The Wonders of the Invisible World by David Gates Read Free Book Online Page A

really, but just from little things they let drop, I’m thinking sooner rather than later. But there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
    “Well, whenever. I’m not going anywhere. Always on the spot. Like Johnny.” It also strikes him that she must be free to call him from work: how could her keepers monitor that? Or do they have her on the honor system?
    “You really have been,” Cassie says. “Don’t think I don’t know that I can never, ever repay you—that’s a lot of negatives, isn’t it? I mean, to say a positive thing.”
    When Billy finally gets the hole gouged out and a votive candle in it, he burns his goddamn fingers reaching into the pumpkin with a match. He guesses the technique is to light a dinner candle, stick it through the mouth and torch it off that way. But when they turn the lights out, Deke says “Yesss” and Billy has to agree. The thing looks both sly and mind-blown.
    “We should have a picture of this,” Billy says, then realizeshe doesn’t own a camera. His mother’s Minolta must be somewhere. Right: he packed it in one of the boxes in the basement. “Tell you what. You want to take a ride to CVS? We can buy one of those disposable cameras.”
    “Yay!”
    Billy ends up buying two, twenty-four exposures each. Since Halloween’s coming up. Cassie will surely want pictures: otherwise there’d be these undocumented months in her son’s life—though he suspects that before the crash-and-burn Cassie had let the picture-taking slide. On the way out, he shows Deke the Barney costume. “Cool,” Deke says, looking away.
    When they get back home, Billy checks the answering machine. No calls.
    On Sunday morning, he takes Deke to the Methodist church he and Cassie used to go to with their mother—his craziest bit of behavior yet, though to Deke it must seem no crazier than any of the rest. Sure enough, the 9:30 service still has a children’s choir, and Billy and Deke share a hymnal and try to sing along, Billy moving his finger underneath the words for him. “See?” he whispers. “When those notes go up and down, the tune goes up and down.” Deke nods, either pretending he knows or just humoring him. Wouldn’t Cassie have explained this much? They’ve got a new minister—old Dr. Griffin must be dead by now—about Billy’s age, whose glasses make him look like Philip Larkin. One of those not-queer/not-
not
-queer types. Billy checks the left hand: a wedding ring, for whatever that’s worth. The first word of his sermon is enough for Billy to cross him off:
Hopefully some of you watched last night’s special on the Holocaust
 … If news of this ever gets back to Cassie, look out. In fact, maybe he should tell Deke not to tell her—or would thatjust make it stick out more in the kid’s mind? Plus the whole issue of keeping secrets. No, thank you. Too much like queer-uncle behavior.
    “So how was that?” he says as they walk down the steps into the sunshine. They’ve gone out a side door to avoid shaking hands with the minister.
    “I don’t think kids should sing,” Deke says.
    “How come?”
    “ ’Cause they stink.”
    “Really? I thought they did great.”
    “They shouldn’t be allowed.”
    What’s
this
about? Billy can’t think what the right response might be; then inspiration kicks in. “Well, adults aren’t always perfect singers either. People sing just because they enjoy it sometimes.” And another inspiration. “What about the kids who sing with Barney? They’re not perfect either, but it’s fun to listen to them.”
    “I hate them.”
    “Why do you hate them?”
    Shrug.
    “But you like listening to them.”
    Not even a shrug.
    They get back in the car and Billy heads for the Howard Johnson’s just off the 787 ramp; he didn’t have time to fix breakfast before they left the house. He stops and buys Sunday papers: the
Times
for himself and the
Times Union
because Deke likes the funnies. The greeter girl—pretty, seemingly too