by Mike Lupica
“I need to know where you are,” she said.
“I know,” he said again.
“It’s not so much to ask, is it?”
“Mom, I’ll say it again,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She asked when he’d be home and he told her in a couple of hours, that he was going back to school to throw a ball around with Cassie and Teddy. Cassie loved showing off her hardball skills every chance she got.
“If you’re going to be later than that—”
“Call,” he said.
He walked back into Fierro’s, thinking that his mom didn’t know how sorry he really was, no matter how many times he’d said it.
Today had been a good day up until that point, watching Cassie pitch, feeling like things were getting at least a little better between him and Gus.
Normal, almost.
Then Jack remembered, all over again, what normal really was now.
It was this.
Normal was his mom worrying that something might happen to him.
FIFTEEN
He let Cassie pitch to Teddy, with a regular baseball, overhand. Of course she looked good enough to be pitching in the boys’ league, which she was threatening to do next season. Jack watched her and thought that maybe if she’d been the one pitching in relief for the Rays today, they would have won their game instead of lost it.
Cassie would be a strike thrower in any league.
But as well as she could throw, Teddy got some hits off her, solid ones. Jack chased the balls down in leftfield, occasionally getting a long run when Teddy, a right-hand hitter, would hit a ball to the opposite field.
The running didn’t bother him. It felt good to be out in the field, his Pedroia mitt on his left hand, in the sun on a nice day with the two people he most wanted to be with these days.
And it felt good watching Teddy start to get confidence, even if he was only doing it for an audience of two.
Later, when Jack and Cassie were walking home, the two of them having long-tossed in the outfield after Teddy said he needed to go take a rest, Cassie asked if Jack wanted to go fishing off the dock.
But he said he’d better go straight home. He felt like he owed his mom a little of what she called her “Jack time.”
“You worry more about other people than anybody I know,” Cassie said.
“Gus would probably argue with you on that one.”
“But see, he’d be wrong!” Cassie said. “Because you’re still worrying about him.”
“He’s my friend,” Jack said. “You’ve got to be a good friend even when they’re not around. My dad calls it being a friend behind somebody’s back.”
“You’re even better at being a friend than you are at baseball.”
They were at the corner to Cassie’s street by then.
“Don’t you mean than you are at baseball?”
“Excellent point,” she said, and patted him on the back, saying she’d text him later and then running down the street, like she was racing against herself.
His mom was in the kitchen when he got home. He knew it as soon as he walked through the front door: The smell of her chocolate chip cookies filled the whole house and maybe the whole neighborhood if he’d kept the door open any longer.
He walked into the kitchen saying, “Can I skip dinner and go straight to dessert?”
He could see one huge plate of cookies cooling on the kitchen counter and knew that meant another batch was in the oven. Once his mom started baking cookies, she couldn’t stop.
“Dinner’s in less than an hour,” she said. “You may have one.”
“One?” he said. “You’re asking me to have just one of your chocolate chip cookies. Your warm, just-out-of-the-oven, chips-making-a-mess-on-your-hands chocolate chip cookies? That’s way too much punishment for me forgetting to call.”
“You’re under the impression that you have a strong negotiating position?”
“Two cookies,” he said.
“Two and then a shower,” she said.
“Deal.”
She smiled. Jack loved seeing his mom smile, especially because she didn’t do it often enough these days.
He got himself a glass of milk to go with the warm cookies. The two of them sat at the table, his mom having told him that his dad was still on the golf course.
“Might be the best chocolate chip cookie ever made,” he said.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. And you always say that.”
“But is it working for me?”
“Always,” she said, and smiled again.
It was one of those moments when he wanted to make sure he didn’t say anything to make the look on her face go away as quickly as it had arrived. He didn’t want it replaced by that sad look that would come into her eyes out of nowhere. He made himself busy—happily—eating her cookies.
She asked how his day had been, and he told her about how well Cassie had pitched, how amazing she was.
“Amazing as a softball player?” Gail Callahan said. “Or just amazing, period?”
“Mom,” he said.
“Yup, that’s me, your mom, asking you about a girl.”
“I know what you’re asking me.”
“Seemed like a pretty simple question.”
“She’s amazing as a player, that’s what I meant.”
She made a motion like she was wiping sweat off her forehead. “Whew!” she said. “Glad we cleared that up.”
She was still working on the cup of tea she had been drinking when Jack came in. She seemed in no hurry for him to go up and shower. He told her about how much better Teddy was getting, how a couple of weeks ago he wouldn’t have had a chance to get a hit off Cassie.
“Maybe the talent was there all along,” his mom said, “and it took you to get it out of him.”
“I’m a solid coach, but I’m not that good.”
“If it’s anything to do with baseball,” she said, “sorry, but you are that good.”
The two cookies were long gone. She said, “Go ahead, you can have one more.” She trusted he’d still have an appetite after an afternoon of baseball. She sipped some tea. The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the big wall clock near the tiny television she kept on the counter so she could watch the news while she fixed dinner.
“It must be hard sometimes,” she said finally, “playing ball but not really playing.”
“Kind of,” he said. “But that’s just part of the deal.”
He saw a slight raising of one eyebrow. “What deal is that?”
“Just a figure of speech, Mom,” he said. “All I’m saying is that it’s just part of it. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to avoid baseball totally when I quit the team. You know what I’m saying, right?”
She sipped more tea. “Not really, no. It’s not like baseball has sought you out. Seems to me like it’s the other way around.”
She smiled again.
“It just worked out that way.”
“I guess,” she said. “But you go to two of Cassie’s games a week as a coach, you help coach two practices, you’ve become Teddy’s personal instructor. Just seems to me you’re on the field as much as ever.”
“But you get that it’s not the same as playing, right?”
“Which you won’t allow yourself to do.” Still in a soft voice.
“No,” he said, knowing as soon as he did that he’d answered too quickly. “It’s not about not allowing. It’s about not wanting to.”
“Right.”
“So you get that,” he said. “Right?”
“Even though playing has always made you so happy,” she said. “Now you can’t allow that.”
“That’s you talking, Mom, not me.”
“Just talking to my boy is all,” she said. She put her hand over her teacup and leaned forward. Smiled again. “Not trying to pressure you, honey. We never put any pressure on you to play sports.”
“I feel enough of that from the guys on the Rays,” he
said, “even if they’re not talking about it at school anymore.”
“My whole thing is for you to be happy,” she said. “And like I said, I know how happy baseball always made you.”
“It’s different now, is all. Between me and baseball.”
Jack heard a car outside and hoped it was his dad, hoped that he’d heard the front door open, so he could close down this conversation. But it must have been one of the neighbors’ cars.
“I guess what your dad and I don’t understand,” she said, “is how right after you pushed baseball away, you let it start pulling you back, even though no one made you.”
“Maybe I can’t explain it, but it’s working for me.”
“Explain the reason you can’t play,” she said, “is that what you mean?”
“The reason I don’t want to play,” Jack said.
“Right,” she said again.
He felt as if he were spinning his wheels now. Or being spun around. All he’d wanted was some cookies.
“Mom, you gotta stop.”
“What, talking to you? I’ve told you your whole life that we were going to talk to each other, whether you wanted to or not. That’s our deal. At least until you made this decision on your own.”
“I feel like we’ve talked this to death.”
“Around it. Never got right to it. Why you felt like you just had to do this.”
“I didn’t have to do anything!” Jack said.
Compared to the way his mom had been speaking to him—that low, soft voice—he knew it sounded like he’d shouted at her all of a sudden.
He sighed. “It was just something I felt like I had to do.”
“You just told me, and loudly, that you didn’t have to do anything.”
He didn’t just feel as if he were being spun around now. He felt himself getting dizzy.
“You’re twisting my words,” he said.
She reached across the table and put her hand over his.
“Honey, you’re the one who seems all twisted up.”
“I give up,” he said as he pushed his chair back and stood up. “Thanks for the cookies, Mom.”
He rinsed his plate and glass, put them in the dishwasher, and walked out of the room and up the stairs, trying to understand why he felt the way he used to when he walked back to the bench after striking out.
SIXTEEN
He called Cassie as soon as he closed the door to his room.
“My mom acts like she knows something,” he said.
“About what?”
“About the real reason I quit.”
He told her what had just happened in the kitchen, making sure to keep his voice down. Then he said, “I gotta ask you something: Did you say something to her?”
There was a pause at the other end of the line, a long one, too long.
“I’m going to act like I didn’t hear that,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “But the whole conversation was just . . . weird? I felt like I was in a courtroom or something, not my kitchen.”
“Because of the questions she was asking you?”
“Not just that, the way she was asking them. Like she knew more than she was telling. I swear, Cass, the way she was looking at me was like she was looking all the way inside me. Does that make sense?”
“Parents see stuff,” she said, “even when we think they’re missing everything.”
There was another pause, and she said, “You told me to swear not to tell. I don’t go back on that. And neither would Teddy, but with him it’s because he’s afraid of you. As cool as he likes to act, he still can’t believe you want to hang out with him.”
“Stop.”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“I’m not saying that my mom knows everything,” Jack said. “But I had to get out of there, because I started to feel like if I stayed, I’d spill my guts to her the way I did to you and Teddy.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because it wouldn’t change anything,” he said. “All she’d do is what you do, and tell me I’m wrong to think the way I do.”
“Mostly because you are wrong.”
“No,” Jack said. “You are, unless you think things wouldn’t have worked out differently if I’d just said something.”
Now Cassie was the one shouting. “Say something now! You’ve been beating yourself up long enough. Can’t you see that?”
“You’re the one who told me not to play if I didn’t want to.”
“That was before I knew the real reason why,” Cassie said. “Will you please listen to me for one minute?”
“I am listening. I always listen to you,” he said, adding, “Not that I have much of a choice.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
Cassie said, “I am gonna tell you something, and if when I’m done you want to hang up on me, go ahead.”
“Okay.”
“So here goes,” she said. “If something hadn’t happened to your brother that night, it was going to happen eventually. And, Jack, guess what? Maybe he was lucky it hadn’t happened already.”
“You don’t know that.”
“And you don’t know if stopping him from getting on that stupid bike that night would’ve stopped him from going the next night! Or the night after that! I know I really only know your brother through you. But I feel like I know him now.”
Jack waited.
“You still there?” she said.
“Still here.”
“C’mon, Jack. What’s one of the first things we hear from our parents? Don’t play with fire. Brad’s deal was that he loved playing with fire the way you love baseball.”
“Loved baseball.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “You think I’m the one missing things? You love it more than you ever did.”
“So now I’m an idiot?”
“Yeah, about this you are. You know how you’ve made this big thing out of helping Teddy? You gotta let your parents help you.”
He heard the front door slam downstairs, heard his father announcing that he was home, and this was it, he meant it this time, he was quitting golf, the sport hated him.
Cassie said, “Can I say one more thing?”
“Sure.”
“Every time we talk about Brad, you tell me how much you loved him and how much he loved you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You think he’d want you to do this?”
It stopped Jack, because he’d never thought about it that way. And he told Cassie so.
“You know the answer,” she said. “He wouldn’t have blamed you, and he wouldn’t want you to punish yourself this way.”
“You don’t know that, either.”
“Nope, I don’t, you got me there. But it’s what I think. And I wouldn’t be a real friend if I didn’t tell you what I think about the big stuff.”
There was a picture of Brad, his favorite, above his desk. It was one his dad had blown up for him, and it showed the first time his brother had ever gotten up on a surfboard and stayed on it, one summer when they’d rented a house on the ocean for a week.
“You’ve kept enough of his secrets,” Cassie said. “Good night, Jack.”
And she hung up.
SEVENTEEN
They didn’t talk about baseball at dinner. Jack thought that maybe his mom had said something to his dad about not bringing it up. So the conversation was mostly about what his dad said had been a disastrous day of golf.
“That’s it, I’m giving up golf,” he said. “And I really mean it this time.”
Gail Callahan said, “And we really believe you!”
“Mom,” Jack said, “I think Dad means it way way more than he did all the other times he quit and said he really meant it.”
“Go ahead, both of you, have your fun,” Jack’s dad said. “Maybe you’ll believe me when I pick up another hobby.”
“Maybe one you could complain about less?” Gail Callahan said
.
They all had ice cream for dessert, with a plate of his mom’s cookies on the side, and then Jack’s parents said they had a movie they were going to watch on the big screen in the den. Jack told them he might watch a movie of his own upstairs.
“Not R-rated,” his mom said.
“It’s Happy Gilmore,” Jack said.
“Again?” she said.
Jack said, “I like to watch it so I can see golf making at least one person happy,” and shrugged at his dad, who said, “Very funny, smart guy.”
It was weird. It was as if the talk he’d had with his mom over cookies had never happened. Or maybe she felt she’d said everything she needed to say on this day.
He was in his room a half hour later, still trying to decide between Happy Gilmore and a ball game, when he found himself walking down the hall to Brad’s room.
It was still his brother’s room, and it wasn’t at the same time.
The poster from The Hangover had been taken down along with the rest of his movie posters. There were still family pictures on his desk, including Jack’s favorite, from last year, of Jack in his baseball uniform, holding up his MVP trophy, Brad standing next to him in cargo shorts and a Sons of Anarchy T-shirt, his arm draped over Jack’s shoulders, both of them smiling.
Most of his other stuff from the room, laptop and CDs and books and magazines and clothes—not that his brother ever had a lot of what he called big-boy clothes, he preferred shorts and T-shirts and jeans and sandals—had been packed away in boxes and stored in the basement a couple of months after the accident.
When Jack asked his parents why they were taking most of Brad’s things out of the room, his dad had said, “It will always be his room. But we don’t want it to be a shrine, either.”
Jack didn’t go into the room very often. He hadn’t gone in there for a long time after Brad died. He just couldn’t deal with the fact that when he opened the door Brad wouldn’t be there, wet towels on the floor along with dirty clothes. Brad wouldn’t be stretched out on his bed, eyes closed, hands pressing his headphones to his ears, listening to music, rap music, usually.
Jack walked in there now and sat down at what had been his brother’s desk, replaying in his head the conversation he’d had with Cassie.