Hardball (24 page)

Janice and I didn’t laugh.

If Vivian ever told me to feed her pussy, I’d laugh. She’d laugh. We’d fuck. I’d feed her pussy all night, laughing.

If I fucked Janice, there was no more laughing with Vivian. I couldn’t go back to her with or without an apology.

If I fucked Janice or anyone else, the door back to Vivian was closed.

Everyone’s going to laugh at you.

They’re going to talk about you.

Feel sorry for you.

Are you ready to bat .200?

Are you ready to fuck up?

Are you ready for the slump
?

I seized. I wasn’t ready for that. I reached for Janice’s knee to open her legs and stopped before I touched her, leaving my hand hovering.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Not yet, baby.”

“Thank you for all the good years. We had some great times.”

She looked at me with big brown eyes and lips that didn’t pout anymore. They were tight and defensive.

“I’ll take care of the room, as always. But I can’t this time.” I zipped my fly.

She took her hands off the headboard and closed her legs. Sighed. I got ready for recriminations and a fight. But not too many. I had to get up in the morning. Even if I fucked her raw, I’d have left by eleven.

“You could have told me before I hired a sitter,” she groused.

“I know. I’m sorry. I can cover it.”

“I’m not a whore.”

“I never treated you like one.”

She looked at her watch but never made eye contact with me. “Whatever. Just get out.”

I got out. I put on my jacket, paid the bill, got her room service, and sat in the rental car, shaking.

Jesus Christ. What had I done?

Vivian

The decorations were up. We were crouched behind sofas and chairs. My friends. Dad’s friends. His brother and sister and their kids and grandkids. The house was alive, holding its collective breath as Dad’s car pulled into the drive. He’d gone out for pre-latke-and-soup coffee with Sylvia, the lady from the deli counter at Ralph’s. He’d changed his medication, and the rheumatoid arthritis pain had become less and less severe. He hadn’t used a walker in weeks and only occasionally needed his cane. When he’d told me he’d had the confidence to ask Sylvia out instead of just asking her to peel the potatoes, my eyes stung with happy tears.

I hadn’t wanted to meet Sylvia at a surprise party, but seeing as I couldn’t change the party, I went to Ralph’s to meet her on my own. Then I told Dad when I got home. Pretending she and I were just meeting at the party wasn’t fair.

He looked stricken. “Peanut, I wanted to have a dinner.”

“I needed pickles, and I know you don’t like the ones in the jar,” I lied. “She had a name tag. I said hi. She’s very nice, Dad. And not just to me. To everyone. The lady in front of me was being a complete bitch, and she was still nice. Real nice. Not fake nice.”

“Yeah,” he said, flipping through channels. It was after midnight, and the pickin’s were slim. “They send her to the worst customers. By the time they walk away, they’re smiling.”

He settled on one of the ESPNs, on some statistical yackety yack involving a players’ strike that wasn’t going to happen, and I didn’t even think to ask him to change it. I didn’t know what I was going to do over the course of the season, if seeing him on the field was going to hurt me too much or if even in the breadth of the stadium I’d feel the heat of his body.

But it wasn’t the season yet. I had time. I had Dad’s party the next day, and I had to get the library in shape for a funding drive, then I had summer vacation. I didn’t expect to be over Dash Wallace by then, but I didn’t have to figure out if I had to start rooting for Anaheim just yet.

That was why his face caught me off guard, landing in my throat like an olive I couldn’t swallow. First in a rectangle in the corner of the screen, still and perfect, with a predatory look outward, with the header
Spring Training Report.

Dad fussed for the remote while the announcer droned about something, but his hands were swollen and stiff. He couldn’t find the button to change the channel.

“Sorry, sorry,” he grumbled to my broken heart.

I hadn’t said a word because it was crazy, but the sight of him brought it all back. When the picture flipped to clips of the Arizona practice field and Dash’s body running across it, my sorrow hit a new low.

He couldn’t catch a freaking ball to save his life. Tape of the pathetic drills looped over and over. Error. Error. Error. It was freakishly bad. I’d never seen him play like that. It was as if a Little Leaguer had stepped onto the field for a charity match.

“Stop,” I said to Dad, leaning over so he couldn’t change the station.

Scouts and sportswriters are calculating the odds that the current world champions will be in fourth place by the All-Star Game without Wallace’s A-game. With Randy Tremaine’s slugging percentage at a career high, there’s speculation number 19’s moving down to the bottom of the lineup.

They shot a second of him close. Profile. Walking off the practice field with his head down. He knew people were watching. He wanted to hide. He was ashamed.

How did I know?

I just did.

He’d hurt me. I knew he was sleeping with other women. I knew he’d forgotten me. I knew what we had together wouldn’t be repeated, but I felt no joy in his failure. I was sick to my stomach for him.

The next morning, prepping Dad’s twenty-five-man roster ball, I placed it in the little glass stand with Dash’s big blue name facing up. I wanted to remember that confident player. That king of the Elysian. I wrapped the box in blue paper and immersed myself in decorating the house and entertaining the guests while Dad was out.

“They’re here!” Aunt Bette said from her spot by the window.

I was in the center of the room because I lived there, so I didn’t have to hide.

Sylvia and I had arranged it. She was going to let Dad walk in first. Tie a lace on her shoe or something. I’d left the door unlocked as usual.

“Wait,” Aunt Bette whispered sharply. “Who is that guy?” She glared at me. “Didn’t you say not to come after seven?”

Aunt Bette was always a little stern. I walked to the window amid the whispers behind the furniture and peeked through the seam between the curtains.

“Shit,” I said.

“Mouth!” Aunt Bette shot to me.

Fuck her. My life had just exploded.

Dash.

Dash Wallace.

Three-time Golden Glove shortstop with a .380 career average and the gentlest filthy mouth was in my driveway with a huge bouquet of pink roses, opening the car door for Sylvia. I put my hand over my mouth. My lips remembered his, and my fingers told them about the sweet silk of his cock. It was my heart that shouted the loudest. Screamed for him to make me laugh, soothe me, goad me into those moments when I didn’t worry about anything but how to please him. My nose and eyes tingled with the threat of tears, and my throat closed around a big lump.

Dash and Dad exchanged words. I couldn’t hear them, but they were pointing at Sylvia. She laughed and waved. Dad sniffed the roses and shrugged. Dash pulled one out and gave it to Dad. He passed it to Sylvia.

“Who is that?” Aunt Bette hissed.

“Dash Wallace,” I said, “He’s a—”

“The shortstop?!” My eleven year-old cousin stood ramrod straight from behind the couch.

“Get down!” three people said simultaneously.

His father pulled him down.

“Friend,” I finished.

The three of them came up the front walk, Dash and Dad talking seriously and Sylvia trying to stay behind. Dad wouldn’t let her. Goddamned gentleman.

Well, the original plan had changed, and I was bursting out of my skin anyway, so I opened the front door. I was supposed to have eyes only for my father. It was his birthday. I was supposed to get him in the house. Shout surprise. Make sure he didn’t have a heart attack. Give him a fraction of the love he’d given me over the years.

But I only had eyes for the guy with the flowers.

Don’t cry.

“Hey,” I said.

He was ten feet away and three feet below, all dressed up in a suit like the day he had waited outside my library. My heart sighed. I hadn’t dared to hope he’d ever be in my driveway again, so seeing him flooded me. Joy first, then pain. Acceptance then rage. Forgiveness then bitterness. What had he been doing for the past few weeks? Who had he been sleeping with? Was he in for the weekend? Was he trying to make me his LA girl? I guarded my heart with tinfoil armor. It was the strongest thing I had against him.

“Your dad said you made potato pancakes,” he said. “And I like potatoes.”

“There’s plenty,” I replied. I wasn’t going to ruin Dad’s party with drama, so I stepped aside and made room. “Birthday boy first.”

“Ladies first,” Dad said.

“Oh, I left something in the car,” Sylvia said with her lilting Honduran accent.

Dad, of course, started back to get it for her. The slapstick comedy of chivalry in the front of the house was maddening.

“Dad, can you let Dash help her? I have an emergency with the matzo soup. I know you told me not to make it, but I had to try.”

Sylvia was already at the car, waving for Dad to just get on with it.

He did. His knees still ached, so he was slow up the steps, but he finally got in the door.

“
Surprise!
”

The shout went up without a hitch, and Dad laughed and whooped right after. I heard it all, but I didn’t see it. Dash had stepped into the doorway, and he filled my vision with his piercing blue eyes and talented lips. I couldn’t tear my eyes from his face. His body. The heat coming from it. The smell of grass and summer. The tinfoil was crumpling.

“Can you forgive me?” he said softly.

“Not if you ruin my father’s birthday.”

He leaned in to kiss me.

And… no.

I pushed him away gently. “It’s not that easy.”

He stepped back. Nodded. Handed me the roses. “First step: I’m an asshole.”

I took the roses. “Good start because you’re leaving Sylvia standing on the steps.”

He looked at her as she stood, waiting, then he smiled in that way that turned me into jelly. We got out of the doorway and joined the party.

When he came in, Francine’s eyes went birthday-cake big. I shrugged, letting her know that if she was stunned, emotional, elated, curious, I was all that and more.

Dash

In a way, I’d spent the last six weeks planning to see her again. In another way, I was playing it completely by ear.

I’d tried implementing new routines in Arizona. This thing, that thing, then the other. The shame of going back to her with my tail between my legs was too much to bear. If I did that, I’d have to tell her everything. I’d have to have the guts to change my life around.

Every grounder I missed, every time I was caught looking, the walls closed in.

I flew back a month into spring training for an exhibition game.

The game didn’t matter. I was a complete cockup. I was letting everyone down. I couldn’t even pass a ball to Youder for the double play. He was ten feet from me. If I fucked up the season before his free agency, he was going to be offered a bag of shit. That was on me. I didn’t want him to go, but I didn’t want to fuck him over either.

I had to do this better. I had to get control.

I dug out the stairs on the slope. Turned out the roots of the avocado tree had been holding the mountain up, and now the ground was going where water and gravity told it to go. So I could shore up the hill, which I did, but I had to unearth the steps. Otherwise, the only way to get down was to slide and slide.

I stayed back half a day and drove to her school. I watched the library windows for a sign of her. Stayed in my car and waited for her to walk to her crack-pipe car. The rear passenger tire needed air. I took the pump out of my trunk and filled it. I noticed it was as bald as a turnip and hustled back into my car like a criminal. I wondered if I could change it completely before she got out.

I missed my opportunity. She left with that guy. The one from the Petersen. He touched her shoulder when he said good-bye, and I wanted to rip out his arm. I opened the door to do just that, getting a foot on the pavement. She got in the car and was far away from him before I even stood straight.

This was me.

This was the core of me. Slow. Misdirected. Impulsive. Unaligned with the rhythms everyone else walked to.

I hadn’t fucked Janice at the Mesa Westin, and without that, the rest of the preseason rituals were forgotten or rendered meaningless. The last time I’d felt right was when I was with Vivian.

I had to go back. All the way back, before I’d built anything. I was running out of time. I had to accept that I was obsessed with her, ask for forgiveness, and rebuild around her. Without her, I’d not only be worthless all season, I’d be plain worthless.

When I saw her in the doorway, I knew I’d done the right thing. Anxiety molted off me. I left it on the sidewalk like an old skin.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I didn’t touch her. Barely spoke to her. The room was populated with Dodger fans, and they were all very nice. I talked about the previous season and the upcoming one. Showed one of the kids how to throw. Caught her glance whenever I could.

Her father opened his signed ball after dinner.

I signed hundreds of balls a year, and I had no idea what they meant to anyone. I didn’t know if they went in the trash or on solid gold pedestals. But I did know what happened to that ball.

He turned it over in his hands a few times, looking at all the signatures. I couldn’t see his face.

“All twenty-five from last season,” Vivian said, wringing her hands.

“You give me such
naches
,” he said. “I’m
kvelling
.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, but a collective
aww
went up in the room when he put the heel of his hand to his eye, rubbing away a tear. Vivian hugged him, and he clasped her as if she was about to run away.

I sat with my drink in my fingers and knew why she didn’t want an expiration date. She couldn’t just take her pleasure and go on with her life. She had a bare minimum expression of love, and it was the love her father had for her. She wouldn’t take anything less.