'You had a girlfriend?' Shelly said. 'When was this?'
'Mom, come on,' he said.
'What, you can tell the whole world but you can't tell me?'
Danny looked at me, his eyes pleading. I smiled at him.
Six-year-old Danny Linwood with a girlfriend. I wondered if she'd missed him, or even understood what had happened.
'Mrs. Linwood. Shelly,' I said, looking at Danny from the corner of my eye. 'I need to be able to talk to your son with his full concentration. I know this is hard and you have a lot to catch up on with Danny, but I need this to do my job.'
'Your job.' She sneered. 'My job is my son.'
'I know that. All I want to do is tell the truth about your boy. Trust me, I don't want to upset your family at all.'
'Mom…' Danny said softly. This was likely the first chance Danny had had to talk about what happened, and it seemed to even be a bit cathartic for him.
'You're right. I'm sorry. Henry, please.'
'Thank you,' I said politely. 'Danny, what was the last thing you remember before you woke up on that field?'
'I remember being at baseball practice,' he said. 'I don't know if that's the last thing that happened. But I remember Mike Bursaw got hit in the knee by a line drive and was crying, and Coach was going to send him to the nurse but Mike wouldn't let him. And I remember watching the Yankees on TV and my dad saying Jason
Giambi couldn't get a hit to save his life, which is weird because he used to be so good. I mean, I had his poster on my wall, and every night I'd tell it to go three-for-four with a home run. I noticed the poster wasn't on my wall anymore. My dad said he took it down but didn't tell me why.'
I didn't have the heart to bring up the fact that Jason
Giambi had admitted using steroids, and his deteriorating performance was likely the result of his body breaking down. Danny Linwood was going to have enough prob-56
Jason Pinter lems reentering society; tearing down his boyhood heroes would happen eventually. Yet I understood his father's hesitance to wield the sledgehammer.
'Do you remember feeling pain?' I asked.
'No.'
'Do you remember a face, someone unfamiliar, something frightening you?'
'Not really.'
'Do you remember anything about the past few years?
Sights? Sounds? Memories?'
Daniel sat there for a few moments. He seemed almost to be in pain, searching his thoughts as hard as he could for something, straining to find what wasn't there.
'A room,' he said. 'Like mine, but…I don't know.'
'How like yours?'
'I think there were toys, but I don't know.'
'Okay…what was the first thing you thought when your mom came out the door that day? The day you came back?'
'I remember being kind of confused. She didn't hug me like that when I came back from school or practice usually, so I kind of knew something was different. I was a little scared, like something might have happened to James or
Tasha or my brothers. When my dad got home and started crying, that's when I started crying, too. Like maybe I was sick and didn't know it or something. All those TV shows where someone gets sick and then everyone is really nice to them, it's usually because they're going to die.'
Again I got that feeling. There was more to what Danny
Linwood was saying than even he knew.
I noticed Shelly Linwood's lip trembling. She was aching to say something, gather her son up and hold him.
My heart hurt for her.
'How did you find out what actually happened?'
'I still don't know what happened,' Danny said, anger rising.
'I didn't mean…Who told you that you'd been gone?'
'My mom,' he said, looking at Shelly. 'She took me in here, sat me down where you're sitting. James and Tasha and my dad were with her. Then Mom told me.'
'What did you think when she told you?'
'I didn't believe her,' he said. 'I thought it was, like,
April Fools' or something.'
'How did you realize she was telling the truth?'
'My dad showed me the Derek Jeter baseball rookie card he bought me for my birthday a while ago. He told me to look at the back. He said he'd bought the card the year I was born, 1996, Derek Jeter's rookie year. Jeter was twenty-two. Then he showed me a brand-new Jeter card. From this year. And on the back of that card, Jeter was thirty-three.'
'How did you feel?'
'Scared. Upset. I mean, he'd been my favorite player and I didn't get to watch him grow up.'
'What did you think about what your parents told you?'
I clarified.
'Really scared,' Danny said. 'I cried, I think, because
I didn't know what else to do. But I didn't really know why. I mean, I didn't feel sick, I wasn't hurt, it's not like
I missed anyone, it was just…like, weird. Like you know when you wake up from a nap and you're not really sure what time it is?'
I nodded. The past few months of my life could have been accurately described that way.
'Do you think it'll be hard going back to school?
Starting your life again? Just being a kid?'
Danny chewed his lip, looked at his mother. I could tell it was killing her to stay quiet, but she also knew her son needed to heal. And talking would help that process.
'I don't feel different. And I probably won't until I go back and, like, see people. Or like today when I want to watch a show but don't recognize anything that's on. I don't even really recognize myself, if that makes sense.'
'In what way don't you recognize yourself?'
'Just, ways.'
'Like what?'
He eyed his mother, a look of worry on his face. 'I don't know if I can say with my mom here.'
'Say whatever you need to, baby,' Shelly added, for once chiming in at the right time.
'Well…I don't think I remember having hair down there.'
I snorted a laugh without thinking. Shelly's face turned beet-red.
I said, 'Moms don't usually like hearing things like that.'
Danny shrugged. 'She told me to say whatever I needed to.'
'She sure did.'
'How's your mom taking it?' I said. I looked at Shelly.
She knew I needed this from him, as well.
'I don't know. Fine, I guess. I mean, she's always hugging me and kissing me. I mean, like the kids don't have enough to make fun of already, I don't want to show up at school covered in lipstick.'
'She missed you is all,' I said.
'Yeah, I know, but she could back off a little bit.'
'I was your age once,' I said. 'I kind of wish my mom was more like yours.'
