Free What Hearts by Bruce Brooks Page A

ahead of both his mother and Dave to note the end points of ramifications just opening beforethem. When the family considered anything at all together, from dinner at a particular restaurant to a drive in a rainstorm, Asa rattled off the string of consequences attendant on each alternative choice. At eleven he was already a pedant. Dave, at thirty, was still a bully.
    They both knew the terms of their life together. But sports, it appeared, was different—perhaps it was not really a part of life. Dave could show him how to let a football slip off his fingertips without the chippy force that usually pushed his commands, and Asa could accept the instruction without feeling belittled, without having to show that he had already figured it out alone, Asa asked himself: Why? Was it because sports did not “matter” (the way saying “Sir” and “Ma’am” in exactly the right tone of voice mattered, or having a short enough haircut, or any of the other things that Dave demanded)? Or was it because sports—clearly a male domain—never brought Asa’s mother into play between them? Asa thought about it a lot, as he and Dave expanded on this newfound opportunity to enjoy, if not harmony, at least cooperative neutrality,by playing football and then basketball throughout the fall and winter.
    One day they were shooting foul shots and Dave missed five in a row. Without thinking (he never spoke to Dave without thinking; the slightest carelessness could be a step into a red elevator shaft of wrath) Asa said, “You’re not bending your knees before you shoot. So you’re standing up too straight and your shots are flat and long.” He added, as if suddenly aware of his temerity, “Maybe we’re tired.”
    Dave stared at him. His eyes narrowed for a moment. Then he looked at the basket, bent his knees, and bobbed a couple of times, spinning the ball in his hands as he eyed the rim. He hit three shots in a row, then said, “Let’s go.” On the way home he patted Asa once on the shoulder and said, “You’re learning good.” Asa. felt good—cold, appraising, alert only to the technicalities of form and result: he was relieved of emotion. This was sports: action without emotion, liberty from putting anything on the line.
    Or so it seemed, for a long time over the winter. Certainly there was less tension in thehouse, and Asa equated less tension with less emotion. He and Dave would return home at dusk, and his mother would be happily setting out the family dinner; they would eat quietly while she talked nonstop; Dave would take his second cup of coffee into the den to watch television, and Asa would scoot upstairs. Often he snuck back down a little later, after Dave had fallen asleep in front of The Beverly Hillbillies or 77 Sunset Strip , to help his mother wash dishes. Oddly, this was a household job Dave had never assigned to him; Asa was certain it was because he did not like the idea of the two of them alone together.
    One night as he was scrubbing a glass casserole dish, his mother said, “I’m sure glad to see my boys getting along so good.”
    He hesitated; when she expressed herself in this girlish-whimsy way, complete with grammatical mistakes—-he couldn’t convince himself she was being genuine. How could she be so shrewd and resolute sometimes, then so content with cuteness at others? He sensed a huge longing in his mother, a catalogue of keen needs that were beyond him and Dave,even together, even with his long-gone father thrown in for good measure. And often when he suspected her of playing a part, he sensed behind it a desperate will to sincerity; she was trying out a way of being someone people could readily understand. It was not the kind of acting he held in contempt. It was a sadder, nobler performance.
    â€œWe’re kind of having fun,” he said to his casserole dish.
    His mother sighed happily and rubbed