Plunking Reggie Jackson (12 page)

Coley was pissed. He swung onto both crutches and headed for the deck. “What you mean is, I'm not as good as
you
think.”

When he drove her home, Bree put her hand on the inside of his thigh, near his crotch. Coley gave a start; he could drive wearing the cast, but he didn't have his usual body control. “Take it easy, huh?”

She was biting at his earlobe, at times too hard for comfort. “Your dad says you need to goof off some way that keeps you off your feet.”

“Yeah, that's what he says. We probably don't need to talk about him.”

“I was just thinking of something you could do on your back, and it would be a lot of fun.”

He didn't know how she could giggle and nibble and talk, all at the same time. “Not tonight, Bree, I have a headache.”

“Very funny.”

“There'll be other times,” he said, turning one of her favorite phrases back on her.

“Very funny again. Are you going to disappoint me?” Her lower lip was extended, but in a mischievous way.

By the time he got home, it was after dark and his mother had just finished cleaning the grill with an S.O.S. pad. After she brewed herself a cup of Swiss mocha coffee, she plopped herself down on one of the deck chairs. Coley got a Mountain Dew from the fridge, then sat down beside her.

“I hope she had a good time,” said his mother.

“Bree? Yeah, she had a good time. D'you like her?”

His mother didn't answer immediately, but it might have been just because she was sipping her coffee. “She's an easy girl to like, but I'd have to wonder if she's a happy person.”

“She seemed like she was having a real good time. I'd say she was happy.”

“I don't mean just tonight. What kind of life has she had?”

It should have been an easy question, but it wasn't. “I don't know a lot about her life before she moved here,” Coley admitted.

“I would guess there's some unhappiness there.”

“I would guess there's some unhappiness in everybody's life,” he replied more defensively than he intended.

“True,” she said. Her tone of voice was conciliatory.

“Sometimes she doesn't like talking about her private life.” That was hedging the bet without a doubt, but he assumed his mother was right about troubling elements in Bree's past. He wished he knew what they were. He felt a little embarrassed because his own mother seemed to connect with her on a deeper level, after just one meeting, than he did.

“Anyway,” she added, “I liked her and I think your father did too.”

“I'm glad.”

“I guess you must like her too, and that would be the real point, wouldn't it?”

It was dusk when he located Ruthie Roth's house along Wood Hill Road. The concrete slab that served as the front porch was somewhat askew. It needed to be jacked up, and it needed a railing of some sort to give it a finished look.

The neglected porch seemed to typify the nature of the neighborhood, which wasn't a slum exactly, but tacky enough. The unmowed yards were peppered with dandelions. Here and there was an overturned tricycle on the sidewalk. The house next to Ruthie's had shingle siding, but some of the sections were laid bare and covered over with roofing paper.

By the time Coley stepped clumsily from the car, Ruthie was already bouncing down the sidewalk. She jumped in the passenger's side. “This would be the Coley car,” she declared.

“That's what it would be.”

“It would have to be cool like this, or it couldn't qualify.”

“Glad you like it,” he said impatiently.
Will it have to be like this
? He started the engine before he asked her, “Where we goin'?”

“Let's go to the Coffee Barn.”

The Coffee Barn was on the other side of the city, near the university. Coley grumbled, “That's way out in Campustown. There's got to be somethin' closer.”

“That's where I want to go, dude. You want help with your homework, I get to choose the place. Quid pro quo.”

Quid pro quo? Dude? Did Ruthie Roth practice annoying, or did it just come naturally? “Okay, okay,” Coley agreed. “We'll go there if you really want to.”

As soon as they pulled away from the curb, she lit up a cigarette. “You mind if I smoke?”

Coley wasn't sure. “What if I say yes?”

“It would be predictable if you said yes. Cigarette smoke would be just too toxic for the Coley car.”

“Can you give that a rest, Ruthie?”

“I'll put the window down,” she said. “I'll blow the smoke outside.”

“You shouldn't smoke those anyway.”

“That's what they say.”

“Do you smoke those at home? Does your mother know?”

Before she answered, Ruthie thrust out her lower lip so as to exhale toward the visor. “My mother smokes about three packs a day while she parks herself in front of game shows and talk shows. She has never taken a hell of a lot of interest in much of anything I do.”

Coley glanced in her direction while they waited at a red light. Most of her face wasn't visible from this angle, though. At times it was hard not to feel sorry for her. This was one of those times.

He said, “Maybe you should count your blessings.”

“Please, let's hear this.”

“I was just thinkin' I might like it better if my parents were a little less interested in the things I do. Especially my old man. He even checks my fingernails sometimes because of the way it might affect my grip on the ball.”

“Let's see your nails, then,” said Ruthie.

Coley stuck his right hand in front of her face. “I don't pitch with this hand, but the left one's the same.”

After she examined his fingers briefly, she said, “There's nothing to see here, they're not too long, not too short.”

“That's the idea.” Coley pulled his hand free and fastened it on the steering wheel. “That's my point.”

“So you're bummed out because your parents aren't more indifferent. Is that what you're saying to me?”

“Yeah, that would be the word. Indifferent.”

“So I'm supposed to, like, feel
sorry
for you because your parents don't ignore you quite enough?”

“Can you knock it off? I don't need anybody to feel sorry for me, I'm just pointin' out that there are two sides to everything. When it comes to conversation, that's probably the best I can do.”

“Your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'. Come to think of it, she's probably rich too; it's hard to find a successful real estate agent who isn't. You're the man-child with the golden arm. You can sign a contract for beaucoup bucks when you graduate. Am I slow to sympathize? Silly me.”

Angry, Coley swerved the car to the curb and stopped. The heavy cast made the stop more sudden than he intended, but it didn't sideline his agenda. “Look, I really don't need this. What I could use is a little help with this one project, and even if it isn't all that important. You wanted me to pick you up at your house, which I did. You wanted to go to the Coffee Barn, and I agreed.”

“Sorry.”

“So back off or I'll take you back home. You can watch
Wheel of Fortune
with your mother.”

“I'm trying to apologize. I don't know how to act.”

“What do you mean, you don't know how to act?”

“I mean, I'm nervous.” She threw her spent cigarette out the window with a snap.

Coley was cooled off enough to reenter the flow of traffic. “What's there to be nervous about? You're an actor. You're on the stage two or three times a year. That would make me nervous as hell.”

“Think about it, for God's sake. This is you and this is me.”

“Okay. I'm, like, thinkin' about it.”

“Coley Burke and Ruthie Roth. Alone together. In your car. Can you just think about that?”

“Okay, okay.” He followed the bend in MacArthur to avoid a Chevy Blazer that was straddling lanes. “Is that why you want to go to the Coffee Barn?”

“It's more adult. It's mostly college students. You can be different there, and they don't treat you with contempt.
Comprende
?”

“Yeah, I
comprende
. Let me ask you a question, Ruthie. In all the years I've known you did I ever make fun of you? Did I ever?”

“No, you've always just ignored me.”

“Not always.”

“Okay, not always. I stand corrected,” Ruthie admitted.

“I'm sure there are lots of people I ignore—people I don't even know exist. I'm sure it's the same for you.”

“Don't be defensive. The choice between being ridiculed and being ignored is a no-brainer, if that's what you're hoping I'll say.”

“I'm not hoping you'll say anything,” Coley declared.

At the Coffee Barn they found a thick layer of cigarette haze, a glass counter housing a variety of pastries, a selection of four kinds of coffee, and very few empty tables. The first thing Ruthie said, surveying the setting, was, “What a dump.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘What a dump.'” This time she said it with body language, a large hand resting on a large thrust hip.

“If that's the way you feel, why'd you want to come here?”

“I'm just practicing one of Martha's favorite lines from
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
? In the play she says it all the time.”

“Maybe you should be wearing the silver wig, just to take it to the next level. There's enough weirdos here you could do it and nobody would notice.”

“Funny boy.”

“Okay, so what d'you want? I'll buy; my mama's rich and my dad is good-lookin'.”

Ruthie ordered some Turkish mocha coffee with whipped cream while Coley got a Coke. They found some space at a table more or less by themselves, although there were three other people nearby where tables were shoved together.

“So what are we working on?” Ruthie asked him.

“I'm supposed to make a values survey for human dynamics.”

“What kind of a survey?”

“That's what I don't know. We're supposed to figure it out on our own.”

“Well, you can't just go around asking people what they believe in, like Do you believe in God? What's your idea of love?”

“I know. That's why I need the help.”

“Why are you even taking human dynamics?” she asked him.

“I need the grade. I've got a B and I need to keep it.”

“You might as well take Dress for Success or some other crap like that.”

“I couldn't fit it in my schedule. Look, I'm okay on my core courses, even Mrs. Alvarez says so.”

Before she commented further, Ruthie took a sip of her coffee. “Why do you need a B in the course so bad?”

Coley was frustrated. “Because I'm gonna get a D in English, okay? If I'm lucky, that is. I need the grade point because it goes on a sliding scale according to your ACT scores. The NCAA makes the rules—they take away your scholarship if you don't have the right combination of grade point and ACT.”

“Oh, God,” she groaned. “Baseball. You're talking about your athletic scholarship.”

Coley glanced uneasily at the people who occupied the other end of the table. One of them was a bearded guy wearing a tunic. It seemed like they were surrounded by intellectuals. This might be a place where Ruthie could feel at ease, but it wasn't the same for him. If he was going to sound like a dumb jock, the least they could do was keep it between themselves. He leaned closer in her direction before saying, “Can you, like, hold it down, okay?”

“I didn't realize I was being loud. Y'know, Coley, in some ways you're funny.”

“How am I funny?”

“You're getting a D in English. I'm trying to think why that should happen.”

“Don't talk like Mrs. Alvarez. If I wanted another lecture on not working up to my potential, I could just visit her office or talk to Grissom.”

“I suppose you could. I'm just sitting here thinking that you're going to get a college scholarship for pitching baseball. Never mind that you've got all the money in the world and you don't even need a scholarship. Never mind that you might not even graduate high school because of low grades in English.”

“Don't go there, Ruthie, not now.”

“I've got almost straight A's clear through high school,” she continued, “and no money at all. I'll end up at the junior college and probably go into debt to do that. Who says life isn't fair?”

Coley stood up suddenly to leave. But he tripped on his cast and lost his balance. He fell heavily back into his chair. “I told you I don't need this shit.”

“Okay, okay, I'm sorry. I promised to help you and I will.”

She lit one of her cigarettes, during which time he managed to calm down. “I don't even know what to do the survey on,” he admitted.

“Did Mrs. Alvarez give you any suggestions?”

“What's she got to do with it?”

“Well, I can't say for sure, but you just told me you were talking to her. What did the two of you talk about?”

“The usual, mostly. I'm an academic underachiever. I don't work up to my potential, yada, yada, yada.” Then he thought for a moment before he said, “She brought up one weird thing, though.”

“Which was?”

“She had a lot of information on my older brother.”

“Patrick?”

“Yeah, Patrick. She said I might have some hidden guilt about his death. She said the guilt might have something to do with me coming up short on things I do.”

“Even baseball?”

Coley was startled. “How did you know that?”

“I didn't, Coley,” said Ruthie. “It was just a guess.”

“Yeah, well. Anyway, it all seemed real weird and confusing. She even said some things about my mother.”

“What things?”