by Linda Holmes
“Wait, you’re quitting?”
He looked up at her slowly. “Yes. It’s fully, totally over.”
“But I saw you pitch a month ago.”
“And a bunch of people watched me throw into the stands yesterday.”
The thump of the ball into the mitt. “You can’t quit.”
“Yes. I can quit. I am quitting. I am not pitching anymore.”
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I feel like I should have gone with you.”
He shook his head, his shoulders, all in a gesture of loose bafflement. “To do what?”
“I don’t know. To be there with you, I guess.”
“You didn’t miss a good time.”
“Not to have a good time. Just, do you remember when you asked me to be behind the plate at the Spring Dance? Do you remember that you said it helped that I was back there, even if you couldn’t see me? I feel like this is what happened, we didn’t follow the rules of what made it work, we didn’t do it the same way. It can still work, but we have to do it the same way—”
“Please stop,” he said, shaking his head. “Please stop, okay, Ev?”
“I’m trying to help.”
“I know you are, but you have to listen. You have to listen to me. I’m fucking tired, and I had a long weekend, and even though I know you’re trying to help, I’m telling you this is how it is.” He was a little sunburned, she noticed. He looked older.
“I just…I’m just surprised.”
“Evvie, I worked on this back in New York until I drove myself crazier than I already was. I did every goddamn thing they told me to do, everything. I don’t understand what you expected to happen. I don’t understand what I expected to happen.” He leaned against the counter. “I mean, did you think I was going to be able to pitch now because we’re sleeping together?”
Hearing this question was like biting down on a bad tooth, right to the nerve. “I didn’t think that.” Oh, but you did, you did, you did.
“It’s over,” he said. “I’m telling you it’s over. All this is over.” He took a drink, and then he shook his head. “I really fucking wish you hadn’t forced it.”
Evvie flinched. “I was trying to help,” she said. “I thought you wanted to work.”
“Well, I didn’t,” he said. “And I can’t anyway. We should have left it alone. It’s time for me to get on with my real goddamn life already.”
She looked around the kitchen. “I’m sorry if I misunderstood.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I should have known better.” He ran one hand through his hair. “I’m starving,” he said. He opened the refrigerator and swore under his breath, and just as Evvie realized what was about to happen, he set down the bottle of champagne she had chilled, right in front of her, hard enough that it rattled the table. “Please stop it with this.”
When he had disappeared into the apartment, she picked at the champagne label until it peeled away in sections, then she left the bottle on the table and went upstairs to lie down. All this, he had said, is over.
* * *
—
That night, once it was dark, Evvie wriggled into soft cotton jersey shorts and a gray T-shirt, and she shut off the lights in her bedroom. She went downstairs, stopping to stash the champagne in the back of a high cabinet, and she went to the apartment, where the door was standing half-open. She peeked in, and she saw Dean in bed, earbuds in, eyes on his iPad. All the lights were off but one, right next to him on the nightstand. She stood still until he looked up, smiled, took one little white earbud out, and extended it toward her. She crossed the room, feeling the quiet and the carpet under her bare feet. Dean lifted the sheets and the cotton blanket on her side of the bed, and she scooted in beside him.
He was watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, and she slid in her earbud at the moment Indy got to Marion’s bar. Dean resettled the pillows behind his head so she could curl around his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ev,” he said into her ear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She turned a little to look at the curve of his jaw and the scar above his eye, and she said, “I’m sorry, too.”
“It was a hard trip. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
She shook her head. “No, I pushed, you’re right. I’m not at my best right now, either.”
“Probably no chance you called Andy while I was gone.”
She played with the charm around her neck. “No. I can’t say I did.”
“Or that he called you?”
She pulled on the chain. “I’m trying to give it some time to blow over.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said, resting her hand on his side.
“The night you guys had that fight, you said, ‘I should never have tried to be happy.’ What does that mean?”
What Eveleth hated the most about being drunk, and what she already hated the most about having been drunk that night, was all the things she barely remembered but knew were true. She had said this; she was sure of it. She had no idea why. And so she ran her hands over her hair and said, “I don’t—just a drunk thing, I guess?”
“You know, it’s been a week. More than a week. It’s not going to get any easier.”
She nodded. “I’m going to miss this kind of really depressing advice.”
He turned to her with his brow furrowed. “Am I leaving?”
“Aren’t you? It’s been almost a year. You said it yourself. It’s time to get on with everything. Your regular life. It is for me, too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure about what? That fall is going to follow summer and that will be a year? Yes. Yes, I’m sure.” She put her hand flat against his chest, gave him a pat, and leaned back against his shoulder. She wasn’t magic, she couldn’t help, and he’d said it himself when he moved in: New York was where his life was. Might as well get on with it and not make it harder. It was going to be bad enough already.
ABOUT A WEEK AFTER DEAN got back from Connecticut, Evvie saw a cardboard box on the table in the apartment with a stack of books in it. This was the first sign that it was real. As July wore on, everything continued largely as it had been: they slept in his bed or hers, they pushed the windows wide open when it was cool enough, they read the news on their phones and binge-watched seasons of 30 Rock and Archer, eating takeout or spaghetti or burgers or something she improvised from leftovers. He slept soundly at night, not getting out of bed to pitch and not icing his shoulder in secret when it began to bother him. Gradually, it stopped bothering him at all.
She read and she worked, and she started to plan for the clients she would need to pay the bills after he was gone. She didn’t ask him any questions when he’d come home from hanging out with Andy, and he didn’t tell her anything. The longer it went on that way, the less she could imagine how anything with Andy might be fixed. Or even part-fixed.
But the boxes kept appearing on the table, and when he handed her a check on the first of August, she looked down at it. “End of the month, I guess?” he said. She looked up and nodded.
* * *
—
As the end of August approached, Dean began to leave in earnest. He sent someone to open up his apartment in New York and have it cleaned. He started selling the things he’d bought that he wouldn’t need: the toaster oven and the smoothie blender, then the dresser, once he put his clothes into bins. He told Evvie he was leaving the big TV on the wall, in case she ever wanted a properly enormous screen on which to watch Halls of Power.
She wanted to have a party for him before he left—or, really, she wanted to be the kind of person who would throw a party for him before he left—but he didn’t want one. He went and watched a ball game with her father one afternoon, and the kids he’d coached had a cookout for him and gave him a sweatshirt that said, COACH TENNEY. The Claws too
k him out drinking, and Andy’s girls got out their paints and made cards for him, and Andy and Monica took him to The Pearl while Evvie stayed home on a deadline she claimed was slightly more urgent than it was. He spent a day at Kell’s, helping her with her garden.
He packed his powders and potions from the counter. He packed his Xbox games. He packed the crooked little trophy and the plastic water bottles from the drying rack. With a week to go, he sold his bed and his table, and the last few nights, they slept in her bed, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to have sex or eat cereal or watch Match Game ’76, which ran all night on cable. On the last night, he took the pinball machine apart and wrapped the pieces in a couple of old blankets Kell gave him, and he put them into the back of the truck.
She woke up on the last day, went into the bathroom, and saw that he’d taken his toothbrush from the plastic cup on the vanity. The day before, she’d teased him about how their toothbrushes were bumping against each other, sharing all their germs, and he had said, “I think you already have all my diseases.” When she saw her blue brush leaning against the side of the cup by itself, she felt the breath go out of her lungs. She leaned down and turned the tap, and she splashed cold water into her eyes and on her cheeks.
Evvie padded down the stairs in her socks, and Dean was there, making breakfast at the stove. “Hey,” she said, coming over and leaning up to kiss him on the cheek.
“Hey. I made eggs, and coffee’s on. And don’t forget, there are still mini-donuts in the bag over there.” They’d hit the bakery a couple of days before so that the next morning, they could stay in bed until noon eating pastries and arguing about which version of Law & Order was the best one.
“Are you all packed?” She poured herself a cup of coffee.
“I think so. I got everything out of the apartment, bathroom—I got my stuff out of the dryer, I got my charger from upstairs. I got your car charger out of my glove compartment and it’s on the counter over there. I think it’s everything.”
He slid her breakfast in front of her and sat down. “I figure if I get on the road pretty soon, I’ll be there sometime before the evening rush, which would be good.”
She took a bite. “You know, your eggs have come a long way since I met you.”
He laughed. “Well, it hasn’t been a total loss, then.” He leaned on his elbow. “So I guess it would be dumb to ask if you’re ever down in New York at all.”
“Not very often,” Evvie said as she nibbled on a piece of toast. “But I’ll call you if I am. And I’ll call you anyway. I mean, I’m not dying. You’re not dying.”
“I hope I’m not dying,” he said.
After breakfast, they cleaned up the dishes, they cleaned off the counters, they divided up an electric bill, and they checked the traffic on the route he was driving. They wound up leaning on opposite sides of the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “I think I’m out of stalls,” she finally said. “You should get on the road if you want to be ahead of the rush.”
“Okay,” he said. He stepped toward her and opened his arms wide, like she was a classmate at a high school reunion. She stepped close to him and let him hold her, and they stood that way for a long minute. “Thank you so much, Ev,” he said. “I don’t know what I would have done.”
“Me, neither,” she muttered into his shoulder. “I mean…you know what I mean.”
He stepped back. “I’m going to miss you a lot.”
“I’m going to miss you a lot, too. I’m sorry things didn’t work out how you hoped.”
Dean looked all around the kitchen, then back at her. “I don’t know that they didn’t.” He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Walk me out?”
She nodded. Out by his truck, he turned back and kissed her, and her knees tried to buckle again, and her breath tried to leave her again, but when she stepped away from him, she steadied herself on her own feet. “Drive safe. Let me know when you get there?”
He nodded and slid into the driver’s seat. He started the truck, and it pulled out of the driveway, and he was gone. She stood in the yard for a minute, looking at the fence, at the house, at the way that her own car needed to be washed, and then she pulled herself up the steps, hanging on to the banister, and went back into her kitchen.
Just as she started to ease herself down onto the living room couch, her phone buzzed. It was a text from Dean, who would be sitting at the light right about now.
Look under sink in apt bathroom. Take care. Call Andy.
She went into the apartment, now totally empty again, and ducked into the little bathroom. She opened the cabinet, and she took out a black baseball glove with pink laces. A sticky note was in the palm.
Go be great, champ.
IT WAS SEPTEMBER. THE LEAVES would start to turn in the next couple of weeks. It would start cooling off at night, but for now, Evvie would still get sweaty, throwing off the covers most of the time and waking up tangled in her top sheet.
Dean had texted when he got to New York, and again two days later to tell her he was looking for coaching jobs in the city. She said she was glad both times, and she sent him a blue heart both times. The blue heart was I have a hundred things to say. But, of course, only to her. He lived there, and she lived here. That was all. It was fine. It would be fine, and saying all the other things would only make it harder.
Instead, she told herself to do one thing at a time. In fact, she stuck a note to the mirror that said, DO ONE THING. So on the hot Wednesday night after he left, she decided to replace the burned-out light bulb in the fixture over the kitchen table. She dragged the stepstool up from the basement, but when she climbed up and poked away the cobwebs, she realized she had to take the cover off of the fixture with a screwdriver to get to the bulbs. “That’s stupid,” she muttered.
Evvie glanced around her kitchen and remembered that her screwdriver was sticking up out of a coffee can filled with screws and nails. The can sat on the end of a high shelf over the stove that she could reach if she went up on her toes. She went over to the shelf, but as she reached for the can, she accidentally tipped it off the shelf. It hit the edge of the stove on the way down, and screws and nails skittered across the slippery kitchen floor. At the same time, a heavy cookbook she didn’t realize had been leaning on the can fell over, and as it fell off the shelf, it took out both a plastic jar of applesauce and a big canister of rice. The applesauce hit the floor and split down the side, splattering across the bottom of the stove, the floor, and the legs of the kitchen chairs and table. And the top came off the canister of rice, which formed a pile in front of the stove—mixed with applesauce, of course—but as it fell, it tumbled and spun, spraying dry rice across the kitchen floor and into the hallway.
Once all the noise stopped, once everything stopped moving, Evvie stood and looked around. There was rice under the stove and inside the burners. There was applesauce on the undersides of the kitchen chairs. There were nails and screws covered with applesauce spilled all over her floor. She walked, dazed, toward her bathroom to see how far the rice went, and there were grains of it even in there. She looked around her kitchen, and she dropped her chin to her chest.
She started to cry, but she could barely breathe. She tried to ignore it and grabbed the roll of paper towels and walked toward the stove, slipping on rice under her feet. She kneeled on her kitchen floor and started to mop up piles of rice and muck, but she had to go get the trash can first, and she wasn’t sure if she should try to pick out the screws and the nails or throw them away, and oh God, there was rice that had fallen into the drawer at the bottom of the stove that was open an inch, and she’d have to take out all the pots and lids, which would all have rice in them, and the stove was too heavy to move.
On her knees, on her floor, in the house she’d never wanted, she couldn’t catch her breath. She felt like she was floating above herself, observing this woman on
the floor who was sobbing, and then wailing, and then this woman on her knees on the floor was screaming. Part of Evvie was watching and thinking, What is happening, am I having a panic attack, am I crazy, am I dying? And part of her gulped air into her lungs and made it into this sound over and over again, a sound she’d never heard herself make before. Whatever was angrier than crying and much bigger than yelling and felt more like a seizure than a shout, that’s what this sound was, and even as she was still making it, it registered: Thank God I am the only person who will ever see myself like this. Thank God, thank God.
She had no idea how long it went on. She knew enough to be terrified a neighbor would hear; she was steeled for a knock on the door from someone who thought she was being murdered. If she’d heard herself from inside someone else’s house, she would have called the police. She heard her own words in what barely seemed to be her voice: I can’t do this and What did I do? and I break everything. Several times, the last one. Everything. Everything, I break everything. She was making this sound, nearly howling these words, and she could hear it, but she couldn’t stop it. She passed through long minutes when she couldn’t imagine how it would ever end except with her emptied out or inside out or reduced to a stick figure that stood for a person who had once existed.
But it ended, for the same reason arm-wrestling matches and overtime games come to an end: there is only so much. Finally, finally, she felt the process reverse. That terrifying sound turned back into raw sobbing, and then to ordinary crying, and then she took a breath, and another, and another. Slowly, she stood, brushing the rice off her bare knees, which were now covered in painful, pebbly red marks. She went into the bathroom and flipped on the light. Her eyes were swollen in a way she’d never seen before. Her throat felt raw and her ears were ringing. She ran cold water on a cloth and held it over her face, breathing in, feeling the cool water on her lips and smelling her laundry detergent.