MARY AND O'NEIL by Justin Cronin Page A

steps up and claps O’Neil on the back. “See what I’m saying? About the kick?” He puts his bearded face close to O’Neil’s and thumps the middle of his chest with the butt of his fist. “You have to go
in
.” He turns to Arthur and Miriam and shakes their hands again, as if meeting them for the first time.
    “Your son ran quite a race,” he says. “I don’t know what you fed him last night, but do it again sometime.”
    Despite O’Neil’s surprising finish the team as a whole hasn’t done that well. Most have finished in the second pack, well behind the leaders. Their strongest runner, whom they were counting on to place in the top three, twisted an ankle out on the course and was forced to drop out. O’Neil points him out, an ordinary-looking boy hobbling around the infield with a sack of ice in his hand.
    “I guess he didn’t go
in,
” O’Neil says. “To tell the truth, I can’t stand that guy. He’s a good runner, but that’s not everything.”
    Arthur looks away from the boy and returns his gaze to O’Neil, who is putting his sweats back on and sucking a wedge of orange that someone has handed him. The pleasure he feels in his son, he knows, is something new. He is watching his son step into himself, into life. Suddenly Arthur knows that, from this day, the love that he feels for O’Neil will be a different kind of love. His son’s transformation cannot be stopped, or hastened, or adjusted; the man he will become is already present, like a form emerging from a slab of stone. All that remains is to watch it happen.
    “Let’s celebrate,” Arthur says. He turns to Miriam, realizing suddenly that he has almost forgotten she is there; he has forgotten Sandra, too, walking beside his son with their arms wrapped around one another’s waists, like any couple.
    At the edge of the field O’Neil stops. “Great,” he says. “Well, actually, I should go back for a while.” He tips his head over his shoulder toward the bleachers, where the two teams are still gathered. “It’s the last meet of the season. Sandra has a game to get ready for too.”
    “That’s right.” Arthur gives her his best smile, though he is disappointed; he would like to have O’Neil to himself for a while. “Field hockey, right?”
    She shrugs modestly. “It’s just JV.”
    “JV nothing,” Arthur says. “I hear you girls really kick some ass.”
    Sandra laughs at this, knowing, as she must, that she is hearing O’Neil’s words played back by his father. They agree to meet instead for dinner, after her game, and that Arthur and Miriam will spend the day shopping in town. The question of Sandra’s parents turns out to be no question at all; they are out of the country, she explains, sailing in the Caribbean.
    “Did you notice the shirt?” Arthur asks later. They have returned to their room to change for lunch; they are planning to eat someplace nice, to make up for last night’s bad meal at the hotel. Miriam is sitting on the bed, wriggling out of her jeans and into a pair of warm wool slacks. Arthur, at the mirror, slides the knot of his necktie to his throat.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Sandra’s.” He can’t say why he’s brought the subject up; he wonders if he’s being mean. “It’s not important, I guess. Under her coat? A pink oxford, frayed at the collar.” He shrugs, and resumes tying his tie. “I thought maybe it was one you gave me once.”
    Miriam flops back on the mattress to pull her slacks on the rest of the way. “I’ve never given you a pink shirt in my life,” she says.
     
    Miriam sleeping, dreaming of birds: a silly and disturbing dream, in which all the birds—ravens, parrots, sparrows, canaries—are wearing hats. Why are you wearing hats? she wants to ask. Do birds wear hats now? Was it always this way? She is in an empty room, she is at the hospital—not the one in Cooperstown, but a hospital from years ago—she is alone in a field of purple heather and