The Whore's Child

Not confidence, exactly. No, he just looked like a boy who’d finally had enough, who preferred to face the firing squad now rather than later. That the batter who now stepped up to the plate was the best hitter on the Stop & Shop team, that he’d already hit two home runs, didn’t even seem to occur to him.
    It occurred to Lin, though, because the boy was left-handed, and when he took a slow practice swing, the end of his bat was pointing right at Lin, as if to predict where hell would break loose. As Hugo started his windup, things went into slow motion and Lin Hart found he had the leisure to think a great many thoughts. For instance, that the game didn’t really matter so much, because everything was changing. A year from now his father might be living someplace else. Hadn’t he said from the start that the apartment over the barbershop wasn’t forever? No, he’d insisted it was just until Lin’s mother made up her mind. New York City, he’d hinted more than once, would be a much better place for a bartender. Or maybe his mother would announce tomorrow that they were moving to Connecticut to be closer to Grandma and Grandpa Foster. Maybe that’s why the house was being painted, so it could be sold for a better price. Maybe in another month he’d be in a new school in Connecticut where they had lots of pretty girls even prettier than his cousin, whose hair he could still feel brushing his cheek and whose smell he’d breathed deep within his lungs. He remembered the satisfaction of guessing right about Audrey’s bullying, the pleasure of seeing his bold challenge work according to plan.
That’s
what he was going to be good at, it now dawned on him. He’d be good with girls. His father was. That’s why people called him Slick, and slick was a good thing to be.
    Lin had other thoughts, too, and his reverie might have produced a great many other understandings had his thoughts not been interrupted by the sharp crack of a bat.
    CENTER
    A strange car was parked right in front of the house when Lin returned home that evening, a Dodge that looked brand new. Leaning his bike up against the porch railing, he went over and peered inside, looking for clues, but the interior was clean, with nothing on the seats or the floor except a paper mat on the driver’s side.
    In the house he found his father, wearing a sport coat and sitting in the chair he’d used back when this was his house too. His mother, all dressed up, lounged on the near end of the sofa, and both held short highball glasses half full of murky liquid. His father’s busted lip was swollen, but otherwise he looked perfectly natural, and they were both smiling at him so smugly that Lin was forced to consider the possibility that one of the improbable scenarios required to bring this domestic scene to fruition had actually occurred: either his father had grown up, or his mother had kissed his ass.
    His father spoke first. “Who won?”
    â€œHow come you’re here?” Lin said.
    â€œI live here.”
    Lin looked at his mother, who nodded, with a crooked smile that for an instant made her look like his Connecticut grandmother.
    â€œWhose car is that outside?” he said.
    â€œOurs,” his father smiled.
    â€œHow about that?” his mother said. “We’re no longer a foot.”
    And just that quickly, a flash of understanding. “Afoot” was one word, not two. “On foot,” it meant.
    â€œAnything else you want to know?” his father said.
    There was. The baseball game had run long, making him late for dinner, but there were no food smells. “What about dinner?”
    â€œWe’re going out to eat,” his mother said.
    â€œTo Rigazzi’s?”
    â€œIf you like. Why don’t you go get cleaned up and put on some nice clothes?”
    â€œI don’t get it,” he finally admitted, which struck both of them as about the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
    Ten minutes later, they’d climbed into the new Dodge and were just about to pull away when Mr. Christie’s pickup rumbled up behind them. Lin’s father looked pleased by this turn of events and, ignoring his wife’s whispered plea to drive off, immediately turned off the ignition and got out. Lin got out too, leaving his mother the only one in the car. The two men shook hands, Mr. Christie beaming his usual good cheer, Lin’s father