Heft (33 page)

Gerard Kane says, Hang on a sec. He walks up to one of the guys standing around watching us: one of the managers, maybe, someone who works here.

You mind clocking this for me? he asks, and hands the man a clocking gun.

I drop one of the bats and walk toward the plate. When I was little I had this superstition: I had to step into the box with my left foot first. I had to, or I wouldn’t get a hit. Then at twelve I forced myself to break this habit in practice, over and over again until it didn’t scare me anymore. Today I step in with my left foot. Just in case.

I try to remember how it was when I first began doing this well. When I first began getting attention for hitting. There were times when I just
knew.
I
knew
I would knock it out of the park. I try to feel this now but it won’t come.

Marcus winds up and releases a pitch that I misjudge. I don’t swing. It’s a perfect strike. I stand and shake my legs out.

Ninety-six! calls the man clocking it.

Hoo, baby, says Gerard Kane.

My mother used to come to all my games. Every single one. She was there for every single one until she got sick. Sitting by herself in the stands. Wrapped up in a blanket if it was cold. Wrapping me in a blanket on the drive home.

Marcus pitches again and I swing and catch a piece of it. It flies up behind me and hits the wall.

After six pitches I finally hit one: a grounder between second and third base, closer to third, and I think that if I had been standing on that base I would have dived for it and chucked it hard to first. I’m a good fielder.

At this point I would have struck out already and it fazes me. Marcus’s pitches don’t let up. His best pitch is his fastball.

I used to cry when we lost until a coach told me not to. I was nine or ten. Don’t do that, he said. Coach Laughlin was his name. Don’t do that, Don’t cry, he said to me. I never did again.

On the twelfth or thirteenth pitch I hit a homer. Well, what would be a homer on a regular field. Here it hits the back wall with a little
thup.

There you go, Kel, says Gerard Kane, and I think maybe, maybe I still have a chance. If I don’t fuck up anymore. Please let me stop fucking up.

But I swing so hard at the next one, and miss so hard, that I almost hit the ground. I stagger backward, trying to catch my breath, trying to stand up straight.

Gerard Kane walks over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. Kel, buddy, he says. You nervous?

No, I say. Just—football, you know? I’ve been playing football all season.

You’ll stick with baseball, if you know what’s best for you! he says.

On the pitcher’s mound, Marcus tosses the ball up in the air and catches it.

How many hours have I spent in my life doing that. Just doing that with any type of ball I could find. Baseballs and basketballs and footballs. Rocks when there were none. Marbles. Pennies. Flipping quarters. Throwing books in the air and catching them. Just tossing things. I think it is what I have done most in my life. Lying down on my bed or standing up or out in the little backyard or on the street or on the way to or from school or in practice or at recess or on the neighborhood court. The clean release of a sphere into space. The muscle behind it. The force from your legs, from your gut, from your back, from your shoulders and biceps and elbows—the sling of the elbow, the catapult—and then the flicking wrist, and then the loving palm, and then goodbye, goodbye. The dance off the fingertips and into the air. The skipping spin. The last loving touch and then it’s gone, gone, and you know when you’ve done it right and when you’ve done it wrong. There is certainty and there is justice in it. You know when you say goodbye to it with your skin. Whether it will go right or left, too high, too low, you know. You know. You know.

I swing. I miss. I wait. A strike. A ground ball. A strike. It’s not terrible—I take a piece out of a lot of them, and I hit one more home run—but I’m not here. I fail. I don’t hit my stride and I can’t get used to Marcus’s pitching. He is better than I am. I know it to be true. A better player. More deserving. Once I allow myself to have this thought I can’t shake it. I can’t unthink it. I want to feel sorry for myself, but I almost feel relieved.

The last thing we do is a sixty-yard dash. Mr. Kane gives us a while to warm up. I run a lap around the bases while they measure the distance and set up cones. Normally I can do it in 7.1. That has always been my speed. But I know, today, that 7.1 won’t be impressive, that I must dig into all of my reserves and come up with something better than that. So when I run it I tell myself that I am on fire, that I am running from a murderer. I used to run up the stairs to my room as quick as I could when I was little because I always imagined a bad guy running up them after me. So I picture this. And when I’m done, Gerard Kane looks at his watch and says, Seven flat.

But Marcus Hobart runs it in 6.93. I should be faster than him. He pitches. I should have been faster.

Thanks, guys, says Mr. Kane. We’ll be in touch with you, OK? Good hustle today.

He shakes both of our hands. I look again at his sunglasses, hanging around his neck on a cord.
Take me with you
, I want to say.

Sarah says, Bye! Very cheerfully.

Then both of them grab their things and go.

I almost run after them. I almost say to Mr. Kane,
You have to give me another chance. You have to let me show you—in the spring. I’m so much better in the spring. Let me work out and then let me show you again. Let me eat right for a month.

But I don’t. I sit on the bleachers—the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds watch me but don’t say anything—and take off my cleats. I pull my sweatpants back on, shivering a little because I’m sweaty and cooling down, and then I pull my sweatshirt on and then my sneakers. I haven’t called Lindsay yet, but I don’t want to hear her voice because I think it will break me. So instead I send her a text.
Done.

Marcus Hobart comes out of the locker room.

Nice meeting you, he says, and he shakes my hand. I’ll see you around, OK?

But I know that I won’t. See him again.

While I’m waiting I tell myself that maybe it wasn’t so bad. That maybe they need us both. We play different positions, I tell myself. Maybe it’s fine. But in my heart I know. I know it’s not good enough. What I did, how I played. I know it’s not nearly good enough for the majors.

When Lindsay picks me up I think she knows before I get in the car.

Hi, she says. She doesn’t ask questions. This is why I like her: Because she is an athlete. Because she understands.

Do you want to come over for the afternoon? she asks.

OK, I say.

And I sink into the seat of her father’s Lexus, smooth inside, leathery and soft, a whisper of a car. Comforting in ways it shouldn’t be.

My mother drew the bull’s-eye. She propped the mattress up and drew the red bull’s-eye on it for me. My mother, wearing sweatpants and a robe, her feet bare in our grassless backyard, and there I was behind her, tossing a baseball into the air. And catching it. Oh I caught it. Oh I always did.

• • •

“I
’m gonna be back,” said Yolanda.

“Very good,” I said.

I was sitting in my armchair &
Cash Cab
was on. I would not look at her.

“You look thinner,” said Yolanda.

I shifted but did not reply.

“They want me there when the baby comes,” said Yolanda. She was holding her bags.

“Of course,” I said.

“My mother apologized,” said Yolanda. “For the things she said. My father too.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“They even said I could go back to school if I wanted,” said Yolanda. “If I can keep working. They’ll help watch the baby.”

“Excellent.”

“I can work for you on weekends. I can bring the baby with me.”

“Perhaps.”

“Am I still invited to your dinner party?” asked Yolanda.

“Don’t,” I said. It was too much for me.

“What?” she said. “You’re having one. The Dales are coming. Don’t stand them up.”

But I knew when she left that she would not be back. No one comes back you see.

“See you then,” said Yolanda, & opened the door.

Before she left she looked at me for a minute. “What are you going to do?” she said.

“O you know,” I said, but even I didn’t.

“There’s fruit salad on the counter,” she said, & then, finally, she left.

It was the first time I had been alone for the night in a couple of weeks. After she left, the house let out a sigh of relief & settled into itself somehow. I could hear things I hadn’t been noticing. The heat went on. The radiators clanged. I wandered a little bit for no reason, peering into corners & out of windows. I went into the bathroom & looked at myself in the mirror. I turned my head from side to side & decided that Yolanda was right: I did look thinner. I went out of the bathroom and stood at the foot of the stairs & looked up them into the dark stairwell. I turned the light on & off again. I walked to the piano and ran my finger over the black of it, just as Yolanda had done the first day she came to me, & found no dust there. I lifted the cover off the keys and played a C-chord. It has not been tuned in more than a decade but it still sounds almost right. It was a gift from my father. When I was a boy I played seriously & I practiced all the time.

Then I put on the radio. Then I walked into my bedroom & tried to remember it as it was when I was a very small boy, when my parents lived there. I have a memory of climbing in bed with them in the morning, one of the few times they were happy together, O I must have been very small.

Then I walked to the wardrobe & opened it & remembered all of my mother’s dresses, how they hung in there from small (on the left) to large (on the right), & how she would lovingly finger the small ones & in misery tell me which events she had worn them to. Anna Ordinary.

Then I walked into the kitchen automatically, my brain was telling me to, the other-Arthur that lives in there. But when I opened my refrigerator I could not muster the energy, I simply could not, & so I closed it & leaned against it & wondered what would become of me. I felt anchorless. But also in some ways I felt weightless.

The fruit salad that Yolanda had made was sitting on the counter. She’d made it out of fruit that she ordered online. It was huge & beautiful. She had put two salad spoons in it. & a smaller bowl next to it so that I might serve myself.

So I did: I filled the bowl with beautiful fruit. Apples & pears & bananas & mangoes & grapes, red and green. Kiwis like stars on the top. Blueberries & strawberries & oranges & grapefruit. I went to the couch and almost turned on the television but I stopped myself. I sat with it instead. I put one blueberry in my mouth & closed my eyes. Inside of my mouth it burst & popped. Its blue flavor. Its juice. I swallowed it neatly & chose an apple piece next.

Outside the street was quiet.

When I was a boy there would have been shouting of one kind or another. A boy to another boy. A mother to her child. I miss these sounds.

A banana. I had forgotten bananas. Their warmth & charitable nature.

When I had finished I went to bed and realized that I could feel a rib if I poked hard enough into my stomach. I could feel one rib someplace deep inside my flesh.

In the morning I woke up later than I had in years. It was ten o’clock. Normally I get up at sunrise & I cannot go back to sleep. I lay in bed for a while listening for Yolanda, to see if she had returned—I had no basis to believe she would, but I listened nonetheless—but the house was silent as it had been the night before, & the windows rattled. There was a gusting wind outside. It was colder than it had been all month.

I read for a very long time & then I made lunch & then read some more. I put on the television & turned off the television.

• • •

I
stay at the Harpers’ all afternoon. We play Wii with Lindsay’s
little sisters in the basement. Over and over again they beat me at tennis. They kill me. Mrs. Harper comes downstairs and says Kel, would you like to stay over tonight?

They know about my practice this morning. Lindsay told them. They probably feel bad for me.

OK, I say. If you don’t mind.

I could go back to Rhonda’s but it’s warm here.

Their house is like the Cohens’. They give me a room of my own. Lindsay says, It was Andy’s.

This was his name: Andrew Harper. It’s the first time I’ve heard Lindsay say it. His room is light blue and dark blue.

I change before dinner and then I start down the stairs and then I hear Margo and Mrs. Harper talking in the kitchen.

How long is Kel staying here? Margo asked.

Just for tonight, says Mrs. Harper.

Why is he staying here?

Mrs. Harper pauses. He lost his mama, she says finally.

His
mama
? says Margo.

Yes, says Mrs. Harper. The way we lost Andy. He lost his mama.

Oh no, says Margo.

Oh no. I stand still in the hallway for a while after that. Lindsay finds me and says Coming? She puts a hand on my back. Burgers, she says.

When we go downstairs little Margo is looking at me worriedly with her two fingers in her mouth. A habit her family tells her she is too old for.

After dinner we go into the living room, where the Harpers have set up a tree, and we all watch a movie that Margo and Kayla have chosen, an animated version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer that I too watched when I was a kid. The girls laugh and laugh and laugh. Lindsay laughs at them. I laugh at Lindsay. Their tree has little lights on it, every color. It has ornaments and some of the ornaments are silver-framed pictures of each of the Harpers. The fact that Christmas is in two weeks has not even crossed my mind until now. I should get Lindsay something beautiful. I should get her something she will look at and hold in her hands and put on her body someplace, on her neck, on her wrist. In her long hair.

Before Margo goes to bed she hugs me.