Free The Wonders of the Invisible World by David Gates

got fixed, like house pets? Lately, every time he uses his mother’s serrated bread knife, he pictures himself cutting off his own penis.
    Back on the highway, Deke’s wide awake and whiny. “How come we have to go to Mommy’s?”
    Had Billy been calling it
Mommy’s
—as opposed to
home
—or was this Deke’s own formulation? “We’re just going to clean upa little bit,” he says. “Make things nice for her when she gets back.”
    “Is she going to be there?”
    “Didn’t I just say
when
she gets back?” He almost adds
Hello?
Kid either doesn’t listen or doesn’t think.
    “Sor-
ry.
” Deke’s never been insolent before. Billy looks over and sees he’s staring at his lap.
    “
I’
m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to sound impatient. I thought you understood that she’s still in the hospital.” Billy decided when they moved Cassie that it was simpler not to get into the whole thing of what a halfway house was. “But I think you’ll be back home together before Christmas.”
    No answer. Billy looks over again. Deke’s still staring down. Then he twists in his seat, wrenches at his door handle and tries to force the door open with his shoulder, but at sixty-five miles an hour, the wind resistance is too strong—and he’s forgotten he has his seat belt on. Billy cries “Hey!” and darts his arm across to grab at Deke’s door handle. A roar and rumble and shaking as the front wheel hits the warning strip of roughened pavement. Billy brakes hard, pulls over onto the shoulder and comes to a stop. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    Deke glares at him. “I don’t
want
to.”
    Billy can’t pretend not to understand. “You have to realize,” he says. Only now is his heart racing: the delayed adrenaline reaction that proves wise old Mother Nature’s looking out for us. “When Mommy comes out of the hospital, she’s going to be a lot better. The reason you sometimes had a bad time is because she was having such a bad time herself because she was sick. But she loves you so much.”
    “But I want to be with
you.
”
    Billy’s heart begins to slow down. He looks over at Deke. The pale skin, through which a blue vein shows at his temple. The soft hair that should’ve been trimmed weeks ago. Theragged, scuffed sneakers Billy’s been meaning to replace. So much need, and nobody else to help. He takes a deep breath, lets it out. “Well?” he says. “I’m here, right? I’m not going anywhere.” Kid doesn’t get it. Billy didn’t get it himself, until just now.

THE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD
    W hen the subway door’s about to close, you hear these two tones, like the phoebe’s call: three one. I tried to find it once on the clarinet, out of curiosity, and all it is, it’s just a third. D down to B-flat, say. Yes, well, obviously the phoebe’s call is sweet and breathy and organic and all that good stuff; I’m talking about the interval. And yes, I know it’s cheap irony, this thing of juxtaposing urban and pastoral. What am I supposed to do, not notice it? And, again yes, I know the Robert Frost thing about how the phoebes wept or didn’t weep or whatever the fuck. You know, what don’t I know?
    I know, for example, that my daughter now has a piano, a Yamaha, but a good Yamaha supposedly, and has begun taking lessons. Sometimes when I call, I’ll hear the piano going. Lately Carrie won’t talk to me, and Laura covers for her as gracefully as can be expected.
Oh, she’s so earnest about her practicing, it’s so dear to see it,
this and that. So I’ll be getting the latest from Laura but really listening to Carrie playing “Lightly Row” or “Swans on the Lake,” and sometimes reverting to “Chopsticks.” Lots of fun, easy for everyone. And I know her teacher still uses the John Thompson book; Greenfield, Massachusetts, is a fucking backwater. Which of courseis why it’s basically good that she’s growing up there and not here. Among other things, she