The Ninth Inning

by A. J. Stewart

  As we watched the last of the people offer condolences and walk away, Danielle leaned into me.

  “I feel selfish,” she said quietly.

  “Why?” I replied.

  “I can’t get the thought out of my head, Why not us? All these people were touched in the most amazing ways by our dad, but Jane and I never got to feel that. And he was our dad, not theirs. So why not us? I’m horrible and selfish.” She shook her head as if she were the epitome of evil.

  “It’s not selfish. Not at all. But there’s a reason for it. For why he touched all these people and not you, not Jane. It was simply a question of what he was good at, what he was capable of. What he could and couldn’t provide. These people didn’t need that emotional connection that you and Jane longed for as kids. What they needed was intellectual rigor. Someone to open up the world of literature and poetry and show them some point that they were desperate to understand. He was their window into a bigger world, and it was a world that he was capable of showing. We’re lucky if we all have such a person in our lives at some point. Problem is, we don’t get to decide who that is. We don’t get to decide what someone’s strengths and weaknesses are, and to a large extent, neither do they. So you’re certainly not selfish, not in any way. He gave to them because he could, and not to you because he couldn’t. Doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make it any less sad. But it does mean it’s not selfish.”

  Danielle gripped my hand, and together with Jane we walked to a town car and were driven out to a private burial at the cemetery. No congregation, no orators, no people who had been touched in ways Danielle couldn’t understand. A priest, a coffin, Danielle, Jane, and me.

  The priest said a few more words, territory that had already been covered in the service, and then asked if either of the daughters had anything further they wanted to say.

  Neither of them did. Their father had been a man of words. They were not like that. As I had discovered, as I already knew, they were women of deed, and perhaps that was the moat that flowed between the daughters and their father, the one none of them learned how to cross.

  As the priest was about to conclude events, I stepped forward. I wasn’t sure why, not completely, but sometimes I operated like that, and I had learned to go with it.

  “I have something to say.” I noted both Danielle and Jane were frowning at me, and I realized for the first time that they both got the same little dimple between their eyebrows when they did it.

  “But what I have to say isn’t for Ryan. It’s for you, Danielle, and for you, Jane. Danielle, you asked me how he could have touched so many but failed to have touched you two. I don’t have an answer for that, any better or any more than what I’ve said to you already. All I can tell you is the one thing that he told me during the brief time that we spent together.”

  I took a breath and looked at each woman in turn.

  “He said he wouldn’t change it, his life, regardless of everything. He said despite all the mistakes, he couldn’t do it, because the outcome had been so wonderful. And the outcome was two amazing women. He told me that you were both his greatest achievement and his biggest regret.”

  I wasn’t sure if there was a point I was trying to make or whether I was just sharing part of a conversation that they deserved to hear.

  Danielle stepped to me and put her face into my chest and her arms around me. I felt the frailty of a strong woman in an embrace that I suspected might never end.

  I was okay with that.

  When we had first met, back when I had just lost my mentor and friend Lenny Cox, Danielle had offered me a similar embrace. The only difference was I had been the one who needed it. In the intervening years, we had taken turns being there for each other in more ways than I could possibly have imagined, and I realized that when it came down to it, this whole marriage thing really wasn’t worth a bean. Not unless the one you wanted to hold and the one who wanted to be held by you were one and the same.

  Danielle slowly pulled away, and I watched her entire body take a long, deep sigh. There were still no tears, but her eyes were wet, as if she couldn’t allow herself to feel the sadness that bubbled within.

  Jane stepped to me and hugged me in exactly the same way. I wrapped my arms around her and held her for just as long, and as I stood there in the Arizona sunshine, I realized that sometimes it was about soul mates, and love, and wins and losses, and shared experiences, and I do’s for the rest of your life.

  And sometimes, people just need a hug.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  We said goodbye to Jane at the airport. Danielle said she’d call as soon as we got home, and Jane said she’d like that. I suggested that we needed to get together more often, and although it felt like a hollow sort of comment, I followed it up by suggesting that I had always wanted to visit Whidbey Island near Seattle and maybe we could do that. Danielle and Jane both nodded like it was a grand idea. I followed up by suggesting that it would have to be in the summertime. I couldn’t do all that Seattle rain.

  Jane caught a flight to San Francisco, with a connection on to SeaTac. We headed out via Atlanta. In her desire to keep busy, Danielle had booked the return flight during the many funeral arrangements, so I had expected the short hop from Atlanta to land in Miami, or worst case, Fort Lauderdale.

  I clearly had been away with the fairies when the boarding announcements were made, because I was more than a little perplexed when I looked out the window and saw that we had hit the ground at Palm Beach International.

  When I realized where we were, I turned to Danielle and frowned. She gave me nothing but a shrug.

  We no longer had a vehicle in West Palm, so after picking up our bags, I turned toward the car-rental counters. Danielle went the other way.

  Ron stood leaning up against the fender of his beat-up old Camry at the white curb outside. None of the police officers directing traffic and moving people along seemed too bothered by him, so I figured he knew them, or a brother or sister, or an errant cousin that he had helped out of a pickle somewhere along the line.

  I waited on the sidewalk while Danielle gave Ron a long hug, and then she waited while I gave him one, too.

  Ron drove us straight to where we needed to go.

  The lights were out in the courtyard at Longboard Kelly’s, but they weren’t turned on. They didn’t need to be. The sun shone like the local tourist board was planning to take their brochure photographs that afternoon. The umbrellas were open on the tables, and people sat in the shade, smiling and laughing, the way they often did at Longboard’s.

  Two beers and a vodka tonic were on the bar before we even reached it. There were four wooden stools, but one was already taken. The Lady Cassandra slipped off hers and stepped over to Danielle to give her one of those hugs.

  I winked at Muriel behind the bar, and she shot me a quick smile, then got about wiping down the bar with a towel. “Good to have you back,” she said, wiping the bar with one hand and tears from her eyes with the other.

  Mick, the owner of the bar, wandered out from the dark depths within and stopped when he saw me. I thought for a moment he was going to come out into the daylight, which was something he preferred not to do, and give me one of the hugs, too. The thought terrified me. Mick was built like a fireplug and could have wrestled a lion and probably hauled in a two-hundred-pound tuna at the same time. But the thought must have horrified him as well, because what he gave me was a solid nod, which I returned, and then he headed back toward the kitchen.

  I was enjoying my beer when I felt my phone ring. I wasn’t really in the mood to take calls—I was, for want of a better phrase, enjoying the now. But I wondered if it was something to do with Danielle’s dad, so I pulled it out of my pocket.

  “Hello?” I asked, slipping from my stool and moving over to the rear of the courtyard, next to the surfboard with the bite out of it, where the reception was better.

  “Miami Jones? This is Lily Barkin.”

  “Lily, hi. Is everythi
ng okay?” I was instantly worried about Zed Graham and whether he was stupid enough to ignore my warnings about going near her. I wasn’t planning on going to the cops. Unlike him, I really did know people who were hard, and they kneecapped knuckleheads like Graham for sport.

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything is fine. I just, well, I wondered . . . actually, we wondered. Let me start again.”

  “Take it easy, Lily. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  “It’s Travis.”

  “What happened to Travis?”

  “He says it’s his—what did you call it, honey?” I heard her speak away from the phone. “Oh. His knuckleball. He says he has a problem with his knuckleball, and he says you’re the only one who can fix it.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m back in Florida now.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not. But it’s no problem. You can put him on, if you like. Or put him on speakerphone, if you prefer, so you can hear.”

  “Why would I want to hear you talk about pitching?” she asked.

  “Well, you asked me not to contact him, remember?”

  “Yeah. I did. I’m sorry about that.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me for protecting your son.”

  “Would you mind, though?”

  “Not at all.”

  She put Travis on the phone, and he asked a few questions about the mechanics of his knuckleball. It took me about five seconds to figure out that there was nothing wrong with his mechanics, but his confidence had taken a beating from just one practice session.

  I talked him up and reminded him about the ten thousand throws, and I told him to finish every session with a few of his preferred fastballs, just to end on a good note every time.

  “Remember, the reason no one does this is that most quit trying. Don’t be that guy.”

  “No, sir,” he said.

  Travis thanked me and Lily came back on. “I’m sorry I misjudged you,” she said.

  “I told you, you don’t have to apologize to me for looking out for your son. And by the way, I had a word with Zed. I gave him an incentive to not come sniffing around, and if Travis wants him in his life, that it happens on your terms.”

  “What incentive?”

  “Avoiding prison. And one or two other reasons you don’t need to worry about. And while I’m on it, there’s something else you don’t need to worry about.”

  “What?”

  “I know Ricky Spence isn’t Travis’s father.”

  “Of course you do. I told you that.”

  “Yes, but I know it because I know you never slept with Ricky Spence.”

  There was silence, then, “How do you know that?”

  “Because I found out who did, and it wasn’t you. And more than that, I learned that you were ill on the way home that night and had to stop by the side of the road. A witness recalls that you accidentally left your underwear by the roadside.”

  “I did?”

  “I heard it myself.”

  “So I didn’t, you know . . .”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “I’m not sure that makes it better.”

  “You got drunk, Lily. That’s it. Perhaps not your finest hour, but no shame, either. We’ve all been there.”

  “Well, thank you, I guess.”

  “Sure.”

  “And if Travis has questions about his knuckle whatever?”

  “Call anytime.”

  We said our goodbyes and I took a deep breath and made my way across the courtyard. When I got back to my stool, Cassandra was talking about the wedding ceremony and how lovely it was. Ron marveled at the technology involved and how clear the picture was. Muriel said that it had been Mick’s idea to take one of the flatscreen televisions off the wall inside and set it up on the outdoor bar so they and the other patrons could watch from the courtyard. I was stunned to think that Mick was a big softy under that gruff exterior.

  “I was wondering if we should do the whole thing again,” I said.

  “You didn’t feel like you got it right the first time?” said Ron.

  “No, but I mean, so all of our friends can be there.”

  Ron shook his head, held up his glass, and saluted us. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We were there. Right here, and right there.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I sat on the balcony of our penthouse apartment on Grove Isle in Miami. It was a million-dollar view and probably came with a million-dollar price tag, so we were lucky we knew the Realtor who owned the place. The view was to die for as the sun fell across the suburbs of Miami, the rigging on the yachts in the marina below us tinking in the gentle breeze.

  I lay on my lounger and watched the city expel the pent-up pressure of another day, and for a brief moment I wondered what was happening with the view out the back of my home on Singer Island. I had to check that thought. It was my house on Singer Island, not my home. Not right now. We had rented it out when I had moved to Miami to be with Danielle. Perhaps we would make it back there again. Perhaps the disequilibrium I had felt since leaving could be rebalanced at some point. Or perhaps all that was a figment of my imagination and nothing to do with the building I found myself in at all.

  I filled Danielle’s wineglass and my own but noted she made no attempt to take a drink.

  “You don’t like this one?” I asked.

  She glanced at the wineglass and smiled. Then she shook her head. “It’s fine. I’m just not feeling it right now. You know how it is when you’re away. You eat out a lot, probably drink too much. I feel like I need to go on a bit of a health kick, you know?”

  I nodded but said nothing. I knew. Danielle’s health kicks rarely turned out so well for me. It meant a lot of miles jogging on the beach and lots of tropical salads. I had to accept that for a lot of people, that sounded like a nice vacation, and I resolved to stop grumbling so much about it. I was fairly confident that was one resolution that wouldn’t stick.

  As we watched the last of the golden sun throw spears of shadow and light across Coconut Grove, I heard Danielle let out a deep sigh.

  “I’m glad you got to spend some time with my dad,” she said.

  “Me, too,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it before, and it’s a shame I won’t get to do it again.”

  She turned her head to me. “Did I blow it?” she said.

  I looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Was the distance between me and him my fault?”

  “I can honestly say that’s a definitive no. And your dad knew that. Look, you’re gonna deal with this however you deal with it, and you’ll come to terms with it or you won’t. I know that there’s nothing I can really say to change that. But I’ll give it a shot anyway. It was what it was, and this is what this is. Everyone has to deal with good and bad, and everyone’s family is completely messed up and weird. It’s just we all do it in our own unique way.”

  I wriggled my body on my lounger to face her properly. Her expression was neither happy nor sad. Perhaps it was uncertainty that I saw.

  “I think we can definitely say that it could have been better, but we can also say that it could have been worse. What we can’t do is change it, either way. What we can do is decide how we react to that change. As my good friend Walt Whitman would’ve said, ‘I celebrate myself, and sing myself. And what I assume you shall assume. For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.’”

  “I like that,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Is this going to become a thing with you now? Quoting Whitman?”

  “I think I’m pretty much tapped out. The rest is just a bunch of words I don’t really understand.”

  Danielle nodded and smiled, not the half smile she loved to give, just one that was only half felt.

  “Except for this,” I said. I sat up and picked up a book from the balcony where I had placed it. It was Ryan Castle’s copy of Walt Whitman, from his hospice room. Danielle and Jane had said his books sho
uld be donated to the university or a local school. Nurse Gabriela found me and suggested that one of them should remain with us. I handed it to Danielle.

  “Not now,” I said. “But when you’re ready, read the passages he highlighted. In the order he marked. I think he was trying to say something.”

  “To me?”

  “To all of us.”

  She laid the book against her chest and turned back toward the view in the growing darkness.

  “So, are the A’s going to keep the player?”

  “Ricky Spence? Sure, they have a need. That’s how organizations work.”

  “So he’ll make a million dollars and get away with all that he did.”

  I laid back down and looked out over the balcony. “I’m not sure he’ll get away with it, per se. Karma has a habit of sneaking up on you when you least expect it. All I know is, it definitely could’ve ruined a young girl’s life, but out of good luck rather than good management, in this one case, it didn’t. I’m not saying it didn’t affect her and she doesn’t think about it, and my visit in all honesty probably didn’t help. But she’s moved on, so she says, and I for one vote that we let her do that. As for Ricky Spence? This is his swan song. His last hurrah. His ninth inning. And like his wife, Amber, said, he’s a slugger. He’s a big, strong man with a pea brain who was designed to do one thing and one thing only. He’s in his mid-thirties and he’s about to stop doing the thing that he built his whole life around. Change is coming for him, and it’s coming big time. And he’s not prepared for it, and he’s not designed in any way to do anything else.”