Follow the Sun. Edward J. Delaney

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ come on.”

      “What do you care? It’s my problem, not yours.”

      “Cut it out, you two,” the old man croaked.

      They all went quiet again. The old man looked like he was waiting for some kind of an answer.

      “What is it, then?” Quinn said.

      “You need to find a real job and then marry that girl.”

      Quinn thought about that. He didn’t want to do either of those things, in truth. But there was the baby, his daughter he’d hardly seen.

      “Look, I’ll marry her,” he finally said. “But I’m not getting some other job.”

      That was it. There was something inescapable about the daily grip of his work. To cast the baited pots into deep water and pull them back to discover within them the salt-slick prize, the glistening bugs snapping angry in their entrapment. To pull from the sea the hard currency of true sustenance, the same miracle that made him feel distant fraternity to some Midwestern farmer pulling growing things from sour dirt. It was a marvel, and it made you wonder about the fraud of any other work people could do. It was almost enough to make you forget you were losing money each time you touched that simple miracle.

      Robbie’s visitation days with his daughter, Sarah, come cross-hatched with both thrill and dread. He’s never felt like a very good father, with his twice-monthly contact. But that’s what the ex, M., had demanded in divorce court. She sat with her new boyfriend, who she had lined up for his job. Robbie, in turn, had just wanted it to be over, but now regrets his willingness to fold so easily. Sarah was little more than a baby then; the assumption was that as she got older, they’d spend more time together. That has yet to happen. His own work schedule thwarts such change. When Sarah comes weekends with her backpack, dropped off in the mall-parking-lot switchover by her mother with no words exchanged, he feels as if he has to introduce himself all over again. She comes at him, always, with a smile that makes him bereft at all he has missed. The mystery of why things fail so badly arrive with her. But, at least, Sarah gets in the car each time as if this is a familiar corner of her large universe.

      In the car, seat belt fastened, she says, “What’s for dinner?”

      “Mac and cheese,” he says, to her predictable delight. Having dinners her mother does not abide is one of the small pleasures he can afford her. Their relationship involves mostly eating at franchise restaurants and watching the DVDs Sarah brings in her backpack. She is entranced by endless loops of princesses and fairies and 3D animals. The fatherly indulgences he sponsors are both bribery and distance, as he has no other ideas what to do with her. He remembers as a child that his sister was largely his mother’s ward, he and Quinn their father’s. It seemed a natural order of things. So he spends his weekends with Sarah mostly trying to figure out how to kill the time, a series of long jumps from breakfast to lunch, lunch to dinner, dinner to bedtime.

      “Do you ever think about playing a sport?” he says, hopefully.

      “Not really.”

      “You want to play catch?”

      “I don’t really like that.”

      “Want to go the park and kick a ball around?”

      “No.”

      “Oh.” Which leaves him out of ideas.

      He doesn’t cover games on the weekends that she comes over, and so it would probably seem odd to take her to one. He brought her to the Red Sox one Saturday afternoon last summer, but she folded under the noise of the crowd, and they left the ballpark with her sobbing on his shoulder.

      “I wish Coco was here,” she says.

      “Is that one of your toys?”

      “No, Daddy, she’s my friend.”

      “You have a friend named Coco?” he says, to which her face goes sour.

      “She’s a toy, but she’s my friend.”

      One of the provisions of the divorce was that Sarah was not allowed to be around Quinn. He was in his worst addiction at the time, and it was another fight Robbie didn’t choose to make. He never mentions Quinn, and Sarah seems to have no memory of him. There’s less and less about the family that she knows. Dad is gone and Ma is down at the nursing home, her mind seeming erased of all but the very oldest memories. His sister, Margaret, moved to North Carolina years ago; between she and Robbie and Social Security and Medicaid they manage the payments for their mother. They were as tight a family as any, he thought, but now it’s been reduced to him, and Quinn, and the duty Robbie feels toward him. And he’s only slowly admitting to himself he’s become so weary of Quinn. He carries enough weight, as he sees it, without his brother entering the room. When Quinn messed up, Robbie knew Quinn would pay for his sins. What he didn’t realize was how much Quinn’s sins would exact a toll on Robbie himself.

      He looks up and his daughter is staring at him.

      “I want to watch my DVD,” Sarah says. He furtively wishes the marriage had lasted long enough for a second child, so at least they could occupy each other. A DVD makes a poor sibling.

      By the time the DVD is ten minutes in, Sarah’s already fallen asleep in front of the television. He hopes this is the most awkward phase to bridge, a man and his second-grade daughter. He’s hanging on, as always, hoping things will get better.

      He sits for a bit, then goes into the bedroom. The business card Jean had given him is on the dresser, where he’d laid it out that night when he’d come home.

      9.

      TINA HEARS THE RAKE OF HER MOTHER’S VOICE THROUGH thin doors. Time, or day, or situation: no idea. Just darkness; just her mother’s bellow, come in drunk again on cheap wine, needing attention.

      “Tina!” Gina shouts, as if calling down a mineshaft.

      “I got work in the morning!” Tina shouts back, rolling her pillow over her head.

      Tina hears the leaden footsteps, the endless rub of shoulder gliding along wall as Gina tries to stay on her feet. And now the shadow in the doorway, framed by light, somehow insistent. Now the breathing, drink-heavy and humid.

      “I saw him,” Gina says, “but he didn’t see me.”

      “Who did you see?”

      “Your father.”

      “So what?” Tina says, rolling over toward the wall, trying to make a point.

      “I don’t even think he knew it was me.”

      Tina is silent, but her mother knows she’s awake.

      “He’s got the money to drink beer,” she says, “but not the money for us.”

      Tina says nothing.

      “And I’m broke trying to support you.”

      Bullshit, Tina is thinking. Gina is in her forties now, and bristling with grievances. She only works sporadically, СКАЧАТЬ