Two Princes

I watched my father calculate each guest’s value as they shuffled past. Most he dismissed with a nod that acknowledged his importance more than their condolence, not wasting precious minutes on the unprofitable. The few found worthy, he favoured with a wintry smile, a few words, perhaps a light touch on the elbow. Even at my mother’s funeral, he sought opportunities.

I sat in the alcove reserved for family. When the organ started and the service began, I slipped out to talk with my brother Andy. He has stayed twelve years old for the last ten years, resting in the grave next to the one now open for my mother.

Andy sleeps in sacred ground. I stood there alone, bracing for my father. He blamed me for Andy’s death. The moat that blame created between us remains unbreeched; the day my brother died, my mother lost two sons, her calling and the strength to face my father.

I made a promise to my mother the last time I saw her; the day she told me she was dying. Her brother Edward said she cried for me at the end, but my father forbade anyone to call me, denying her last wish. She made Edward promise he’d get me home to honour my word.

I leaned on the obelisk my mother placed on his grave the summer Andy died. That monument was in the picture in the newspaper announcing my mother’s death and recalling her early career cut short. It was the last work she completed.

§

By the time Andy was twelve, we had outgrown hide-and-seek and invented Ghost, ferocious enough to play without embarrassment. One player hid, the rest were seekers. You earned style points by drawing blood or bruising with your tag.

“Pleeeasseee … just one more. Please?” Andy said.” I found the perfect spot. He’ll never find me this time!”

“Sweetheart, not today,” mother said.” Your brother has practice this afternoon. We can’t make him late and I can’t leave you out here alone. You need to come inside so he can get ready.”

My mother was a sculptor then. When she was working, she said a window in her soul opened and she saw what needed to be created.

“It’s alright, Mom. I have seventy-three minutes until practice,” I said. My new watch, a gift from my father, included nightly telling-time lessons before bed. I loved that time spent alone with my father in his study; after he was satisfied with my progress, we’d spread out the sports pages and debate pennant races. I suspect he intended the watch, and the lessons, to nudge me toward his ordered world and away from my mother’s.

“But time is money, so my price for watching Andy for another 45 minutes is … you gotta tell us what you saw through your window this morning!”

My mother raised an eyebrow at hearing “time is money” and I realized she was far ahead of me in understanding the watch’s true purpose.

“Time is money. You little shit! One banker is more than enough for this family!”

Then she chased me across the yard towards her workshop, eyes flashing, snapping at me with a damp towel, Andy squealing after her. We zigzagged and ducked into and climbed over and between piles of wood, stacks of reinforcing bar, cement mixers, boxes of green glass insulators, rusty bicycles, tires, rolls of sheet metal and wire mesh. Our yard contained all the raw material consumed by the gift driving my mother to create sculpture. We stopped when I tripped into a one legged creature fifteen feet high, with a head of two snow tires, green insulators for eyes and a bicycle frame welded to each side of his torso, straining to reach the sky.

My mother stooped between me and her creation, catching her breath. “Are you alright?” she said. I nodded. She hugged Andy and I to her. We looked up to see whatever drew the sculpture skyward.

“Close your eyes,” she said. ”We’re in the land of two princes. The skies are soft green. Two orange suns hang low behind us in the sky, warming our backs. Fields of long blue grass wave in the wind, waiting for the sweet rain. Talking flowers line the road to the castle where the two princes live, beloved by the king and queen. What color is the road?”

“It’s glass,” Andy said. “It’s bits of coloured glass, all melted together, solid, sparkling in the light.”

She hugged us and continued. “It’s sparkling glass. And as we’re walking down the road, we see the castle getting bigger. And we hear the flowers talking, whispering. What do they say?”

“They say the king and queen are sad,” I said, feeling a sudden chill. “Because one prince is gone, and the other has left the castle to find him.”

“They’re very sad,” mother said. “And because the queen misses her princes so much, she loses her magic. And the king will no longer receive visitors from far-away. He sits alone, waiting for the two princes to return. Because the magic is lost, no rains fall. The crops die, the flowers dry up and talk no more. And then …”

Inside the house, a world away, I heard the phone ring three times, then three times, then three more times. I opened my eyes and returned to the yard, still tasting dryness from the other place. Three rings on the party line, repeated three times, was my father calling. The spell was broken. Annoyed, mother released us to answer the phone. All must serve the king.

“Your father has a late meeting,” she said. “Coach Baker called him to cancel Billy’s practice today. He says you’ve got infield and batting practice tomorrow at 10:30, before the game at noon. Baker said to tell you, you’re pitching first, and do your stretching tonight and go to bed early. Damn baseball.”

My father loved baseball. My mother considered it foolish and boring, the slow ruin of a sunny afternoon. To my father, baseball was numbers brought to life by summer magic, sacred rituals performed by nine charmed men. And a worthy sacrifice of his clock: time was meaningless for nine innings and 27 outs. He said the rules were resolute, tracking the score on the same card used for a century.

The stories he told us about growing up were all about playing baseball in a hard town by the ocean. The summer he was twelve, boys with money for uniforms filled the teams, so he spent two weeks knocking on doors of businesses, all scraping to stay open. He organized his own team, and then, wearing eleven different coloured uniforms, with eleven different sponsors’ names on the back, they beat the rich boys in the tournament and won the trophy that still sits in his office. That was the last year he played. He said boys who ate better than salt cod three times a day grew faster, so he focused on school and clawed his way out of that dying town.

But he still loved baseball. He taught us to read using the MLB Official Baseball Rules. He gave us books, articles and quizzes about in-game situations, rules and who belonged in the Hall of Fame. We both started playing young, but Andy was always special. He “played up” on travel-teams year round, always the best player on every team. When he pitched, he rubbed the ball up, caressed it with his fingers to find the seams, then he made it dance. He toyed with the batters, moving the ball up and down, in and out, teasing them, hiding the ball where they could see it but not hit it. Every time he pitched, people came to watch. Coach Baker told our father Andy was going to play on a team being put together for Williamsport, to play in the Little League World Series.

But the week he died, Andy told me he was done with baseball. We were up on the roof of the workshop at night, tracking satellites. He was tired of people watching him like he was a freak. Teammates on his travel teams resented him because of his talent. Andy didn’t care about Williamsport, but he didn’t know how to tell our father.

It hurts to say it now, but when he talked about quitting, I hated him. He was the golden child, blessed with talents and skills I only dreamed of. After games, all our parents talked about was Andy; I was visible only in Andy’s reflected glory. Even my mother saw his talent. How could he throw away what I worked so hard for, playing the same game?

§

The instant a mother knows her child is dead, she makes a sound, a terrible keening ripped from deep inside her, raising straight up from hell, that no good man should ever hear and no man who harms a child should ever escape.

I am innocent in my brother’s death, but I hear that sound every night when I try to sleep.

§

Andy and I talked our mother into one more game of Ghost while she laid down for a nap, leaving me in charge.

Andy was hiding, and I was the seeker. I set the timer on my watch for him to hide, then sat down in the workshop and fell asleep.

My father, meeting cancelled and home early, shook me awake and demanded, “Where’s Andy? Where’s your brother?”

We searched for hours, first the three of us, then with the neighbours, finally with the police, looking for Andy.

An old, hand-dug well sat hidden in tall grass at the rear of our yard. The last day I lived at home, my father filled it and sealed it with cement, but that night, the wooden top lifted off easily. The police said Andy opened it, then pulled the cover back on from the inside, before he slipped on the ladder and fell, hitting his head and falling unconscious into the water at the bottom. They said he didn’t suffer.

Everyone searching for Andy heard my mother scream. That sound stopped you where you stood as soon as it began. You felt an unbearable chill, your sweat and every hair on your body froze, and you knew.

§

Edward nudged me where I stood staring into the past, not seeing the people waiting for my mother to be put in the ground.

“Good to see ya, Billy,” he said.

The minister spoke. They lowered her with knotted silk ropes, leaving my father alone, looking down at the casket. I went to him, put my arms around him and said: “Dad. I love you. I’m so sorry”. He didn’t move. He never acknowledged me. It was like hugging granite. My knees shook. His cold cut me like a slap.

Edward saw and heard. He steered me away and said, “Good lad for trying. But It’s been ten years. This is the first time he’s left his office since she died; sitting there night and day. You need to make him come to you. He will. He wants to; he needs to. He’s just stuck and doesn’t know how to. Come to the house.”

At the house, I walked through rooms I had not seen for a decade. I saw Andy’s room frozen in time, and my room as I’d left it. They lived in a prison my mother created, punishing him with her memories of two lost sons.

I went to mother’s workshop. I blocked the doors and windows open and turned on lights and ventilation fans, drawing the wind and sun back in. I sorted through her wood rack, looking for the perfect piece, something smooth and true, ash maybe, or hickory or maple, about forty inches long, with no knots and a tight grain. I found it as I felt him standing behind me in the doorway. I refused to turn around.

“The hell are you doing? You have no right,” my father said.

“I have every goddamn right. She was my mother. What right did you have to stop her from seeing me before she died?”

I turned to face him. He attacked.

“He was special; they were scouting him for big schools when he was twelve. He could have turned pro at sixteen. And your carelessness killed him. Snuffed out his life. While you slept, he died.”

“No Dad. The police looked at everything. You know it was an accident, everyone but you said it was an accident back then. You blamed me and refused to hear it, but it was an accident. And I told you---he was done with baseball. Burnt out from playing baseball year-round. Do you think I don’t hear her scream every night? Still? To hell with you, old man. You don’t own the exclusive on missing them.”

I turned, adjusted the angle of the blade on the saw, then started the motor, remembering lessons learned long ago. The wood slid lengthwise across the blade, cutting four square corners off, leaving an eight-sided promise.

He crossed the floor to watch as I tapped the sharp steel centres into the cross hairs marked on each end, marks made by my mother, left for me to find. I closed the lathe, then started the motor, spinning the wood. I held the chisel to the whirling edges. Shavings danced.

My father spoke. I stopped the lathe.

“She couldn’t do it after he died. Her sculpture. She tried, but she said the window closed. And you know what happened next? She got popular. After she couldn’t make any more sculpture, that’s when the art world found her. Soon as what she wanted all her life happened; she lost her gift. Do you have any idea what it did to her, losing him, then her gift, then her art world demanding what she couldn’t make? You don’t know what it did to her.”

“I knew. I saw her a few times a year when she was teaching. She told me how much it hurt to have the technical ability, but not the gift, trying to teach something she was born with, then lost. I know the way you ranted at her, too. What was the sense of art, you said. Her work reselling; prices climbing, no money for her. Where’s the profit in art, you told her. I knew, dad, I knew exactly what she went through dealing with you and her art and everything she lost. I knew.”

I started the lathe and continued working the chisel, shaping the wood, watching it spin narrow at one end, thick at the other.

He spoke again. I stopped the lathe.

“Why did you come back?” he said.

“Because I made her a promise. The last time I saw her; she knew she was dying. She knew what a thick headed ass you were, so the only way she could save you from yourself was to extract promises from Edward and me. So that’s what she did, from me then and from Edward before she died. So, tell me, how does it feel to know that her last concern while dying was for you? Are you pleased? Do you see the profit in that? “

He lowered his eyes, said nothing. But he was listening. Finally.

“They’re gone, Dad. They’re dead. It’s just you and me now. And you’ve got your head so far up your own ass, you’ve lost all humanity. Remember Barbara Jordan?”

He nodded.

“Mom’s best friend for forty years. Bridesmaids together. Your best friend’s wife until he passed. At the funeral I saw her, shaking with grief, coming towards you and you almost knocked her over to talk to some suit behind her. What would Mom say to that?”

He didn’t answer. And kept looking down, eyes blinking fast.

“I’m here, Dad. Andy’s gone. Mom’s gone. I’m all you’ve got. How much longer are you going to blame me for something I didn’t do and punish me for something I can’t fix? I can do this until you die. I’ve got a life in the city, but you’re gonna die soon, all alone in this house. You’re already dead inside.”

He turned away, unable to face me.

“When’s the last time you watched a ball game in the sun with a beer and hot dog, kept score with a pencil and program, not sitting in a box listening to the TV? I’m your flesh and blood. Sit in the sun with me and watch a game.”

He was turning back now to me now.

“We’ll argue about who you’d want pitching in Game 7 - Fergie or Palmer or Catfish or Steib or Doc Holliday. We can still make that trip to the Hall of Fame we talked about when I was sixteen. Remember that? Cooperstown? We’ll take a week, stopping at minor league parks along the way, Buffalo, Syracuse, Utica, Binghampton, anywhere they play on real grass.”

I opened the lathe. The wood dropped into my hands; a few ounces heavier than a final version. It needed to be sanded and polished until the ultimate form of the bat appeared.

I crossed the room to the partial sculptures; glass, wood and metal hinting at something unfinished. I swung the bat hard, arc flat and level. Sculpture exploded. I kept swinging harder, letting the violence boil away my rage at the loss, the unfairness, the too soon of it all, until the bat shattered, and my eyes were wet, and my hands bled.

My father hugged me from behind when I was standing there, looking at the wreckage.

He cried. I turned to him. We couldn’t talk. A door opened.

We stood there, eyes closed, supporting each other. I saw the green sky. Sweet rain fell. The glass road sparkled. Then the Queen smiled, one prince beside her, the other home at last, protecting the King.