Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? (12 page)

Curveball
An excerpt from a novel by Michael Angelo

Sam spent his life perfecting his batting stance. He learned to stare down the pitcher, to bend his knees, to raise his bat, ready. To have every nerve and muscle on alert, waiting for whatever pitch was sent his way, in life or in the ballgame. He lived and breathed baseball, the smell of a leather glove, the sound of the ball smacking against the bat, the sight of its high arc as it shot out of the park.

Sam knew that since baseball’s beginnings, sportswriters have used the game as a metaphor for life. Men who couldn’t talk to their fathers about anything important, about anything emotional, men who could do little more than punch their dad in the arm, and mumble a few gruff words, found in baseball a way to communicate.

Sam and his father used baseball to talk before Sam went off to college. They would play catch in the backyard. On the face of it, catch is such a simple game. Sam loved the rhythm. He threw the ball to his father. His father threw it back. Sam loved the sound of the ball hitting the leather of his glove. His hand would wrap around it, and he would lob it back. If only, Sam used to think, their father-son relationship could be so simple. “Talk,” in their case, was half phrases. “Good catch.” “Nice throw.” “Good arm.”

Men of a certain generation could barely spit out the words, “I love you, son.” Hugging was uncomfortable; kissing was out of the question. The ball, the glove, the game, the nosebleed seats at Shea Stadium or Fenway Park, or wherever the home team was playing, they were the pitcher’s mound of communication. From there, the wind-up, and then the pitch over the plate in the form of verbal shorthand.
Dad really loved me,
men of that generation say,
he just didn’t know how to show it.
But there’s always the memories of Yankees games and hot dogs, and the ritual of buying a bag of peanuts and letting the shells fall to the cement and hearing them crunch under your sneakers.

Sam told himself the words “nice catch” were just a secret father-son code for the real stuff. Then he was assaulted.

First the police came. He drifted in and out of a morphine haze. The detectives—two of them—kept asking him, like they didn’t believe him.

“Son…now you’re sayin’ you didn’t see nothin’ of the fellas that did this to you?”

Sam’s doctor told the detectives it might be shock. Or the trauma. “He could even have amnesia of the trauma event. It’s not uncommon. Let him recover a bit and perhaps it will come back to him.”

No one from the team visited.

His coach didn’t drop by.

In fact, not a single person from his college—the people he’d been friends with through thick and thin—none of them even came to see if Sam was going to live.

His mother flew in with his father. She never left his side. Night and day she said prayers, or she pushed the hair off of his forehead and cooed to him. She whispered in his ear, “You will get well, Sam. You will get well.”

His father didn’t come by the hospital but for the first day. Then, when Sam slowly started emerging from the morphine haze, his mother felt safe enough to leave him one morning and to go back to her hotel and shower and rest. It was then his father arrived.

He stood at the foot of Sam’s bed, surveying the mess of bruises, mottled and black. He looked at the catheter tube that snaked its way into Sam’s penis.

“I hear they found a black plastic dick at the scene.”

He said it. Left that sentence hanging in the air. It was the one screw-up the coach and team had made. The one thing they should have taken but didn’t.

“Don’t remember,” Sam croaked out.

“I smell something sick. Something rotten. I talked to your best friend, Charlie. Or should I say ex-best friend?”

Sam opened his eyes a crack. The monitors beeped, and he was sure because his heart was pounding hard. He felt his mouth go drier than it already was.

“I know why they did this to you. When you get out of here, you come on home, you get your things and you tell your poor mama that you’re moving away. And if you come back to visit, you make sure you do it when I’m not there.”

His father turned his back and walked toward the door. Sam felt tears on his cheeks. He couldn’t move his hand to wipe them away.

“If it was me that was your coach, I would have done no different.”

And those were the last words Sam’s father ever spoke to him.

Lily

P
ete told me I looked beautiful. He brought me a bunch of lilies of the valley—apparently the day we met I had mentioned something about how beautiful I thought they were. That having cancer makes you want to be around your favorite things and makes you want to not waste a second with the things you hate, including the people who bring you down.

We picked up where we left off, and by the end of the appetizer course, I knew I would make love with him. He made me dizzy, that’s how crazy I was about him.

After dinner, we stood in the parking lot near our respective cars.

“You look great with hair, you know.” I smiled.

“You’ve got some coming in, too.”

“Pete…something about you…” I leaned in close to him and we kissed.

“Will you think I’m pushing it if I ask you back to my place for coffee?”

I shook my head.

I followed him to his apartment, which was two towns over—about a fifteen-minute ride. It was a duplex, a small house divided into an upstairs apartment and a downstairs apartment. His was downstairs, and he opened the door and ushered me inside.

Pete’s apartment fit him. He had a fish tank with a few goldfish, and an old tabby cat named Chester that had once belonged to a student of his whose new baby brother turned out to be allergic.

His furniture wasn’t “classic bachelor,” but nice, comfy. I sat down on the couch while he went into the kitchen.

“Coffee or a nightcap? Or both? I have some sambuca.”

“Sambuca would be great.”

He returned with two snifters. “A woman after my heart. I love sambuca after a meal.”

He set the snifters down on his coffee table, which had several books on space and astronomy. Then he sat next to me and next thing I knew we were kissing.

It had been so long since someone loved me in that way. And not just someone. It was Pete, who I felt understood me so innately. Even without this cancer connection, he was funny and really open and sincere. He was someone I was sure I could introduce my children to—something I rigorously avoided with ninety-nine percent of the men I’d ever dated since their father left.

“Stay a while?” he whispered.

I nodded, and he took my hand and led me to the bedroom. I slipped out of my skirt and boots. That left the bodysuit. I slid the straps down. Then I reached back and undid my bra.

As I slid my bra and bodysuit down, I had a moment, a flash, of worry. The scar from where they’d removed my lump was still raw and red—and radiation hadn’t helped it any. My skin there looked like a bad sunburn. Peeling.

Pete, by now, was in this adorable pair of scotch plaid boxers. Flannel. He was to me in three strides, and the first thing he did was lower his lips to my poor wounded right breast. He kissed the nipple, and then the scar. He kissed the scar again and moved his tongue over it. Then he went to my other breast, as if to signify they weren’t different from each other. Then he stood and looked me in the eyes and said, “You have a beautiful body.” He put his hands to the knot on my scarf and undid it. The purple silk fluttered to the floor.

“And you have a beautiful face,” he whispered.

I felt my eyes tearing up, and I just pressed against him, kissing him hard. We made our way to the bed, and it was one of those lovemaking experiences that you replay over and over again. Not because the orgasm was so much better or his cock was so much bigger. But because it was so intensely honest.

Afterward, I lay there for an hour or so, cradled in his arms, before I said, “I have to go home.”

“I know. Call me when you get there, to say good-night? I won’t go to sleep until I know you made it home safe.”

I nodded and slid from out of his bed. He had flannel sheets—soft and warm. Guess he was a flannel fan. He also got out of bed and pulled on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Then, after I was dressed, he walked me out to my car and kissed me again in the dark.

“I had such a good time, Lily. Can I see you again? Like tomorrow?”

I laughed. “My kids…you know…they take up a lot of my time. But yes, we’ll work something out.”

“I’m so glad you agreed to go out with me. I worked on that Top Ten list for a month. I even ran it by my Cancer Survivors Group.”

“Well, you can tell them it worked.”

I climbed in my car and drove home. Michael’s car wasn’t there. I let myself in, let Gunther out and went up to check on Noah. He was sleeping peacefully, looking angelic. I picked up a damp towel and his dirty clothes, and walked to the end of the hall where I keep the laundry basket. I could see Tara’s light on. I pressed my ear to the door. Her stereo was on quiet. I knocked gently. “I’m home. You up?”

“Yeah.”

I opened the door and poked my head in. Her bed was covered with homework.

“Tara! It’s 1:00 a.m.”

“I know. I have a chemistry test tomorrow. I’m going to sleep now, I swear.”

“You’ll end up sick, not sleeping enough.”

“Yes, Oh Nagging One.”

“Thanks. Now shut off the light.”

“How was your date?”

“Who told you I was on a date?”

“Uncle Michael. How was it?”

“Really nice.”

“Awesome, Mom. You know, Uncle Michael’s great, but…it would be nice if you had a real boyfriend. People will think you’re a fag hag.”

“What!”

“Chill out, Mom. God, you act like I don’t know anything.”

I shook my head and shut her door, then went down to my bedroom. I dialed Pete’s number.

“Night-night, Pete.”

“Good night, gorgeous.”

“A woman could get used to compliments like that.”

“A man could get used to having a beautiful woman like you to sleep next to.”

“I better get some sleep.”

“’Night. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Good night,” I whispered.

Okay, so I had chemo to thank for the best sex of my life. Maybe for the love of my life.

They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But hell ain’t seen nothin’ like a woman out to protect her children.

Pete and I were seeing each other fast and furiously, and Michael was head over heels in love with George. And two weeks later, I flew to London with Tara.

I met David for dinner at my hotel. Tara was seeing a play with a tour group, pleased to be free of her mother for the night and probably passing herself off as eighteen to the handsome young tour guide with the slight Irish brogue. I wanted the advantage of being seated in the restaurant first, so I got a table for two and waited for David to show up.

I hadn’t seen him in five years, and I hoped he had lost his hair, grown a gut and had the disheveled appearance of a man aimless without his first wife. When he entered the restaurant, I saw none of those things. His hair was still thick and sandy blond. Maybe he was graying, but you couldn’t tell from across the room. He didn’t have a gut, just the taut, lean lines I remembered. He wasn’t frumpy or wrinkled, but dressed in a crisp white Oxford shirt, gray slacks and expensive black loafers.

He walked confidently across the dining room, the walk of someone who always knows he is the best-looking man at a party. At one time, that walk, knowing he was cutting across the room to me, would make my stomach do flip-flops. Now, I felt nothing but a dull anger I thought I had long since spent to nothingness. I’d take Pete’s swaggerless walk any day.

I didn’t stand to greet him. I think he expected a hug, and he leaned down awkwardly to kiss me, his eyes glancing around the room as if to see if anyone had noticed my slight snubbing of him.

“Lily…” His lips brushed my cheek. He smelled of Polo.

“David.” I didn’t smile as he sat down.

His gray eyes looked at my scarf, at my face, at the toll cancer had taken on my coloring. My makeup was perfect, but still, I knew I looked very different from the last time he’d seen me. I saw the muscle of his jaw flex several times. His eyes watered.

“You look good,” he said hoarsely.

“I don’t, but then again, I have cancer. This isn’t a beauty contest.” I had taken extra care to pencil on my eyebrows perfectly. I wore red lipstick, and added mascara to my few growing-in lashes. I had on foundation and blush. I didn’t look healthy, but I wasn’t ghastly. I couldn’t face him looking truly wretched, knowing he was going back to his perfect blond wife and their perfect blond baby boy after lunch.

“Tara has grown up so much,” he offered, taking a sip from his water glass. They’d tried to spend some time together.

“Children do that. Especially when you haven’t seen them in years,” I murmured, looking at the menu. I settled on a bowl of soup and a salad.

“I guess she told you things didn’t go all that well today.” He had taken her, alone, to lunch.

I nodded. “Did you expect otherwise?”

He shrugged. “I guess not.” Did I hear in his voice a faint British clip? Was he really becoming a fake Brit, à la Madonna?

“Noah is almost eight now,” I reported.

“Time flies.” He shook his head and scanned the menu. I guessed he would order a steak and a salad.

Our waiter came over. “May I offer you a drink while you consider the menu?”

“I think we’re ready to order.” I smiled. “I’ll have a tossed salad with oil and vinegar and a bowl of your corn chowder for my meal.”

“And for the gentleman?”

“I’ll have the filet mignon, cooked well-done, and a beefsteak tomato salad.”

“Excellent. And to drink?”

I ordered a martini, and as I expected, he ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks. Some things don’t change. Knowing that, I felt certain wife number two would end up as abandoned as I had been. Which served her right. I was comforted by the thought that I could see it happening. Like a gypsy fortune-teller with my scarf on my head, I saw it all. The sobbing, the clinging, the begging him to stay even though it meant losing every last shred of dignity. Clutching the baby at night, wondering where she went wrong, how she had not seen it coming. Anger filling the place where heartache resided. Seeping through her like a sponge mops up a spill on the counter. Then, after a while, the empty hollow, neither anger nor love residing there, just empty space.

“So I suppose you’re here to talk about the kids, though coming all the way to London is a little over the top, even for you, Lily.”

I felt the knife twisting in me. I stared across the table. How had I ever been married to a man who would undermine my very being at every turn, make me doubt my sanity? I remembered all the nights he hadn’t come home from NYU, how he’d “fallen asleep in his office.” I knew. I wasn’t one of those women…the last to know. The signs were there, and yet when I confronted him, he assured me it was all in my head. I was only imagining that when he touched me in bed, in my pregnant state, that he was secretly repulsed. I only imagined that making love was robotic, his eyes shut, where once they had stared down at me, full of fire. But maybe the fire had been imagined, too. I knew what he ate. I knew what he drank. But I had no access to his heart and soul. Never had. And neither did Child Bride. She was someone new to manipulate. I felt a tiny bit sorry for her. Just a tiny bit.

“Look, David, it’s clear your involvement with the children is minimal. It’s too much effort to call them, even on their birthdays. Months and months go by without them hearing from you.”

“Lily, I have an important position here. I have responsibilities to my new family. To my in-laws.”

“Ah, yes, Lord and Lady Marlborough. Cheerio, old chap.”

“Don’t mock, Lily. I always hated how you mocked everything.”

“I always hated how you fucked everything.”

“Is that what’s brought you here? Across the Atlantic? To hash out imagined affairs and water under the bridge?”

Our drinks arrived, and I swallowed half of mine and signaled for another. I felt like I was losing my footing.

“You complain about the child support.”

“Well, I have a life here. And I feel like I’m sending tremendous support to you, and I don’t know what you spend it all on.”

“Oh—” I looked down at my nails “—you know, frivolous things. Food, a glove for Little League, a roof over their heads, school supplies, savings for college. Nothing important, David.”

“Again the mocking.”

“Do you even care about them, David?”

His voice dropped an octave. “Keep your voice down. Of course I do. I love my children very much, but I can’t help that I live so far away from them.”

I shook my head. I had the urge to pick up my steak knife and plunge it into his jugular.

“I’m dying, David.”

I watched him blink rapidly, three or four times in succession, then he exhaled and leaned back in his chair, his shoulders sagging. It was like watching a balloon deflate.

“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

“Spare me.”

“I am. I knew you had cancer, I just had no idea. I thought you’d have chemo and get better.”

“What could you know, David? What can you
possibly
know about throwing your guts up all day long, and then reading bedtime stories at night, being both a mother and father. Pulling over to the side of the road to throw up on the way to soccer practice, smiling through the pain so your kids don’t guess how bad it really is. You don’t know because you haven’t bothered to ask. Not once did you call to offer me your support. Not one phone call.”

“It’s not my place to give you support.”

“Did you call
them
to make sure they were okay, knowing their mother had cancer?”

He didn’t answer and looked away. When he looked back he sighed again, then drained his Dewar’s in one smooth gulp.

“I want you to sign these papers, David.” I pulled them from my purse. “I want the children to remain in the U.S. after I die.”

“With who? Let me guess. Michael.” He said Michael’s name like it was bile in his throat. They’d both always been jealous of the other.

“Yes. Michael.”

“He’s not even family, Lily. He’s not even a blood relative.”

“He’s the closest thing they have to a blood relative. Did you know he coaches Noah’s baseball team? Takes Tara to track. Holds their hands when they’re feverish. Makes them dinner. Does all the Dad things you should be doing but aren’t.”