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The Girl Who Threw Butterflies

Page 11

by Mick Cochrane

Molly felt terrible that she'd done it to him. On the other hand, she couldn't help but think that bruising Lonnie made for a weird kind of intimacy between them. You could kiss someone hard enough to put a bruise on them. It was a physical connection. She'd left her mark on him.

  During homeroom, as part of the morning announcements, the details of the game that afternoon were broadcast by Vice Principal Niedermeyer. Normally, announcements were made by two students, but this week's pair apparently had been fired the day before for reading the announcements in crazy accents. Something like that was too funny to be tolerated. In the vice principal's voice, even a baseball game—four o'clock start, home field, first game of the year, come and support the team—sounded ominous somehow. When he spoke, everything sounded ominous. He had a voice that made you want to duck and cover.

  The vice principal referred to the team as “the boys’ baseball team.” Molly wouldn't have thought about it one way or another, but that phrase, presumably, and Molly's presence in the room, seemed to evoke a reaction from some girls in the back. There was some laughter, some tittering and pointed looks. Molly wasn't paranoid, but she knew when she was being talked about.

  The girls were an A-list clique. Celia called them The Mindys, though only one of them was actually named Mindy, Mindy Banks. There was also a Jodi, a Lindsay, a Hailey, and an April. When Celia called them that, The Mindys, it always sounded to Molly like the name of a band. They didn't actually play anything, but here, in this little world, they were stars, minor celebrities. Skinny and glamorous. Lots of eye makeup. Kids gossiped about them, noticed what they wore. Boys whose names they probably didn't even know had crushes on them. They were always well turned out, always on. In their own way they were performance artists.

  “When I said I was going out for baseball,” Molly said, “you told me that I was Amelia Earhart. I was a pioneer, you said. You remember that?”

  Celia nodded. “Sure,” she said. “I remember that.”

  “So how come they don't seem to think so?”

  “Just wait,” Celia said. “It takes time. At first the other girls didn't know Amelia Earhart was Amelia Earhart. Know what I mean?”

  Molly didn't, in fact, know what she meant, but she said she did, which was what she often did when faced with this sort of Celia-ism. It was just easier. “Of course,” Molly said. “It takes time.”

  On her way to fifth period Molly passed Morales in the hall. He was dressed as a mild-mannered social studies teacher, pushing an overhead projector on a rolling cart, but he was apparently thinking about the game.

  “How's the arm?” he asked.

  “Dandy,” Molly said. Dandy? What a weird thing to have come out of her mouth! She had never used the word in her life. Who said that? What did it even mean?

  But Morales seemed unfazed. “Good,” he said. “We may need you.”

  “Sure,” Molly said. Though at first it didn't register—what he meant, who the “we” was who might need her.

  Alone, in a far corner of the girls’ locker room, Molly changed into her uniform. She could hear, not see, the track team getting ready for practice, the happy hum of their talk, the squeak of their sneakers.

  Always self-conscious about dressing and undressing, Molly in a way was a little glad to be an exile in the locker room, grateful for the privacy. Sometimes, entering and exiting the practice field alone through the girls’ door while the boys crowded through theirs in a pack, she felt a little special. But this afternoon she just felt lonely. She missed Tess and Ruth. Who was playing third base these days? She even missed Lu Baxter. Was she still dancing in the outfield? Working on any new routines? If Molly weren't alone, if she had someone to joke with, maybe she wouldn't feel so nervous now.

  Molly smoothed the front of her jersey, made sure that her socks were straight. Her black uniform pants were neither baggy nor tight—they were comfortable, just right. She thought of her mother giving her uniform a thumbs-up. Molly knew that from her mother's perspective, she'd always been insufficiently interested in style. They hadn't shared too many chummy shopping sprees—when they bought Molly's clothes, it was often testy, a battle of wills. For her mother not to offer some kind of full-blown fashion critique, that was something. At breakfast that morning Molly had mentioned the game to her, very low-key, just sort of FYI, and her mother didn't freak—she just kept blowing on her coffee and said good luck, which seemed to Molly just right.

  Molly checked the wall clock—in three minutes she was supposed to be on the field for warm-ups. There was a full-length mirror near the door leading to the field, and Molly stopped to take one last look at herself. She didn't want to look fashionable, just professional, and Molly, giving herself as objective a once-over as she could, figured she passed—she looked like a ballplayer.

  She was about to take the field for her first game, uniformed, wearing her cap the way she always did in the backyard, brim slightly curved, pulled low over her eyes to make herself look fierce. At that moment, naturally, she thought of her dad.

  You look good, Molly. It's a dandy uniform.

  That was your word! I should have known.

  How you feeling? You look a little pale.

  I'm nervous, Dad. I don't want to be Amelia Earhart. Look what happened to her!

  You don't have to be anyone but you. Just be Molly Williams.

  Molly Williams is scared.

  Scared of what?

  I don't know. What if I make a horrible error? What if I make a royal fool of myself?

  What if?

  What if I let the team down? I let you down?

  You've got nothing to prove, Molly. You don't have to cheer me up. I'm proud of you. Do your best. Have some fun.

  Fun? Fun?

  Molly looked at the clock—she was a minute late. She grabbed her glove and, cleats clicking across the locker-room floor, headed out toward the field.

  19. GIMME SOME

  olly jogged out and joined her teammates, who were just lining up in right field to start stretching. The varsity field had been fenced off all spring, KEEP OUT signs posted every ten feet or so. Now, in May, it was in terrific shape. The infield dirt was smooth, the mound raked, the foul lines and batter's box neatly chalked. The grass was thick and green. After so many practices on their bumpy, dandelion-filled practice field, this was something else. Molly almost felt guilty for being on the field at all, half expecting some-one to holler at her to get off.

  Dressed in their brand-new unis and let loose on the well-manicured field, everyone seemed a little formal, self-conscious and cautious, like kids dressed up in their Sunday best. Coach V must have sensed how they felt. “It's okay to get dirty,” he said, walking among them while they got down to stretch. “You won't get in trouble. Grass stains are good. You want your parents to know you played.”

  They went through the familiar routine, second nature now after performing it practice after practice, week after week. Molly stretched and tried, unsuccessfully, to empty her mind. She focused on her breathing. But despite her best effort to embrace the stillness of her inner depths and all that, her mind was full. It was overflowing.

  She would never be a Zen master. She didn't have a single inner voice, she had a chorus of voices, all of them shouting questions, like reporters at a news conference. She wondered if the other team was going to harass her about being a girl. She worried that she wasn't going to get into the game; she worried that she was going to get into the game. There was a breeze blowing in from center field—would it help or hurt her knuckleball?

  While they were running, a bus pulled into the parking lot. The doors opened and a line of boys in red jerseys filed off. Several men came last, a whole committee of coaches in matching shirts, carrying big canvas bags of gear, buckets full of baseballs, first-aid tackle boxes. Molly kept running, but of course, just like the rest of her teammates, she was checking them out.

  The team came from Sheridan, a more distant, wealthier suburb, which called itself a villag
e. The streets there all had names like Fawn Trail and Deer Run. Judging from a street map, you might think it was a wildlife preserve. The players had their names sewn across the backs of the jerseys, just like the pros. To Molly some of the Sheridan boys looked physically intimidating—taller, more muscled up. One kid had a mustache. A big batter has a big strike zone, Molly's dad liked to point out, which was easy to say when you were sitting on the couch.

  Molly played catch as she usually did with Lonnie. His hand didn't seem to be bothering him. He looked good in his uniform. Unlike the thing he wore at practices, his uniform cap seemed to fit and sat relatively straight on his head. Underneath, his hair was under control, sort of. He looked like a real ballplayer.

  On the first-base side of the field, people were filling in the wooden bleachers; some were beginning to settle in to watch the game from along the right-field line. Mom and dad and grandparent types were unfolding chairs, spreading blankets, setting up the toddlers with coloring books.

  Lonnie threw one ball over Molly's head, and the next one was in the dirt. Molly's return throw bounced off the heel of his glove. What was up with him? All of a sudden he couldn't play catch?

  Lonnie wasn't paying attention, that was the problem. His head was turning again and again to the sidelines—he was checking out the fans. Molly pretended to stretch her trunk and, as subtly as she could, turned to have a look herself.

  There was one man Lonnie was completely focused on. It was easy to pick him out. He was wearing a pink polo shirt, holding a baby on his chest in a Snugli. Molly knew it had to be Lonnie's dad. He looked like the poster boy for midlife crisis. Next to him there was a tan, blond woman with sunglasses perched on her head. Molly recognized them immediately from Lonnie's description. They were the new, improved family.

  Part of Molly felt jealous of Lonnie, just for an instant, that he had a dad at the game at all, even a pink-shirted one. It was a kind of spasm—quick, involuntary, and painful. But it passed. It passed as soon as she glanced back at Lonnie and saw how he looked. He didn't look scared, he didn't look upset. He looked abandoned—and forlorn, that was the word. He looked as sad and as hopeless as the word sounded. Painfully aware that there was nothing he could do, not today, not ever, to measure up, to win the day. In baseball lingo, he'd been mathematically eliminated, and he knew it. Lonnie looked as if he wished he were some-where else, as if he wished he were someone else.

  Over the past several weeks, Lonnie had revealed bits and pieces about his dad, very cautiously, a detail or two here, a story there. He'd taken to waiting for Molly after practice, not always, but usually. She'd step out of the girls’ locker room and find him there on the sidewalk, sitting on his bike, spinning a pedal, loitering. She was always glad to see him. They lived in the same general direction, so they walked along together for a few blocks, Lonnie pushing his old bike alongside Molly on the sidewalk, until they parted ways at Molly's corner. They made small talk, about school, about practice. Or they just went along in silence. Occasionally Lonnie would volunteer something about his family situation, his dad in the suburbs and his new half sister. Molly just listened. She never pressed for more. Always Lonnie framed things in a good light. He'd seen baby Zoey only a few times, but he obviously adored her. Still, Molly got the picture. Lonnie's father was a guy who fulfilled his court-ordered visitation to the letter of the law, never a day more, hardly a minute more. He had a wallet containing a whole album of Zoeys and not a single Lonnie. The new wife called Lonnie “my husband's son.”

  Molly understood why Lonnie looked so stricken. She had probably never cared more for him than she did at that moment. She wanted to protect him, to be a fierce advocate for him. She felt like slapping his father's self-satisfied face, she felt like kicking dirt on his wicked step-mother. But what good would that do?

  “Okay,” Molly shouted to Lonnie. “I'm warm,” which is what you say when you're through playing catch. Lonnie looked relieved and grateful. Together they jogged off the field and into the dugout.

  A dugout was one of the things Molly had always envied about boys’ baseball. The girls’ teams, for some reason, always sat on benches, exposed. A dugout was private, half underground—you stepped down into it. It felt protected, like a bomb shelter, and exclusive, like a clubhouse, some-place you'd need to know a secret password to enter.

  Morales had posted the starting lineup and batting order on the dugout wall:

  Eli Krause 2B

  James Castle CF

  Desmond Davis P

  Lloyd Coleman SS

  Mario Coppola 3B

  Everett Sheets 1B

  Ian Meriwether LF

  Ryan Vogel RF

  Ben Malone C

  Molly and Lonnie looked it over and then sat down side by side on the bench in silence. Molly couldn't think of anything to say. She was starting to feel angry with herself now, her amazing non-way with words, when she heard Lonnie clear his throat. Then he let loose a stream of spit in the direction of the field. Molly had never seen Lonnie spit before—he wasn't the spitting type. But this was a surprisingly strong effort, well executed, with respectable distance. It landed in the dirt outside the dugout. It was a brave gesture, it seemed to Molly, much more to the point than anything she could have said.

  “Okay,” Lonnie said, mostly to himself. It was as if he had expelled something poisonous and was feeling better already. He pounded his fist into his mitt a couple of times. The other team was taking the field for infield practice. Mustache Boy was jogging over to take first base. He kicked the bag. There was something about him Molly just didn't like. His attitude, which was something like ownership, or entitlement. First base was his, he seemed to think—the field, the game, it was all his. Molly cleared her throat and got ready for her first spit of the season.

  Five minutes before game time, Coach Morales took Everett Sheets and Eli Krause, the tall and the short of it, to home plate to meet with the umpire and the Sheridan coach and captains. Molly watched them, sitting by herself now in the corner of the dugout. Lonnie was down at the other end of the bench, filling up a cup with water from the team's plastic cooler. Desmond Davis and James Castle were standing just a few feet away from Molly, flexing and stretching, getting ready to take the field.

  “Gimme some,” Desmond said to James, and they launched into their handshake. There seemed to be some new flourishes, a few more fancy touches at the end that made Molly smile. She envied their style, their private language of friendship.

  Desmond noticed that Molly had been watching. He paused for just a beat, as if deciding something, then spoke. “Molly,” he said.

  She was afraid that she'd invaded their space, intruded upon a private ritual that was none of her business. She was just about to apologize, but Desmond interrupted her. “Come on,” he said. “I'll show you how it's done.”

  Desmond broke it down for her, step by step, while James looked on, grinning. Two times through and she had it down. Slap, slap, up and down, knuckle and elbow, with a near miss and a wiggle at the end. She'd never say so, but it was just a hipper version of patty-cake, rhythmic and percussive, a little combative but still friendly. She and Desmond ran through it once more, full speed, and neither missed a beat.

  Watching them, James cracked up. Molly had never seen him so animated. “Okay, girl,” James said. “One more time. Gimme some.”

  20. KEEPING SCORE

  olly was sitting next to Coach V on the bench, watching the game and watching V keep score. It was the bottom of the fifth. Morales was busy coaching third base, giving signs to the batter and shouting instructions to the base runners, so it was up to V to record what happened in the official scorebook.

  Ian Meriwether took ball four, tossed his bat aside, and jogged down to first base. Coach V wrote a “w” for walk in the little square reserved for Ian and the fifth inning and drew a line, showing he'd advanced to first.

  Coach V used the same basic system of scorekeeping Molly had learned from her d
ad. V's method did have its own peculiarities, some eccentric variations. He kept track of every single pitch, for one thing, something her dad never did—balls, strikes, even foul balls—with tiny antlike marks. Plus he talked while he scored, kept up a little private commentary.

  When Ben Malone took a called third strike at the knees, V made a large K in his box. No one had ever told Molly why K was the symbol of a strikeout, not S or SO, but she understood it was more fitting somehow, more dramatic, even brutal. Coach drew this K backward to show that Ben's strikeout was looking rather than swinging. “What can you do with a pitch like that?” he asked sadly.

  Molly understood that keeping score was a kind of storytelling, an almost magical translation of loud and dusty events in the world—a stolen base, an around-the-horn double play, a triple—into pencil marks, a kind of secret code, numbers and lines and shapes, like cuneiform or hieroglyphics, the handiwork of some ancient scribe.

  In Coach V's book, Molly could read the story of the game so far. Not just the score, McKinley 3, Sheridan 2, but also how the runs came about. In the first inning, the first three McKinley batters—Eli, James, and Desmond—had gotten on base, an infield single and two walks. What the scorebook didn't show, but what Molly remembered, was how nervous the Sheridan pitcher had looked, or what a joyful scene it was when Lloyd Coleman cleared the bases with a double—whistles and cheers from the grandstand, whoops and high fives in the dugout.

  Back then, in the first inning, it looked easy. The game seemed like it was going to be a blowout. What's so hard about this game? That's what it felt like. But Molly knew baseball didn't work that way. You're cruising along one minute, feeling like you can do no wrong. Life is good, all's right with the world. And then all of sudden, for no apparent reason, things change.

 

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