The Tender Bar

by J. R. Moehringer

  “False. Mets, Phillies. Doubleheader.”

  I’d been promoted.

  As if going to Shea Stadium weren’t astounding enough, Uncle Charlie said I could wear one of his hats. I picked a lime green number with a plaid hatband and stood at the mirror, admiring myself, tilting the brim this way and that, until Uncle Charlie told me to get a move on.

  We picked up Joey D first. He complimented me on my new “chapeau.” Then we picked up a bruiser named Tommy. He was large like Joey D, and while he didn’t look as much like a Muppet, his features did have that same quality of haphazard and temporary attachment to his face. It was a fleshier face than Joey D’s, more elastic, and when Tommy frowned, which was every two minutes, his lips would fall and the features would follow—nose, mouth, eyes and cheeks plunging toward his chin as if being sucked down a drain. Tommy complimented my hat also, then said with a frown that he too was “wearing a new hat.” He had a new job, he said.

  “Tommy just got hired at Shea,” Uncle Charlie explained, looking at me in the rearview. “Head of security. Runs the joint. Hence today’s outing. Tommy’s getting us in gratis.”

  We stopped at Manhasset Deli for iced tea and cigarettes. Then, instead of steering toward the expressway, we circled back to Dickens.

  “Who else is coming?” I asked as we all took stools at the bar.

  Uncle Charlie looked off. “Pat,” he said.

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  “She,” Uncle Charlie said.

  “Pat’s your uncle’s girlfriend,” Tommy whispered.

  We sat around the barroom, waiting for this Pat person. I didn’t like the idea of a woman joining the group, and I certainly didn’t like that she was late. At last she entered with a whoosh, as if a gust of wind had opened the door and she’d been blown through in its wake. She had hair the color of scotch, bright green eyes, and freckles that looked like tiny wet leaves stuck to the bridge of her nose. She was lanky like Uncle Charlie, a fellow flamingo, though more high-strung. “Hiya gents!” she cried, slamming her purse on the bar.

  “Hey Pat!”

  “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was a bear.” She lit a cigarette and looked me up and down. “You must be JR.”

  “Yes ma’am.” I hopped down from the barstool, took my hat off and shook her hand.

  “My, my, my. A real gentleman. What’re you doing with these bums?” She said she only wished her son, who was my age, had such nice manners. “You must be the apple of your mother’s eye.”

  In ten seconds she’d found the quickest route to my heart.

  Our seats at Shea were three rows behind home plate. Uncle Charlie and the men spread out, stretched their legs, made friends with everyone around us. Uncle Charlie told me if I needed to go to the bathroom, I should feel free, “but take note of where we’re sitting and don’t stay away too long.” He spotted the beer man and waved him over. “Take note of where we’re sitting,” he told the beer man, “and don’t stay away too long.”

  “Who do you like today?” Joey D asked Uncle Charlie.

  “I’m torn. My head says Mets, my bankroll says the Philadelphia Brotherly Lovers. Who do you like, JR?”

  “Um. Mets?”

  Uncle Charlie pursed his lips and squinted at me as if I’d just said something very sensible. He went to phone in his bet and Pat turned in her seat to face me. “So how’s your mom?” she said.

  “Good.”

  “She’s in New Mexico?”

  “Arizona.”

  “Oh she must be so lonely without you.”

  “Gosh I hope not.”

  “Trust me. I’m a single mother. She’s miserable.”

  “Really?”

  “You don’t have any brothers or sisters, am I right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Oh she’s all alone out there! But she’s making the sacrifice, because she understands how much your cousins and your grandma and Uncle Charlie mean to you! Do you talk on the phone?”

  “No.” I looked out at centerfield and felt a lump in my throat. “It’s too expensive, so we make cassette tapes and send them back and forth.”

  “Oh! She must be so lonely!”

  I will not worry about something that will not happen.

  Uncle Charlie returned. “What did you do?” Joey D asked him.

  “I did the Mets ten times,” Uncle Charlie said. “Kid sounded like he had a premonition.”

  Joey looked at me with saucer eyes.

  “What’s ten times mean?” I asked.

  “Depends on the bookie,” Uncle Charlie said. “Sometimes a time is ten dollars, sometimes it’s a hundred. Follow?”

  “Follow.”

  Uncle Charlie looked at Tommy and asked if everything was “set.”

  “All set,” Tommy said, standing, hitching up his pants. “On your feet, kid.”

  I hopped off my seat.

  “Don’t forget,” Uncle Charlie told Tommy. “His idol is Seaver.”

  “Chas, like I said, Seaver can be kind of standoffish.”

  “Tommy,” Uncle Charlie said.

  “Chas,” Tommy said, frowning.

  “Tommy.”

  “Chas.”

  “Tommy.”

  “Chas!”

  “It’s his idol, Tommy.”

  “It’s my ass, Chas.”

  “Just try.”

  Tommy gave his most magnificent frown yet, then motioned for me to follow. We walked down a ramp, rode an elevator, passed through a gate, jogged down some stairs. A cop waved us through a metal door, and into a dark tunnel, like a sewer. Up ahead I saw a pinpoint of light, which grew larger as we walked forward. Tommy, his voice echoing, reminded me not to leave his side, no matter what. We stepped through a portal into glaring sunshine, and there, all around us, were the 1976 New York Mets. The blue of their uniforms was blinding. The orange in their caps was like fire. They weren’t real. They couldn’t be real. They were like the mechanical mannequin cowboys at Rawhide.

  “Willie Mays,” Tommy said, nudging me. “Say hello to the Say Hey Kid.” He picked up a baseball lying in the grass and handed it to me. I stepped toward Mays and extended the ball. He signed it.

  “You should see his Cadillac,” Tommy said as we walked away. “It’s hot pink. Real big shot.”

  “Like Uncle Charlie?”

  Tommy guffawed. “Yeah. Just like.”

  He brought me to Bud Harrelson and John Matlack and Jerry Koosman, all standing together, leaning on bats as if they were Irish walking canes. I almost told Koosman about Uncle Charlie’s Rule, but Tommy turned me away just in time and introduced me to the Mets announcer, Bob Murphy, who wore a sports coat that looked like one of Grandma’s afghans. Murphy laughed with Tommy about a dive bar they had both visited. His familiar voice came out of the same box as my father’s, which gave me a confusing feeling of closeness to him.

  Tommy led me to the dugout and told me to sit down, he’d be right back. I perched on the edge of the bench, beside some players. I said hello. The players didn’t answer. I said I was allowed to be there, because my uncle’s friend was in charge of security. The players said nothing. Tommy returned and sat beside me. I told him those players were mad at me. “Them?” he said. “They’re from Puerto Rico. No habla inglés, kid. Now listen. I looked everywhere. High and low. Someone saw Seaver shagging flies earlier, but he’s not around anymore. So we’re going to have to let that one go, okay? I’ll show you the Jets’ locker room, then bring you back.”

  He walked me through a door in the corner of the dugout. We turned down a hall and into a locker room that smelled something like Dickens—menthol and hair tonic and Brut—and as I looked for Namath’s locker I felt Tommy grab my upper arm. I looked up. “Someone I’d like you to meet,” he said, jerking his head toward the door. I turned.

  Seaver.

  “What have you got there?” Seaver said.

  “Baseball.”

  He took it. Tommy pushed me closer to him. I watched the m
uscles twitch and bulge in Seaver’s big forearm, level with my eye, as he worked the pen across the ball. I stared at the number 41 on his chest, just above my head. When he handed me back the ball I tried to raise my eyes but couldn’t. “Thank you,” I mumbled to the ground.

  He walked away, down the tunnel.

  “I’m such an idiot,” I said to Tommy. “I didn’t even look at him.”

  “What are you saying? You were extremely polite. A perfect gentleman. I was very proud to present you.”

  I carried my ball like a bird’s egg back to our seats.

  “So?” Uncle Charlie said.

  “Mission accomplished,” Tommy said.

  A look of enormous affection flew between them.

  Joey D studied my baseball, taking care to hold it by the seams. I wanted to hug him for being so careful, unlike Pat, who spun it and patted it like a snowball. “Who the heck’s Jason Gorey?” she said, squinting at the signatures.

  “That’s Jerry Grote. He’s Tom Seaver’s favorite catcher.”

  “Who’s Wanda Marx?”

  “That’s Willie Mays.”

  “He’s still playing? I thought he retired.”

  “He did. He’s a coach. He drives a pink Cadillac.”

  “Is he Willie Mays or Mary Kay?”

  The game started. The Mets were dreadful that day, and every time they did something wrong Uncle Charlie flagged down the beer man. He also kept close tabs on the scoreboard, checking all the games from around the country, none of which was going his way either. Pat grew tired of his tension and bored with the Mets. She said she was going to look at souvenirs for her son. When she’d been gone three innings Uncle Charlie went to find her. He came back alone. “Vanished,” he said dejectedly.

  “She’ll come home when she’s hungry,” Tommy said.

  “Or thirsty,” Joey D said.

  Uncle Charlie was having a bad day, and I felt guilty, because it was already one of the best days of my life, and because it was I who had persuaded him to bet the Mets. To take his mind off his losses, and Pat’s disappearance, I peppered him with questions. This seemed to work. Cheerfully he explained to me the nuances of baseball—hit-and-runs, double switches, sacrifice bunts, how to calculate batting averages and ERAs. Also, he introduced me to the covert language of baseball. Instead of saying the bases are loaded, he instructed me to say, “The sacks are drunk.” Instead of extra innings he said “bonus cantos.” Pitchers were “twirlers,” runners were “ducks on the pond,” and catchers wore “the tools of ignorance.” At one point he commended my choice of idol. “Seaver’s a goddamned Rembrandt,” he said, and I was pleased with myself for catching the reference, thanks to Minute Biographies. “Grote asks for the ball on the outside corner—Seaver puts it there. Like a little dab of white paint. And Seaver’s got a sixty-foot paintbrush. Follow?”

  “Follow.”

  Even Rembrandt couldn’t save Uncle Charlie from the corner he’d painted himself into that day. When the Mets rallied, Uncle Charlie’s mood lifted briefly, but then the Phillies rallied, loading the bases. “Sacks are drunk,” I said, trying to cheer him up, to no avail. Philadelphia’s slugger, Greg “The Bull” Luzinski, sauntered to the plate, looking like Steve at a softball game, a man among boys.

  “Goose,” Joey D said, “I don’t know how to tell you this but I feel a moon shot coming on.”

  “Bite your goddamned tongue.”

  Luzinski swatted a high-inside fastball toward left field. We jumped to our feet and watched the ball strike the distant stands with a resounding smack.

  “I don’t live right,” Uncle Charlie said.

  “I just had a feeling,” Joey D said, shrugging.

  “Son of a bitch,” Uncle Charlie said to Joey D. “If it didn’t cost me so much timber, I’d celebrate your psychic powers. You must be prescient. You don’t mind if I say ‘prescient,’ do you?”

  The Mets looked sharper in the nightcap. They took an early lead and Uncle Charlie perked up again. But again the Phillies rallied, taking the lead for good on a Mike Schmidt homer. Uncle Charlie chain-smoked and waved to the beer man and I imagined the piles of fifties and hundreds on his dresser growing smaller. After the second game ended we set off in search of Pat, whom we hadn’t seen in three hours. We found her on the mezzanine, drinking beer and laughing with a group of cops. Walking to the car she leaned against me, praising my manners, saying how proud my mother must be. I knew she hadn’t behaved well. At the start of the day I’d thought I was being promoted, but Pat was the one being promoted, and she hadn’t made the most of her opportunity. Still, I liked her, and wished I were doing a better job of supporting her. The problem was, she was heavier than she looked, and I was cradling my autographed baseball at the same time I was carrying her. Uncle Charlie took her from me. He slung her arm around his neck and led her to the car like a soldier guiding a wounded comrade to an aid station.

  When we learned a short time later that Pat had cancer, the first thing I thought of was how tender and patient Uncle Charlie had been with her in that moment. I hadn’t appreciated how deeply Uncle Charlie cared about Pat—none of the men had—until she got sick. He moved into her house, fed her, bathed her, read to her, injected her with morphine, and when she died he sat in Grandpa’s kitchen, his body convulsing with sobs, as Grandma held and rocked him.

  I went to the funeral with Grandma. I stood over Pat’s open casket, looking at her face, her cheeks scooped out by the cancer. Though there was no trace of her zany smile, I felt as if I could hear her voice, exhorting me to take care of my uncle. I turned from the casket and saw the men from Dickens gathered around Uncle Charlie, like jockeys and stable boys around a racehorse that’s come up lame. I told Pat that we could both relax. Uncle Charlie will turn to the bar, I said. He’ll hide there, as he did when he lost his hair. I told her that the men at Dickens would take good care of Uncle Charlie. I promised her that I could see it all. That I was prescient.

  fourteen | JEDD AND WINSTON

  Stepping off the plane at Sky Harbor I saw my mother leaning against a pole, her face expectant. When she saw me her eyes filled with tears.

  “How big you’ve gotten!” she cried. “How wide your shoulders are!”

  She’d undergone some changes of her own. Her hair was different. More pouffy. She exuded energy, as if she’d had too much coffee. And she laughed—a lot. Making her laugh had always required some effort, but driving home she was giggling at everything I said, like McGraw.

  “Something different about you,” I said.

  “Well.” Her voice was quivering. “I have a new friend.”

  His name was Winston, she said in a tone that spelled trouble. He was tall, he was handsome, he was sweet. And funny? Oh he was terribly funny. Like a comedian, she said. But shy, she added quickly.

  “How did you meet?” I asked.

  “At a Howard Johnson,” she said. “I was eating by myself at the counter and—”

  “What were you eating?”

  “An ice cream sundae and a cup of tea.”

  “How can you drink hot tea in this heat?”

  “That’s just it. The tea was cold. So I complained to the waitress, and she was very rude, and Winston, who was also eating at the counter, made a sympathetic face. Then he came over and we started talking and he walked me out to my car and asked if he could call me.”

  “Doesn’t sound shy to me.”

  Neither of us spoke for several miles.

  “Are you in love?” I asked.

  “No! I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “What does Winston do?”

  “He’s in sales. He sells tape. Industrial tape, packing tape, all kinds of tape.”

  “Duct tape?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so.”

  “Grandma will love him. He can redo her living room.”

  I had mixed feelings about Winston. I liked seeing my mother happy, but I couldn’t help feeling I’d failed her. I was supposed to make her h
appy. I was supposed to make her laugh. Instead I’d gone to Manhasset and hung out with the men from the bar. And, though I could scarcely admit it to myself, I’d enjoyed being with a group of men I didn’t have to worry about or take care of. Now, as punishment for shirking my responsibility, for relaxing, some tape salesman from Howard Johnson had taken over my job.

  More worrisome was the fact that my mother had found something to like about Arizona, which meant we were staying. I thought it was time to admit that Arizona hadn’t panned out. We were still struggling, still worrying about money, only now we didn’t have Grandma and the cousins to compensate. Then there was the heat. “How can it be this hot in September?” I asked, fanning myself with my plane ticket. “What happened to autumn? What happened to the seasons?”

  “Just one season here,” she said. “Think of the money we’ll save on calendars.”

  Yeah—she’s definitely in love.

  Instead of the ivy-covered junior high school set on a bluff overlooking Manhasset Valley, I enrolled that fall in the nearby middle school, which sat in the middle of the desert. I wondered if that was why they called it a middle school, because it sat in the middle of nowhere. Much of the school, like much of Arizona, was still under construction, and classes were held in temporary trailers set on cinder blocks. Under the desert sun the trailers turned to kilns by noon, and we were barely able to breathe, let alone learn.

  But the trailers were the least of my troubles. After a summer with the men my Long Island accent was noticeably thicker. (“Ahm dyin’ uh thoist! Wud I wouldn’t give frah glass-uh wadduh!”) I made Sylvester Stallone sound like Prince Charles, which meant I sounded tough, and every schoolyard hooligan wanted to prove himself by trading punches with me. Walking to class I’d hear, “Well, well, here comes Rocky Balboa-ringer,” and the fight would be on. I held my own, preserving my teeth and the plane of my nose, because I fought not with anger but confusion. I couldn’t understand why Arizona kids made such a fuss about the way I said certain words. Words, which had helped me break into the men’s circle at Gilgo, kept me from fitting in at my new school. Example: Arizona kids said “water” to rhyme with “otter,” and mocked me when I said the word to rhyme with “oughta.” What was the big deal? There wasn’t any water in Arizona anyway.