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"You should be reported," the woman said to him.
"Yes, I should be," Danny told her, "but please don't."
Now cars were honking their horns, and Joe started to cry again. "I couldn't see the sky from the house," the boy was sobbing.
"You couldn't see the sky?" his dad asked. They crossed the pavement to the sidewalk, and went into the house to the continuous honking of horns.
"I couldn't see if Lady Sky was coming down," Joe said.
"You were looking for Lady Sky?" his father asked.
"I couldn't see her. Maybe she was looking for me," the boy said.
The divided avenue was wide; from the middle of the road, or from the median strip, Danny realized that his two-year-old had been able to see the sky. The boy had been hoping that Lady Sky would descend again--that was all there was to it.
"Mommy's home," Joe told his dad, as they came into the apartment, which the two-year-old called the umpartment; from the moment he'd begun to talk, an apartment was an umpartment.
"Yes, I know Mommy's home," Danny said. He could see that Katie had fallen back to sleep. On the kitchen table, the writer also noticed that the rum bottle was empty. Had he finished it before going to bed, or had Katie downed what was left in the bottle when she'd come home? (It was probably me, Danny thought; he knew that Katie didn't like rum.)
He took Joe into the boy's room and changed his diaper. He had trouble looking at his son's eyes--imagining them open and staring, unseeing, as the two-year-old in his bright-white diaper lay dead in the road.
"AND THEN YOU stopped drinking, right?" young Joe asked his father. For the duration of the long story, they'd kept their backs to the house they had lived in with Katie.
"The last of that rum was the end of it," Danny said to the eight-year-old.
"But Mom didn't stop drinking, did she?" Joe asked his dad.
"Your mom couldn't stop, sweetie--she probably still hasn't stopped," Danny told him.
"And I am grounded, right?" young Joe asked.
"No, you're not grounded--you can go anywhere you want, on foot or on the bus. It's your bicycle that's grounded," Danny said to the boy. "Maybe we'll give your bike to Max. I'll bet he could use it for a backup, or for spare parts."
Joe looked up at the brilliant blue of the fall sky. No descending angel was going to get him out of this predicament. "You never thought Lady Sky was an angel, did you?" the boy asked his dad.
"I believed her when she said she was an angel sometimes," Danny said.
The writer would drive all over Iowa City looking for the blue Mustang, but he wouldn't find it. The police would never spot the rogue car, either. But, back on Iowa Avenue, all Danny did was put his arm around the eight-year-old's shoulders. "Think of it this way," he said to his son. "That blue Mustang is still looking for you. Six years ago, when you stood in this street--with nothing but a diaper on--maybe the blue Mustang was stuck in traffic. It might have been several cars behind the white van; that blue Mustang might have been trying to get you even then."
"It's not really looking for me, is it?" Joe asked.
"You better believe it is," his dad told him. "The blue Mustang wants you--that's why you've got to be careful."
"Okay," the eight-year-old told his father.
"Do you know any two-year-olds?" Danny asked his son.
"No," the boy answered, "not that I can think of."
"Well, it would be good for you to meet one," his dad said, "just so you can see what you looked like in the road."
That was when the cook drove down Iowa Avenue, in the incoming lane, and pulled over to the curb, where the father and son were standing. "Get in, you two," Tony Angel told them. "I'll drop Joe at school, then I'll take you home," the cook said.
"Joe hasn't had any breakfast," Danny told his dad.
"I made him a big lunch--he can eat half of it on the way to school, Daniel. Get in," he repeated. "We have a ... situation."
"What's wrong, Pop?" the writer asked.
