See No Color (20 page)

He shook my hand off his arm and looked at me like I was the stone he had kicked only minutes before—misshapen and dirty. Then he walked toward me one last time and touched my hair; my straightened, beautiful hair, which I had washed, blown dry and set specially for our meeting. “I don't care how you talk or do your hair or walk,” he said softly. “I care that you lie.”

The park was desolate except for two kids aimlessly kicking a ball around.

He turned, and started walking.

“Just … wait,” I said, reaching for him. “Reggie, don't.”

He kept walking.

“Reggie!” I yelled. “Reggie!”

But no matter how many times I called to him, he would not turn around.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Kit shook her head. “Fuck,” she said. Even I had to admit that hanging out with me more was beginning to negatively affect her formerly very clean vocabulary.

I shifted my weight in a plush leather chair in my room and chewed on a chocolate bar. We could hear Mom in the kitchen downstairs, clanging pots and pans, searching for something to make for dinner.

Kit pushed a strand of her thin blonde hair behind an ear. “Call him in a week and see how it goes,” she said. “He'll have cooled down by then.”

I picked at a callus on the side of my big toe.
You could have loved him, but you messed it up.

“He just thinks you dissed him,” she said, grabbing a gummy worm from the bag.

I sighed. “I
did
diss him.”

“Okay, but does he even have a clue about all the stuff that's going on with you right now? I mean sure, you haven't handled it the best, but how would he be with you if he had just met his real father?”

I lifted my index finger. “Biological father,” I said.

Kit waved her hand. “Whatever.”

I rolled my eyes. She really didn't get that Keith wasn't any more my father than Dad was. It wasn't a question of blood or race or lineage or upbringing. It was a question, I was beginning to see, of what I wanted.

“The point is that Reggie should get that you're not exactly at the top of your game, having just visited Keith and his family in Detroit,” Kit said. “I mean, didn't he flip out when you told him about sitting down at the dinner table with them, meeting your half-sister and debating the merits of religion with his wife? Didn't he get a little less angry when you told him about all those letters that Keith wrote you?”

I shrugged. I ripped off a layer of dead skin from my toe.

“Alex,” Kit said, leaning in closer. “You did tell him about the letters, right?”

I dug into my toe deeper, even though all of the dead skin was gone. I picked at the delicate, pink skin around the eviscerated callus, and ripped off a small patch. Blood oozed up from underneath.
I need you.

“Well, fuck,” said Kit. She threw up her hands. “Then I guess you didn't tell him about Detroit either.”

I pressed down on my toe as hard as I could.
Pressure stops the bleeding.

“I have to say that I'm seeing his side of it a little more than yours at this particular moment in time, even though you are my only sister, and I take your side in all things by default.”

I shivered, remembering his right hand moving down the small of my back. His teeth on my earlobe.
Never again.

“What about Keith?” Kit asked, leaning her head against the wall. Her skin looked so white in that moment against the brightness of the paint.

“What about him?” I asked.

“When are you going to see him again? Are you going to talk to him again?”

I was pressing my toe so hard that I couldn't even feel it anymore.
I would like to meet you someday. I am your father. There was a lot of things that could have been better between your mother and I. I would have liked the chance to know you.

“I don't know,” I said.
The most important thing is that a child be raised under the eyes of God. No matter what color the family.
“It's … complicated.”

Kit nodded. I looked into her light gray eyes, and for the first time in over a year, I saw tears in their depths. She never cried—even in front of me. “Yeah,” she said.

I tried to smile. “But I'd like to visit him—them—again.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

O
n the day of the state tournament quarterfinal, we got to the field four hours before the game. It was at Bowman Field on UW, which boasted a seating capacity of 4,500 and consistently the freshest cut grass in the conference. We had watched the Badgers lose to Purdue here two years ago during the Big Ten championship, and now here we were, getting ready to play for a championship in front of thousands of spectators.

“I want you to pay extra attention to your plyometrics today,” Dad said, the brim of his cap obscuring his eyes. “I don't want to see any dead arms, and I don't want to see anyone standing on the ground for longer than a second after each jump.”

Logan looked down and rolled his eyes. He was a reliever and wouldn't pitch for a couple hours if at all, yet Dad always made him do the full warm-up with us. He said it fostered a sense of equal responsibility among team members.

“What, you think your quads and calves are all warmed up already?” Dad asked Logan, walking toward him slowly.

I shook my head. Logan had been playing with Dad for almost as long as Jason and I had, yet he had somehow managed not to learn that Dad saw
everything
.

“You think your teammates would do better if you weren't here, warming up with them?” Dad asked him, his face barely an inch away, his eyes flashing with anger.

Logan bit his lip. I was sure there were about a million places he would rather be right at that moment. “No, Coach Kirtridge,” he said. “I know what it takes to be a member of the team.”

It was always better if you used Dad's language when you found yourself in a scrape.

Logan looked Dad in the eyes. “I'm ready to lead the box jump.” That was the first drill.

Dad adjusted his cap. “Good,” he said. He surveyed the field, watching all of us sprawled out on the grass at strange angles, stretching our backs and arms and calves. “And all of you better get ready, too,” he said, gesturing toward us. “Because this is a game where everybody's going to have to step up and play harder and smarter and just plain
better
than they ever have before.”

We understood we should stop stretching and give him our full attention. I pulled my right leg from my chest, and then set it on the grass.

“Eau Claire isn't just any team,” Dad said, walking around our small circle of fifteen. “They have been a top-ranked team in the nation for the past five seasons running. Last season, they scored more runs than any team in the history of Wisconsin high school baseball.”

I sniffed and kicked at a patch of grass.
You're going to go out there on Friday, and you're going to kick some ass.

“Eau Claire has a winning tradition,” Dad continued, enunciating each word carefully. “They think they're going to just knock us over with their trophy case.”

Dad took several more steps and stopped in front of me. “They can talk like that all they want, and they can spend the rest of the year polishing their old trophies for all I care.”

It was a hot day—around 95 degrees. My eyes were smarting, even through my sunglasses. Drops of sweat were crawling down my forehead.

Dad turned to his left and faced me. “And why is that, Alex?”

I don't want to see you let anything drop in that you can lay out for, I want to see you get on base five times and score four.
I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, but I only succeeded in knocking some of the sweat into my eyes. They stung, and I winced. “Because…” I said, racking my brain for the sentence that he wanted. “Because it shows they're not focused.” I tried to make it sound as much like a definitive statement as possible, but it came out sounding more like a question.

Dad scratched the back of his ear. On the other side of the field, Eau Claire was just walking into their dugout, dropping their gear on the bench. A slight wind blew over us, ruffling our jerseys, and making the hair on my neck stand up. “No,” he said. “Because it shows they have a lack of respect. Their tradition isn't swinging a bat today. Their old titles won't make them run just a little harder. Only respect will.”

Across from me, Jason crossed his arms and nodded.

“And without respect,” he said, looking deep into my eyes, “you have nothing.”

I nodded. It was his automatic response, like scratching a mosquito bite or pulling your hand away from fire, but it still irritated me. Why was 90 percent of what came out of his mouth scripted? I sighed; I was just here to play a game.

Logan was staring blankly out into space. Dad walked over to him and took his chin in his hand. “You—we—have nothing,” he said, startling Logan out of his reverie. “Our team has gotten so far because you respect me enough to listen to what I have to teach you and because you respect yourselves enough to do the work it takes to learn and then apply that learning in order to win games.”

I kicked at the patch of grass harder, sending a few clumps of dirt flying.

Dad crossed his arms. “That's really all it takes,” he said. “But it's a lot if you don't have it in here.” He tapped his head. “All that stuff I told you guys all these years about the game all being psychology, that wasn't just a bunch of horseshit.”

Norm guffawed and everyone glared at him.

Dad continued his walk around our circle, trying to catch each of us with his eyes. “Everything I do, everything I say, has a reason,” Dad said.

Across from me, Jason was staring at Dad like he was Jesus Christ himself.

“All the weight I make you lift, all the running, all the drills, are nothing compared to the mental fortitude it takes to win a major championship. And these jokers,” he gestured toward Eau Claire with his head, “have forgotten that.” Dad smiled. “They've gotten way too comfortable with the idea of winning to realize that it's just that—an idea—until you decide to do the work to make it happen in the world.”

Some of my teammates shook their heads. When Dad waxed philosophical like this before big games, it invariably confused a third of our team. But he continued, undaunted. “You have to get yourself in a zone where
no one
and
nothing
can come in and distract you from your one, singular goal of making that catch, turning that double play, beating the tag till you think your damn lungs will explode—understand?”

A few of us nodded. Dad's brow furrowed. “I asked if you understood,” he said.

“Yes,” a bunch of us murmured.

My stomach was churning with all this talking, my windpipe beginning to constrict.
When will he just let us be? We know how to play—he taught us.

“Let them think we're scared of their tradition. The more energy they put into that idea, the more energy we put into our fielding, and all the plays we've been going over and over for months now.” He looked at Jason and then at me. “Even years.”

Eau Claire were running out of their dugout and jogging en masse around the field. It wouldn't be long now before the game started. It wouldn't be long now before all the trust that Dad ever had in me would be put to the test. He could have played Kyle in center easily—Kyle had been working incredibly hard the past few weeks, trying to show Dad that he had no choice but to play him in one of the most important games of his coaching life, that he had to let go of his daughter and decide that what he wanted more was to win, and that Kyle could make this decision as clear, and as painless, as possible. But Dad wasn't falling for it. If there was one principle that guided him, it was that anything was possible. No barrier was intractable if you worked hard enough. And I had worked, and I was his daughter.

“The only end to this game is victory,” he told us, stepping outside our circle. “That's the only possibility I want in your mind for the next six hours.” He pulled his stopwatch out of his pocket and clicked its knob with his index finger. “Logan,” he said. “You're the first one in the box. Let's go.”

We all lined up behind Logan, two feet away from the box, as he squatted down and prepared to jump.

• • •

Our pitching was dominant for the first few innings, so I saw no action in center. And I was hitting eighth, so our three-run first inning happened without my bat. In other words, three innings of standing alone in center were all I needed for Dad's plan to become clear. In truth, he was the one lacking in respect for his opponent. He was confident that he had solved Eau Claire's lineup. He was confident that through sheer force of his will and maniacal preparation, we would win this game even with a liability at center. And even I could see that he saw this as the act of a loving father.

• • •

By the sixth inning, Eau Claire had gotten one run off of us, and held us to the three runs we had managed in the first.

“I want to see some passion out there,” Dad yelled at us in the dugout. “You all are acting like you're just waiting to see how the game turns out. Cal, you almost let their catcher reach on a weak ground ball; a championship shortstop doesn't make half-assed plays like that. Darren, you made that catch in the second inning look a lot harder than it should have been. This isn't Little League, ladies.”

I winced, retying my spikes, which never seemed to be tight enough.

“No, this is the fucking
championship
,” Dad said. He pointed to the field. “And I coach a team of champions. Now get out there and start acting like one!”

Yes, he wanted me in this game for me, but I also saw that it was for him, too. Terry Kirtridge's children were ballplayers, starters, and champions. This fact was as important to who he was as to who Jason and I were. Probably more.