IN THE CAR, he pulled out a map to figure out the shortest way there. As he drove, he thought again of touring the Roosevelt projects with Pappy. Back in Kennedy’s time, Pappy, then a newly minted senator, had been instrumental in the development of the project, the largest in the state and then considered state-of-the-art, with green spaces and redbrick buildings that spread over several city blocks. But by the early eighties, when David had accompanied his father on a tour, the buildings were blighted and crime-infested, and the middle-class businesses and homes that once dotted the surrounding area had long since moved away. David remembered the distaste he had felt as they’d climbed the dark stairwells with their burnt-out lightbulbs and the acidic smell of urine on each landing. He smiled grimly as he remembered what Pappy had said when they’d left: “If I’d known the shithole this place would become, I’d have begged them to name it after Nixon, not Roosevelt.”
David had told Pappy two days ago, on the phone, the news about the possibility of their adopting Anton. To his surprise, Pappy had been pleased. “He’s a great kid,” he’d said. “I’m just glad the drugs have still left the woman with enough of a conscience to do the right thing. You know what they say—even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
“Well, it took a little arm-twisting,” David heard himself say.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Nothing,” he’d said, suddenly afraid of the senator’s indignation if he ever learned the truth. Pappy, who had a reputation for scrupulous honesty, had served in the Senate with distinction. Residents in the state were still divided about his decision to resign his office in 1985, after Reagan’s landslide victory, because he’d despised the direction in which the country was headed. David remembered Tip O’Neill himself visiting the senator at his home, asking him to reconsider.
No, Pappy would’ve found it unforgivable, what he’d done to Juanita Vesper, David thought. And the strange thing was, he didn’t really care. He adored his father, admired him, but Pappy had never known what hell looked like, had never felt the lick of hellfire or stared into the void the way he and Delores had after James’s death. The son became older than the father during that time, David thought. That first night when Delores and he had come home after visiting their son at the morgue and gone to bed in their street clothes—David shuddered at the memory. The way Delores had woken up in the middle of the night, sat cross-legged in the middle of their bed, and begun to wail. David knew that if he lived to be ninety, he would remember the ancient sorrow of that wailing; its terrible notes lived under his skin. Pappy had been devastated by the loss of his only grandson, and in some ways, he’d never recovered from the blow, same as them. But Pappy had never lived in the same house as James. Pappy had not made him pancakes for breakfast or taken him shoe shopping or—heavenly Father—shopping for his tuxedo. For the prom.
David wiped away the tears pouring down his cheeks. It was foolish, what he’d done, pinning all his hopes on Anton, a damaged boy from a damaged home. No wonder it had not occurred to the boy to leave them a note. The first chance he had gotten, he’d made his way home. Home, to that brutal, ugly place whose thumbprints they’d tried so hard to erase from his body. Home to the mother who had discarded him like an old pair of shoes. Anton had obviously believed that she was back there, living in that same apartment where he’d almost roasted to death. A feeling of despair gripped David. He had done everything that he could to win Anton over, and at the first mention of his mother, the boy had fled. How he had even figured out a way to get back to Roosevelt was a mystery. Well, he’d find out soon enough.
It took David almost forty-five minutes to get to the projects. He drove down the narrow streets slowly, careful not to hit the parked cars, not wanting to risk any kind of altercation in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Even with his windows rolled up, he could feel the reverberations of jarring music blasting from nearby cars. He took in the general disrepair of the roads and buildings and marveled that Anton had survived this blight as well as he had. He began to look for building 1301, knowing that Anton was waiting for him at a bus stop in front of it. Just then he saw the boy’s forlorn shape, saw him sitting hunched on the bench of the covered bus stop, leaning his elbows on his knees. A stout, middle-aged woman was the only other person at the stop, although a cluster of young boys hung out not too far away. David saw Anton look up and recognize the car and give a little wave. All of his bitterness against the boy’s thoughtlessness melted away at that wave. He pulled up in front and leaned over to unlock the passenger door. “Hi, Anton,” he said. “Get in.” The boy smiled. He threw his backpack in the backseat and climbed in.
“And who would you be?” The woman was leaning into the car window from Anton’s side, glaring at David.
David glanced at Anton, his right eyebrow raised in inquiry. “She says she’s a friend of Mam’s,” the boy whispered to him, his irritation at the woman showing on his face.
“I asked who you were,” the woman said again, louder this time. She looked at Anton. “Boy, you knows better than to get into a car with a strange man.”
“He’s not a strange man,” Anton yelled. “I told you, he’s my dad.”
The honorific shot through David like a bolt of electricity. For a second the air between the man and the boy crackled. Then David turned toward the woman and smiled. “Thank you for watching out for my son,” he said politely. “Good night.” The look he gave the woman was so intense and imperial that she backed away from the car, muttering to herself.
They drove out of the housing division in silence. After they were on the main road, David put his arm around Anton and cradled him. “Hello,” he whispered. “You all right, son?”