Once the door had closed behind me, the thumping of the music and the rhythmic clinking of empty bottles were the only sounds. Surveying the countertops covered in beer bottles, half-empty bottles of Jack Daniels and weird Russian vodkas, I pushed a few of them into a garbage bag and cleared a space for myself. Our normally sterile kitchen seemed to have mutated into something sinister and a bit sticky, as if we had been visited by a strange yeast-fueled virus. From the fridge, I selected a can of Fresca and then perched on a bar stool in my small space. I was still feeling the rush of freedom, of having flouted a rule. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t actually seen anything exciting. For now, the initial act of rebellion was enough to keep my heart racing as the door to the kitchen banged open.
A drunken couple staggered in, the man pushing several bottles into the sink with the wave of an arm. My father’s friends were like case studies in masculinity, at least the kind that drinks too much beer and spends Sunday afternoons glued to the game. I didn’t understand that not all men lived for sport, fetching and hitting and sweating for a living. It seemed natural to me then, and set Lee and me up for the sort of disappointment that comes with being the children of men who don’t really work.
The man and woman ignored me, opening the fridge and rooting through the contents to extract two more bottles of beer. The woman was clearly neither a girlfriend, who were always sorority-girl clean, or a wife, polished and prim. This woman wore too much make-up and a shoulder-baring polyester dress that looked half-finished against her dark skin. The man played on another team, one that hadn’t made it last year, and he seemed to me to be fat, as if a few weeks had already turned him from an athlete into someone ordinary. The woman leaned heavily on the man, whispering in his ear.
“What, baby?” he shouted. “I can’t hear you. No, I can’t hear...what?”
She giggled and they closed the fridge door with a bang that rattled the bottles within. I jumped at the sound and they swiveled, taking a moment to stop rocking together.
“Shit! A dwarf!” the man said, staring at me.
They both erupted with laughter and staggered out of the room, the man yelling over the music. “What? Baby, I said I can’t hear you! What?”
I returned to my Fresca, irritated. It was my house, after all. The door opened again and this time a tall, thin young man entered and set an empty bottle in the sink. He was obviously a little tipsy, opening and closing his eyes as if he couldn’t quite trust them. Smoothing my hair quickly, I sat up.
“Hey, Ben.”
Ben McDunnough smiled when he saw me, as he always did. To say he was the center of my world would suggest I still had other concerns. Some young girls worship rock stars or actors. The unreachable object of my affection liked to come over on a Sunday afternoon and toss a few balls around with my dad. He was then only twenty-two, though he seemed indescribably mature to me, lanky and yet strong, like a dancer. He had a kind face, with more angles than most, and large, dark eyes. I had an entire scrapbook of his sports photos hidden under my bed. I smiled back and took a timid sip of my Fresca, intensely aware of every molecule in the room.
“Howdy, Sport. Whatcha doin’ up?” he asked, slurring the words slightly.
I shrugged, trying to be the picture of childhood innocence. A child awake after ten treads a thin line. “Couldn’t sleep. I was kinda thirsty.”
Ben peered over the rows of beer bottles between us, his face a study in concentration. I realized he was trying to stand still long enough to focus on me in the spinning room.
“What are you drinking?” Ben asked and I held up the can of Fresca. “Think I’ll have the same.”
Retrieving a soda from the fridge, he popped the top, took a sip and grimaced. I giggled, and was delighted when he laughed in return. His world seemed to have slowed enough to keep him steady, while mine was spinning like a merry-go-round.
“Well, that ought to take the edge off,” he said. “So, Sport, you see anything you shouldn’t have, wandering around down here? Hmm?”
I shook my head, blushing despite myself. “Just drunk people,” I told him. “Nothing scandalous.”
To my great horror, he laughed.
“Scandalous. That’s great. You’re going to have a ton of stuff for that school paper of yours.”
“I don’t write about home stuff, Ben,” I replied, trying to retain some dignity.
“‘Course not,” he nodded, taking another sip of the soda and wrinkling his nose. “Political stuff is more your forte.”
“You’re teasing. I hate that.”
“Oh, now, I’m not really teasing, Casey,” he reassured me, but his face was edged with laughter. “You’re a very talented young lady.”
I rolled my eyes. It was a bit like being told you’re “nice.”
“No, seriously,” he said, resting his elbows on the counter and waving the Fresca a few inches from the tip of my nose. “Your dad gave me one of your stories. You could be a great writer.”
“I don’t want to be a writer,” I told him.
“Well.” He straightened up. “What do you want to do? Play ball?”
I frowned, unsure whether he was asking me seriously or not. Just two years before, Little League had begun to admit girls. I was already ten-years old at that point and a seasoned pro from games in the park. The teams I’d been allowed to participate in before had been the childhood equivalent of the local softball leagues, where it was not uncommon to find a keg at third base, “as an incentive.” I’d signed up for Little League immediately, delighted at the chance to really play. Later that year, when I’d hit my first official home run, my coach’s comment had been: “All that talent and nothing to do with it.” I was still vaguely determined to prove them all wrong, though about what I wasn’t yet sure.
“You know, Case…” Ben fingered the sharp edge of the can. “There’s a hell of a lot more to life than ball. I know that sounds like I’m telling you that you can’t do it, which I’m not, but I’m just saying… maybe you ought to consider everything that’s out there.”
“You didn’t,” I pointed out.
“No,” he agreed, taking another sip. “God, this stuff is awful.” I smiled and he continued. “But you know, maybe I should have.”
“Why?” I asked. He seemed sad, his face held very still. It was the way adults looked when they felt the subject of their misery was beyond my comprehension. And perhaps it was, though I would have argued that point fiercely. No one in my family ever seemed to think I was old enough to understand anything. My father was still fond of introducing me to people as: “...My daughter, Casey. She’s a tall five.” It went beyond not wanting to see their little girl grow up into a frustrating state of perpetual denial. I desperately wanted Ben to trust me enough to confide in me.
“Let’s just say that no one’s career lasts forever.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, exactly, as the statement itself seemed obvious. Did he plan to quit? Was he injured? Or was this simply one of those moments of self-pity that seemed to affect all pro-ball players, confronted with the already limited span of their careers? I hesitated and searched for the right thing to say.
“You’re a great pitcher,” I told him at last. “The best ever. You’ll be okay.”
He smiled at me, wistfully. “Thanks, Case. You’ll always be my little cheering section.” Pausing, he rested his arms on the counter in front of me and studied my face. I couldn’t help but blush. He licked his lips and spoke. “You know what, Casey? I’m going to tell you something now, so listen up, because this is the truth.”
I nodded. Everything Ben said was The Truth to me.
“Don’t ever fall in love with something, Casey, that you aren’t strong enough to let go when it disappoints you.” I was silent. I already loved the game, too deeply to extract any part of myself. I’d always believed this was true for Ben, as well. It was an essential part of his appeal. He stretched and regarded the filthy kitchen for a moment. “God, I’m a melan
choly drunk,” he said, suddenly smiling. “What’s there to be sad about, anyway? I’m here with my intended bride, after all.”
Immediately, I could feel a rush of heat to my cheeks. The excitement of being alone with him shrank like an imploding building, sucking the air from my lungs.
“I’m gonna kill Lee!” I managed to gasp out, intent on leaving immediately to pursue my sister’s death. The fact that this would remove me from what I already saw as the most embarrassing moment of my life was a major plus.
Ben grinned, oblivious, and poured the Fresca down the sink. “Now, that wouldn’t be fair. Lee didn’t tell me.”
Horribly shamed, I whispered: “Dad.”
I couldn’t kill my father, couldn’t even yell at him. Would it be enough to hate him secretly? It seemed unlikely that he would actually be affected by my radiating anger. My father lived in the impenetrable bubble of his own self-confidence. Possibly I could not speak to him for a week. That might be punishment enough. Maybe.
“Might have been. Aren’t you even going to ask what I think of your little plan to drag me to the altar?” I shook my head miserably, nearly in tears. Ben went on, smiling. If I had ever needed proof that I was just a kid in his eyes, I now had it. “Well, I’d be all for it, Casey, you know that. But I do believe I’m a little young to get married, even to you.”
He waggled his eyebrows. I sniffled slightly, barely able to wave him away with my hand.
“You just came in here to be mean to me.”
Only slightly repentant, he pouted until I looked briefly his way. “Come on, Casey. I’m just poking fun. You know I don’t mean it.”
He probably didn’t, but that didn’t matter. My perceived reputation as a near-teenager was now shot to hell. I acted completely uninterested, playing with the edge of the Fresca can. Ben watched me; I could practically feel him smiling. Then he played the trump card, at least in this hand. “Your mom know you’re up?”
My head shot up. It was the final indignity, as well as being a powerful scare-tactic. “You gonna tell her?”
“Not if I can get you to go back upstairs before she sees you. Now scoot.”
Leaving the Fresca, I slipped down from the stool and stood in front of Ben, wondering if there was still some way to salvage the situation. Ben looked down at me and patted my cheek, his large hand completely filling the space between my jaw and shoulder.
Well, I reasoned in a moment of desperate inspiration, if he wanted a kid, I could be a kid.
“Can you walk me up? I don’t like trying to get through all those people.”
He nodded, clearly amused. “Sure, Sport. I’ll tuck you back in.”
Sport. Humiliated but ever-willing to compromise, I followed him out.
The lights and roiling music absorbed us as we passed through the doorway into the crush of bodies. Ben shielded me and pushed me gently forward at the same time. His hands rested on my shoulders, his fingers curved around to touch my collarbones. The abandonment of my bid for maturity suddenly seemed to have an up-side.
Upstairs, Lee was asleep again, apparently not terribly concerned with my foray into danger. I climbed into bed as Ben knelt down beside me and tucked the covers up around me as if I really were five. I was already learning to take what I could get. We whispered.
“Show me a curveball.”
I held up my fingers around an invisible ball, demonstrating the pitch.
“Fastball.”
I changed my finger position.
“Knuckleball… Slider… Spitball.”
“I’m not gonna spit on my hand. Besides, that’s illegal.”
Ben nodded and patted the covers down around my waist, clearly trying not to laugh. “You think you can go to sleep now?” he asked me.
“Maybe.”
Leaning over, he kissed me on the forehead, his lips as soft to me as my mother’s fingertips during a fever. Overcome by him, I whispered: “You smell good.”
He shook his head, still hovering above me. Still vaguely drunk.
“Listen, now. I know it’s noisy, but if you just settle in here, I promise you’ll dream of good things, okay?” He stood, stretched his muscles, wincing briefly, and towered over my bed. He was glorious, all sinew and strength. “I’ll see you in a couple weeks, when the Series is over.”
“Ben?”
He nodded, his hand on the door. For me, my skin still throbbing, my heart pounding, reassurance seemed as far away as he now stood.
“Who’s gonna win?”
Shrugging, he opened the door and then shut it again at the burst of noise.
“It’s not supposed to matter, Casey. It’s all just for fun.”
“Matters to me.”
“Me too.” Ben smiled and left then, shutting the door behind him. From across the room, Lee opened her eyes.
“Oooo, I’m gonna tell you had a boy in the room.”
I threw a pillow at my sister and rolled over on my back. Across the room was a poster of the 1976 Atlantics, with Ben standing in the middle, elbow to elbow with my father.
Now Arriving at the Terminal
1998
The night my father died, I answered the phone with my bare leg thrown carelessly over Mark’s chalky cast. This should, certainly, have made me feel guilty. I hadn’t exactly carded him at the door. It wasn’t until I heard my sister’s barely restrained grief, sharp despite the rattle of the cell phone, that I remembered I was still accountable for anything at all.
By the time I’d reached SeaTac, I was running on a sort of exhausted shock. The woman who checked me in reached across her gray laminate counter and touched my hand as she handed me my boarding pass. “Are you okay, Sweetie?” she asked. She could not have been more than five years my senior.
“My father died yesterday,” I answered. “I’m going to Florida for the funeral.” She shook her head mournfully. My mouth continued to run. “To be honest, I’m not sure what I’m looking forward to the least: the funeral, or staying with my sister.”
She retracted her hand and smiled weakly at me.
“Have a nice flight.”
I decided right there not to talk to anyone else until I reached Tampa. It wasn’t difficult. The black eyeliner-coated teenage girl sitting next to me listened to her Walkman the entire way, while reading some sort of gross-out teen horror novel about a convent school and psychotic nuns. I’m not sure who kept the stewardesses away, me or my little Goth seating companion.
Lee met me in the muggy, well-conditioned air of the Tampa airport, wearing a beautiful black silk pants suit that reeked of far more money than I earned in a month, even with overtime. Her nails were polished a deep, dark crimson, and she wore little jewelry. I suspected it might be her form of mourning, like a blazer-wrapped Queen Victoria, but couldn’t be sure. She always wanted to be chic, and black was chic. Perhaps that was all it was. Or perhaps she too, like the teenage girl from the plane, was sending the world the not-so-subtle message to just leave her alone. Seeing her was making me absolutely crazy and I was barely off the plane.
“Jake wouldn’t let me call ahead.” Her arms were so fashionably thin I hardly registered her embrace until she pressed warm, crimson lips to my cheek. She smelled like vanilla, like cotton candy in the strange sterility of the terminal, and I found myself wanting to cry for the first time since leaving Seattle. “So of course we’ve been sitting here in this damn terminal for over an hour. I told him, flights from the West coast are always delayed, but he just wanted to go. And then, of course, at least a dozen people recognized him, and we had to stop and sign every single autograph, as if Jake hasn’t been told a thousand times by his agent that it devalues the official merchandize.”
Ignoring what must have been a fairly routine tirade, Lee’s husband, Jake, leaned over and hugged me, nearly enveloping me in his huge body. I had forgotten the sheer size of men who played ball professionally. They weren’t basketball players, by any means, but most players tower over a woman like me. His
hands were large, and his arms felt like stone no matter how I touched them.
“Hey Case,” he said and stepped back, already choked up.
“Hey Jake,” I answered.
“I’m real sorry,” he told me, squeezing my shoulder so hard it ached. “Your dad was…” He ran out of words, standing there awkwardly.
“I know, Jake.”
“I’m just real sorry,” he said again.
Lee was practically tapping her foot. I could feel the irritation rising off of her in sticky waves, like a heat mirage.
“So,” she said, ending the tender family moment, “did you check any bags?”
Jake drove us home in his new Lexus, its white leather seats sticky and hot even through the tinted windows. I tried rolling the rear window down, just to sniff the remembered smells of the Florida street, but Lee reminded me that they had the air on and for God’s sake, could I shut that damn thing? Outside the car, it was hot enough to make it difficult to breathe, as if I was inhaling through a towel. Lee patted down an imagined flaw in her perfect hair and smiled over the back of the seat at me.
“How are you doing?”
It was a ridiculous question. We were both terrible and all right at the same time, as grown-ups are when they lose a parent. Grief, sharp as a bee, hovered around me, waiting for inopportune moments to strike.
“I’m ok,” I told her. “How about you?”
She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “There are so many arrangements to make. It’s a real pain in the ass. At least Daddy was here to do it for Mom.”
I nodded. “When are we having the funeral?”
“I think Friday,” she said, picking at the edge of one dark nail. “Or Saturday, so people who work can come.”
Casey's Home Page 4