“Sorry. I’m still getting used to your tender side.” Puppy hopped over the railing. “How about we put them up?”
It took them about fifteen minutes to get to the upper deck in left field. Beth frowned, baffled by how tiny the players looked.
“Why would anyone sit up here?”
Puppy clomped awkwardly behind in his spikes. “It has a certain rugged appeal. Folks who sit here and in the bleachers take pride in being far away. Traditions are traditions. Even when forgotten.”
“But don’t you want to see the game more clearly? Or is that also your tradition?”
He winked at a couple kissing in the next section. Beth sighed as if he were a child and held up the banners. “Where do these go?”
Puppy pointed at the white brocade at the very top of the stadium. She blanched.
“My idiot son was going to climb up there?”
“I don’t think we have any ladders.”
Puppy held out his hand. Instead, she tossed him her handbag and scampered up the steps, tucking the banners into her waistband. At the top row, Beth jumped with arms outstretched, grabbing onto the brocade and swinging like a chimp to the very corner of the ballpark. She easily climbed to the top and wedged the banners onto the flagpoles, glancing around uneasily as the winds whipped up. She leaned back slightly to see if they were straight, swinging back in the other direction and rejoining the astonished Puppy.
“Have you climbed many stadiums, Ms. Rivera?”
“My first.” She slung the handbag back over her shoulder.
“Seriously, Beth. Where’d you learn that?”
“Life’s a remarkable teacher.”
He stopped her from passing him on the steps. “That’s real training.”
“I guess it is.”
“Were you a gymnast?” Beth nodded slowly. “Or maybe not.”
“If you’re answering your own questions, I don’t think you need me.”
Puppy gripped her strong bicep. “Did you learn that at 610 Tremont or 2001 Clay?”
Beth reddened, but didn’t answer.
“My lesson was on Clay. First and last time my father paid real attention to me. He insisted I go up and down the brick walls on the back of the building.” He tightened his grip. “Shouting in that drunk semi-puke voice of his that everyone had to pass the test. Be a spider, he yelled when I kept slipping off. Be a spider, he kicked me a few times in the head…”
“That explains a lot…”
“But I couldn’t do it. Even with the grooves onto the bricks from all the kids whose mothers and fathers felt it their DV duty to humiliate their children and remind them why they would have to climb extra hard in life…” Puppy spun Beth around. “…to wash away the Miners in our blood. Which Vet camp did you go to?”
She calmly met his stare. “Lawrenceville. Two weeks. I took it up again after my husband died. Late at night, practicing climbing up and down near my old church.”
“You still practice?”
Beth’s eyes narrowed. “No. But I still have faith.”
“In what?”
“That I can climb any damn building when the time comes.”
She smiled vaguely. Puppy suddenly grabbed her shoulders and pressed his mouth onto her lips, but Beth quickly turned. He breathed into her cheek, as cold as the building his father made him climb.
“I have to go.” She patted his shoulder. “Tell Ruben I’ll kill him if he ever climbs near those flags.”
• • • •
BETH DISDAINFULLY SIZED up the squeaky-faced little girls pressed into the couch. Let me hang up your coat, ma’am, who’d like cookies, may we have some tea?
“What’re your names again?” she asked.
“I think that’s for the Mommy to remember,” the woman said sternly.
Zelda squirmed in the chair in the far corner.
“The Mommy gives them names?” Beth asked.
“Goodness gracious, no. They’re not pets.” The woman looked horrified.
“Amy and Amelie,” Zelda said.
“What’re your real names?” Beth persisted.
“Ms. Rivera, that’s not important.”
Amy dismissed Beth as if she were dust, smiling at Zelda. “Where’s that lovely man Diego?”
“Yes, Diego. We liked him,” Amelie chimed in.
“A thoughtful person,” the woman nodded gravely.
Beth started answering, but Zelda waved her off. “He died. That’s why he’s not here.”
The girls glared at Zelda as if she’d murdered Diego along with causing her mother’s suicide.
“What kind of accident?” Amy asked in a low, suspicious tone.
“What’s it matter?”
“So it’s a secret?” Amelie asked.
“No, it’s not a secret. He was on a boat. He drowned. Anything else?”
The funeral in Diego’s apartment yesterday had been sparsely attended with only immediate family, his mother and two sisters. Afterwards, Zelda had met the oldest one, Maria, at a bench overlooking the Harlem River, where she cautiously showed the letter from Shipmate Sails, the parent corporation, expressing their deepest apologies at the loss of Diego Garcia and Captain Jey Lee in a still unexplained accident. The letter had forwarded a new Lifecard containing payment for Diego’s funeral along with two months severance pay.
Zelda rubbed her stomach. “This is Diego’s baby.”
“I know.” Maria’s eyes welled. “I helped him pick out the ring. Why don’t you wear it?”
She had been tempted. “It’s illegal. Mockery of marriage and all that to wear an engagement ring when you’ve never been formally engaged.”
Maria spit into the river. Zelda joined her.
Zelda slowly came back into the room as Beth flared her nostrils in encouragement. They’d rehearsed this all the way over. Zelda took a deep breath.
“That’s why I want to be able to name my baby Diego.”
“I thought you didn’t know the father?”
“I’m sure now.”
The woman happily clasped her hands. “Splendid. Oh splendid. This is an enormous step forward as a mother. We just need the DNA tests.”
“There are none since he’s dead.”
The woman quieted Amy and Amelie’s singing and dancing around the couch. “You can’t name a child after the father unless it’s proven the father is the father.”
Zelda unbuttoned her blousy top. The woman and the little girls craned their necks as if a vidmovie were beginning.
DIEGO AND MY MOM was evenly stitched in purple letters on her gold undershirt. The woman gasped.
“That’s unacceptable.”
“Chill
