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“Is this your baby?” the van driver screamed at Da
Now a woman from the car that was stopped behind the white van ran into the median and scooped the baby into her arms. “Is that your daddy?” she asked Joe, pointing to Da
“He’s mine-I was asleep,” Da
“Your baby was in the street, pal-I almost ran over him,” the van driver told Da
“It doesn’t appear that you were looking for this baby, or that you even knew he was missing,” the woman said to Da
“Daddy,” Joe said, holding out his arms.
“Does this child have a mother?” the woman wanted to know.
“She’s asleep-we were both asleep,” Da
“You’re still wasted, man,” the driver told him. “Is your wife wasted, too?”
“Thank you,” Da
“You should be reported,” the woman said to him.
“Yes, I should be,” Da
Now cars were honking their horns, and Joe started to cry again. “I couldn’t see the sky from the house,” the boy was sobbing.
“You couldn’t see the sky?” his dad asked. They crossed the pavement to the sidewalk, and went into the house to the continuous honking of horns.
“I couldn’t see if Lady Sky was coming down,” Joe said.
“You were looking for Lady Sky?” his father asked.
“I couldn’t see her. Maybe she was looking for me,” the boy said.
The divided avenue was wide; from the middle of the road, or from the median strip, Da
“Mommy’s home,” Joe told his dad, as they came into the apartment, which the two-year-old called the umpartment; from the moment he’d begun to talk, an apartment was an umpartment.
“Yes, I know Mommy’s home,” Da
He took Joe into the boy’s room and changed his diaper. He had trouble looking at his son’s eyes-imagining them open and staring, unseeing, as the two-year-old in his bright-white diaper lay dead in the road.
“AND THEN YOU stopped drinking, right?” young Joe asked his father. For the duration of the long story, they’d kept their backs to the house they had lived in with Katie.
“The last of that rum was the end of it,” Da
“But Mom didn’t stop drinking, did she?” Joe asked his dad.
“Your mom couldn’t stop, sweetie-she probably still hasn’t stopped,” Da
“And I am grounded, right?” young Joe asked.
“No, you’re not grounded-you can go anywhere you want, on foot or on the bus. It’s your bicycle that’s grounded,” Da
Joe looked up at the brilliant blue of the fall sky. No descending angel was going to get him out of this predicament. “You never thought Lady Sky was an angel, did you?” the boy asked his dad.
“I believed her when she said she was an angel sometimes,” Da
The writer would drive all over Iowa City looking for the blue Mustang, but he wouldn’t find it. The police would never spot the rogue car, either. But, back on Iowa Avenue, all Da
“It’s not really looking for me, is it?” Joe asked.
“You better believe it is,” his dad told him. “The blue Mustang wants you-that’s why you’ve got to be careful.”
“Okay,” the eight-year-old told his father.
“Do you know any two-year-olds?” Da
“No,” the boy answered, “not that I can think of.”
“Well, it would be good for you to meet one,” his dad said, “just so you can see what you looked like in the road.”
That was when the cook drove down Iowa Avenue, in the incoming lane, and pulled over to the curb, where the father and son were standing. “Get in, you two,” Tony Angel told them. “I’ll drop Joe at school, then I’ll take you home,” the cook said.
“Joe hasn’t had any breakfast,” Da
“I made him a big lunch-he can eat half of it on the way to school, Daniel. Get in,” he repeated. “We have a … situation.”
“What’s wrong, Pop?” the writer asked.
“It seems that Youn is still married,” the cook replied, as Da
“They’re at the house?” Da
“It’s good that they came after Youn was up. She was already in her room-writing,” the cook said.
Da
“Are you crazy?” the cook said to his son. “Joe should go to school.”
“Youn is married?” Joe asked. “She has a kid?”
“It appears so,” Da
“I think you should go to school, sweetie,” Da
“But you want me to meet one, right?” Joe asked.
“What’s this about?” the cook inquired; he was driving to Joe’s school, not waiting for contradictory directions.
“It’s a long story,” Da
“He’s a surgeon in Korea, he told me,” Tony Angel replied. “He’s attending a surgical conference in Chicago, but he brought his daughter along, and they thought they’d surprise Mommy-and let Youn look after the two-year-old for a couple of days, while Kyung is in meetings. Some surprise, huh?” the cook asked.
“His name is Kyung?” Da
“Her husband seems like a nice guy,” Tony Angel said.
“So I’m going to meet Youn’s two-year-old daughter?” Joe asked, as he was getting out of the car.