13
Somebody gave Mrs. Kaplan two tickets to tonight’s Mets game, and she—inexplicably a Yankees fan—foisted them off on Patrick.
Patrick in turn tried to give them to the Valdezes, but it’s a weeknight and Mrs. Valdez won’t let the kids go out.
Mr. Valdez is working. Patrick thought Susan and Nathaniel might want to go, but Susan says she’s managed to live this long without seeing any professional sports and isn’t quitting now.
“Do you want to go to a Mets game?” Patrick asks Nathaniel. Patrick doesn’t particularly want to watch a baseball game, and he doubts Nathaniel does either—he doesn’t read the sports section of the paper and when the sports reporter comes on the eleven o’clock news, Nathaniel picks up a book.
“With you?” Nathaniel asks, letting the hammer fall to his side.
The other day, Nathaniel found some framed botanical prints in one of the more derelict corners of the second floor, and now he’s hanging them downstairs on the few patches of wall that aren’t covered by bookshelves.
He’s standing on a chair, and Patrick has to resist the urge to remind him to be safe.
“Yeah, with me.” Patrick’s not sure if this is a deterrent.
It’s been a few days since they kissed, and Nathaniel hasn’t made anything resembling another move.
Patrick isn’t chasing after an employee, so that’s that, then.
Presumably, Nathaniel wanted to prove to himself that he could kiss a man, and now he’s accomplished that: excellent work all around, Patrick’s job here is done.
But even before the kiss, things between them had been—not strained, exactly, but careful.
Especially after the trip to the radio supply store.
Sometimes he catches Nathaniel watching him.
Patrick feels exposed, like he typed up a list of his weaknesses, an illustrated guide to his worst moments, and stuck it on the bathroom mirror for Nathaniel to reference.
“They have hot dogs and beer,” he adds, as if that’s any kind of incentive.
But Nathaniel smiles, just this quirk of one side of his mouth that Patrick’s coming to realize is Nathaniel’s version of a full-blown grin. “I’d like that,” he says.
“We should leave at six. God knows how long it takes to get to Shea Stadium.”
“Where is it? Queens, right?” He steps down from the chair, using Patrick’s shoulder to steady himself, then goes over to the subway map.
Before Nathaniel agrees to go anywhere, he needs to find it on the map, needs to see his route laid out in front of him.
At first, Patrick thought this had something to do with Nathaniel’s nervousness about going outdoors, but now he wonders if Nathaniel’s just the kind of person who likes knowing exactly where he is in the world.
Patrick puts his finger on the Willets Point subway stop. “You’ve been to Queens. Mrs. Kaplan’s house isn’t even that far from the stadium.”
Nathaniel makes a doubtful noise.
Plenty of New Yorkers treat visiting the outer boroughs like going on safari.
Patrick used to think it was because they thought they were too good for it, but now he realizes it’s because they don’t understand the bus system outside Manhattan.
Which is fair, because neither does Patrick.
But he doubts that’s Nathaniel’s rationale—he doesn’t understand public transit within Manhattan either.
This will be the farthest Nathaniel has been from the shop since he got here.
A month ago, Patrick would have been patient and gentle and understanding, but now he knows what Nathaniel looks like when he wants a push. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Patrick says. “You can go to Queens, you snob.”
They wind up on an especially wrecked Queens-bound subway car. This spring, graffiti artists are going all out. Either that, or the city doesn’t have the money to paint over and scrub off the graffiti.
Patrick always expects Nathaniel to be put off by these signs of decay.
After all, he keeps the shop in an unnatural state of cleanliness.
He tends to stare at litter and graffiti, wads of gum ground into the pavement, cab drivers swearing at one another across traffic.
But Patrick is all too familiar with Nathaniel’s less impressed expressions, and right now he looks perfectly content.
Patrick points to a crude drawing. “People drew dicks on the walls of Pompeii.”
“We’re participating in a great human tradition,” Nathaniel agrees. “An unbroken chain of penis graffiti dating back thousands of years.”
Patrick’s aunt and uncle used to bring him and Michael into the city twice a year: once to visit his uncle’s office, once to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, boxes ticked off on some imaginary How To Do The Bare Minimum By Your Orphaned Relations checklist. The New York City of the early fifties was bright and sparkling, steel and glass, everything gleaming with the polish of prosperity.
Everyone wore hats and had their shoes shined, and Patrick sat on the subway with his hands folded in his lap like he was in church.
The trash didn’t dare linger on the streets, and cabbies didn’t shout, and neither of those things can possibly be true but Patrick will swear by them anyway.
In 1958, when he realized he couldn’t go home—or that the city was his home, now—the shine hadn’t worn off quite yet. Only in the last few years has he really had the sense that he’s in a place that’s past its prime.
But the seedier this town gets, the more it feels like home.
He doesn’t have any business with bright and sparkling; he doesn’t want to wear a hat or get his shoes shined, either literally or metaphorically.
Fifteen years ago, there was barely room in this city for people like him, or at least that’s how it felt.
Maybe a place needs a layer of grime and an aura of rot before anyone’s willing to cede territory to the undesirables.
Their seats are in the upper deck behind third base.
“I’ll get some beer,” Patrick says.
“Priorities,” Nathaniel agrees.
When Patrick gets back, Nathaniel is regarding the field with an odd expression.
When the game starts, Nathaniel leans forward in his seat, his hands clutching his knees, Patrick still holding both beers.
The first three innings pass like this, Nathaniel studying the game with a strange intensity, and Patrick wishing he had binoculars to get a good look at that shortstop.
“The Mets,” Nathaniel finally says, taking the beer that Patrick presses into his hand. “The Mets didn’t exist the last time I watched a baseball game.”
“What team did you root for?” Patrick asks, taking advantage of Nathaniel being in the mood to talk about his life.
“Growing up, the Red Sox.”
“Oh, so you really are from Boston?”
“I grew up in Vermont,” he says easily, having evidently forgotten that he once said he was from Boston. “I had a boss who always had Senators games on in his office. He’d make people stand behind the television and read their reports.”
“That doesn’t seem like a great way to watch baseball or do a job.”
“Patrick, you have no idea.”
It’s a weeknight game, early in the season, so the stands aren’t full. Around them, empty seats give the illusion of privacy.
Nathaniel leans back and puts his feet up on the back of an empty seat in front of them.
“Once or twice a year,” he says, something taut in his voice that’s belied by the looseness of his posture, “we’d drive up to see the Orioles play the Yankees.
My ex-wife was a Yankees fan.” He takes a sip of beer, his gaze fixed straight ahead.
Patrick isn’t sure whether he’s more surprised Nathaniel was married or that he’s mentioning it. “Is that what went wrong?” he asks, because he doesn’t know how else to ask if the divorce is what made Nathaniel lose his mind a little.
“We got divorced in ‘62,” Nathaniel says. Patrick assumes that’s a no .
Patrick flags down the beer man and buys two more overpriced Rheingolds. Then he gets some ice cream from the next vendor who passes by. Beer and ice cream might not be a decent dinner, but he’s glad to see Nathaniel eating something.
“How long were you married?” Patrick asks.
“Three years.”
The next question, the obvious question, is do you have any kids .
If Nathaniel got divorced in ‘62 and he was married for three years, his kids wouldn’t be older than eight or nine.
The world is filled with men who walk away from their families, but Patrick can’t imagine that Nathaniel wouldn’t even send a postcard.
He remembers how firmly Nathaniel insisted he had nobody to write to, nobody who was worried about him.
But he remembers, also, Susan asking how Nathaniel learned to take care of newborns. Patrick hopes he’s added all of that up and come to the wrong conclusions, but the way Nathaniel’s hand is clenched on his thigh tells its own story.
When Nathaniel gets like this, he likes the reminder that he isn’t alone.
At least that’s how Patrick’s explained it to himself, the way Nathaniel shadows him after a bad day.
Right now, slouched in their seats, their upper arms are already touching.
Patrick hopes that everyone in the stands behind them is too busy watching the runner on third base to pay much attention to Patrick’s hand.
He reaches over and pries Nathaniel’s fingers off his thigh and leaves his own hand covering Nathaniel’s for a second before pulling away.
“I used to root for the Red Sox too,” Patrick says.
“I thought you were from Long Island.”
“Only after my parents died.”
“Ah, when you fell into the clutches of the evil aunt and uncle.”
“They weren’t so bad to Michael.” They were neglectful, mean, stingy, and hateful, and they let Patrick sit in jail instead of coming to bail him out. But they tolerated Michael, at least.
“Well, as long as they were fine to Michael, it doesn’t matter that they kicked you out,” Nathaniel says. He’s apparently been talking to Susan.
“They didn’t kick me out. I ran away.” Patrick could have gone home after getting out of jail. He could have gone home, could have let Michael and Susan know he was alive, could have finished high school—but he didn’t know how to do any of those things.
“Susan thinks they smacked you around.”
“Only a normal amount,” Patrick says.
“It’s very distressing when I’m the sane one here. What would be the normal amount for someone to smack Eleanor around?”
Patrick thinks he might be sick. “Stop being reasonable.”
“My parents were the same way.” He raises a hand to flag down the beer man. “And look at me now, not a trouble in the world.”
Patrick starts laughing, which is just totally inappropriate, what the hell.
But Nathaniel has that little twist of a smile he gets when he’s pleased with himself.
Nathaniel takes out his wallet and buys a pair of beers, something deft and second nature about it, and Patrick catches himself wondering if Nathaniel bought drinks for his wife at Orioles games.
They’re well on the road to tipsy at the top of the seventh inning, and all the way there by the time the crowd starts filing out as soon as it’s clear that the Mets aren’t going to win this one.
“This has been lovely,” Nathaniel says. “Really lovely.”
Patrick doubts anybody’s ever called the Mets lovely, but he can’t disagree.
The infield grass is unnaturally green under the stadium lights, and the smell of Cracker Jacks and spilled beer is the kind of familiar that passes for comfortable.
The sky is dark except for planes taking off from LaGuardia, and Nathaniel’s arm is still pressed against his own.
On the subway home, Nathaniel takes out his little notebook and writes something in it.
“What’s in there?” Patrick asks, feeling bold.
“It’s a list of my sins,” Nathaniel says, and sticks the notebook back in his pocket.