-How long will it take yet, dad?
-Oh don’t worry, we’re almost
there. There’s not much traffic today.
Michael looks outside the window.
No, there are not many cars around, but the streets are full of people. Moms
and dads with their little children, young boys with their girls, old men just
sitting there and talking and glancing at the couples. You wonder what they
think.
The fresh air hits Michael’s face
when he stretches his head a bit out of the window. Dad doesn’t say anything,
so he maintains his position, sticks his head out a bit more, and keeps looking
at the fellas out there. He likes the air in the face, when he fights to keep
his eyes open and his hair goes everywhere. That’s one of the reasons why he likes
when dad takes the car.
-Look at how many people are in
front of the Kings, dad! -Michael says pointing his arm towards the theatre.
–That movie must be good!
-It’s Sunday, –dad smiles- people
want to have fun and relax. Don’t lean out of the window, Mike.
Michael manages to get a glimpse
of the poster outside the cinema. The movie title is “The Love Parade”. That
doesn’t sound particularly good.
When dad parks the car and opens
the door to get out, Michael is almost sorry that the trip is finished. He
likes Coney Island, who doesn’t, but staying in the car, sitting there watching
people around while she does all the work for you –well, Michael finds that
really pleasant. He bets he could do it for hours. He misses old Tin Lizzie,
though. It must have been one year ago. Dad liked Lizzie a lot, and there was
something about her which inspired trust in Michael. When he’ll grow up he’ll
probably buy one just for himself.
-Are we going to the Luna Park,
dad? –He promised, but it’s always better to double-check.
-If you still want it… –dad
replies, half-smiling. –Come, Mike, it’s this way.
This is great. Michael loves the
park, there are so many attractions and rides inside. And the animals.
Everything is fun there, really. And the fact that mom didn’t come is good,
too. Every time they go anywhere, she
tells him not to run and shout, to be considerate towards other people and basically
to stay next to her without moving and breathing. And candy is absolutely forbidden
when she is around. Dad is so different, he understands Michael much more. It’s
a question of attitude, but what do women know about that.
He and dad can talk about
interesting stuff, car trips and holidays and the new things that happen in
Manhattan and Bill Tilden. He knows his onions.
-The new baby is coming in one
month, Mike. You know that, right?
Michael wants to try the Shoot
the Chute thing. He has never done it and it looks just great.
-Yes dad, I know. –One month.
It’s still quite a lot of time. –Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?
-We don’t know that yet –dad
smiles and lowers his head, as if he had just been unexpectedly distracted from
his chain of thoughts.
-I hope he’ll be a boy. We can
play together and he can meet all my friends.
-Be it a boy or a girl you’ll
love him all the same, won’t you Michael?
Well, yeah. I guess so. You don’t
really have a choice there.
Dad and Michael approach the
cotton candy kiosk. They don’t ask each other and they don’t think about it:
they just buy the candy as they walk and talk, men united by the same passions.
Well, obviously it’s dad who actually buys the candy, Michael has no money, but
that’s purely incidental. When Michael will start to work (he will probably be
an accountant like his dad) they will go together to Coney Island or to
Manhattan and they will both spend money, real money, and they will talk about
the usual stuff. Movies, life. Sport.
-Do you think the Yankees will
have a good shot next year, dad?
-They could. I don’t think
Philadelphia is stronger. And they don’t have Babe Ruth –dad adds while lifting
his head for one second from the cotton candy and looking in Michael’s eyes.
Babe is great. Michael has a
picture of him in his bedroom that he never fails to show to Jimmy every time
he comes to his house. But how old is he now? Dad’s age, more or less? At what
time do you stop playing baseball and become an engineer or an accountant?
-You know Mike, –dad continues- now
that the new baby will arrive we’ll have to be a bit more careful.
Careful? This is something mom
would usually say. Michael likes the matter-of-fact tone of his dad, though. Talking
about sport, eating that giant mountain of cotton candy, and then casually
dropping there something important, something about family. Straightforward,
face to face, like a man should talk to another man.
-What do you mean, dad? –Michael
tries to look as intelligent as possible while asking this question. He knows
how to do that, he practiced on the mirror once. You have to close your eyes a
bit and assume a stern expression. Something like that.
-Well, we will be four instead of
just three. And the new baby will need a lot of care and protection, do you
understand that? From all of us. That includes you, young chap –dad says patting
Michael’s hip for attention.
Oh, yeah. Before he will be able
to play with him and talk about stuff, there will first be that period when
everybody will have to look after him. What a drag.
-Yeah, I know dad. –People are
getting off the Shoot the Chute. He could go and try it now.
-This means, Mike, that when
we’ll have a spare dime or two we will have to consider the baby first, at
least at the beginning.
Wait a minute. Why is dad talking
about money now? Michael didn’t expect this.
- He is the youngest one now.
It’s only fair, don’t you think? –Dad goes on.
That automatically makes Michael
the vice dad, he guesses.
-But why are you telling me about
this? I mean, I understand about the attention and him being small and
everything. But why the money, what does that have to do with this?
And isn’t this mom’s job, anyway?
Taking care of the baby and buying food and stuff?
-Well… let’s see, do you remember
when we gave you three dollars for your birthday? Do you remember what we told
you, exactly?
-That I could buy whatever I
wanted…
-…And?
-I could buy whatever I wanted,
but I wouldn’t have received any more money. So you told me to think about it
carefully and decide what I really desired.
Boy, that was hard. Michael
remembers it very well now. You think that having money would solve all of your
problems, then you receive some money –just some,
not enough to buy all you want– and you have to make a choice and you risk
wasting all of it. Phew!
Obviously, having a lot of money would solve everything. But
Michael never found himself in that situation.
-So you had to think about it,
didn’t you Mike? The money was yours, but if you wanted to buy something you
had to renounce to something else. You had to make a choice, and you did a good
job at that –dad smiles again, like he always smiles when he talks with Michael
and mom is not around, but with an expression of complicity on his face.
Michael is not so sure he did
that good of a job, however. That toy car he left in the shop was really good.
-I and your mother have to make
the same decision now. Think about it. We have some money, we have to buy food
and clothes like before, but now we have to count four people instead of three.
We will make it, Michael, no doubt about it, but there will be times in which
we’ll have to choose which thing is more important for the family. What we
really need. Like you had to do with your three dollars.
-I understand, dad. I do. –It’s
hard to look solemn and credible when you have pink cotton candy all over your
mouth.
-You’ll understand better when
you’ll be a bit older, Mickey. Things are changing. –Dad is not smiling now,
not even half-smiling. It looks almost as if he’s muttering those words to
himself more than to Michael. -Things are becoming more complicated. People are
a bit scared.
-Scared of what? –Is everybody
having a baby?
-It’s a tough world sometimes,
young chap. –Dad laughs and punches Michael jokingly under his shoulder. –I
can’t explain you everything all the time or we won’t be able to try any of the
new attractions!
The Shoot the Chute is ready
again. Dad keeps talking about the Yankees and Bill Tilden and the new Ford
which is better than the old Tin Lizzie. Michael knows this is only fluff talk
now. That’s what adults do: they discuss about serious stuff, and then they
switch over to sport and gossip and the other beautiful things in life. There
is a specific time for everything, you can’t always talk about the most
important matters. That’s what grown-ups do, if you observe them. Talk about
the war and the new President and then change the subject to baseball and smile
to the ladies who walk down the street.
Mike is part of that now, you
can’t change it. He has to think about the new baby, soon he will discuss with
dad about the news in the Times and the money he earns at work. Just five,
maybe ten minutes, before switching to boxing and cinema when mom will enter
the room. He understands it very clearly, though to be fair –to be absolutely
honest– he is not sure he likes it. He thinks about the toy car and the three
dollars. He looks at the Shoot the Chute which is almost ready to start again
and has not finished the cotton candy yet, and his mouth and all around his
lips is sticky and tastes a bit like sugar.
Davide
