“Mets, all the way!” Noah said.
Henry grinned. “That’s what I wanna hear!” He high-fived the boy. “What do you think about Grandy? Think he can bring it?”
That was all it took, apparently. They talked animatedly about baseball for the rest of the way to the park while Janie and Denise walked quietly side by side. Denise was mute with disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” Janie said, her voice low. “I didn’t know what he would do when he saw you. He doesn’t talk about it anymore, but I didn’t know.… I guess he’s just Noah now.”
They walked on a bit in silence.
“He still likes the things he likes, though,” she continued. “Lizards and baseball and new things, too. You should see what he can make out of Legos. These beautiful buildings.”
“He’s like his mom,” Denise said at last.
Janie blushed, shrugged. “He’s happy.”
They got to the park and found an open stretch, a meadow. An elderly couple walked by arm in arm. A large Hasidic family moved down a path, corralling their children, keeping them from veering too close to the pond at the meadow’s edge. People were feeding the ducks, a frenzy of beaks and crumbs. A girl stood in the grass twirling a Hula-Hoop around and around like someone from another time.
Janie and Denise settled on a blanket under the protective limbs of a large tree and took out containers of oily mozzarella balls and hummus, grapes and carrots and pita chips, weighing down the napkins with the thermoses so they didn’t fly away. They had brought a baseball with them and the glove, and while they set up the picnic Henry and Noah crossed over into the open grass and tossed the baseball back and forth, Henry catching the ball in his bare hand, like he used to do.
Denise watched them. Noah was happy. Denise could see that. It was nice to see him happy, like any child. It was for the best that he had forgotten her, Denise knew that, though knowing didn’t make it hurt any less. She was grateful that nature had righted itself but couldn’t shake off the feeling that something had been taken away from her that might have been precious, if only she’d been able to find a way to make it so.
She leaned back on her elbows under the fluttering green leaves. Henry threw the ball in a steady, relaxed rhythm, his face as friendly and neutral as Noah’s. She realized what she had already known: Henry didn’t believe any more than he ever had but was doing this for her. Because he loved her. The sound of that love was in the thwack of the ball in Tommy’s old mitt, and the sound of her love—for Henry and Tommy and Charlie and Noah—was in the clicking of the wind in the leaves overhead, all of it making a web of sound that caught her and held her in this moment, right here, right now.
She sat back and watched Henry and Noah toss the ball back and forth, back and forth, like fathers and sons and men and boys anywhere, anytime.
“Now let’s see you try a pop-up,” Henry said, and he threw the ball straight up into the sky.
*
Janie wrote to Anderson. She thought it might be useful for him to keep track of what was happening with Noah, in case they did a new edition of his book. Now that normality reigned in her land in all its hectic glory, she liked to remind herself sometimes of where they had been. She and Jerry hadn’t been friends, but they had shared a deeper connection: they were allies. She wrote about Denise and Henry’s visit, giving him all the pertinent data: how much Noah had enjoyed it without recognizing either one of them. She sent the e-mail, and then another one, but he didn’t write her back.