Skin Deep

57

Steve didn’t know what to make of the resemblance of the Novak woman to Terry Farina. In reality, the shot was small and the likeness more generic than actual. Furthermore, the file photo close-up of her taken a year before her death looked even less like Farina. He decided any resemblance had more to do with the hair than anything else. That and the fact that he could no longer fully trust his perceptions

Maybe it was a nostalgic impulse, a little stroll down memory lane. Or maybe it was a necessary diversion to flush the sludge from his mind. But instead of heading back to Boston, Steve took Exit 2 off 93 and drove to Hampton Beach.

It was a bright sunny day with cumulus clouds rolling against the azure blue like huge puffs of cotton being blown out to sea. Even though it was a weekday, several people were on Ocean Boulevard, moving in and out of fast-food places and shops where you could get T-shirts, nose rings, fried dough, saltwater taffy, your fortune told, and a henna tattoo. Electronic arcades kept up an endless pulse of whoops and whistles from video shoot-’em-ups, poker, and Skee ball. And lacing the ocean air were the scents of fried clams, cotton candy, popcorn, and oh-wow incense. The place was a quintessential American honky-tonk that still tripped a wire in his soul.

In faded vignettes, Steve remembered coming here with his mother on a few excursions when she wasn’t in one of her emotional black holes. She’d drive them in her car and they’d cruise the strip with the radio playing like a couple of teenagers. They’d stop for fried clams and orange slush then head for the water. With her cheering him on, he’d charge down the sand like a colt, impervious to the cold that would stop adults dead at the knees. And when he emerged, red and goosefleshed, she’d wrap a towel around him and hug him while he warmed up. Those were the good innocent times because for whatever reason her demons were asleep and she was free and happy to play mother and not suffering paralysis from self-doubt and a bad marriage.

Steve walked down the boardwalk, his shouldered briefcase slapping his side with the heft of the Novak files, reminding him that he should find a bench and continue reviewing them. But that seemed out of place, a corruption of the sunny salt-air memories. So he dismissed that idea and cut across the beach toward the water.

The tide was out, exposing the hard intertidal sand where people threw Frisbees and footballs and kids skimmed the shallows on Boogie boards. On a hot weekend, thousands would swarm the flats.

In the distance a father played whiffle ball with his small son, whose plastic bat was nearly as big as he was. Thirty years ago, that was Steve and his father, who had brought him here to play catch with a rubber baseball. He could still feel the glove on his left hand, could still smell the leather. He had a good throwing arm that could have taken him through high school teams and beyond but for the migraines that benched him in Little League.

He could still hear his father’s words: Throw overhead, not side arm. Right arm over right shoulder and down to your left pant pocket. It was right here on the low tide flats, Great Boars’ Head in the distance—one of the few fond memories Steve had of his father—a sweet hour of a handful that rose out of the muck of contention, shouting matches, fits of rage, the sound of pounding and smashing that clouded the kinescope of his childhood.

To this day, he never knew what kept his parents together. It couldn’t have been him since neither proved fully equipped for parenthood. She was overwhelmed and emotionally unstable. And his father was too caught up in his work to play daddy. On his off days he felt pressured into doing things with young Stephen and his impatience was obvious. When they were out at a movie or baseball game, he’d check his watch, reminding Steve that he had to get home early because he had work or an old friend was in town. Or he’d shuffle him off to a neighbor’s house. At the time, Steve thought that was normal. Only when he was older did he realize how little his father partook in his life and how much he depended on his mother.

He removed his shoes and socks and slipped them into his briefcase. He walked to the water’s edge and rolled up his pant bottoms. The sun had heated the sand flats, but wavelets still carried the numbing chill that sent a shock to his brain.

So little time, he thought as he watched the father and son play.

He moved toward them. He could hear the man tell his son to keep his eye on the ball because he kept missing and getting discouraged, hitting the ground with the bat in frustration. The father encouraged the boy to take his time, to watch the ball, to swing at the right moment—that it was all timing.

Timing.

After a dozen pitches and just one connect, the boy whined that he was stupid and couldn’t hit.

Steve looked at the boy and his father and stopped in his tracks. That could be me. I could be that man and that boy could be our son. I could do that.

In a moment of clarity that seemed to strip the air of haze and sound, Steve saw himself tossing that ball to the boy, telling him to correct his stance, to keep his eye on the ball. In a suspended instant that had all the rightness of a religious epiphany he told himself, I want that.

For so long he had convinced himself that fatherhood was not for him, that he could not get beyond a wall of scar tissue to assume the role, the responsibility. But as he stood on that open sand flat under an endless blue, it became so clear that he had essentially resigned himself to a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, based solely on the belief that he’d end up like his father—a too busy, angry, self-absorbed drunk.

But that was not him. And at this moment those doubts seemed no more than flimsy imaginings born of obsession and irrational fears.

I can do that.

As he stood there taking in the scene of the father and his boy, Steve felt something inside loosen and break.

I can.

With a grunt, the boy took a mighty cut but caught the whiffle ball on the wrist of the bat, sending it toward Steve. With one hand he picked it out of the air and brought it to the father.

He turned his back so the boy wouldn’t overhear. Steve handed the ball to the man. “Have him choke up and keep his elbow parallel to the ground.”

Before the man could respond, Steve moved on.

A few moments later, Steve looked back. The father was crouched down, talking to his son and setting his stance with the bat choked up and his arm parallel to the ground. A moment later the kid cracked the ball in the sweet spot, sending it high into the air. He let out a hoot and his father cheered and flashed Steve a thumbs-up.

Yes! Steve said to himself. I can.

His hand went to his cell phone clip on his belt in the impulse to tell Dana, to say he could do it, that he had made up his mind that he could commit.

But how to word it without sounding foolish or desperate?

Hi, it’s me. I decided I want to have kids, I could come by tonight if you’re free.

Hi, I had this vision and I’m ready to commit. What do you say we start all over again?

He pressed her number. On the fifth ring her voice message came on. He clicked off and continued down the flats through shafts of light from the setting sun.