Page 36 - WTP Vol.IX #3

Soccer (continued from preceding page)
crazy damage to himself, just a few minutes ago— prompted by just what, at this point, he couldn’t say, beyond his own darkening misery: for all that he
had felt no impulse toward violence since the first
of the troubling revelations had unfolded and Meg had made plain that she was having the affair and no intention, either, of giving it up; for all that he had had no wish until now (none conscious, anyway) to do her any harm, he had phoned her from the office, its door secured for the moment—oh, rash act! if only to call it back now—and had said to her in low tones, If you let it continue, I will fill your sky with lightning and with smokey fire. Knowing even as he said it that it was over-the-top, excessive. Grandiose. Melodramatic. But hoping for something.
She had offered no response.
A dyke had broken there, and the gods had descend- ed, their punishing whips flailing to sting him with regret. He had given up in an instant unrecoverable ground: he could have no peace now. The branch had snapped. It had to end. Couldn’t he have found a better, more composed way of addressing the crisis? What was he thinking?
He’d examined his wrist, forearm mottled by the filtering sunlight. Wondering where to make the cut. Knowing that he had no skill in any of this. Still, the pain, the sorrow had grown too great.
Then this thought occurred to him, out of the blue: If you go ahead and do this, if you allow yourself to do this, where, exactly, will your curiosity have gone? Where WOULD your resilient curiosity have gone? For he knew in that instant that love would not save him, not love alone, not for his son or for his wife, or for the many people he cared for: all those were ashes.
It humbled him to know it, to admit it to himself. The only thing that would save him was that one selfish thing. He’d phoned his wife back to tell her that he might need to be hospitalized this evening.
And had said nothing further. ~
When Kevin reemerges, soccer ball in hand, Matt sheds his suit coat and drops it on the hood, still warm to his touch. How he’s going to manage this with such leaden arms and legs, his back feeling raw, his head also a-swirl, he has no idea. Light-headed- ness has become his permanent state these recent months—one of the challenges he faces in the eve- ning, grading papers.
The thought occurs to him to go inside for other shoes; but he knows that if he does so, the moment will be broken. He cannot afford that. His dress shoes must do.
Kevin, already, if only by degrees, seems more at ease, assured, as he tosses the ball from one hand to anoth- er. But still tense, still tight. The feral fear—of all that’s happened, of all that might happen—retaining its grip.
Son and father’s eyes meet. “Well, go on, then!” Matt smiles. “Chuck it to me, bub!”
It’s with the velocity Matt expects that the ball hurtles toward him. The anger is out now, out in
the open! Matt stifles a “Yo!” as the leather meets
his palms, smacks his hands with a sting. It’s not an unpleasant sting, since the impact has released from the surface of the ball that special soccer-ball smell, a fragrance tangy and yet wholesome.
Laughing, Matt meets his son’s eyes with a challenge. Of all the standard ball-sports—tennis and football, basketball and baseball—Matt has the least knowl- edge of and skill in this one. It’s the one sport that Kevin has gained some real adeptness in, in a week- end league that is held at his school.
Matt is glad for that. It’ll help level the playing field. So will his unwellness.
The side lawn of their house enjoys a fifty-yard depth, its width only marginally more modest in dimensions. The property is historic: a farm (or part of one) from an earlier century, it still harbors fruit trees—apple, pear, cherry—and old stands of berry cane, raspberry mainly. A grape arbor wraps two sides of the house on the sunny east and south sides, and garden plots, Matt’s recreation, now, in summer, grace the property’s farther reaches. Old-growth pines frame the longer of its borders.
~
Spinning the ball experimentally, Matt tosses it to Kevin, who immediately turns and dumps it onto the grass with a careless, insouciant gesture. Let the old man know who is going to be boss here! A later-in- life father, Matt is, for all that, a fit enough man for his stage of life, all else aside.
So it begins. Matt trots—trudges, rather, his legs filled with sand—to the lawn’s lower part, awaiting his son’s first advance. Attending on his father, Kevin opts to be showy, toeing the ball in the air with a flip of his foot, and then trading it back and forth, toe-to-
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