by Dave King
We receive a shaky phone message from Sylvia. “Hi, Ryan and Howard. Me, guys, Thursday night. So it looks like they’re not going to let me out again Saturday like we’d hoped, damnation. Nobody really liked me hanging out at that place last week, even if beer is so not my problem. I swear, the turnkeys I live with are worse than the hotshots at the center! And it also had to do with”—she lowers her voice—“goddamn Mary Ellen being along. Be careful who you hang with, that’s what I say.” She sighs dramatically. “But also about learning to accept limits, resist impulse, change my pattern of thinking so that I look at the bigger picture, which I’m . . . I see the point, but I—And who on earth seriously understands how to change? But I’m here, so I’m working pretty hard to absorb those good lessons, et cetera. And I’ll miss you fellas, and wasn’t it amazing running into each other? Almost more fun than if we’d planned it in advance. So hit a big home run for Mama, baby, and remember every single thing so you can tell me. Much, much love . . .”
Ryan and I hear this message when we get in from practice. It’s unlike me to monitor the answering machine so diligently, but Sylvia’s been on my mind, and at the sound of her voice I’m back in her kitchen, in her arms on her floor. Still, I wince a little as I listen. Doesn’t she think about what she’s saying? The voice on the recording comes not from the vivacious Sylvia of last weekend but from some whiny stranger, powerless and conflicted. When she mentions Mary Ellen I smile weakly at Ryan, as if it’s a joke, but when she launches into jargon I give up pretending. As the message finishes, Ryan takes up the dog-eared envelope with her phone number on it. “What would I say?” he murmurs, picking the flap with his thumb. I believe there’s plenty he might say, and I know words will come once he hears Sylvia’s voice. He could start by telling her how much we miss her, and he needn’t respond to her sad meanderings. But he looks so awkward that when he says, “Can I do it tomorrow?” I let him off the hook. Even this is progress.
The machine clicks and starts again: a second call. I hear a throat being cleared, then “Howard Kapostash, this is Sister Amity Bridge, calling from Mercy Convent.” The voice is raspy. “I thought you’d come by and speak with me this week, and I’m a little surprised that that hasn’t come to pass. I also want to make sure there’s been no misunderstanding, Howard. I hope you know that what I said last week was not categorical. Perhaps we both had some thinking to do. But I hope you’ll come see me at your earliest convenience. As I’m sure you can imagine, the grass is quite long. You know where to find me; I’ll be around tomorrow. I’d like to get on this, Howard, and I look forward to speaking with you.” She puts the receiver down with a clunk.
Ryan’s leaning in the parlor archway. He meets my gaze and looks quickly away, and I feel my face redden. I can recognize a poor impulse at fifty paces, but his shifty glance embarrasses me, and I’ll never forget how he witnessed my humiliation. I don’t want him thinking I’m beholden to anyone, so I give the answering machine the finger and delete Sister Amity’s message.
36
I’M STANDING BEHIND THE Mister Luster Kleen shop, watching batting practice. I’m still the sultan of throw, and on Saturday I umpired as the kids played six innings against each other. But on the evenings we meet here there’s less to occupy me, so I have the opportunity to assess the world.
Healy Boulevard is a commercial strip, and Mister Luster Kleen stands in a small plaza in an endless sequence of shopping plazas. A service road, where our vehicles are parked, runs behind the strip, and across the service road a vacant lot’s been cleared for the kids. The lot’s too narrow for a regulation diamond and outfield, but home plate and a single base path for sprinting, plus a low pitcher’s mound, have been laid out on the bias. Most of the kids don’t hit deep, anyway. Tonight, several Snakes are taking turns on the mound, while the others rotate fielding and catching duties. The birdlike woman who once gave me the evil eye—I’ve dubbed her the kid wrangler for the carload she chauffeurs to every practice—has proposed that each turn at the plate last until the child connects, and between a certain wildness from the pitchers, a burgeoning heat wave, and the flapping of the young batters, things are moving slowly. Juliana Mesk, in bright green madras shorts, stands in the batting area advising on form, but as a wafer-thin boy named Rajiv takes his fifteenth or twentieth swing, I can see her getting fidgety. “Remember what I told you, Raj: line your knuckles up. Attaboy.” With a Sharpie pen, she draws a line across both sets of Rajiv’s knuckles. “Just line ’em right up when you grip the bat.”
Juliana and her father have done a nice job creating this little field. The coarse, chest-high yellow grass has been carefully mowed, and a softer, lawn-style grass fills the gaps. Behind the plate, a tower of hay bales serves as a backstop. And there must have been a ton of rubbish to remove. Looking at the neatly pruned perimeter, where the grass of adjacent lots stands like a wall, I wonder why Mister Luster Kleen’s neighbors haven’t volunteered their back lots, too, so a full ball field could be established behind the plaza. But this is one of those complicated questions I’m unable to ask, so unless someone volunteers an explanation, I’ll never know. Liability, perhaps. A car pulls in behind me, and the mother of Ryan’s blue-haired friend Shawn waves a paperback in my direction. “Think the heat’s getting worse, Howard?” I point to the mound, where her boy’s now pitching, and she comes and stands beside me, fanning herself with the book.
Ten days in, and I’m absurdly happy. I doubt I’ve felt so involved since the army, but there’s nothing about this that’s much like the army. Perhaps it’s that I jumped in that first morning—throwing, umping—or that with no job to go to, baseball’s our big event. Either way, the easygoing, fluid atmosphere reminds me of life before I was injured.
Shawn’s mother laughs suddenly, nodding at a short-haired dog who lies panting in the outfield. “Who brought the extra fielder?” she says. I point out the kid who owns the dog, and as I do so I wonder if she’s realized I don’t speak. She strikes me as pretty spacey, her nose usually stuck in a book, and the team’s broad cast of characters makes it easy for me to pass. “He’s paying a hell of a lot more attention than most of the kids. I don’t suppose he can throw,” Shawn’s mom says dryly, and I picture Sylvia getting to know these people, chuckling along with me and responding for both of us. In school, before the bitterness set in, she was pretty well-liked.
Rajiv finally pops one up. He throws the bat, sending Juliana and the young catcher jumping, and scampers toward the single base. In what I figure for the middle infield, the freckle-faced kid gets under it, but throws wild. Two kids part the yellow sheaves to hunt for the ball.
This is the type of thing that gets on Ryan’s nerves, and under different circumstances we’d be listening to some mouthing off. But it’s his turn to bat, and he moves to the plate, pausing like a big leaguer to lean the bat handle against his crotch. Ed takes a blue handkerchief from a pocket and mops the back of his neck, then flips Shawn a spare ball. “Batter up!”
Ryan hits the first pitch high, and we watch it sailing into the blue. It descends toward the center of the lot, where a couple of kids would have a chance at catching it if they weren’t locked in some kind of wrestling match. The ball plops behind them, but only the dog seems to notice, adjusting its pointed ears before lowering its chin with a yawn. The woman I call the kid wrangler hollers that it was a nice hit, but Ryan doesn’t sprint to first. Whatever pleasure he derives from a big smack is undone by the fielding, and he slams the bat to the ground and yells, “Catch the goddamn ball, ya asswipes!”
Everything stops. I sigh and stroll toward the plate, and Ryan cries, “They just stood there, bro!” I know they did, and it’s hot, and I suppose he’s frustrated at getting one swing after Rajiv’s long turn at the plate. He’s his mom’s kid underneath it all, with her tart tongue, and sometimes he reminds me what she’s really like. But Ed’s a stickler for sportsmanlike behavior, so I pantomime disapproval, and when Ryan stomps to the sidelines I
walk over and hand him his glove. Catch some goddamn balls yourself, I want to say. But he only says loudly, “This is supposed to be practice, not goof-off. We gotta win games.”
More than anything in the world, I hate being a spectacle. I point again to the outfield and think how I’d handle this if I could say what I’m thinking. Oh, I’d be eloquent! I’d tell him we have standards for considerate discourse, and that after a nice hit the name-calling lowered him. I’d teach him about teamwork. Elizabeth, the tall black girl, sidles up to me and announces sanctimoniously, “Those two are A-wipes, Mr. K,” and I want to tell her to mind her own business.
Then, abruptly, the spectacle dissolves. The next batter bops out a laconic liner, and one of the asswipes flops forward to stop it. It’s clear from the laughs that greet this performance that the kid’s been called to order. Juliana yells, “Pitching change, guys! Who else wanted to pitch? Come on now, almost quitting time. Let’s move! Let’s change catchers, too, okay? So Jeremy gets a chance to hit.” She gives the stocky Asian catcher a clap on the shoulder and waves at Ryan. “Put your money where your mouth is, guy.”
Ryan’s approach is more fervent than mine. It took him no time at all to align himself with a posse of older, more competitive players—Shawn, Jeremy, one or two others—and though he can be playful at home, he’s a terrier here in Luster Kleen Land. When other kids use the bats for sword fighting or lawn bowling, it’s usually Ryan who suddenly needs one for batting practice, and when some kid goes dreamy and loses track of the play, it’s always Ryan hollering to look smart. If he were my teammate I’d want him to calm the fuck down, but though the kids sometimes snarl back, they fall into line.
And yet, impatient as he can be with individual teammates, he’s lost no faith in the broader enterprise. We still have no scheduled games and no real pitching coach, but he’s never doubted that these will come, and he seems not to realize it’s his cadre of überjockboys who are out of step with Snake inclusiveness. This amazes me. I expect him, at his spikiest, to throw the Snakes over, say he wants a team that kicks butt, and drag me off to sweatier pastures. But three times a week he’s raring to go, and we’re always the first to arrive.
Ann’s Jamie is up to bat. He swings and swings, and as the time passes for practice to end, a few kids drift from the field and climb into waiting cars. The new pitcher’s a long-faced, inscrutable boy with the team’s best arm. He seems in no hurry to call it quits, and Ryan, catching, is in his element. He lunges dramatically as each pitch comes in and tries to get a patter going. “Yo, Ibrahim, Ibrahim. Show the fans how you nick the corner, Ib.” But Jamie at the plate has begun to look trapped, and it seems we’ll have to pull him or be here all night.
At last, I crouch behind him. His head’s no higher than my earlobe, and I imagine saying to him keep it flat, now! Don’t be afraid to turn toward the ball, and if it feels right, stick your butt out. I guide him through a few practice swings, but all I’m really murmuring is “Mbah . . . Mbah . . .”
Maybe Ibrahim can read my mind, or maybe he’s just a very nice boy. He waits ’til we’re ready, then lobs in an easy one. Jamie flinches, but I don’t let him pull back, and we manage enough tap that the ball jumps forward eight feet from the plate. In an instant, Jamie’s slipped from my grasp and is hightailing it toward base, and Ryan’s saying, “Hit the whole ball for him, why don’t you, Howie.”
We’re stowing the equipment in the back of the shop when Robin stops me in the roadway. “Howard, if it weren’t so hot I’d give you a hug. I think you just salvaged a boy’s fragile masculinity.” She laughs her goofy laugh, then adds, “Speaking of fragile, what’s the deal between you and Sister A?” With a stern face, she says, “The grass is very long.” I’m not sure who she’s calling fragile, but I won’t get into convent stuff, so I just shrug. Someone yells that we’re all going to Burger King, and I cock my head toward the vehicles. “Damn, wouldn’t I like that,” Robin says with a sigh. “But Ann would surely shred me alive if I fed him fast food. We live vicariously, ha, ha, ha, ’cept for these.” She flicks an ash from her cigarette.
Ryan runs over to ask if we can go to Burger King, too. Sure! No food nuts in our household. Robin says, “Hey, Ryan, nice going with the bat. Think you could teach Jamie a thing or two?” He nods, though I’m not sure Jamie quite appears on his radar. She grins at him, then says, “Seriously, though, Howard—” But I especially don’t want to discuss this in Ryan’s presence, so with a hand on his shoulder, I steer him away. “Look, I don’t know what exactly went down with you two,” Robin says. “And Lord knows I’m no fan of Sister Shmamity. But you oughta look out for number one, How! It’s not a bad gig, right?” It could be I pull away more abruptly than I intend, but it’s my view I am looking out for number one.
37
RYAN PILES INTO A BOOTH with five other boys, and Ed waves me to one with Shawn’s mom and the kid wrangler. “What the hell happened to the girls?” Shawn’s mom asks sleepily, and Ed points out Juliana and Elizabeth sitting in a corner with a couple of pigtailed moppets. Elizabeth’s declared the corner a no-boy zone, he says. Shawn’s mom murmurs, “Look at them. So pretty and neat, even after playing sports! I wonder what it would be like to have girls for a week. Or for a day.” We watch Elizabeth break up her fish sandwich and eat it in dainty bites, and the kid wrangler says girls are no picnic either.
I’ve never figured out which child the kid wrangler belongs to. She’s always got a bunch piling out of her Caravan, and she’s full of suggestions for the kids as well as for Ed and Juliana. Things grind to a halt whenever she’s involved, and she kept that eagle eye on me early on. So I’m not a fan, but I nod amiably as I dig into my burger.
“Well, Ed sure knows what girls are like,” she says now. “How long have you been a single parent?” Ed says his wife died when Juliana was seven, but they were separated at the time. The kid wrangler says she’s also going it solo. “Not easy,” she announces. Turning abruptly to Shawn’s mom, she says, “Now, Eleanor, your husband travels?” Shawn’s mom looks briefly amused and says her husband’s a pilot and the boys don’t see enough of him, and the kid wrangler says she’s comfortable with her divorce, but she’s certainly not dead. There are times when a little romance, or even the notion of romance, just to see what came of it . . . Or even companionship. “I mean, who wouldn’t?” She smiles lavishly at Ed, who nods a little blankly, and I sip my milkshake and think of high school. I didn’t worry much about dates because Sylvia and I held steady from junior year on, but there were girls who flirted with me from time to time, and sometimes they got me into trouble with Syl.
“You’ve done an amazing job with Juliana,” the kid wrangler tells Ed. “Ooh, isn’t it chilly in here!” She wiggles her shoulders, and though I don’t find her alluring, her short focus nettles me. I like Ed Mesk, and if he’s susceptible to this nonsense I wish him the best. And I can’t say by what shift I suddenly consider myself a player, but I’m here. I’m more virile than Ed, even with my scar, and I, too, am raising a child alone, at least for the moment. And no one has to know I’m unemployed. A cloud descends, and to keep it at bay I turn to the clowning boys at the next table.
The chubby freckled kid has on a Burger King paper crown. He’s announced he wants to be called Sammy Sosa, and after chanting, “Sammy, Sammy,” for a minute or so, the other boys choose alter egos, too. Ryan says he’s Ken Griffey Jr. Shawn says, “Hey, hey, I’m Roger Clemens. I’m the rocket, man. Ninety-seven miles per owah! Pshhhhooo!”
Ryan says Clemens is a pussy. Some kind of rivalry’s developed between Shawn and him. Looking shrewdly across the table, he adds, “Anyway, if you seriously wanna learn how to pitch, you gotta come to my house, dude. There’s this guy there, he’s like a friend of Howie’s? And he—and also of mine, too. He was practically a pro, like he—Okay: dynamite slider, not-too-shabby fastball . . .”
Sammy Sosa says, “Oh, right, and he’d be friends with you.”
“He is, man
. He lives in our house. He’s like old now, but I play ball with him.”
Shawn says, “He’s teaching you to throw sliders?”
“Yeah, man. No sweat. I mean, it’s not like I have it down. But he showed me the grips.” Jamming a French fry in his maw, he chews absently, a cool customer. “He was some all-star or something. I forget.”
The boys blink at him in silence. At last Shawn says, “Sounds awesome. So when?”
“What?”
“When you wanna invite me over?”
Ryan tucks in his chin. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he says. “I mean, the guy has a job. But maybe some Saturday—” Then the lightbulb goes on. “Oh my God! Howie!” He flies from the booth and grabs my forearm. “Howie! How ’bout Harrison?” The adults are watching now—even the kid wrangler’s on hiatus—and Ryan says, “Ed, Ed! Ed! There’s a guy in our house who was like an all-star or something, and he’s a lefty, like me. I bet he’d be a pitching coach. He already said he’d be happy to teach me.” He turns for high fives all around.
Shawn says, “Mom! That would be so cool!” Ed says it would really help. I nod to suggest I’ll do what I can, though I wish we’d nailed Nat down beforehand.
Ryan says, “Hey, wait,” and I can see him thinking. “Wait, wait. You said that, about Harrison, didn’t you? Before Mom came. At the rib place; now I get it.” He looks quizzical. “I gotta listen better.” I wipe a smear of milkshake from his eyebrow—how does he do it?—and he shouts, “Hey, Juliana!” When they tell him it’s the no-boys corner, he says, “No, I really, really got something to say.”
The kids, Juliana included, retire to the play area, and the adults stand by Ed’s station wagon, shooting the shit. It’s hot, and we’re all grubby, and the Burger King parking lot is as unappealing as a place can be, but no one’s in any rush to depart. The kid wrangler says Ed and Juliana should come for a meal sometime; she makes a mean chicken and biscuits, and Ed mumbles, “Sure,” and “Thanks.” I’ve let my attention wander, but Shawn’s mom, Eleanor, catches my eye with a look. Ed says, “So Howard. Think your, um, pitching buddy might come through?” I sure hope so, Ed.