by Mike Lupica
“It’s just …” Justin stopped, shook his head. “It’s just that the real estate woman just put up that sign this morning. Who knows, maybe that’s why I hit the way I did at practice even though I can’t hit in a game right now. Maybe I just needed to take it out on something.”
Ben said, “I’m lucky right now if I can hit my pillow with my head.”
“You’ll be fine,” Justin said. “You’re always fine. You’re Ben McBain.”
At least we’re talking, Ben thought.
“It’s not always so great being me, trust me,” Ben said.
“Better than being me.”
Then, as if somebody had thrown a switch, he was breathing hard, really hard, his eyes red. All the things you did right before you started to cry.
The sound of his breathing was the only sound in the room now, Justin taking in air and letting it out and trying as hard as he could, Ben could see the effort in him, not to cry in front of another guy.
When Justin was able to speak again, this is what he said, the words coming out of him so weakly Ben was shocked they even made it across the room:
“My parents are getting divorced.”
The boy who hadn’t wanted to talk at practice talked for a long time. Like he’d been waiting to tell somebody all the things he was telling Ben.
Telling him that his dad, who traveled a lot, who had the kind of company that bought and sold other companies, had moved out during Little League season, even though Justin hadn’t told anybody at school about that and nobody, even in small-town Rockwell, had found out.
“I didn’t want anybody to know,” Justin said. “And I kept believing my parents when they were telling me this was something they had to try. So as much as it hurt not to have my dad living in the house, I just kept telling myself that eventually they really would work things out.”
He put air quotes around “work things out,” hopped off his bed now, walked across the room, and shut his door.
“I kept hoping they’d do that,” he said, “and that my dad would come back home to live.”
Another deep breath. “But he never did.”
Ben couldn’t help it, he knew this wasn’t about him, it was all about Justin, but he couldn’t help imagining what this would be like in his room, telling somebody else that his dad had left his mom.
“At the beginning,” Justin said, “they just said they needed some time apart.” He closed his eyes. “Right,” he said. “Try till the end of time.”
“How have things been between you and your dad?” Ben said.
Thinking about his dad as he asked the question, the way things were between them, how close they were.
Feeling luckier than he ever had in his life.
“They’re fine,” Justin said. “He keeps telling me nothing is ever going to change between us. Except he’s living on the other side of town and my mom and I are about to leave town.”
There it was, in the air between them, the air in the room changing just like that, Ben getting the answer he’d come up here looking for, even if it wasn’t the one he wanted.
He wasn’t just moving.
He was leaving.
I would want to throw things, too, Ben thought, or maybe find a wall to punch.
“My mom wants us to move back to Cameron,” Justin said. “It’s where she grew up, you know that, right?”
Ben knew because Justin had told him when they’d gone to a sleepaway basketball camp there the summer before last. He couldn’t remember exactly how long it took to get there, but it was definitely more than an hour.
“Her whole family, most of it, anyway, is still there,” Justin said. “My grandma and grandpa, my aunt and her kids. And my uncle. Did you see him when you came in? My uncle, I mean. He’s downstairs.”
“I heard him talking on the phone,” Ben said.
“He’s the one who wants her to come home to live, says she needs her family.”
“You’re her family,” Ben said. “You and your sister. But your sister’s in college. You’re her family and this is your home.”
“I keep trying to tell everybody that!” Justin said. “But it doesn’t look as if my vote counts.”
In a quiet voice, Ben said, “How soon?”
“Are we leaving?”
“Yeah.”
“Sometime before school,” he said.
“Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Ben said.
Justin looked up with eyes that had stayed red the whole time. “You don’t know my mom,” he said. “But then, lately, I don’t, either.”
“This isn’t between you and your mom,” Ben said, trying to think of things Lily would say, wishing Lily were here to help him. Help him and, more important, help Justin.
“This is between your mom and your dad,” Ben said, “and you’re just caught in the middle.”
“Tell me about it.”
That’s when he told Ben he was thinking about quitting the team.
They were in Ben’s basement, two boxes of pizza on the table between the couch and the big screen, game-watching TV.
Ben, Lily, Sam, Coop, Shawn. Ben had texted everybody as soon as he was back at the bottom of the driveway, told them to meet him at his house, called his mom and dad to make sure it was all right and ask them to have the pizza delivered, telling them he’d explain everything when he got home.
He had done that. His mom said she had no idea, his dad said the same thing, both of them wanting to know how Justin was doing.
“Bad,” Ben had said.
Now in the basement, after Ben had given his best friends in the world the play-by-play, Lily said, “Well, you can’t let him quit. Seems to me like he needs you guys more than ever.”
“I told him pretty much the same thing,” Ben said. “He said his mind was made up.”
“Not only does he need you guys,” Lily said, “I think he needs baseball, too.”
“Could have fooled me,” Coop said. “I mean, now I know why he’s been acting like a jerk. But he’s still been acting like a jerk. So if he does need our help, he’s had a funny way of showing it.”
“You’re forgetting that I was a bigger jerk than he ever thought of being in football,” Shawn said. “Creeps me out just thinking about it.”
“That was because you were getting crushed by the pressure from your dad,” Coop said.
“Right, genius,” Ben said. “Now multiply that by two. Justin’s getting crushed by both his parents, just in a different way than Shawn was.”
Sam was staring at Coop. “Are you really this thick?”
Coop held up a finger. “Okay, maybe I was thick. But now that you guys are explaining it to me, I feel less thick.”
“Yeah,” Lily said, “thin, practically.”
“Bottom line?” Sam said. “Lily’s right, we gotta do something.”
“You think about it,” Lily said. “If he didn’t have baseball right now, even the way he’s been playing, what would he have?”
“Pretty much the worst summer of his entire life,” Ben said.
“Maybe we can’t save his summer,” Sam Brown said. “But we at least have to try.”
Lily smiled then, one of her biggest and brightest Lily smiles, stood up, walked in front of each one of them, bumped each one of them some hard knuckle.
“You only do that when you think you’re about to be brilliant,” Ben said.
“Well, that’s just plain old wrong,” she said. “Because then I’d be doing it all the time.”
“What you got, Lils?” Sam said.
“I think,” she said, “that maybe we’re about to become the Core Four Plus Two.”
* * *
When Lily and the guys had gone home on Sunday night, Ben went upstairs and talked about it with his mom, his dad still off playing in his Sunday night softball league.
She was in the den watching her favorite television show, Downton Abbey, about a bunch of English people living in some kind of castle.
&n
bsp; Beth McBain paused the show as soon as she saw Ben standing in the doorway.
“Mom,” he said, “this can wait, I forgot it was Downtown time.”
“You know it’s pronounced Down-ton,” she said. “But you’ve got that face.”
“What face?”
“The face you get when you’re trying to save the world,” she said, “usually one kid at a time.”
“Justin,” he said.
She patted the couch next to her. “Step into my office and have a seat,” she said.
He told her about Lily’s plan, saying that was the best they could come up with, for them to basically take Justin in, and then somehow convince him that cutting himself off from the team wasn’t going to help him hurt any less.
And would probably hurt him more.
“I know I’ve asked this question before,” Ben’s mom said, “but are we absolutely certain that girl is only eleven years old?”
“You just say that because she reminds you of what you were like when you were eleven.”
“Well, there is that.” She took off the glasses she wore for television and driving a car — and watching Ben’s games — and said, “Sounds like you’ve got this under control. So what do you need your old mom for?”
Ben said, “I’m just trying to figure out why Justin’s mom would do this to him?”
“Get divorced? Sweetheart, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but half the marriages in our country end up in divorce.”
“No way.”
“Way sad,” she said. “But way true.”
“I’m not really talking about the divorce part, though, Mom. I don’t even know whose fault that is.”
“Maybe it’s no one’s fault,” she said. “Maybe it just took this long for Justin’s mom and dad to figure out that they’re not supposed to be married to each other. Like I said, big boy: It just happens sometimes.”
“But why does she have to leave town?” Ben said. “Why does that have to happen?”
“I don’t have the answer to that one,” she said. “But I’m sure it must be a very difficult decision for her, at a very difficult time of her life. And even though Marcy isn’t a close friend, I know how much she loves her son, so she must think this is the best thing for both of them.”
Ben looked at the TV screen, frozen on the face of some old woman he thought might be the Queen of England.
“Justin sure doesn’t think it’s the best thing for both of them.”
“Don’t imagine he would.”
“I’ve got to help him, Mom.”
“No doubt in my mind that you will,” Beth McBain said. “And bringing him into the world’s coolest club for eleven-year-olds on the whole planet seems like a pretty cool way to start.”
Ben reached over then and hugged his mom, even though she was the one who usually initiated the hugging, pressed his face into her shoulder. It was a good thing, because she didn’t see how he clenched up his face when his sore wrist got pressed between her back and the back of the couch.
“Don’t you and Dad ever get divorced, okay?” he said.
“Not happening,” she said, kissing the top of his head.
“Promise?”
“Promise,” she said in a quiet voice. “In fact, I can guarantee you that you and your father will always be together.”
“How?”
“Because he informed me a long time ago that even if I ever left him, he was going with me, that’s why!” And smiled.
Then she pointed her remote at the screen and told him lights-out by ten o’clock.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Wow,” she said. “Usually you don’t thank me for reminding you about your bedtime.”
“Thanks for listening.”
“Didn’t really do much more than that.”
“Then how come I feel better than I did when I came in here?”
“Because sometimes,” she said, “just the thought of helping somebody makes you feel good before you actually help them. Now let me get back to my show, they’ve got problems of their own to solve.”
From the doorway Ben said, “If any of them come up with a better idea for Justin, gimme a shout.”
“Hush,” his mom said, “I think the two old grandmas are about to have a throw-down.”
“You make it sound like wrestling,” Ben said.
“It kind of is,” she said. “Just with English accents. Everything always sounds better with English accents.”
Ben told her that maybe he’d try that with Justin.
Ben called Justin when he got up, Justin actually answered his phone for a change, asked him if he wanted to hang out.
“I’m with my dad today,” he said.
Ben said, “You thought anymore about what we talked about yesterday?”
“About quitting?” Justin said. “I don’t have to think about it anymore.”
“Because your mind’s still made up.”
“Pretty much.”
“Will you make me one promise?” Ben said. “Will you promise me you won’t do anything before we talk about it again?”
“You mean like tell Mr. Brown?”
“Like that?”
There was a long pause at Justin’s end of the phone until he finally said, “Deal.”
Ben said, “Even though we’re on the phone, we’re shaking on this, okay?”
“You’re a little weird sometimes, you know that, right?”
“Only with my friends,” Ben said. “Are we shaking on this or not?”
“We are,” Justin said.
* * *
Ben’s wrist was still sore, he still couldn’t grip a bat the way he wanted to. Or needed to. But no way he was missing the game, not after he’d injured himself in the cage. He didn’t even let his dad tape the wrist, telling his dad that he was fine, smiling away — and through the pain — as he twisted it this way and that to show his dad he was ready to go.
He knew he could catch the ball at short, knew he could close the game if Mr. Brown asked him to do that. And figured that he could find a way to work a walk or two, get on base, use his legs the way he always had to help his team win.
They were down a man already because of Justin’s suspension — maybe down a man permanently if Ben couldn’t convince him to stay on the team — and so Ben was going to play, even if he had to convince everybody, and himself, that he was feeling a whole lot better than he was.
Sometimes his mom would get off the phone after talking in this sweet voice to someone Ben knew she didn’t like all that much, a smile on her face the whole time, and say to him, “What can I tell you, hon? Sometimes you have to fake a little sincerity.”
That was Ben tonight in Hewitt, the game 5–5 when Ben led off the top of the sixth, his hitting no better than his wrist. He’d led off the game by opening up his left side way too soon, left knee buckling again, hitting a soft liner to the second baseman, knowing the swing had nothing to do with his wrist being sore.
Just afraid.
Still.
At least he’d worked a walk last time up, stole second, making sure to go in feet first, hands high, taking no chances going in headfirst, which Mr. Brown hated, anyway. Then he’d stolen third the same way and scored on a sac fly from Sam.
Now he was up in the top of the last, unless they went extra innings, tie game, waving at strike one. The new Hewitt pitcher wasn’t exactly throwing sidearm, more like three-quarters. But it was more than enough to make Ben miss.
The kid threw him two balls after that, both outside, trying to get Ben to chase. Ben fouled off the next pitch, then swung and missed — badly — at strike two, the Hewitt kid going outside again, maybe seeing that Ben had no chance at a pitch off the outside part of the plate the way he was swinging the bat.
Ben swung and missed again.
Ball three was up in his eyes.
Full count.
And Ben made up his mind what he was going to do if the next pitch was anywhere close
to the plate. Tired of waiting to be a real hitter again, the hitter he used to be. Tired of going up there and hoping — or begging — for a walk.
It was going to be a borderline pitch, maybe on the outside corner, maybe not, Ben didn’t care. He dropped the handle of his bat, made sure not to cross the plate too soon, and pushed a perfect two-strike bunt to the left of the pitcher’s mound.
Ben knew that fouling it off was strike three, same as missing it would have been strike three. But he still trusted himself to get a bunt down even if he couldn’t get a clean hit these days and came out of the box flying, seeing that he’d pushed the ball just hard enough to get it past the pitcher — kid dove for it, missed — and just soft enough to keep it on the infield grass.
Ben saw all that, saw the second baseman get a late break on the ball, never thinking that Ben would bunt with two strikes. Then Ben was only concentrating on the first-base bag, prepared to launch himself headfirst this time even if that did mean banging the bad wrist in the dirt.
But he didn’t have to.
Because the Hewitt second baseman, who should have eaten the ball, who should have seen that Ben had the play beaten, tried to make an off-balance throw even when Ben was across the bag and threw wildly, over Ben’s head and over the first baseman’s head and into foul territory down the right-field line.
Way down the right-field line.
“Go!” his dad was yelling from behind him, from the first-base coaching box, but Ben didn’t need anybody to tell him that, he was already turning for second.
Already thinking about third, the way he did when he was running from first on a single to right.
Picking up Mr. Brown in the third-base coaching box as he got near second base, Mr. Brown windmilling his left arm. Telling him to come on.
Ben cut the second-base bag perfectly, dropping his left shoulder, leaning into the cut like he was in the open field in football, not sure where the ball was behind him, not sure if it was in the air yet or not.
Just knowing that it wasn’t going to beat him to third.
Maybe he couldn’t hit a ball right now, but he knew he could sure outrun it.