That's What Friends Do

by Cathleen Barnhart

  “I mean it would be easier to tell my pop something exciting that happened if it involved baseball.”

  “Is baseball exciting?” Sean asks.

  “To Pop, it’s the most exciting thing in the world.”

  “What about for you? Do you think baseball’s exciting?”

  “Umm. Sometimes,” I say, remembering the time Sammie scored off my hit, and the time Kai’s mom brought homemade lemonade for the team instead of Powerade.

  “You don’t sound excited,” Sean says.

  “My dad thinks NPR news is exciting,” Arnold says. “Every night at dinner we have to hear all about it.”

  “My dad’s an engineer,” Sean says. “He thinks buildings are exciting. When we went to Chicago last spring, the whole family had to take a boat tour just to look at buildings. But the next day my dad and me went to Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, and I added seven birds to my life list. We even saw a Leconte’s sparrow.”

  The bell rings, and we grab our backpacks. Arnold heads to English class and Sean and I start toward math together.

  “Did your pop always like birds?” I ask him. “I mean, is he the reason you started birding?”

  Sean laughs. “Nope. It was the other way around, actually. He tried to get me interested in buildings. And then he wanted us to bake stuff together. He’s an amazing baker. He makes the best cakes and pies you’ve ever had.”

  “I like cakes,” I say. “And pies. Can he make a sour cream apple pie? That’s my favorite.”

  “My dad can bake anything,” Sean says proudly. “But I hated baking. Way too messy. I don’t like messy. You have to be okay with gunk on your hands to be a good baker.”

  “So how’d you end up doing the birding thing?”

  “I’d sit in the kitchen while my dad baked and watch the birds landing on our bird feeder. One day, my dad was making a pecan pie, and I was watching these two yellow-and-black birds fluttering around the feeder. My dad put the pie in the oven, and took a book down from the cookbook shelf, and handed it to me. It was the Sibley Guide to Birds. He challenged me to find a picture that looked like the birds at the feeder. It only took me about five minutes. Then he asked me if I’d want to go somewhere and look for birds with him. I was so excited, I fell off my chair. My dad said that if I didn’t want to build stuff or make cakes with him, that was okay. But he wanted us to share something more than just our genetics. He said if what I loved was birds, then he wanted to love birds too.”

  “Wow,” I say. “My pop would never say something like that.”

  “How do you know?” Sean asks. “You haven’t even tried. Maybe you should tell him your comic strip truth, and see what happens.”

  All afternoon, I think about Sean and his dad, and Pop, and baseball, and truth. I make it through my classes without any of my friends asking awkward questions about the art club, and then, when the dismissal bell rings, I grab my backpack and head outside, not to my regular bus, but to the one that will take me downtown, to the store.

  When I walk through the doors of L. H. Fischer Sporting Goods, Pop’s at the register, his reading glasses perched on the very tip of his nose. He looks over the top of them at me and smiles.

  “David,” he says cheerfully. “What a surprise!”

  I nod, but can’t say anything.

  He tips his head to one side, looking concerned. “Everything okay?”

  I nod again, take a big breath, then sigh it out.

  “Did something happen?” Pop asks worriedly. “Bad day?”

  I take another breath and say, “Yes, and no. I mean, yes, something did happen, but it wasn’t bad, it was good. But it made me feel bad—well, it made me think, and that made me feel bad . . .” I stop because I don’t know how to say the rest.

  Pop comes out from behind the register and puts his hands on my shoulders, then bends over and looks right into my eyes. “Whatever it is, good or bad, champ, you can always tell me.”

  So I try again. “I’m in the art club,” I say. “And I won second place in a contest.”

  “Second place? Nice,” Pop says, sounding exactly like he did when Allie came in third in her class’s geography bee.

  “It wasn’t just a school-wide contest,” I explain. “Kids from all over Westchester entered.”

  Pop nods.

  “Melvin Marbury judged the contest.”

  Pop furrows his brow, and then his eyes go big. “Isn’t that the guy who drew the Northern Province comics? I loved those comics when I was your age.”

  “I know,” I say. “You gave me all your old books. I loved them too. I still do. They’re what turned me on to drawing, and then I drew a comic strip myself, and it won second place. From Melvin Marbury.”

  Pop nods his head some more and smiles at me. “I knew you liked to draw. I’ve seen those kitten stories you and Allie do. But I didn’t realize how much it meant to you. I’m so glad you told me, David.” He turns to go back behind the register.

  “There’s something else,” I say.

  He turns around.

  “Baseball.”

  He nods, smiling so widely that all his teeth show. “Tryouts tomorrow! I bought the eggs already!”

  “The thing is,” I say. “I’m not sure . . .” I stop and look down at my feet and then up at Pop. He looks at me, puzzled, and then he understands, and his mouth makes an O, and he nods, and sighs.

  “You’re not sure you want to play?”

  I nod. “I’m not sure I don’t want to play. But I’m not sure I do.”

  “Well,” he says. He clears his throat, then says “well” again. I can’t look at his face because I know I’ll see disappointment there.

  “I—just have to check on something in the stockroom. I’ll be right back,” he says.

  It takes him almost five minutes to fake-check on the fake-something in the stockroom. He comes back carrying two metal folding chairs, opens them, and sets them out, facing each other.

  “Sit down,” he says.

  I sit in one and he takes the other.

  “Son,” he says. I look up, startled, because Pop never calls me “son.” That’s what my bubbie and zaydie called him. His eyes are bloodshot and his nose is running a little, but he doesn’t look sad, or disappointed. He looks determined. “Did I ever tell you how your mom and I met?”

  “In college, I think.”

  “We met in law school,” he says.

  I look at him, surprised. “I never knew you went to law school. I thought only Mom was a lawyer.”

  “I didn’t finish. I quit at the end of my first year. You see, law school wasn’t my dream, it was my parents’ dream for me. It took me a long time to see that, and to see my own passion. I’d started working in this store when I was sixteen—it wasn’t called L. H. Fischer then, of course; old Mr. Blumenthal owned the place. I kept working here every vacation during college and even the summer before law school, and I loved it. But making a career in retail? Not what a nice Jewish boy was supposed to want to do. I figured I’d stay connected to the sports world by going into entertainment and sports law, maybe representing professional athletes. Then I met your mom during orientation and fell pretty hard for her. She loved the law, and she loved law school, and she could see almost right away that I didn’t. You know where I brought her on our third date?”

  I shake my head no, afraid if I say anything Pop will stop talking, stop telling this surprising story that I’ve never heard.

  “Right here.” Pop says, pointing at the store’s checkout counter. He laughs. “I wanted to show her New Roque, where I’d grown up. We were both living in the city, so we took the train out here and I took her to dinner down the street, at a little Italian restaurant. We walked to the high school and got ice cream at the Häagen Dazs place. Then I brought her here, introduced her to old Mr. B.”

  He stops talking and looks around at the store, seeing something I can’t. Then he pats my knee and says, “We were only a couple of months into our first yea
r. Mom saw how much this place meant to me. She convinced me I should come back to work over the Christmas break. Told me Mr. B needed me. Then she kept prodding me, asking me questions, making me see what was already in my heart. What I really wanted to do. Making me see that I already had a passion, and a path, and it was right here.” Pop pats the counter like it’s a living thing and smiles a small, crooked smile. “I didn’t know how to tell my parents. But your mom, she gave me the courage to do that too.”

  He puts his hands on his knees and leans forward a little, chuckling. “It took Bubbie and Zaydie a long time to forgive me, and to forgive your mom. But following my own passion instead of the dream someone else fashioned for me? I have never once regretted it. I love what I do.” He puts his hands on either side of my face so I’m looking right at him. “I love what I do, son. And you should too. Whatever you decide about baseball will be fine with me.”

  Tuesday, March 3

  SAMMIE

  I wake up with a headache. In the bathroom I wet a washcloth and press it to my forehead, closing my eyes. When I open them, I know that the face staring back at me in the mirror is mine. But it doesn’t feel like mine. “You got this, Sammie,” I say out loud to the face. I watch the mouth move, but the words don’t help.

  I’m in my room, packing my backpack, when my mother comes in. “Sammie,” she says quietly.

  “What?” I say, making my voice cold and angry so she won’t see my sadness.

  She shifts from one foot to the other, not saying anything, and I realize she’s holding some papers.

  “That baseball meeting is today?” she asks.

  “Yup. Are those the forms?”

  She holds them out to me and starts to say something.

  “Thanks,” I say, cutting her off. I take the papers, shove them into my backpack, and push past her.

  In the kitchen, Dad’s waiting, pacing back and forth. When he sees me, he smiles and holds up a hand to high-five me. Like we’re victorious. Like we’ve won something. I don’t feel victorious, but I hold up my hand anyway and let him slap it.

  I pour myself a bowl of cereal and eat it in silence. When I’m done, I put the bowl in the dishwasher, grab my stuff, and head for the door.

  “Hey, Buddy,” Dad says. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  I turn around, puzzled. He’s holding the paperwork that I already put in my backpack.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Mom already—”

  “Don’t worry about your mother,” he says, cutting me off. He holds out the papers. “I’m proud of you.”

  I take the papers and unzip my backpack to show him the other set, the ones my mother gave me. But he pushes past me and opens the front door. “Better hurry,” he says. “Don’t want to miss the bus on your big day!”

  I shove the second set of papers into my bag and head out to catch the bus.

  “You show those boys who’s boss, Buddy!” he shouts after me.

  DAVID

  I stumble into the kitchen, still mostly asleep in my usual morning fog, and am surprised to see Pop, cooking his world-famous first-day-of-baseball scrambled eggs with cheese and salsa. For a moment I think maybe yesterday, in the store, never happened. Maybe I only imagined that I told Pop about my comic strip and that I wasn’t sure I was trying out for baseball.

  But Pop heaps some eggs onto my plate, sets it down in front of me, and says, “I’d already bought the eggs. I figured, what the hay, it’s never a bad morning for a healthy, stick-to-your-ribs breakfast, right?”

  “Thanks,” I say, mixing some salsa into the scrambled eggs.

  “Don’t forget the toast,” he sings, nodding toward the toaster, where two slices are waiting for me.

  Allie’s neatly cutting her eggs into tiny, rabbit-poop-sized bites.

  “Good morning,” she says cheerfully, placing a poop pellet of egg on her piece of toast and taking a tiny bite.

  I grunt at her because it’s just too early to speak words.

  She picks up her phone, looks at it, and announces, “It’s going to snow today. A lot.”

  “Really?” Pop says. He walks over to the kitchen window. “It’s not snowing at all right now.” He leans over and looks up at the sky. “Looks a little gray, though.”

  “According to the weather app, six inches by this afternoon,” Allie says gleefully. “My snow day calculator says an eighty percent chance of early dismissal!”

  SAMMIE

  The snow starts falling during first period. During Spanish, third period, I go to the window, and the parking lot is completely white. By fourth period, when English class starts, it’s all everyone can talk about. Mr. Pachelo keeps clapping his hands and trying to get our attention, but no one even notices. Carli and Sarah are twittering and giggling, and Haley’s telling Marissa about how they never had snow days in the Bronx. Raven and Max and Andrew aren’t even in their seats. They’re clustered at the window talking and high-fiving each other. I’m the only one even half paying attention to Mr. P, and that’s only because I don’t have anyone to talk to.

  Apparently, the stress of trying to get our attention is not good for Mr. Pachelo’s bowels, because five minutes into class, when Raven and Andrew are still at the window, Mr. P coughs, and the entire room is suddenly filled with a stink bomb of rotten eggs. I cover my nose with my hand.

  “Uugghhh,” Carli groans. She whips out a mini bottle of perfume and a tissue and douses the tissue in perfume.

  “Everyone, take out Tangerine,” Mr. P says. “Let’s talk about Paul, and his relationship with Erik. According to Paul, what’s the biggest difference between football—Erik’s sport—and soccer, which Paul plays?”

  Normally, I would raise my hand right away, but today I just don’t feel like it. I want this day to hurry up and be over. So I watch the clock and count down the minutes until the period’s over. Then I can go to the baseball meeting, and turn my paperwork in, and everything will be all set. Everything will be done and final.

  I won’t play softball. Everything will go back to the way it was.

  The bell finally rings, and I pack up as fast as I can and head to the gym. I don’t bother stopping in the cafeteria to pick up lunch. I’m not hungry.

  DAVID

  When the bell rings for lunch, I grab my backpack and head for the cafeteria. I have all the baseball paperwork—Pop zipped it into the front pocket of my backpack weeks ago, so we wouldn’t forget—and I could still go to the crap mandatory meeting, and maybe make the team. But when I get into the cafeteria, I see Arnold and Sean sitting with a couple of girls from the art club, and the girls are talking while Arnold nods. Sean sees me and waves. Luke and Jefferson are walking toward the door with trays of food.

  “See you in the gym,” Luke says as he passes me. “Save you a seat?”

  I glance toward Arnold and Sean, and I know what I really feel. I shake my head. “Nah. I’m not going to do baseball.”

  Luke’s eyes go wide. “Wow. Okay. You sure?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Jefferson says, looking way more disappointed than I feel. “We’ve been talking about tryouts the entire year.”

  “I am sure,” I say. “And I’m not kidding. It’ll be better odds for you guys.”

  Luke laughs. “I wasn’t so worried about my odds. But thanks.”

  Jefferson rolls his eyes at Luke.

  “Have fun,” I say.

  “Ha,” Luke says. “Somehow I don’t think the mandatory meeting will be fun.”

  “About as fun as getting a flu shot,” I say, “continuously, for an hour.” Then I turn and walk to Sean and Arnold’s table and set my tray down. “Whatcha talking about?” I ask as I take a seat.

  SAMMIE

  When I get to the gym, Coach D is already talking, even though there are only six guys in the room. Luke and Jefferson are there, sitting on one of the benches in the back row. I choose an empty bench, as far away from them as I can. I sit down and open my backpack. Corey Higgins and Markus J
ohnson stroll in and sit down next to me. I glance at Corey. He smiles at me. I remember seeing him at the batting cages on Sunday, and wonder if he’s smiling because of my fight with Dad.

  When I reach down to get the paperwork out, Corey slides over so his leg’s touching mine. “Hey, Sammie,” he whispers.

  I nod, and slide away from him.

  He grins at me. I sigh and roll my eyes right at him. Then, ignoring him completely, I pull out the papers Dad gave me.

  “. . . practice after school every day, Monday through Friday, no excuses,” Coach D is saying, staring down at his clipboard. “And if I feel the need for it, we may have additional weekend practices, TBD. Those are mandatory too. No excuses. What I hate more than anything is parents calling with excuses. You’re big boys now. Don’t go crying to Mommy when you have a schedule conflict. Be a man about it.” He looks up from the clipboard, right at me, then coughs into one hand. “What I mean is, be a grown-up. No crybabies on this team.”

  While I’m trying to straighten out all the papers, Corey picks up my bag and hands it to Markus, who sets it down on the floor on the other side of him. Coach D doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

  Just then, Max and Spencer walk in. I slide over and wave at them, so they’ll sit between Corey and me. But Corey slides toward me, and Max and Spencer take the bench behind us. I lean over Corey and Markus and grab my bag, setting it down on the seat beside me to block Corey. He grabs it and passes it over to Markus again, who sets it down on the floor next to him. Then Corey slides over until his leg is pressed against mine.

  “Why aren’t you sitting with your boyfriend?” he whispers.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say back, not whispering.

  “Sammie,” Coach D says, “when I talk, you listen. What’s going on back there?” Without waiting for an answer, he starts up his lecture again. “Practices will start next Wednesday. We’ll run outdoors no matter what, even if it’s snowing like today. None of this girly—err, harrumph,” Coach coughs into his hand. “None of this wimpy running in the halls. A little cold weather never hurt anybody.”

  “I heard you and Luke Sullivan were making out on the bus,” Corey whispers.