“Will you practice ball with me, before it gets too hot out?” Polly asked.
She was starting softball next week, and they had been working on throwing and catching at least once a day.
“Sure,” he said, his voice sounding choked off to his own ears, not like himself at all. “In a minute.”
Inside, he went to the front room and lay down on the white couch, setting his dirty tennis shoes on the armrest, then lifting his legs to see the gray splotch they’d made. What difference did it make anymore if this room remained clean? He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself with deep breathing, but he kept seeing images of his wife beside a different man. He wanted to know what this particular man, Peter, looked like, just so he could know and be done with it. He imagined a shorter man with dark hair, dark eyes, someone completely different from him. A clean-cut executive maybe, or a military officer.
A hand on his ankle. “Dad?”
He opened his eyes to Polly. “I’m ready,” he told her. “Go get your glove.”
In the street, he felt cleaner, his anger-blackened chest fading back to its normal pale pinkish white. The ball was sure in his hands as he hurled it toward his daughter’s mitt. She was a natural, like he had been, still was he guessed, though he no longer played ball anymore. Callie watched from the sidelines, sitting on the curb. Even though she didn’t possess her older sister’s talent, he should throw a couple of balls to her too, after he was done helping Polly.
The old lady next door came out on her front step, hands on hips in her yellow housedress, and watched them for a long minute. Her gaze was an irritation, and Rex felt his calm begin to ruffle once again. She had complained to him, on more than one occasion, about the loud fights he’d had with Kristina those final months together, and he still held this against the old bag. Couldn’t she hear that his marriage was imploding? Did she need to make it worse by complaining?
She made her slow way across her lawn to where Callie sat on the curb, and Rex saw her leaning down and speaking to his daughter, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. The ball thwacked softly into Polly’s waiting mitt, and she threw it back with more force this time, which made him smile. She was improving. Despite the divorce and this new boyfriend of her mother’s and every other sad distraction in her life, she was getting better at catching and throwing, and it was all because of him, because of his work with her. He held this thought out before him like a crystal, gleaming and warm from the sun, sending its refracted rainbow against his skin.
Rex sent the ball back to her, not using all of his force but giving it a little more kick each time. She was only eight years old, after all. The sound of it hitting her glove was a soft thud of air, his own catch a slightly louder version. Thud, toss, thud, toss, thud, toss. He could do this all day long.
The old woman—Rosemary was her name, that was it—sat down on the curb beside Callie and was watching them too now, and actually smiling. Her perfect dentures gleamed across the asphalt, a wind lifting the edges of her gray, bobbed hair. Callie was leaning against her, whispering something. Having this audience of two enhanced his feeling of well-being, reminded him more fully of high school when everyone had watched him play, waiting for something amazing to happen. It was why he had left the church—well, one of the many reasons. He didn’t want to break his career trajectory with a two-year mission to some faraway country. After graduation, he pitched for the High Desert Mavericks for two years in a California town even more desolate than Las Vegas, but his game had fizzled there, and he’d quit after being passed over for promotion to the big leagues for the second year in a row.
Thud, toss, thud, toss. They hadn’t dropped one yet. The air was growing warmer as the sun climbed, but he liked the feel of the heat through his black T-shirt. Maybe Jane would walk this way again with her friend and see him playing catch out here with his daughter. That had to be appealing to a fellow parent, didn’t it?
Polly’s face was stern with concentration beneath her lavender ball cap. She got the same vertical crease between her eyebrows that her mother did when she was thinking hard on something. She had Kristina’s arched brows and finely shaped mouth, too, and sometimes when she pursed that mouth into a pout of disapproval, it was like looking at a miniature, white-haired version of his ex-wife.
Watching Polly and listening to the rhythm of their game, he suddenly remembered buying the vase. They found it in a shop on the water with a long, winding stairway in the back that led down beneath the store to a cave that opened out onto the sea. You paid extra to climb down to that cave, and he could still smell its dark scent of wet earth and saltwater. Waves poured in, but he and Kristina were safe, up on a wooden observation platform. That was all he could see: that platform and the two of them standing on it, watching the waves unfurl in that dark, mysterious space. He couldn’t picture the actual store, or the restaurant she’d mentioned, but he felt better, remembering that cave.
“I threw the ball with Peter a little bit,” Polly called over to him, “in Death Valley.”
Her voice broke into the memory, and he heard her as if from a great distance. Then the meaning of the words became clear, replacing the image of the cave with a new one: a dark-haired man throwing a ball to his daughter, to Polly. The pain of this image was like a wave breaking inside of him, curling up in the base of his chest and unleashing its powerful fury through his long, outstretched arm as he threw the ball back. She caught it, stumbling from its force, and immediately started to cry.
Rosemary reached her before he did—he’d never seen the old lady move so quickly—and then Polly was removing her glove with a whimper and holding up her crooked finger for all to see. It was obviously broken.
“Oh, honey.” He cradled her in his arms, lifting her and holding her small frame close to his chest. “I’m so sorry.”
“You threw it too hard,” she said, her voice angry even through the tears. “You know you can’t throw it that hard to me.”
“I know,” he whispered. “It was an accident. I’m so sorry.”
Her tears increased then, and through a broken sob she said, “I want Mom. I just want Mom.”
“Me too,” he whispered into her hair, then met the old woman’s eyes and felt a flush of embarrassment run through him. Why was this person once again witnessing his weak moment?
“You take her to the hospital,” Rosemary told him, “and I’ll watch Callie.” Her voice was kinder than he expected.
“Okay,” he agreed. “Thank you.”
He folded Polly carefully into the backseat, and left for the emergency room, looking once in the rearview mirror to find the old lady and Callie holding hands in the middle of the street, waving good-bye.
IVY
Ivy grabbed a beer for herself from the icy bucket that Frank liked to bring out by the pool whenever people were over and sat down beside Jane. Ramona was drifting nearby on a pink raft, and Frank swam laps, back and forth past their knees. “Don’t tell Frank about the piggy bank,” she whispered to Jane. “I don’t want him to make a big deal out of it.”
“Fine,” Jane agreed, then looked toward the shallow end, where Rocky was splashing Fern in the face.
Lucky was asleep in his crib, and Ivy leaned back and raised her face to the sun, feeling the beer move through her faster than she’d expected. She was secretly pleased by Jeremy’s gift. He had mostly been a selfish boy back in high school—even the cookies he’d baked for her typically came with an unspoken expectation of sex—but this gift seemed simple and pure, particularly since it had been anonymous.
Ramona paddled over to them, avoiding Frank’s lap across the pool, then lifted herself out and sat on the edge beside Ivy.
“Where were you all morning, anyway?” Ivy asked her.
She shrugged. “Nowhere. I slept in. I think I might go by the old apartment building later though, or tomorrow. You want to come?”
“Why?” Ivy asked. “That place is awful.”
“I don�
��t think anyone we know lives there anymore,” Ramona said.
“Of course they don’t,” Ivy said, shaking her head. “I won’t go near that place ever again.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Jane said.
“You never had to live there,” Ivy told her.
“True,” Jane said, sipping her beer. “I was always jealous that you two got to live in the same place though. That part seemed fun, and the fountain was cool.”
“It was fun,” Ramona said, nudging Ivy with her elbow. “All the sleepovers, playing hide and seek in the hallways, the guy in number four who always lent us his moped.”
Ivy nodded and said, “You’re right,” but she was recalling only the bad times: The day in fourth grade when Ramona’s brother had died. The morning after her own mother had left and she’d stood waiting for her on the balcony. The long nights of listening for her return and hearing only snoring in the next room or shouting down the hall, or the distant sound of weeping. Ivy had always associated the weeping with Ramona’s mother, but she lived all the way across the courtyard and emerged every morning dry-eyed in her cocktail uniform, looking small and fragile with all that black hair piled up on her head. She surely cried at night, but not within Ivy’s hearing.
Jane brought her another beer, which Ivy finished quickly, then set the bottle on the edge and slipped into the pool just as Frank lifted himself out of the deep end and disappeared inside. She swam the length of the pool twice before coming up for air in the shallow end.
The sliding glass door opened, and Jeremy appeared, carrying a plate of sandwiches. Frank walked out behind him, holding a large bowl of grapes and a fistful of napkins. The two men turned to face the pool, and standing like that, side by side, Ivy had the feeling of seeing her old life beside her current one. Frank was taller, broader, and more self-assured. He held the bowl of grapes casually, under one arm like a basketball; whereas Jeremy held the plate of sandwiches formally out in front of him, as if serving a table of diners.
“What are you doing here?” Ivy asked from the pool, then added, “Hi.”
“We’re supposed to meet, remember?” Jeremy said. “Go over the menu for Friday?”
“I thought you said tomorrow.”
He shook his head. “I can come back if you like; it’s no big deal.”
“No,” Frank shook his head and patted Jeremy on the back. “She can go. We’ll watch the kids,” he told her.
“We can just talk in the living room really quick,” Ivy suggested.
“I was hoping to show you the commercial kitchen where I rent space too,” Jeremy said. “That is, if you’re interested.”
“Of course she’s interested,” Frank said, and Ivy couldn’t tell if he was just being polite or mildly sarcastic.
Ivy hesitated, not wanting to step out of the water in front of Jeremy, feeling embarrassed by the slight pooch of her belly still leftover from having Lucky, by the small starburst of spider veins on her left thigh which she hadn’t yet had time to cover with a summer tan. Ramona, who was sitting under the yellow umbrella, seemed to read her mind and brought a towel to the pool’s edge where she held it out for Ivy as if for a child. It was enough to propel her out of the water, then into the bedroom where she changed into a skirt and T-shirt and ran a brush through her wet hair.
In the bathroom mirror, her eyes were tired, but her skin was slightly flushed, giving her a healthy glow, and the leftover plumpness in her face from having the baby made her look younger, she decided, but slightly naive. She swiped on pale lip gloss, checked her teeth, then left the bathroom.
Jeremy’s car did not have air-conditioning, and the breeze through the open windows quickly dried Ivy’s hair as they drove out of her neighborhood. The two beers hummed in her, relaxed her, and she leaned back against the seat and watched Jeremy shift gears, then ease onto Eastern Avenue. Should she thank him for the present now, she wondered? Or would it be better not to say anything?
They’d been driving for several minutes before it dawned on Ivy how far they were going. Her new neighborhood was left behind along with the landscaped sidewalks and ornamental medians. The palm trees were further apart now, and shaggier, the homes along the road more like white boxes than Spanish bungalows. They passed a Chevron, a Circle K, an endless block of beige strip mall, a white stucco house with a picket fence, then more strip mall. “How far are you taking me?” Ivy asked.
“The kitchen is over by Vegas High, in an old building near downtown. It’s a really cool space.”
“Not to be rude, but why do you want me to see it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Since my parents died, I don’t have anyone to brag to, or show stuff to anymore. I guess I just want someone who knows me to see the things in my life that are important.”
This made sense to her, so she tried to relax back into the ride and just take in the scenery. She hadn’t ventured to this part of town since she moved back and was surprised when they passed Jaycee Park where she’d sometimes skipped school with Ramona and Jane. She hadn’t realized how little time it took to get back here, to travel to the places where she’d grown up. The slide, once covered in graffiti, looked new, and the grass was green and neatly trimmed. Her brief vision of the park’s familiar hills and picnic tables, the baseball diamond off to the right, calmed her. Maybe she was making a mistake by so completely avoiding her old haunts.
When he turned left onto Charleston and started driving toward their former neighborhood, agitation stirred inside her. “You’re not taking me by my old apartment building, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Because I have no desire to see that place.”
“I understand. There’s just one quick stop I want to make before we see the kitchen.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“I shouldn’t be gone too long,” she told him. “When Lucky wakes up, he’ll want some milk, my milk. He won’t take a bottle.”
Jeremy frowned and looked over at her. “So you think if you disappeared forever Lucky wouldn’t survive, that he’d never accept formula or cow’s milk?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s what you’re implying.” He grinned at her and tapped his thumbs on the wheel in a snappy beat.
“I’m just saying I shouldn’t be gone too long, okay?” She said this sternly, the hum of the beer beginning to wear off and irritation settling more firmly into place. Why had she agreed to leave the house with him? Why had she hired him in the first place?
“All right, take it easy. I’ll get you back as soon as I can.” He moved as if to pat her bare knee, but she shifted her leg away, out of his reach.
“Wow, you’ve gotten so uptight. What did you do with the old Ivy? I’d like to see her again.”
She rolled her eyes and leaned back against her seat with a huff. She noticed for the first time that there was a sparkly plastic flip-flop wedged into the space between her seat and the gear shift. “Whose is this?” she asked, plucking it out and waving it around. It was purple, size nine.
He glanced at the shoe and shrugged. “Probably Gretchen’s. I don’t know.”
“You don’t recognize your own girlfriend’s flip-flop?”
“I told you,” he said, giving her a slow smile, “she’s not my girlfriend.”
He made another right turn, then a left, and parked the car. Ivy hadn’t been paying attention—the flip-flop angered her, though she couldn’t say why—and looked out to find they were sitting beside Las Vegas High School, now a school for the arts called the Las Vegas Academy.
Despite the school’s new purpose, and a new coat of coral paint, the building was the same. It had been designated a historic landmark after they graduated, and she admired the art deco façade, the latticed windows and clean lines. This was a structure from her past that she actually liked, the only building in her small radius that wasn’t ugly.
“C’mon,” he said. “Follow me.”
He retrieved a minicooler from the trunk and slung a duffel bag over his shoulder then crossed the empty street and led her to a metal gate through which she could see a portion of the school’s central courtyard, the lunchroom hulking behind it. “Here,” he said, handing her the duffel bag, then he dug into the pocket of his jeans and retrieved a key.
Ivy followed him to the open-air courtyard where she used to meet him between classes. She’d talk to him while he smoked a cigarette, then they’d share one deep, lingering kiss, an embarrassing memory to her now, before heading off to their separate classes. Frank had always refused to kiss openly at school, which Ivy had come to admire, though she’d originally felt slighted by it.
Jeremy looked around, seeming to consider the open space, then doubled back to a shadier corner beneath a stairwell among a quad of classrooms and set down the cooler and duffel bag. He produced a red-and-white checked blanket from this bag, which he shook out and laid on the ground, then motioned for her to sit. Because it was spring break, there was not a student or teacher in sight, and the place was eerily empty, her voice echoing lightly when she spoke. “How did you get that key?”
“A buddy of mine is a janitor here.”
“And let me guess, you sell him drugs.”
He looked up from the open cooler and shook his head. “No way, I don’t do that anymore. I can’t believe you think I still do that.” He opened a Tupperware container and set it in front of her. It contained a sandwich on crusty French bread, with what looked like thinly sliced carrots sticking out of its sides. She picked it up and took a bite, surprised by its spicy complexity, the crispness of the carrots against some type of meat, ham, she guessed, and there was cilantro too, and maybe sliced radish? “This is great,” she said. He passed her a cold thermos, and she unscrewed the lid and sniffed, expecting the pungent ammonia of alcohol, but instead the aroma was slightly sweet, lemony. She took a sip and recognized it as iced tea, though it wasn’t a typical black blend.
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