for this; the horn section's brassy refrain rousing him out of conversations, thoughts about work, or flashes back to his own athletic days. A muscular male cheerleader would be at center court, waving what had to be the largest Confederate flag in the history of organized humanity; and Lincoln would slam his callused hands together, clapping loudly and roughly now, whooping it up a bit, even as his eyes scanned the aisles, checking to see if his kid was nearby.

Breaking off eye contact with his reflection in the mirror, Lincoln ran some water. Conservation regulations be damned, it took a while to get good and cold. And Lorraine always appreciated a nice glass of cold water.

Really, did life come down to more? A glass of water for the woman you love. A tub of popcorn for your kid. Was it the stronger man who ordered everyone around and in the process pleased not even himself, or the man who satisfied those around him and in the process was satisfied? The benevolent patriarch enjoys nothing so much as being able to step into responsibility and shoulder the load, making the big decisions, providing for all. Lincoln was competent and then some at his job, he didn't mind all the planning, detail work, or late nights. At the same time, no matter how hard he worked or how well a project came off, he always had a sense, basically, of how useless his job was: he did not make anything, after all, did not really provide any kind of service, but spent truly head-pounding quantities of time trying to convince corporations that having their conventions at the Kubla Khan would make for a significantly better experience than having it across the street. Any of a million people might have been able to do his job, he knew this. But the way Lincoln figured it, he might as well be the one who made use of that salary designation, the one who took care of his family in style. Thus he schmoozed the people who needed schmoozing, landed most of the new accounts that mattered, kept his customers satisfied and coming back for more. He took pride in a job well done and, a couple of times a year, he packed up his family, set their home's security system, and took off to Vail on a ski package. He headed to the Napa Valley for a weekend of wine tasting and hiking, to Puerto Vallarta and Squaw Valley, Bermuda, and Cabo. On summer mornings when Newell was just a toddler, he and Lorraine used to take him out to Lake Mead — it was about an hour-and-a-half drive and he'd keep the child entertained by pretending one of his hands was a puppet. In a high-pitched voice, Lincoln would blurt out ridiculous insults and nonsensical sentences, driving along and tickling and poking and jabbing Newell, bringing light to his kid's eyes, filling the pickup with titters, the boy laughing so hard he cramped up, stop, Daddy, or I'm a pee.