The Might Have Been (7 page)

Beyond those periods in the lobby—what were they, half an hour?—he stayed in his room, telling himself it was because he didn’t want to miss Julie if she phoned, which she did every evening after she got home from work. She told him about her job answering phones and typing for a podiatrist, describing the people who limped painfully into the office, telling him about the bags of trimmed corns and toenails she carried to the dumpster. For his part, he had little to say:
I noticed the plaster walls aren’t square but actually rounded at the corners. I noticed that the paint is flaking outside the window
. Gradually, their conversations began waning sooner and sooner each time.

When he wasn’t talking to her, he watched television. He avoided the American programs: they made him homesick. He wasn’t certain what he wanted to feel, but not that—not at a time when he wondered what his life would become, when he wondered if he would ever be able to play ball again or if that life was entirely behind him. What was he if not a ballplayer?

He preferred programs that had nothing to do with his life across the border—soap operas in French, newscasts about places he couldn’t even, if pressed, find on a map. Watching a story about a tornado in Manitoba that had killed a retired cobbler and his wife, he glanced out his window to the park eleven floors below where a plump man and woman lay in the grass, kissing. On the television, the reporter interviewed the dead couple’s daughter, who became so overcome with grief, she covered her face, but where he was, it was a beautiful day.

At night, he had trouble sleeping. It was difficult to get comfortable because of his cast and, outside his room, the hotel always seemed alive with noise:

Children dashed in the hall, shrieking, a mother scolding: “Now, now.”

On the other side of him, a couple made love and, afterward, the woman wept while a man’s voice buzzed with what Edward Everett assumed was consolation.

The elevator
ding
ed.

He gave up, turned on the television. A preacher standing on a stage, framed by two vases of palm fronds, saying, “God has a plan for your life.” On another channel, a test pattern. He turned off the television, tried to sleep again.

Outside, footsteps scuffled by in the carpeted hall.

He eventually began appreciating the hotel’s amenities. In the morning, he had breakfast in the less formal of the two restaurants while he read the newspaper, something he had seldom done in the past, aside from the sports pages. So much turmoil in the world: riots in Rhodesia; three hundred Americans evacuated from Lebanon in the face of civil war; Argentina’s police killing two revolutionary leaders. He read the paper and glanced around the restaurant, feeling fortunate to be part of the privilege of the place: the deference of the waitress and busboy silently appearing to refill his water goblet and coffee cup. Around him, businessmen made notes on legal pads as they ate their eggs and bacon; tables of women with careful hair declined the pastry cart; obvious newlyweds on their honeymoon regarded each other sleepy-eyed across the table.

He began venturing beyond the hotel, going into nearby shops. One day, he spent two hours browsing belts in a leather shop; another day, he drank coffee in a café across the street from his hotel, counting the number of men and women who went inside. That day, he got back to his room after Julie had called and found a message slip under his door. He sat down in his chair by the window, picked up the phone but the thought struck him that he had nothing new to say, and turned on the television, to
Casablanca
, but dubbed in French, and spent the time until it was too late to call her trying to translate the dialogue back into English. Two days went by with her leaving him messages and his not calling her back, then three. Then a day came when there was no message from her, and a second day on which she didn’t call, and a third and a fourth and then he lost count.

The evening the traveling secretary called him, he was dozing in his room, dreaming: riding with his father in a Studebaker he had owned
before Edward Everett was in kindergarten; although it was just his father and himself, Edward Everett sat in the backseat. His father was smoking, although Edward Everett had never seen him do so in life, but when he tried to open the window, the crank was missing. They were on a dirt road, racing past a line of barbed-wire fencing that seemed to serve no purpose, as the land bordering the road was overgrown with tall weeds that whipped the car’s windows as they sped past. Edward Everett was trying to say
Slow down, slow down
but, for some reason, couldn’t speak, and they hurtled onward.

After he got off the phone with the traveling secretary, he went into the bathroom. At first, he thought he would splash water on his face to wake himself a bit more but, standing at the sink, he realized he needed to shower, that he hadn’t shaved for days and his hair was unkempt, much longer than he usually kept it.
A beatnik
, his mother would say. He wondered if the team would be angry he had charged so many hamburgers and grapefruit to the room. With chagrin, he remembered that one day he had signed for a ten-dollar tip on a three-dollar check for a waitress who told him he was her last table before she moved back to Manitoba to care for her ill mother. He wondered if they would punish him for it. The owner was wealthy; would he even miss the money? But he didn’t get wealthy letting his injured, marginal players live extravagantly.

The plane ticket the traveling secretary couriered to the hotel was for a flight to St. Louis at ten the next morning; from there, he would have to make his own arrangements. It occurred to him he had no place to go. He had given up his room in Springfield, had no home in St. Louis; he had no idea what his future was going to be. He would have to go back to the town where he’d been raised, where he hadn’t been in years save for brief visits in the off-seasons. He phoned the front desk, asked for long-distance and gave the operator his mother’s number. He wasn’t sure what she’d make of his calling her, telling her that he would need someone to pick him up at the Columbus airport—a hundred miles away—but the phone just rang and rang at her house until he hung up.

He thought again of calling Julie, but what would he say? What a
shit he was for not calling her, he thought. Not long ago telling her—in a Catholic church, of all places—that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, but now, sitting on the edge of the bed they’d shared, he had a hard time conjuring her face. He remembered her eyes were blue, but what he recalled was the fact of it, a detail she might list on her driver’s license, not an image of her eyes themselves. Her hair was, what? She was how tall?

Outside, the sky was darkening, perhaps rain moving in. Indeed, after a moment, sporadic drops were splashing against his windows and then a full-blown storm was lashing the glass. Lightning brightened the sky and seconds later thunder cracked. He stripped off his clothes, turned on the shower and, after he finished, dressed and went downstairs for his last dinner in another country.

T
he lobby swarmed with men in dark suits and women in formal dresses: a wedding party crowding into the hotel, drenched from the rain, shaking out umbrellas that sprayed everyone, their shoes leaving dark spots on the carpet. The men and women were giddy: the storm would become a story the bride and groom would tell for long thereafter. Twenty years from then, with the way stories grew, maybe they would describe their reception as a party in the midst of God’s fury.

On his crutches, Edward Everett had difficulty navigating through the mass of people. A stocky middle-aged man in a brown tuxedo too snug for his girth shoved past him, nearly bowling him over. A tiny woman in a silver floor-length gown trailing him, her hand gripping the crook of his elbow, apologized, cringing. A small girl wearing a white pinafore and white patent-leather shoes banged into his left crutch, causing him to stumble; she fell into a heap on the carpet, crying. A woman swooped in behind her and, gripping her by the wrist, yanked her to her feet. The girl wailed, “I don’t wanna.”

“Oh, yes, you wanna,” the woman said through clenched teeth. They swept off with the rest of the wedding party toward one of the ballrooms down a long corridor.

There were two restaurants off the lobby: the coffee shop where
he’d eaten his breakfast on so many mornings and a more formal one. It was this latter one where he wanted to have his last meal in Canada, a place the guidebook Julie had picked up at the airport on her arrival said featured one of the best steaks in the city. The dining room was far fancier than anyplace he’d ever eaten in his life. The lighting was subdued and the room seemed darker still because the walls were a deep mahogany paneling. Patrons filled roughly half the tables, speaking in quiet tones. Even their gestures were reverential—the way they picked up a silver knife to butter a roll or laid salad forks onto the plate. He stood at the entrance for a moment, separated from the dining room by a burgundy velvet rope. At a podium on the other side of the rope, a tuxedoed maitre d’ spoke into a phone, his brow furrowed, flipping through the pages of a register. “Impossible, impossible,” he was saying in a quiet yet firm tone. When he glanced up, Edward Everett gave him a look that he hoped the man would perceive as understanding: clearly the person on the other end of the call was being difficult. Instead of giving him some sign he appreciated the support, he frowned and resumed leafing through the book. When he hung up, he approached Edward Everett.

“Oui?”

“I’d like a table.”

“A table?”

“Yes. For dinner.”

“I’m sorry. There is nothing,” the man said, gesturing to the dining room behind him. In a far corner, a man who had been eating a solitary dinner while reading
The Wall Street Journal
folded it neatly into thirds, stood, pushed his chair snug against the table and left.

“But …”

“I’m sorry, monsieur. We are booked.”

“There are empty—”

“I assure you, sir. Our reservations are full. Besides …” He held out his right hand toward Edward Everett. “Your attire.”

Edward Everett glanced at his clothing: khaki slacks and a paisley long-sleeved shirt.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the maitre d’ said. His focus shifted from Edward
Everett as if he had dismissed him from his consciousness. “Yes, sir?” he said.

“Ellison, four,” a man behind Edward Everett said.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Ellison. Good to see you again, sir,” the maitre d’ said, and the party of four swept past Edward Everett as the maitre d’ unhooked the velvet rope: three men in their fifties and a dainty, elderly woman; the men in suits and ties, the woman in a lilac dress with a lace collar that rose high on her neck. They followed the maitre d’ to a table. He was an entirely different man with Ellison, party of four; he seemed to shrink a bit in his deference.

“Money,” a woman said from behind him.

Edward Everett turned. “Excuse me?”

“Money,” she said. “It makes me sick.” She was somewhere in her forties, he guessed, nearly as tall as he was, wearing a silver floor-length dress. Her red hair was in tight curls, a white orchid tucked behind her left ear. He noticed she was in stocking feet. A pair of slender-strapped silver high heels dangled from her right hand, rainwater dripping onto the burgundy carpet.

“Ever wear heels?” she said, holding her shoes out to him.

“No,” he said.

“Avoid it.”

“I’ll check it off my list,” he said.

“I’m a refugee,” she said.

“From what?”

“Wedded bliss. My little sister’s, not my own.”

Edward Everett realized she had been drinking; her breath carried the smell of some slightly sweet alcoholic beverage.

“May I help madam?” the maitre d’ said from behind Edward Everett.

“Technically, it’s mademoiselle,” the woman said. “Much to my mother’s horror.”

“Does mademoiselle have a reservation?”

“I have many reservations,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“Reservations about the wisdom of white after Labor Day. Reservations
about supporting either presidential candidate. In my country, not yours. You don’t have a president. You have that man with the weak chin who has the wife everyone says is so beautiful although I don’t see it. Tell me, Mr. Crutches, don’t you think I’m more beautiful than what’s-her-name?” She struck a pose, tilting her chin up, laying her left hand on the back of her head, and smiled, showing teeth that were nearly perfect save for her right upper canine, which had a small chip in it.

Edward Everett had no idea what she was talking about. “I’m sorry, but—”

“Perhaps madam and sir—”

“
Mademoiselle
,” the woman said with a surprising fierceness.

“Mademoiselle,” the maitre d’ said, giving a clearly obsequious smile. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable in our less formal dining room. I can have someone escort you there.” He lifted a finger and almost immediately a bellhop stood beside the woman. “I am afraid we cannot accommodate mademoiselle and monsieur,” the maitre d’ said. “Perhaps you can show them to the Salon de Jardin.”

“Certainly,” the bellhop said. He was a squat man with what Edward Everett’s mother called a “drinker’s nose,” the cartilage thick, the skin red and pockmarked.

“We’re not—” Edward Everett tried to say.

“Are you throwing us out?” the woman said.

“Please, madam.”

“Moiselle. Mademoiselle,” she said.

The maitre d’ gave her another obsequious grin. Edward Everett wondered if he was deliberately taunting her.

“I have never—” she said.

Behind her, a half-dozen people waited for the maitre d’: a mother and father and two well-dressed sets of twins, the boys in navy blazers with gold buttons decorated with ships’ anchors, blond hair in crew cuts that matched their father’s; the girls in black-and-white polka-dotted dresses, their hair held back in identical polka-dotted ribbons.

“Maybe we’d …” Edward Everett said, nodding toward the bellhop.

“Yes, sir?” the maitre d’ said to the family behind them, Edward Everett and the woman in the silver dress already in his own personal past tense, his hand on the clip securing the velvet rope to its stanchion in anticipation of another acceptable party.