Remember the Time (2 page)

The four-wheel-drive vehicle carrying a deputy and a member of the rescue squad sped along the dirt road. When they saw the unfamiliar sight of a river running through the desert, the deputy reverently whispered, “Flash flood,” and immediately put in a call for an emergency vehicle. The two men breathed a sigh of relief when they spotted a man sitting on a large boulder. Their relief would be short-lived.

He fit the description of Mitchell Browder, and the deputy was about to cancel the call for emergency services when the stillness of the figure struck him. The two men got out of the car, not bothering to close the doors, and walked toward the lone man. He didn’t move. He didn’t acknowledge their presence. When the deputy called out his name, he didn’t hear. He simply sat, staring at a point somewhere in the distance. When the man from the rescue squad drew closer he could see the mud caked on the man’s clothing. When he stepped in front of him and repeated his name, Mitchell Browder slowly moved his head upward, revealing a face streaked with dirt and tears.

“Mr. Browder, where is Paul Armstrong?”

“He’s gone,” Mitchell answered in a hollow voice.

“Gone where, Mr. Browder?” the deputy asked in a patient voice. “Which way did he go? My partner will go find him and I’ll stay with you.”

Mitchell shifted his eyes away from whatever he had been staring at and turned them on the man who stood before him. They seemed to burn with pain and fear, and the deputy took a step backward.

And then Mitchell Browder said the words that stunned first the men standing in front of him, and then the entire nation.

“He’s not far away. I watched Paul Armstrong die right over there.”

Mitchell lifted a hand that felt heavy with the weight of his words, pointing to the nearly unrecognizable Jeep
that sat buried in the muddy rubble of the flash flood, and then silent tears coursed down his face once again.

“He didn’t stand a chance,” stated the sheriff, thinking she was out of earshot.

“It was over very quickly,” said a friend, who was also a doctor on call at the hospital, afterward.

“He didn’t feel any pain,” the coroner had pronounced, taking her hand.

Over and over again, the same meaningless phrases blew across her consciousness until she simply stopped hearing them. How the hell did they know? Although she had been spared the sight of his once beautiful now unrecognizable face, she had been forced to look at his battered body. A body that had been untouched by a surgeon’s knife, despite thirteen years in baseball. It seemed to her that he had hurt very much.

Paul had tried to convince her to go with them that morning. But Kate was sick to death of everything to do with Arizona. She’d been married to Paul Armstrong, and consequently baseball, for thirteen years. It wasn’t fun anymore. The constant moving, the road trips, the hundreds of hours spent alone, the limelight that Paul lived in as the Giants’ phenomenal second baseman—all these things had worn her down. She’d almost not come to spring training this year. Almost. But at the last moment she’d changed her mind, knowing that separation from Paul would be even more devastating to their marriage. This was his last chance to make it better. Kate had done all she could. She didn’t think she could live without him, but knew something had to give. And that “something” wasn’t going to be her any longer.

And as she sat, dry-eyed, on the couch in the living room of her parents’ Tempe home that night, surrounded by
people who whispered and murmured and hovered, that was the one thought that assaulted her mind.

How am I supposed to go on without you?

It wasn’t until the next day that she cried.

Mitchell Browder stood in front of her while she sat on that same couch. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked at her forlornly—helplessly. He held a small plastic bag that he continually passed from one hand to the other. When he finally began speaking, his words came out in torrents of pain.

“I’m sorry, Kate. I’m so sorry! I don’t know what else …” He stopped and swallowed hard. “God, he was my best friend on the team. They just let me out of the hospital, and I wanted to come by and tell you how sorry … I don’t know what else to say. It doesn’t seem like enough. If there’s anything I can do to help you … anything.”

Kneeling in front of her, he held the bag out with both hands. When she didn’t take it from him, he gently placed it on her lap.

“These are some of Paul’s things. They forgot to give them to you at the hospital. They were going to send over some stranger to give them to you, but I wouldn’t let them.”

She tried to smile, but the effort it took was too great.

“He saved my life, Kate.” Mitchell’s voice broke. “He saved me and then he died. I’ll never be able to repay him. I don’t know what to do …”

And then this man, who had been through too many injuries to count, who was as tough as nails when it came to the vagaries of his career, began sobbing like a small child. His tears widened the crack in her heart, and she reached out for him.

They held each other for long minutes, and then she sent him away.

He was wiping his face with the back of his hand, standing in the archway that led to the hall, when he suddenly said, “The rose was for you. He wanted you to have it.” Kate’s grief-stricken eyes stared at him blankly, but he didn’t want to have to explain any more and he walked away.

The bag he’d given her had fallen to the floor. As she reached for it, she saw where his teardrops had landed on the tiles. Tangible evidence of pain. Her fingers closed around the bag and she stood, knowing she’d never look inside.

Kate’s mother found her in the guest room. There was a phone call for her. It was Mike Fitzgerald. Did she want to take it?

She hadn’t even heard the telephone ring, but, yes, she wanted to talk to Mike. She always wanted to talk to Mike. He was the best friend she’d ever had.

And when she picked up the receiver and heard him say “Katie? Darlin’?” her loss hit her fully, and the tears finally came.

“H
omer? You up here?” Kate stood on the postage-sized stamp of a landing and waited. Homer? “The door to the tower room was half open and she reluctantly pushed it aside. “There you are.”

He lay in the rectangle of weak sunlight the window admitted, a well-scuffed baseball between his huge paws. Kate knelt down in front of the black Lab. “You know I don’t want you up here. It’s a nice day. You need to be outside chasing squirrels or something.” He gazed at her with liquid eyes, and she reached out to stroke his head. Kate’s voice softened. “Hey, I miss him, too.”

Her knees creaked as she stood, reminding her of the recent passing of her thirty-seventh birthday. “Getting old, Homer,” she whispered, as she let her eyes slowly examine the contents of the room.

In two steps she was facing a set of shelves. Taking down one of the twelve baseball gloves, Kate slipped her left hand into it and punched the well-worn leather. Dust flew into the still air and sparkled in the shaft of light. She replaced the glove on the shelf and moved to a small chest of drawers. Her hands hesitated momentarily before sliding open the top drawer. She lightly passed her fingers across the fabric of a gray road jersey, feeling
more than reading the appliquéd letters that spelled out his name and his number—five—in orange and black.

Resolutely pushing the drawer closed, she spoke to the dog once more. “Hey, Homer … remember the time he dressed you up and took you trick-or-treating?”

At the sound of his name, the dog’s ears moved up a notch and he gave his tail a halfhearted wag.

“Think the socks are too much?”

Kate looks up from the book she’s been immersed in to behold the sight of Homer wearing one of Paul’s game jerseys. The dog’s ears stick out of the two holes Paul has cut in one of his caps. White stockings with black stirrups encase his legs
.

“You’re not seriously taking that dog out into the neighborhood looking like that.”

“It’s Halloween. He shouldn’t be deprived just ’cause he’s a dog.”

“Uh-huh.” Kate looks into her husband’s smiling eyes. “Was this your idea, or did you lose a bet to Mike again?”

“Actually, Homer heard a rumor that the Craigs were giving out Reese’s cups this year.”

At the sound of two of his favorite words—“Reese’s cups”—Homer’s tail begins sweeping the floor
.

“Okay, but you make it understood that I had nothing to do with this.”

Paul Armstrong leaves Homer’s side. He bends down, cupping Kate’s chin in his hand, and tilts her face until his lips meet hers
.

“No way. The first words out of my mouth at every house are going to be, ‘Katie made me do this.’ ”

“And who’s going to believe that?” she asks, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth
.

He winks and turns to Homer. “C’mon boy. Let’s go find a bag for all your goodies.”

As they leave the den, she calls after him, “And he’d better not be wearing your cup!”

Later that evening, when the last of the neighborhood children have rung the doorbell, a knock on the front door surprises her. Turning the porch light back on, she finds Paul leaning against the railing. He lets go of the dog’s leash, and Homer gallops past her and into the house
.

“Hey, lady,” he says, sleepy-voiced. His eyes insolently sweep down her body. “Trick or treat?”

Her legs felt weak remembering, and she clutched the sill of the window that she had been staring out of with unseeing eyes. Homer sat by her side, and when she let her hand drop, he nuzzled it. She didn’t notice Mike Fitzgerald looking up at the house from his yard. Never saw him wave.

Time had a way of passing for Kate Armstrong that few others would understand. The rhythms of the year contrarily refused to conform. As soon as the last leaf was off the enormous beech tree that grew in her backyard, Kate began to feel as though she could breathe again. While spring—well … spring, with its promise of life, began the cycle of suffocation all over again. But the falling leaves, crisp days, and the smell of woodsmoke that drifted through the Shenandoah Valley weren’t working their magic this year.

Stuck in a house she didn’t want, with a dog who didn’t want her, Kate neglected them both. Her parents were in Tempe, three thousand miles away. Paul’s mother had moved over the Blue Ridge Mountains to Charlottesville, to live with her sister when Paul’s father had died. Paul’s sister had left Staunton, too. Patricia’s misplaced values made her believe that Charlottesville, with its university and horse farms and aura of Thomas Jefferson, somehow rubbed off on her socially. She had married one of the ubiquitous lawyers that the
University of Virginia churned out and couldn’t be bothered with a run-down Victorian house in a town like Staunton. The house was left to Paul, and because it was the home he grew up in, Kate couldn’t bring herself to leave it. But she couldn’t bring herself to love it, either.

Paul Armstrong had died two and a half years ago, and the only thing Kate had shown any interest in since then was his grave. She could be found there once a month, pulling up weeds, placing fresh flowers in the two cement urns that flanked the large stone. Sometimes she would sit under the beech tree that protected the family’s plot and read. Other times, if it had been a particularly bad month for her, she would talk to him. The taking of his life had taken hers. This wasn’t something she consciously understood. Friends stopped calling. They’d heard “No thanks, I just don’t feel like it” one too many times.

The girl who had loved life became the woman who suffered through it. She had been alone too long, but didn’t realize that loneliness had made heavy inroads to her soul.

Kate now sat at the top of the stairs, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands.

“God, I’m bored.” She was talking to the dog again. Not a good habit. “And it’s only eleven o’clock, Homer. What are we going to do the rest of the day?”

Kate looked at the list she’d been holding when Homer had sneaked upstairs. There were at least twelve items written in her shorthand. Of the twelve—some of which were:
dust dwnstrs, rake lawn, p-u dry cl
, and
swp kitch flr
—the only one that had been crossed off was
chg bulb over stv
. She’d made the list two weeks ago and looked at it daily, and once again, it overwhelmed her. She stuffed it in the pocket of her shirt.

Footsteps sounded on the front porch, and Kate
groaned as Homer shot past her and rocketed down the stairs, barking hysterically.

“Homer! For God’s sake!”

She reached the bottom of the staircase in time to see the mail drop through the slot in the door, and the dog trample it in an attempt to shove his snout through the brass oval. Pushing him aside, she muttered, “Why do we have to do this every damn day?” and rescued the pile of catalogs and envelopes. She carried them into the kitchen and dropped them on the table. The obvious junk went directly into the trash, while a Neiman Marcus preholiday catalog was tossed into a basket. She’d look at it later. Jamming the bills from the gas and phone companies into an already-full napkin holder that served as her accounts payable file, she found two actual pieces of mail. One was what was left of the monthly pension check she received from the baseball commission after debts had been served. She hated those things, and despite needing the money, it sometimes took her months to deposit them in her account. Kate stuffed this one into a small drawer by the phone, then went back to the table and picked up the hand-addressed gold-colored envelope with the blue borders. She didn’t have to turn it over to know the flap would be embossed with her high school’s crest. And she didn’t want to open it, knowing it was the announcement for the dedication of the new gym in Paul’s name. Instead, she put it back on the table, not wanting to think about it, or the twenty years that had gone by at the speed of sound.