Mystic River

She couldn't picture Dave with these two men, even as boys.

"Okay," she'd said.

"So this car pulls up, I get in, and not long after, I escaped."

"Escaped."

He nodded. "Wasn't much to it, honey."

"But, Dave? "

He placed a finger to her lips. "That's sorta the end of it, okay?"

He was smiling, but Celeste could see a? what was it?? a kind of mild hysteria in his eyes.

"I mean? what?? I remember playing ball and kick-the-can," Dave said, "and going to the Looey-Dooey, trying to stay awake in class. I remember some birthday parties and shit. But, come on, it's a pretty boring time. Now, high school?"

She'd let it go, as she would when he lied about why he lost his job at American Messenger Service (Dave saying it was another budgetary cutback, but other guys from the neighborhood were walking in off the street in the weeks that followed and scooping up jobs left and right), or when he told her his mother died of a sudden heart attack when the whole neighborhood had heard the story of Dave coming home from senior year in high school to find her sitting by the oven, kitchen doors closed, towels pressed to the bottoms, gas filling the room. Dave, she'd come to believe, needed his lies, needed to rewrite his history and fashion it in such a way that it became something he could live with and tuck far away. And if it made him a better person? a loving, if occasionally distant, husband and attentive father? who was to judge?

But this lie, Celeste knew as she tossed on some jeans and one of Dave's shirts, could bury him. Bury them, now that she had joined in the conspiracy to obstruct justice by washing the clothes. If Dave didn't come clean with her, she couldn't help him. And when the police came (and they would; this wasn't TV; the dumbest, drunkest detective was smarter than either of them when it came to crime), they'd break Dave's story like an egg on the side of a pan.

* * *

DAVE'S RIGHT HAND was killing him. The knuckles had ballooned to twice their normal size and the bones closest to the wrist felt like they were ready to punch up through the skin. He could have forgiven himself, then, for floating meatballs to Michael, but he refused to. If the kid couldn't hit curves and knucklers from a Wiffle ball, he'd never be able to track a hardball coming twice as fast, hit it with a bat about ten times as heavy.

His son was small for seven, and far too trusting for this world. You could see it in the openness of his face, the glow of hope in the set of his blue eyes. Dave loved that in his son, but he hated it, too. He didn't know if he had the strength to take it away, but he knew that soon he'd have to, or the world would do it for him. That tender, breakable thing in his son was a Boyle curse, the same thing that made Dave, at thirty-five, repeatedly get mistaken for a college student, find himself getting carded at liquor stores outside the neighborhood. His hairline hadn't changed since he was Michael's age; no lines had ever creased his face; and his own blue eyes were vivid and innocent.

Dave watched Michael dig in as he'd been taught, adjust his cap, and cock the bat high above his shoulder. He swayed his knees a bit, flexing them, a habit Dave had been gradually working out of him, but one that kept coming back like a tic, and Dave released the ball fast, hoping to exploit the weakness, hiding the knuckler by releasing the ball before his arm was fully extended, the center of his palm screaming with the pinch of the grip.

Michael stopped flexing, though, as soon as Dave began his motion, quick as it was, and as the ball fluttered, then dropped over the plate, Michael swung low and teed off on it like he was holding a three-wood. Dave saw the flash of a hopeful smile on Michael's face mixed with a bit of amazement at his own prowess, and Dave almost let the ball go, but instead he slapped it back to the earth, felt something crumble in his chest as the smile disintegrated on his son's face.

"Hey, hey," Dave said, deciding to let his son feel the goodness of a sweet swing, "that was a great swing, Yaz."

Michael was still working on a scowl. "How come you could knock it down then?"

Dave picked the ball up off the grass. "I dunno. 'Cause I'm a lot taller than kids in Little League?"

Michael's smile was tentative, waiting to break again. "Yeah?"

"Lemme ask you? you know any second-graders who go five-ten?"

"No."

"And I had to jump for it."

"Yeah."

"Yeah. Keep a trip to a single, all five-ten of me."

Michael laughed now. It was Celeste's laugh, rippling. "Okay?"

"You were flexing, though."

"I know, I know."

"Once you dig in and set, buddy, you stop moving."

"But Nomar? "

"I know all about Nomar. And Derek Jeter, too. Your heroes, okay. But when you're pulling down ten million in the Show, you can fidget. Until then?"

Michael shrugged, kicked at the grass.

"Mike. Until then?"

Michael sighed. "Until then, I concentrate on the basics."

Dave smiled and tossed the ball above him, caught it without watching it fall. "It was a nice rip, though."

"Yeah?"

"Dude, that thing was heading for the Point. Heading uptown."

"Heading uptown," Michael said, and let ripple another of his mother's laughs.

"Who's heading uptown?"

They both turned to see Celeste standing on the back porch, hair tied back and barefoot, one of Dave's shirts hanging untucked over faded jeans.

"Hey, Ma."

"Hey, cutie. You going uptown with your father?"

Michael looked at Dave. It was their private joke suddenly, and he snickered. "Nah, Ma."

"Dave?"

"The ball he just hit, honey. The ball was going uptown."

"Ah. The ball."

"Killed it, Ma. Dad knocked it down only 'cause he's so tall."

Dave could feel her watching him even when her eyes were on Michael. Watching and waiting and wanting to ask him something. He remembered her hoarse voice in his ear last night, as she rose off the kitchen floor to grab his neck and pull her lips to his ear and say, "I am you now. You are me."

Dave hadn't known what the hell she was talking about, but he liked the sound of it, and the hoarseness in her vocal cords had pushed him that much closer to climax.

Now, though, he had the feeling it was just one more attempt by Celeste to climb inside his head, poke around, and it pissed him off. Because once they got in there, they didn't like what they saw and they ran from it.

"So what's up, honey?"

"Oh, nothing." She wrapped her arms around herself, even though the day was warming up pretty fast. "Hey, Mike, did you eat?"