Free The Devil's Own Rag Doll by Mitchell Bartoy Page A

Pete?”
    â€œWell,” I said, “you better ask your mother about that.”
    â€œAll right!” Alex turned his attention back to the game, working the ball in his glove and squirming with excitement.
    It was a crisp fall day in 1941, and even though parts of the world were already fighting, it seemed nothing could touch us. But things fell like dominoes for the boy shortly after that: Within a year he’d stand stricken at his father’s graveside, his body erupting with change and the world turned blacker in his eyes.
    I couldn’t blame him for changing. Standing there looking down at the bristling young man working out his frustration on his old ball glove, I could see that he was a world away from me now. He was not five feet from me, sitting on the same sofa we’d roughed up listening to games on the radio while Tommy was alive, but I could not in my fumbling manner find a way to touch him.
    I had made the mistake of telling Eileen that my favorite meal was meat loaf with mashed potatoes and lima beans. So now she made the same meal whenever I stopped by. Still, it was good, solid, heavy food, and tasty, and I was glad to sit down at the table to eat, especially after the grim and unsatisfying day I had suffered. I mumbled a terse but serviceable grace before the meal, adding a silent prayer afterward, more like an undirected birthday wish, that I could somehow bring back the easy feeling of family that I had known as a child. When Tommy and I were kids, we scrapped and tussled bloodily, as boys will do, and our father tarred the both of us regularly, but at the end of the day we were a family, tight and loyal. But here it was like a minefield of emotions that I did not feel I could navigate. Alex seemed ready to burst, as if he were holding his breath all the time. I knew that it was a problem of his age. The world was opening up for him; he was finding out about any number of things that he couldn’t well share with his mother any more. It’s a normal thing for a boy to go through, and in a regular family, the house holds together. But with Tommy gone—especially Tommy—I could see that pressures were building up and that something would have to give.
    It was hardest for me to judge how I should act toward Eileen. Tommy had been our connection, and with him gone, I had a slippery feeling that somehow things were improper. I continued on the same way I always had, or so it seemed to me, but I had more and more come to feel that I was missing something that everyone else could see. Early on in life, I had skipped out on the lessons in social grace and etiquette, and now I was a rube, a laughing-stock. It could be that I was just generally uncomfortable in my own skin. Had I always been?
    I could see that Alex was in a big rush to get away, though he clamped down on his squirming well. He ate quickly, smart enough to head off any objections by wolfing down a hearty portion of food. He had lately taken on an odd smell, with all the chemicals in his body churning and roiling, and this, too, was hard for me to handle. It would have been better for the boy to have a father or some other older man that he could trust to help him through this part of his life, someone to show him the ropes of shaving and showering and talking to the girls. But how was I to be of any help, when my own life and history had become such a botched affair? I ate slowly and chewed thoroughly, rolling the salty gravy over my tongue to get all the flavor I could out of every bite. We ate for a time as if famished, and an uncomfortable silence grew.
    â€œWell, it’s a year this week,” said Eileen finally, “since Tommy died over there.”
    â€œMother,” said Alex, “we shouldn’t talk about it during dinner.”
    I swallowed my words. If she wants to talk about it, I thought, she can talk about it.
    â€œI think that’s just silly, Alex. If we don’t talk about him,