by Tim Green
“Goo-goo ga-ga. Silly. Distracted. Bananas. Consumed.” Mr. Starr moved the chair closer again, to study Ryder’s face. “For a pretty face, men do things they never thought they’d do. You know Helen of Troy? The face that launched a thousand ships. Tens of thousands of men, off to war, slaughtered because of a woman. That’s smitten. Doyle is smitten.”
“Doyle?”
Mr. Starr narrowed his eyes. “You think he wants to be the dad of somebody else’s twelve-year-old kid? Firemen see car crashes every day. They don’t stop everything and play the hero for some four-hundred-pound lady with no teeth and a hyena laugh. It’s your mom. You never noticed how she does that to people?”
Ryder did know. He thought of the word “worshipfully” and gave Mr. Starr a startled look. “But why would Jimmy Trent not stay with her? Because of me?”
“She could launch a thousand ships. Maybe ten thousand,” Mr. Starr muttered to himself as if he hadn’t heard Ryder, then he buzzed his chair over to a desk that had been pushed up against the wall away from the window and the couch. “Oh, dang it. Let me get to work. You should close your eyes.”
A computer sat atop the old wooden desk and, using the jerky motion of his right arm, Mr. Starr managed to press something that brought the screen to life. With a wide sweep, he brought what looked like a microphone on the end of a bendable metal neck so that it stayed within inches of his mouth. He dropped his twisted hand onto a touchpad. Using the combination of a hooked finger on the pad and words he muttered into the microphone, he began to navigate the Web in search for Jimmy Trent.
Ryder leaned over and curled his legs up on the couch. He put his head onto a velvety crimson pillow that matched the cushions on the couch. He was exhausted, and he did close his eyes. As he drifted off, he let his fingers travel up and down the laces of the signed baseball as he filled in more of the blanks of Jimmy Trent, the man he imagined was his father.
Ryder woke up to the sound of keys rattling in the door. The room was now dark, but for the glow of the computer screen. Ryder bolted up in a bit of a panic. For a brief moment, the intensity of his nap made it seem like the whole thing might have been a dream, but the lights went on and a nurse waddled in.
“Oh! Who are you?” she asked, startled.
Ryder blinked. The look on her face told him he wasn’t welcome. Naturally shy, he had no words. “Uhhhh.”
Mr. Starr whirred around in his chair to face the nurse. “Do you think because I’m entombed in this wreck of flesh and bone that I’m not allowed guests? This is my nephew. His name is Ryder.”
Ryder sat silently, absorbing yet another lie about who and what he was with an impassive face.
“Say hello,” Mr. Starr barked so abruptly that both the nurse and Ryder said hello at the same time.
“I’m Amy Gillory.” The nurse wore a white uniform that barely contained her stout figure, and her arms seemed too short for the barrel of her squat body. Her hair was bluntly cut and dyed a purple-pinkish color. She had big brown eyes set in a doughy white face, and thick, painted lips.
Ryder shook her hand.
“He’s shy.” Mr. Starr started his wheelchair across the room toward the short hallway that led to an oversized bathroom. “Let’s get this over with.”
Ryder watched them disappear behind the bathroom door and sat silently, listening to the sounds of water being drawn and washcloths being dipped and wrung out. After a while, Amy Gillory came out in a flurry. Ryder craned his neck around and looked through the opening into the kitchen. On the kitchen counter just inside the front door, the nurse had left a premade dinner tray. She stuck that into the microwave and it hummed while Mr. Starr appeared, whirring along in fresh clothes with his thin strands of hair plastered to his misshapen skull. The intensity of his glare suggested that he didn’t like whatever had happened behind the bathroom door, but he said nothing.
When the chair came to a stop in front of the couch, Ryder shifted in his seat. “Do you need me to do something?”
“Can you fix yourself something to eat?” Mr. Starr whispered so the nurse couldn’t hear him.
“SpaghettiOs.”
“Do you like SpaghettiOs?”
“Yes, would you like some?”
The microwave beeped from the kitchen and the nurse appeared, unfolded a small tray stand with one hand, and expertly set down Mr. Starr’s dinner as she plunked herself onto the other end of the couch.
“I have this.” Mr. Starr flicked his eyes at what looked to Ryder like a kind of glorified school lunch. “You go have something to eat with the neighbors, and then come back.”
Ryder scooted off the couch and addressed the nurse. “Nice to meet you.”
“Yup.” She didn’t even look his way as she spooned a dollop of applesauce into Mr. Starr’s mouth, letting her own mouth hang open as she did so, just the way Ryder had seen people feed babies. He wondered why Mr. Starr had to be fed when he could obviously use a computer. Then he realized it was because his elbows wouldn’t bend far enough to allow his hands to reach his face.
He got out of there and went back to his empty apartment. He heated up some SpaghettiOs in a pot to have with a glass of milk and two slices of bread thick with soft butter. When he cleaned up and returned to Mr. Starr’s, the nurse was gone and he was back at the computer.
“Well, we know you can sleep on the couch without any problems.” Mr. Starr worked the touchpad without looking back. “But I want you to get some sheets so your drool isn’t all over the place. I drool enough for a classroom of boys, but that’s my prerogative. Here . . . look at this.”
Mr. Starr gave the computer keyboard a final stroke with a crooked finger and tilted his entire upper body to study the screen from a new angle. Something in his tone suggested great importance.
Ryder snatched his signed baseball up off the couch and clutched it as he crossed the room. “Did you find something?”
“Well, something, I guess. Auburn, New York, is full of Trents, see them?” Mr. Starr angled his head toward the screen.
Ryder looked at the list on the screen, jittery.
“But no Jameses or Jimmys to be found,” Mr. Starr mumbled. “I even made some phone calls.”
Ryder’s heart sank. He was silent for a minute before he spoke. “You can use that thing to call people?”
“It’s the internet, you can use it to perform robotic surgery on someone in Australia, of course you can use it to call people, not that I call people. The people in my life are . . .” Mr. Starr blew air out his nose.
“Why don’t you like that lady?” Ryder was thinking of the nurse since she was the only person he assumed Mr. Starr knew.
“Amy Gillory? My evening zookeeper? What animal really likes its keeper? I’m not talking about its master. Dogs and cats? They can love their master, but no animal likes its keeper. In fact, the animal resents its keeper because in the wild, it would fend for itself and that’s where it instinctively knows it should be.”
Ryder wanted to change the subject. “What did you do? Before . . . you know.”
“Before my body turned into a blob of hardened wax? I was a writer. For the New York Post.”
“A sports reporter?”
Mr. Starr snorted and choked. “Good God, no. I was a crime reporter, which actually requires one to work. You can’t run down a serial killer’s second-grade teacher in a wheelchair. So, they offered me a television column. Can you imagine that? You think people who watch television need someone telling them what they saw? What’s good? What’s bad? Seriously? It’s television. I said I’d rather be on half-pay disability than undertake something so meaningless.”
“Did you ever write a book or anything?” Ryder asked, still trying to find some solid ground.
“I started one, yes. Then my fingers froze into these delightful claws. Recently, they’ve come up with some voice programs that almost work, but now that I actually can write again, I find I have nothing to say. Obviously there’s nothing immediat
ely around me—these four walls and the view out my window—but even in the wide world, the things I read about, I find no inspiration. The world is in a tailspin. Everyone knows that. Everyone writes about it. They don’t need me to add to it. More meaningless drivel . . .”
Ryder shifted his attention to the screen and pointed. “Is that how many James Trents there are?”
“Yes, over three thousand, and that’s just on Facebook. None connected to Auburn, New York, though.” Mr. Starr clucked his tongue.
“But what about when I was . . . before I was born. Before my mom came to New York City?” Ryder asked.
Mr. Starr made a humming in his nose. “Hmm, yes. I’ve been checking back over the last thirteen years, landlines and cell phones. Nothing. Look, this Jimmy Trent could have been someone your mom met on a vacation or a school trip or anything. He might not even be your father. We’re guessing, Ryder. We’re grasping.”
Ryder’s heart suddenly gave him a jolt. “Wait, but what about baseball?”
“I think you need to let go of the pipe dream that your father was or is some kind of sports star. You know the odds of that? If we do find him, he’ll probably be working the cash register at a Qwik Fill, and that’s if you’re lucky.”
“But you could check.” Ryder didn’t want to let it go. “He could have signed it. He might be famous.”
“You don’t think I checked?” Mr. Starr sounded insulted. “I crossed ‘MLB’ with that name and every major league team individually. I was an investigative reporter. They don’t have those anymore, people just sit in front of their computer screens and gossip, but I know what it is to find someone.”
“But if you were a sports reporter, you might know that the Toronto Blue Jays have a single-A farm team in Auburn, New York. It’s not a major league team. They’re called the Doubledays.” Ryder actually bounced on his feet. “And if I’m a good baseball player because my father was a good player, and she got this ball when she met him, then maybe he was on that team. . . .”
Mr. Starr sucked in his lower lip. “And if he was, he probably wouldn’t have had a phone listed in Auburn. Those minor league players are like gypsies. His phone could have been a cell phone from anywhere. He might have lived in a hotel instead of an apartment or a house.”
Ryder gave his hands a clap. “And maybe he’d be on the Doubledays roster the year before I was born.”
Mr. Starr’s finger scratched across the touchpad and he muttered quickly into the microphone. He clicked on a website called Baseball-Reference.com. Another click and up came a headline that read: AUBURN DOUBLEDAYS ROSTER.
Mr. Starr started to scroll down to find the correct year. When he got to the top of the roster and the names starting with A through J, he paused with his finger above the Down key, looked at Ryder, and took a deep breath.
“You ready?”
Ryder seemed to float, standing there in the pocket of light in the corner of the dark room next to Mr. Starr. It was like the two of them had been cast adrift in space with only the desk and its computer holding them together. His eyes zoomed in on the roster.
Mr. Starr scrolled down. Ryder saw the last name “Trent,” but blinked. It wasn’t Jimmy Trent. It was Thomas Trent.
“That’s not Jimmy,” Ryder said. “Thomas Trent . . . I’ve heard of him before . . . in baseball.”
“I knew a Richard once.” Mr. Starr used the touchpad to adjust the cursor over the top of Thomas Trent’s name. “Everyone called him Jacob in high school. Then I ran into him years later outside a Broadway play. He was married with kids and calling himself Richard. I had no idea why.”
Mr. Starr double-clicked on Thomas Trent’s name and a full player profile filled the screen. “Turns out my friend’s middle name was Jacob.”
Ryder leaned toward the screen. It was just like Mr. Starr said: Thomas James Trent.
“So, is that my father?” Ryder asked.
Mr. Starr clicked on the arrow until he got back to Google. He spoke Thomas Trent’s name into the microphone and it appeared in the search box. Then he moved the cursor to “Images” and clicked on that. A gallery of rectangular images popped up on the screen. The ones at the top were all of a baseball player in Atlanta Braves uniforms, either white or gray, a blue hat with a white A and a red brim.
Thomas Trent from the Atlanta Braves was one of MLB’s top closers, and it all came together in Ryder’s mind. He had heard that name, even though he wasn’t a big Braves fan.
Thomas Trent was rich.
He was practically famous.
And—judging from the resemblance he had to Ryder’s own face, dark curly hair, and striking green eyes—he just might be Ryder’s dad. The possibility gripped Ryder by the throat and tossed him about until he was dizzy. Thomas Trent was the kind of father he’d secretly wished for all his life. That came out in a flood, the realization that he had ached for a father. Almost any father would have done.
He couldn’t help thinking how different his life would have been and how different it might now be, with a father. He realized not having one was a big part of why he’d been so shy and so reluctant to make friends. It was because he felt like something was wrong with him, that he was missing something and not as good as other people. He realized now, amid the raging storm of emotions swirling through him, that if Thomas Trent was his father, Ryder’s life would never be the same.
Mr. Starr’s hand flopped from the computer touchpad to the arm of his wheelchair and the chair buzzed a quarter turn so that their eyes met.
“You realize, don’t you?” Mr. Starr said, as if he’d been able to read Ryder’s mind. “This changes everything.” Mr. Starr turned back to the computer, muttering. “I know they’re having the interleague games early this year; I mean, I know it would be a crazy coincidence, but . . .”
Mr. Starr worked his touchpad and pulled up the Atlanta Braves schedule. “Ha! Talk about fate? They’re here.”
“Who? Where?”
Mr. Starr spun his chair again so that he faced Ryder. “The Braves. They played the Yankees yesterday and today and they’ve got an afternoon game tomorrow. First pitch is at 1:05. Your father is in this city somewhere, right now.”
The next morning, the sound of keys in the door again jarred Ryder from his sleep. He bolted up from the couch. The sudden memory of the accident and everything else tilted the room beneath him, but the thought of saving his mother was rocket fuel in his veins, and before he’d fallen asleep on the couch, he and Mr. Starr had devised a plan to do just that.
The door swung open and the morning nurse walked in. This nurse was quite different from Amy Gillory, young and pretty and pleasant, but she didn’t seem to know how to react to Ryder.
“Hi, I’m Ashleigh Love.” The nurse forced a smile and shook hands with Ryder.
Before Ryder could speak, Mr. Starr’s bedroom door burst open and his chair buzzed right out at them.
“And the name fits. Loving and lovely.” Mr. Starr wore no expression, so Ryder didn’t know if he was trying to be funny or if he really appreciated Ashleigh’s pleasant disposition. “Ashleigh, this is my nephew, Ryder.”
Ashleigh nodded at Ryder then turned her attention to Mr. Starr. “Well, are you ready?”
“Don’t you love a person who gets right down to business, Ryder?” Mr. Starr’s eyes sparkled.
“Sure.” Ryder knew nothing else he could say.
Mr. Starr allowed Ashleigh to wheel him into the bathroom without any of the harsh words he’d had for the night nurse. Ashleigh waved back to Ryder, then shut the door and he heard her clucking over Mr. Starr like a mother hen.
Ryder tried not to listen to the sounds of Ashleigh Love cleaning up Mr. Starr to make him ready for the day, but when something happened that caused the nurse to yelp and apologize, Mr. Starr started yelling at her too. Ryder felt his face go hot and he slipped out of the apartment and across the hall to his own place to eat some cereal and put on fresh clothes. When he returned, everything seemed
fine. Ashleigh Love fed Mr. Starr his last spoonful of oatmeal before packing up to go.
Ashleigh zipped up her big duffel bag and turned to Ryder. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”
Mr. Starr jumped in. “You never know with my sister, his mom. Very erratic. Always was. He may come and go a bit. One never knows.”
“I didn’t know you even had a sister, Mr. Starr,” she said.
“There’ve been many times I haven’t known it myself, dear,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
When the door closed they looked at each other.
“Nice girl,” Mr. Starr said.
“Yes.”
“So, you think you can do this?” Mr. Starr’s eyes bored right into Ryder’s core.
Ryder nodded and knew Mr. Starr was talking about their plan.
“Tell me again,” Mr. Starr said.
Ryder ticked on his fingers the steps they’d devised the night before. “I take the subway to Yankee Stadium. I ask a cop where the team bus comes in. I get as close as I can and I shout to Thomas Trent and if I get close, I ask if he remembers Ruby from Auburn. I show him the baseball and hand him the note and tell him I have to speak to him. It’s a matter of life and death.”
“And that you think you’re his son. I want you to say that.”
“Really?” Ryder stared at Mr. Starr. Telling Thomas Trent that Ryder was his son was something they’d debated long into the night last night. They’d come up with no answer until, apparently, now.
“Yes. I’ve been thinking about it.” Mr. Starr’s eyes seemed to flash. “You have to hit him right between the eyes. Get his attention. That will do it, trust me. If you can, say it so only he can hear, but either way, you’ve got to say it.”
Ryder shrugged. “Okay. I guess I better get going. They get there two hours before the game, right?”
“Sometimes earlier, so don’t dawdle. You need to see him today.” Mr. Starr banged a crooked hand down on his armrest. “The visitors’ bus should pull up to the loading dock near the garage on 164th Street, but don’t take that as gospel. I just read it from some crazy fan’s online blog about how he gets MLB autographs. The guy might be a total loon for all I know. Ask someone who’s there, a cop or a stadium worker or someone. If anyone asks you why, you’re just hoping to get an autograph on your ball. No one will bother you that way. You got to wait there where the buses arrive, and just shout to him.”