{"id":20411,"date":"2011-09-09T16:15:43","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T20:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=20411"},"modified":"2011-09-09T13:50:17","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T17:50:17","slug":"the-maserati-kid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/09\/the-maserati-kid\/","title":{"rendered":"The Maserati Kid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I turned down the driveway, which descended slightly from the road, the house barely visible through the pines. The feeling was of entering a secret world.\u00a0I arrived in front of an open-air garage, filled with vintage\u00a0Corvettes and Maseratis. Just beyond it, across a stretch of lawn, was a\u00a0basketball court.<\/p>\n

It was a sunny August morning in East Hampton. I had come to play in a memorial game for a man who had died in the twin towers. The man who had built this house.<\/p>\n

I was a friend of a friend, recruited to help fill out the roster. Since the guy\u2019s last name started with G, and since my childhood friend Jimmy Gartenberg was killed on that same day, in that same place, I gave a private nod to Jimmy.<\/p>\n

The basketball court was a fantasy: glass backboards, three point lines, beautiful landscaping. A TV crew would be filming, I had been told. The widow had written a book. I would be both participant and prop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The game got going, grown men hustling. The players were mostly members of my tribe: middle-aged guys who seem normal enough until you see them on a basketball court, satisfying the need.<\/p>\n

A boy played, too\u2014fourteen or so, braces, spindly arms. It was the boy\u2019s father who died on 9\/11. He was hitting shots like crazy. Game of his life. At first I thought this was touching. But then I began to feel irritated that everyone was giving him room. There is an entitlement to pulling up for a long jump shot.<\/p>\n

A woman mingled on the sideline amidst the men. She was well put together, in jeans and a white blouse, hands in her back pockets. The widow. A photographer stood on the sidelines, snapping shots with a telephoto. What was so far away, I wondered, that she needed that zoom lens?<\/p>\n

The kid was hustling, driving, taking shots, making most of them. Voices of encouragement and praise came from the sideline.<\/p>\n

Someone told a story about standing on this court with the widow just after 9\/11. \u201cI\u2019ve got this asphalt jungle back here,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat am I going to do with it?\u201d Just then her boy, four years old at the time, came out and starting dribbling a basketball.<\/p>\n

Apparently his dad had been really good. But a dead baller is like the fish that got away, always much better in memory. I looked at the kid now, wheeling and dealing. I was moved, happy to see him so supported by his dead dad\u2019s friends. But supported in the context of such outrageous wealth is a complicated word.<\/p>\n

Oh, Horace Mann, how many of your board members are educators? None. It\u2019s all Wall Street people.<\/p>\n

The next game, I waited for the kid to drive the lane. I was going to block that kid\u2019s shot, smack it over the gorgeous landscaping, show him what happens in the real world. But his dad died on 9\/11. Isn\u2019t that knowledge enough?<\/p>\n

At any rate, I never got the chance. The teams were changed. Now he was on my team. I watched him hoist jumpers. Score.<\/p>\n

In the end, after the last game, I slapped the kid five, said, \u201cGood game.\u201d I shook the widow\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n

Leaving, I paused at the garage, its floor polished as glass. The Corvette was a shimmering silver. I wonder, now, why did I wipe my feet?<\/p>\n

Thomas Beller is the author, most recently, of a collection of essays, <\/em>How\u00a0to Be a Man<\/a>, and a novel, <\/em>The Sleep-Over Artist<\/a>. He is a co-editor of <\/em>They\u2019re at It Again: Stories from Twenty Years of Open City<\/a>. He teaches creative writing at Tulane University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I turned down the driveway, which descended slightly from the road, the house barely visible through the pines. The feeling was of entering a secret world.\u00a0I arrived in front of an open-air garage, filled with vintage\u00a0Corvettes and Maseratis. Just beyond it, across a stretch of lawn, was a\u00a0basketball court. It was a sunny August morning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":233,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2794,3747,3746,1928,3748],"class_list":["post-20411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-2794","tag-east-hampton","tag-maserati","tag-open-city","tag-world-trade-center"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Maserati Kid by Thomas Beller<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 9, 2011 \u2013 I turned down the driveway, which descended slightly from the road, the house barely visible through the pines. 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