“Did it develop for you?”
Molly sighed. She didn’t want to answer the question. The truth would only hurt them both more. “I don’t want you to worry about us right now. What’s most important for you to remember is we’re both still here for you.”
His mouth quirked into a little smile of amusement.
“What?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know. That sounded kind of funny.”
“Why?”
“Of course you’re both still here for me.”
“Good, I’m glad you know that, but it’s okay to feel sad or worried, and you can talk to me about your feelings.” Seeing his confidence gave her the strength to voice her own fears. “This isn’t going to be like when your dad left.”
“Mom,” he drew out the word, “I know.”
“Do you?” How could he when she didn’t know herself? Until two days ago, she let herself believe she could never see Duke again.
“Duke loves us. She promised no matter what she’d always be on our team.”
“I know, honey, but sometimes people say things they don’t mean or make promises they can’t keep.”
“Not Duke.”
“She’s not perfect, you know. She makes mistakes.” The words came out in a flash of hurt, and she regretted them immediately.
Joe frowned, then continued more slowly. “She didn’t promise to be perfect. She promised to do her best.”
Something twisted inside her chest. Duke had done her best. Molly knew that with everything in her. She saw it clearly. Joe did, too. Why had they come to such completely different opinions about what would come next? Was it his childish faith in other people? He might have been wise beyond his years, but he was still a kid. He didn’t know what it meant to be disappointed, left, let down the way she did.
“I remember Dad, too, you know,” he said softly as if he’d read her mind.
“What do you remember?”
He looked away. Why couldn’t he look at her? Did he miss him? Of course he did. Did he know she’d failed them all? Did he blame her for Tony’s abandonment? He deserved a chance to say so. “We’ve always been able to talk, even when you were Charlie’s age. You’re my number one man. You can tell me anything, Joe, even about your dad.”
“I was happy when he left,” he blurted out.
She gasped.
“What? I didn’t like it when he came home from work. He didn’t talk to me or you. You didn’t smile at him. He didn’t smile at all.”
“I’m so sorry you remember that.” All those years of trying to protect him were for naught. And now she’d put him in the same position with Duke. “I tried to make things good for you, but you’ve always been sensitive. I’m sorry for that, too. I think you were too aware of my unhappiness. I should’ve been stronger for you.”
“We weren’t unhappy when he left. I liked it.” His cheeks grew pink with either embarrassment or guilt, but he forged on. “It was just me and you, then Charlie, too. I liked that. I didn’t want you to date anyone until Duke. Duke was the opposite.”
“How was she the opposite?” The situation felt very similar to her.
“We were happy with her here, and when she left, you were sad.”
“What about you? Aren’t you sad she’s left us?”
He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Duke didn’t leave us. Duke will always be there for us.”
Molly swallowed the lump of emotions clogging her throat. “Then why do you seem so sad?”
“I’m afraid I’m not supposed to love Duke anymore because you don’t. Maybe I shouldn’t even love baseball, but I don’t know how to stop loving them.”
“Oh, honey, why would you think I wanted you to do that?”
“Because I love you, and I’m not sure I should be happy when you’re so sad.”
She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to her chest. Her breaths came in ragged bursts as if the love filling her heart might crush her lungs. How had she ever made something as perfect as the little boy in her arms? All this time she’d tried to put him first, and he’d been trying to do the same for her. She’d spent years making up for a trauma he’d never suffered and the last few months guarding him from an abandonment that would never come.
How much time had she wasted looking through a distorted lens, and what kind of damage had she done to them all along the way? She couldn’t even begin to make sense of everything right now, but she did know one thing she could fix immediately. She held him back at arm’s length and crouched down until her eyes were level with his. “Joseph Landon Grettano, you’re too good for your own good, but if you ever sacrifice your own happiness for my sadness, then I haven’t taught you what love is.”
He looked down at the floor, and she gave him a gentle shake. “I mean it. I always, always, always want you to love whoever and whatever makes you happy, no matter what.”
“But isn’t that what Duke did?”
Molly could no longer hide her tears. They spilled down her cheeks in a steady stream. What had she done? To her son, to Duke, to herself? She’d been so caught up in trying to protect them all she’d taken away everything worth protecting.
Love.
Her chest ached. She’d had a real chance at love. She’d been surrounded by it, and she’d rejected it. More than that, she’d taught the people she loved most that love was something to fear, to be ashamed of, to hide.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“You didn’t, honey.” She sniffed and wiped the tears away. “I did this, not you.”
“We don’t have to go to the baseball game.”
She shook her head and hugged him tightly again. “No, the baseball game is exactly what I need right now.”
“Why?” he asked skeptically.
She forced a smile and said, “Because there’s no crying in baseball.”
Top of the Ninth
The Heart of the Game
“Duke!” both Joe and Charlie shouted as they hurled themselves at her.
She caught them in her arms and hugged them so tightly she lifted them off the ground. She inhaled their scent, sweet and warm, like fresh air on a summer’s day. “I missed you.”
“We missed you, too.” Joe stood back and straightened his ball cap, then glanced behind him, causing Duke to turn her attention toward Molly. The sight of her sent a shot of pain through her chest. The distance between them hurt even more. Molly stood back a few feet, her smile encouraging but reserved and pointed at Joe, not her. Duke wanted to step back, too. She’d barely been able to focus on her work when she’d been in Pittsburgh, far from Molly and the void she’d left in her heart, but now, within sight of her, she couldn’t escape the emptiness. If not for the little boy looking back and forth between them, she might have given in to the urge to flee.
Molly gave Joe a little nod, and he turned back toward Duke, his expression hopeful. “Do you think we’ll clinch the pennant this weekend?”
Duke shook her head, but Molly’s frown stopped the jaded laugh bubbling up in her. She stared back into Joe’s big brown eyes and felt another piece of her heart crumble. She’d almost done exactly what she’d warned Molly against. He deserved the comfort baseball afforded right now even if she didn’t think the Cardinals would clinch the pennant this weekend.
They were two games back of the first-place team with three games left to go against them. To take sole possession of first place, they’d have to win them all, and if any team was more likely to walk away from this series with a sweep, it was the Reds. The Cardinals had rebounded from their slump earlier in the month, but not fast enough and not soon enough. One of the hard lessons she’d learned this season was sometimes heart and grit and will weren’t enough to win an unevenly matched contest. Still, she couldn’t and wouldn’t dash Joe’s hope.
She started to sit down, to brace herself and gather her thoughts, but the stadium was filling quickly, and it occurre
d to her the seat she’d grown accustomed to occupying wasn’t hers. The Grettanos had three seats, one for each of them, and she wasn’t one of them. Not anymore. Maybe she never really had been. Molly and her boys formed a unit, a family. What was she? A friend? Maybe the boys saw her that way, but what about Molly?
She couldn’t even look at her now. She couldn’t give into the questions still pounding through her head or the emotions that came with them. Maybe that was why she didn’t share Joe’s excitement. Excitement was an emotion, along with joy and hope. Opening the door to any one of those feelings would be like trying to let a single grain of sand slip through an hourglass. She’d be cutting it close to even acknowledge those attributes in Joe, but she had to try.
“You’re a true believer, kiddo,” she said, bending her knees to reach his eye level. “If the Cardinals are going to win three out of three from the Reds, they’ll need to have a heart like yours.”
“Oh, they have it,” he said confidently. “They’ve also got Molina’s big bat, and that’s the heart of the game.”
“Some people say a strong defense is the heart of this game,” Duke said. “They argue pitchers who don’t let anyone get a hit tend to win the most ball games.”
“What do you say?”
Duke mulled the question over in her head, trying to grab a hold of something, anything familiar. She knew the arguments to both sides of the clichéd debate that raged constantly, even among the most novice fans. What was the heart of a winning team? The crack of the bat? The sizzle of a fastball? The pop of a glove? These questions made up so much of her job, and yet she felt completely unable to give even the most conventional of answers, much less an articulate one.
“I think a good catcher’s every bit as important as a good pitcher or a good batter,” Molly finally said. “He’s the one who calls the game, isn’t he?”
“Absolutely.” Duke looked up quickly, registering the compassion in Molly’s eyes and realizing she’d lobbed her a softball. A swirling mix of gratitude and embarrassment stirred in her chest, overwhelming her. She turned back to Joe quickly. “A catcher’s got to have the highest baseball IQ on the team, and he’s got to be able to withstand a beating, too.”
“Brains and brawn,” Molly said, her voice higher than usual as though laced with forced cheerfulness. “Our catcher has both to go with the big bat you mentioned, Joe.”
Duke nodded thoughtfully. What change of heart allowed Molly to make baseball small talk easier than she did? Nothing about this conversation felt right.
“And we’ve got Ben LeBaron on the mound,” Joe said. “It’s a powerful battery.”
“I heard someone say once Molina would have an MVP year. Has he lived up to the prediction?” Molly asked.
“I think so,” Joe said quickly, then looked to Duke. They both watched her now, hopeful, waiting for her to confirm something they believed in could still be real. Should she lead them on? Hadn’t she done enough of that already? They’d only be let down eventually. Maybe it would be better to ease them into the disappointment and perhaps help guard their hearts from the inevitable crash.
“He’s had a career year. He’s done a lot to be proud of, the whole team has, but there’s more to the game than stats and trophies. No one can win all the time.”
“You don’t think he can do it?” Joe asked, his voice low with suspicion. “You don’t think we’re going to win the division either.”
“I didn’t say that.” Duke’s defense was halfhearted. “We’re up against hard odds. Life’s like that sometimes. So is the game, and we don’t have a lot of time left.”
“We have some time,” Joe said.
He was right, of course. They weren’t mathematically eliminated yet, but for some reason, the series didn’t strike her as a final push toward glory so much as a swan song, or a long good-bye, and for the first time in her life that didn’t bother her. She’d been a fan through good and bad, seen World Series wins and losing records, but for the first time she didn’t mourn the end of a season. She couldn’t say that to Joe, though. She’d promised Molly this game would bring him more than just heartache. “I suppose anything is still possible.”
“Yeah, because we’re Cardinals fans,” he said emphatically. “We don’t play games on paper. We win World Series we only backed into. We make mad dashes toward home plate. We never give up even when we’re down to our last strike…twice.”
Duke smiled in spite of her malaise. He knew more about the game, the team, the history than most people ever would. Why had she tried to rein him in? Perhaps his optimism served as such a stark reminder of how lacking her own faith had become that she couldn’t process the disparity. Or did misery love company? Maybe seeing the team she loved come up short would make her feel better about her own failures.
“What did I say wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing. You’re right.” She grabbed the bill of his red cap and spun it around backward. “You should believe in the team, in rally caps, rally towels, and rally squirrels. You’ve got the right idea, and you give a great pep talk. Maybe you should write my column tonight.”
He shook his head. “Never. You’re the best sportswriter ever.”
She gave him a half smile. “All right then, I better get back to work.”
She glanced one more time at Molly, who opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then closed it again before offering a fake smile of her own. Duke wondered briefly about the unspoken sentence, but her heart and her mind were too emotionally spent to dwell on any more unknowns. Molly had already made it clear Duke had disappointed her, and she had no argument to the contrary. None of the shadowy reasons to keep fighting mattered now. Molly needed more than she could give, and she needed to get back to the things in her life she could be sure of. That meant going back to work. Only for the first time ever, her job actually did feel like work.
*
The view from the press box was iconic, an early autumn night, the dark sky serving only to magnify the bright white stadium lights. Duke felt like she was in some epic baseball movie with scenery built to heighten the overwhelming sense of urgency. If she were a director, she could’ve done no better a job of evoking those emotions. Busch Stadium literally vibrated with the collective energy coursing through her veins as a cast of forty-two thousand fans packed its every open space. The cool September breeze carried a teasing scent of autumn. Like the subtle perfume left in the wake of a beautiful woman, even the air itself seemed to hint at a path to October baseball.
Flashes of white danced across a sea of St. Louis red below her, and the stamp of feet echoed from the seats above. Concrete and steel hummed. A constant murmur of the crowd reverberated through the stands and spilled into the streets, but when the Cardinals scored a run, the roar deafened the city, drowning out the fireworks and rippling the waters of even the mighty Mississippi.
There had been more than a few of those earth-shaking cheers over the last two games. The Cardinals had pulled out a win off the arm of LeBaron and a single stroke of Molina’s bat the night before, leaving them one game back of the Reds with two more to play. There had never been a more enjoyable math lesson than the one being taught all over St. Louis. Everywhere everyone ticked the magic number down from three to two and now itched to replace it with a one. The entire city had been swept into the excitement, with her report from last night’s game having triple the readers she’d seen back in July. St. Louis couldn’t get enough baseball and clamored hungrily for one more game, leaving Duke feeling like a stranger in her own home.
Even now with a one-run lead in the top of the ninth, she couldn’t summon any faith. She waited for the inevitable error, the grooved pitch, the overthrow, or the defensive miscue to end it all. Even with victory and a tie for the National League Central division a meager three outs away, an air of defeat still permeated Duke’s senses. It blew across her skin like a phantom mist and settled like a heavy yoke across her shoulders. She’d changed so much o
ver the course of the season she hardly knew how to do her job anymore. She’d long since given up her lists of words to store for future use. She’d also passed on witty banter with her colleagues. She managed to keep score and tweet major announcements, but even her color commentary had dried up completely. As both the crowd around her and the blogosphere teemed with armchair coaches and catchers, she had no expertise left to share.
Now in the top of the ninth inning, all she looked forward to was the end. The first batter was easily dismissed with a ladder of incendiary fastballs. Outside, the crowd noise rattled the glass. Duke marked a K on her score-keeping app without comment.
The second batter wouldn’t go down as easily. He crowded the plate, looking for a jump on the outside pitch, and got his reward in the form of a ninety-eight-mile-an-hour heater popped directly between his shoulder blades. The thud could be heard even in the third tier, followed by a collective wince and groan, leaving Duke the only one around unmoved by the blunt force trauma. The hitter spun dramatically and half hopped, half staggered toward first base. Every Reds fan in Ohio was, no doubt, glad to get their base any way they could get it, and maybe in a few minutes, the hitter might feel the same way, but Duke empathized only with the way he clenched his fists and jaw in an attempt to focus on the job ahead of him. She knew the struggle well. She even envied him the public and productive nature of his pain. At least he had something to show for his trouble. At least he stood the possibility of helping to build something better.
He’d also extended the inning, something Duke didn’t thank him for. Why did the ninth frame always seem to last longer than the others combined? Finally, the third hitter dug into the batter’s box. The All-Star first baseman had taken the lesson of the last pitch to heart and leaned away from another fastball, but this one caught the inside corner of the plate for strike one. The Cardinals closer wasted none of his momentum busting him inside again, but this time he got the bat off his shoulder, long enough to muscle the ball a hundred feet straight up. In one fluid motion Molina rose and tossed off his mask as easily as a normal person might remove a T-shirt. He trotted a quarter of the way down the third baseline, then seemed to will the ball’s downward fall right into his mitt.
Heart of the Game Page 27