What I Loved

different from everybody else."
    "You mean that every person has a different way of seeing the world?"
    "No, Dad, I mean really and truly. I mean that because we were sitting where we were sitting tonight, we saw a game that was a little different from those guys with the beer next to us. It was the same game, but I could've noticed something those guys didn't. And then I thought, if I was sitting over there, I'd see something else. And not just the game. I mean they saw me and I saw them, but I didn't see myself and they didn't see themselves. Do you get what I mean?"
    "I know just what you mean. I've thought about it a lot, Matt. The place where I am is missing from my view. It's like that for everybody. We don't see ourselves in the picture, do we? It's a kind of hole."
    "And when I put that together with people thinking their zillions of thoughts — right now they're out there thinking and thinking — I get this floaty feeling." He paused. "On the way home in the car when we were all quiet, I thought about how everybody's thoughts keep changing. The thoughts that people were having during the game turned into new thoughts when we were in the car. That was then, but this is now, but then that now is gone, and there's a new now. Right now, I'm saying right now, but it's over before I've finished saying it."
    "In a way," I said to him, "that now you're talking about hardly exists. We feel it, but it's impossible to measure. The past is always eating up the present." I stroked his hair and paused. "I think I've always loved paintings for that reason. Somebody makes a canvas in time, but after it's made, a painting stays in the present. Does that make sense to you?"
    "Yes," he said. "Definitely. I like things to last for a long, long time." Matthew looked up at me. Then he took a breath. "I've made up my mind, Dad. I'm going to be an artist. When I was little I thought I would try for the Major Leagues. I'll always play ball, but that's not going to be my job. No, I'm going to have a studio right here in the neighborhood and an apartment close by, so I can visit you and Mom whenever I want." He closed his eyes. "Sometimes I think I'll make great big paintings, and other times I think I'll make pretty small ones. I don't know which yet."
    "You have time to decide," I said. Matt turned onto his stomach and gripped the covers. I leaned down and kissed his forehead.
    When I left Matthew's room that night, I stopped in the hallway and leaned against the wall for a couple of minutes. I was proud of my son. Like a rush of air in my lungs, the feeling grew, and then I wondered if my pride wasn't a form of reflected vanity. Matthew's thoughts echoed mine, and that night when I listened to him, I heard myself, and yet as I stood there I knew that I also admired a quality in Matthew that I didn't have. At eleven, he was bolder and more certain than I had ever been. When I told Erica about our talk, she said, "We're lucky. We're lucky to have him. He's the best boy on earth." And after that hyperbolic declaration, she rolled over and fell asleep.
    On June twenty-seventh, the six of us crowded into a rented minivan and drove to Pennsylvania. Bill and I carried two leaden duffel bags into a cabin Matt and Mark were going to share with seven other boys and greeted their counselors, Jim and Jason. The pair reminded me of an adolescent version of Laurel and Hardy — one thin, the other rotund — both grinning broadly. We briefly met the camp director, a hairy man with a pumping handshake and a hoarse voice. We strolled around the grounds and admired the mess hall, the lake, the tennis courts, and the theater. We lingered over our good-byes. Matt threw himself into my arms and hugged me. Only at night did I get such affectionate treatment anymore, but he had clearly made an exception for that farewell. I felt his ribs through his T-shirt as he pressed himself against me, and I looked down into his face. "I love you, Dad," he said in a low voice. I answered him as I always did. "And I love you, Matt. I love you." I watched him embrace Erica, and I noticed that he found it a little hard to withdraw from his mother. Erica removed his Mets cap and stroked his hair away from his forehead.
    "Matty," she said. "I'll embarrass you with a letter every day."
    "That's not embarrassing, Mom," he said. He held her tightly and pressed his cheek into her collarbone. Then he lifted his chin and smiled. "This is embarrassing."
    Erica and Violet