by Sara Zarr
“Okay, Ruby-Jean-Jean, that’s good, but I can see you thinking too much. This is a game of muscle memory.”
“What does that mean?” Jacob asked.
Kyle didn’t even turn to him then. “It means what it sounds like it means,” he said, then, feeling like a piece of garbage, he went over to Bobby to show him how to keep his glove lower. “You want to be able to trap the ball. Good.”
He heard Tatum say to Jacob, “Like your muscles remember what to do because they do it so much.”
“Less chatter, more fielding,” Kyle said, and Tatum gave him a disapproving, disappointed frown and big eyes. You’re an asshole, her eyes said.
Oh, I know, he thought back at her.
After practice, while the kids were collecting the equipment, Malone slow walked over to Kyle, arms crossed. “Okay, Baker. What have you got against Jake? Did the hot nanny turn you down or something?”
He’d noticed? Did he have eyes in the back of his head? “No. I mean, I don’t have anything against him.”
Malone gazed out from the shadow of his cap. “You can’t play favorites. Kids notice everything. You can lie to me about it, but never lie to kids. They’ve got bullshit radar like you wouldn’t believe.” Malone gestured with his head toward the bleachers and fence. “Go talk to him. Tell him what he did good today and mean it. The point of this is to help build their self-esteem, not make them feel worse.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“And Baker,” Malone said. “Don’t give the kids rides. Unless there’s some major emergency, I mean major like an earthquake or something, we don’t do that.”
Man, the guy didn’t miss a thing. “Sorry. Got it.” How many more ways were left for Kyle to fail?
“You didn’t know. I should have told you on the first day. That’s on me.” He gestured to Jacob, who was walking toward the parking lot. “Talk to him.”
Kyle shuffle jogged to catch up. “Hey,” he said as he got closer. Malone was right. In fact, he should be giving Jacob extra attention, not less. Kind of boost him up, so that when the shit of his life eventually hit the fan, he might at least be feeling okay about his ability to field a ball or steal a base.
Jacob glanced over his shoulder.
“Yo. Hey,” Kyle said again. Jacob stopped walking. “Um, nice work today. You seemed pretty confident with the grounding stuff.”
Jacob shrugged.
“I was kind of distracted from something that happened at school,” Kyle continued. “Sorry I didn’t answer your question about muscle memory. I think Tatum explained it pretty well, but if you need to know more . . .”
“I gotta go. My mom’s waiting.” He pointed to a gold Subaru idling in the fire zone.
Kyle’s stomach lurched. “Oh. That’s your mom?”
Jacob looked at him like, “Yeah, I just said.”
“I should meet her.” It was impulse, driven by curiosity. Even though he was horrified, he found himself following Jacob to the car.
Through the open window he saw her, a white lady with reddish-blond curly hair, hands on the wheel. When she turned and saw Jacob, she smiled this radiant smile. They got closer, the smile pulling like a magnet.
“Are you Kyle?” she asked, reaching her hand through the window. He shook it. “Jacob told me about you. Thanks for working with the kids. Oh, and for giving him a ride the other day.”
“No problem. But I just found out I’m not supposed to.”
“I’m sorry. I hope you didn’t get in trouble.” While Jacob ran around to the passenger side, his mother took off her sunglasses and used them to push her hair off her face. Her eyes were bright, maybe slightly tired. He imagined her with a surgical mask on, saving lives in the ER. “He thinks it’s very cool that he gets to practice with an actual high school varsity player. Coach Malone is great, but to someone Jacob’s age, he’s just another old person.”
She was so . . . pretty. She was so warm. She looked younger than Kyle’s mom. He’d assumed she’d be, like, ugly or mean or something.
“Anyway,” she continued when Kyle didn’t say anything, “you’re what he wants to be someday.”
Ugh, don’t be like me.
“Mom.” Jacob looked down at his lap.
“I’ve got to get back to the hospital.” She turned to Jacob. “You’re with me today, buddy. Dad’s got a meeting in L.A. all of a sudden, and Angelina’s other job needs her. We’ll go home and walk Chase real quick, and then you can do your homework in my office.”
Jacob nodded.
“Nice to meet you,” Kyle said.
“You too.” She put her sunglasses back on and waited. “Can you . . .”
Kyle realized his hands were on the car door. He jerked them back. “Sorry.” He leaned down and said to Jacob, “See ya, man.”
“Bye.”
He watched them drive off.
When he got home, his mother was there. With Jacob’s mom fresh in his memory, he found himself comparing them, which felt wrong and strange.
“Hey, sweetie, I’m glad you’re back.”
She advanced on him. He stepped away, but she persisted and got her arms around him in a hug. He didn’t hug back, but he let her do it. “I was only gone one night,” he muttered.
There had been probably thousands of hugs between them in his lifetime that he’d barely paid attention to. This one felt more meaningful, like she was trying to tell him something important with it. His guard faltered as her hug soaked in, and it took effort not to at least put one arm around her. When she released him, she asked about Megan. How she was, what her apartment was like.
“She’s doing good,” he said.
“Did you tell her about the farm? Did you ask her about summer?”
Oh, yeah, he’d almost forgotten. Here he thought she was worried about him or something when actually she had an agenda, a role for him to play in her life, this life she wanted to be allowed to have without any consequences.
“She’s going to ask about time off,” he said.
Her face lit up with this pure mom gladness and it was all so exhausting, not knowing if he should think of her as a bad person or a good person, someone right or someone wrong. And he lashed out with “Only because I told her she could pretend you aren’t there,” and waited for the pain to cross her face or for her to get mad at him, get defensive, something.
But her face stayed soft. She didn’t even flinch. She looked him right in the eye and said, “I love you, Kyle.”
It pierced him.
With nothing to say in response, he went to his room, let his backpack slide off his shoulder and fall to the floor. He stripped down, changed into a clean T-shirt and boxers. Got under the covers. He plugged his phone into the charger by his bed.
Megan had started a text thread with him and Taylor about the farm, and they were breaking down the details of a six-screen email from Grandma and a hundred reply-alls from the rest of the family. He skimmed through that, then opened up his Emily thread.
She’d replied to his texts from last night.
I’m excited! I haven’t seen Megan in so long. the mysterious older cousin no one talks about.
Then she wrote:
I was at my mom’s closing night of the student play she directed.
hello??
anyway I guess text me later!!
oh btw I got a 1390 on the SAT. I want to take it again and see if I can pass 1400. That was my goal. But I’m really happy with this first score. It’s close enough.
He read and reread the texts and scrolled through some of their past conversations. He wrote, Hey. I’m fried from last night and I’ll tell you about it later, but I just gotta say . . . You’re the only person who stays solid for me. Everyone else is lying or mad or moving on. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I know sometimes I need you too much, more than you want me to, but I’m so glad you’re there.
You gotta say . . . ???
He smiled but also was pretty sure he was going to start
crying again.
Awesome job on the SAT . . . 1390!! You worked hard for it.
She sent back a string of like thirty blushing smiley faces.
Then she added: when are YOU taking it?
Uhhhhhhhhhhh.
They messaged a little more. His stomach growled and his eyes were heavy. There was a light knock on the door, and his mom came in with a sandwich on a plate and a glass of milk. “It’s peanut butter and jelly.” She put the plate on his bedside table; he saw she’d cut the sandwich into four triangles. “Need anything else?”
“No.”
“I’m here if you do.”
She kept staring at him. Meaningfully.
What, Mom, what?
“Someday,” she said, “I think someday you’ll understand. Maybe you’ll want to hear all about it. Maybe even forgive me. It’s not like you think.” She reached out to stroke his hair. He let her. He was so tired.
He wanted her to say she was sorry. That she’d do it all different if she could. The words he’d said to Nadia.
He wanted her to say she’d finally figured out how wrong it was, what she was doing, that she couldn’t have her family and the guy, couldn’t ruin their family and someone else’s and now she was ready to belong to them again and be at home and make sandwich triangles. . . .
“Mom,” he said, his eyes closing.
“Mmm?”
“I want this to be over. This thing, this . . . guy.” It hurt to refer to him directly and aloud.
“I know,” she said, almost whispering.
He waited and waited, until he was crushed by her inability to add “I’m sorry” or “I’m trying,” because it was obvious: she wasn’t sorry and she wasn’t trying.
13
HIS MOM went all in on not being sorry, not trying, by going on a trip with the guy. Not that she told Kyle about it, but Jacob’s dad having a meeting in L.A. “all of a sudden” and then the next morning his mom leaving a note to say she was going to a home goods trade show to do some buying for Baker & Najarian? He knew what it was.
It was a sign of just how many fastballs of shit had been coming his way that this new one barely affected him. One thing at a time. First, get through the school day knowing he was going to see Nadia and Mateo. Maybe not together, but around. He managed it at first by ducking and dodging the way he had back at the beginning of this whole thing; then, between fifth and sixth period, he passed by Mateo in the hall and couldn’t avoid him. They made eye contact and Kyle gave him chin nod that he hoped said ’Sup and also I guess you’ve had your eye on my girl for a while now and so be it but don’t expect me to congratulate you.
After school, he did a conditioning workout with the girls’ volleyball team.
“Don’t you guys have a game at Cabrillo today?” Alissa Wilkinson asked while she spotted his bench presses.
“The team does.” He exhaled, pressed up slowly. At the top of his move, he said, “I’m taking a break.”
“Is it your shoulder? It seems fine.”
“No. I bailed—I went AWOL,” he said, lowering the bar. “Got myself kicked off, basically.”
“Why’d you do that?” She stood over him, ready. “You’ve got two left.”
“Honestly,” he said, grunting, “I don’t even know anymore.”
He finished his set and they switched. Alissa put her hands on the bar as he helped her unrack it. “Well,” she said, “there’s always next season.”
At home, Kyle walked through the house.
“There’s always next season” was a stale phrase he’d been hearing most of his life, but maybe now was the time to embrace it, start thinking ahead. Taylor was in finals and then she’d be home soon after that, and then it would be summer. And the farm. He didn’t want to let his mom’s choices rob him of at least enjoying that, their last time.
He looked at the calendar hanging on the fridge under the Doctor Strange magnet he’d gotten one Christmas in his stocking, from Grandpa Baker. That was the movie they’d all gone to over Thanksgiving that year.
He got out his phone, opened Emily’s thread.
When did you say the next SAT is?
He was behind in geometry and biology. Doing okay in Spanish and U.S. history. In real trouble as far as American lit. He could write decent papers, but the time and focus it took to do the reading was what was killing him. He had to stop getting sucked into the vortex of all this shit he couldn’t control.
Last year his mom had religiously checked on his grades through the school portal and stayed on him. Even as recently as right before the trip to Martie’s birthday, she’d taken him out to dinner and helped him strategize how to maintain his good grades and improve his bad ones. Kyle doubted she was even looking now. And did not doubt that his dad didn’t even know how to look, or that someone was supposed to.
Emily replied.
I don’t think I said, but you can look it up online. You have to register ahead of time, though. You know that, right? Like a month ahead?
A vague memory of unopened school emails with subject lines about test registration lurked somewhere in the parts of his brain he had not been paying attention to. He found the College Board website and looked at the dates. The registration deadline for the next test had just passed.
Shit.
I think I missed it???? Did I miss the SAT?
Keep scrolling. You can take it in late summer or even up to late fall senior year. Or the ACT. Either one.
But you already took it.
I’m weird and enjoy tests. She added a shrug emoji and then asked, Are you okay? Do you want to FaceTime?
He heard his dad’s truck in the driveway, then the garage door opening.
Honestly I don’t think I could handle it right now. Three crying-face emojis. He added: haha ha
His dad came in through the mudroom, holding two pizza boxes. “Bringing home the bacon,” he announced.
It was a joke he’d been telling as long as Kyle could remember, because the family’s favorite pizza had Canadian bacon on it. Only the way he said it now was joyless, and three out of five members of the family weren’t there to eat it. He put the boxes on the island, then emptied his pockets next to them. Wallet, keys, some coins, a piece of gum, a few business cards, his phone, his Swiss Army knife. He unhooked the tape measure from his belt, then took off his belt and added it to the pile and, finally, peeled off his Baker & Najarian polo and tossed it toward the laundry room.
This was all stuff he never would have done if Kyle’s mom was there.
Kyle looked at him there in his undershirt. His dad stared back. “I’m real tired, Kyle.”
“Okay.”
His dad went over to the sink and tried to pull a paper towel off the roll with one hand; about six unspooled. “Goddamn it.” He opened the fridge and got out a half-empty two-liter bottle of cola and a carton of milk. He liked to mix them, which everyone else in the family thought was gross.
He brought the milk and the soda and the six paper towels to the island, got two plastic tumblers out of the cupboard, and sat across from Kyle and opened the top pizza box.
“So we’re eating our feelings now?” Kyle asked.
“That’s right. You want a brown cow?”
“No. Just . . . cow.”
Kyle thought, Okay, maybe we’re finally going to talk. Really have it out and make a plan for whatever was going to happen next. But his dad got out his phone and scrolled and tapped and scrolled and tapped while he ate a piece of pizza in about four bites, so Kyle kept working on his homework. Emily had answered his cry-faces with Seriously though, are you okay.
I met the mom yesterday, Kyle replied. The guy’s wife. She was picking up the kid and she was really nice and pretty and idek wtf is wrong with adults.
He slid a piece of pizza out of the box and watched his dad. Something about the way he tapped and swiped was different than whatever his dad normally did on his phone, like read news and sports scores.
Aa
aand now I think my dad might be on Tinder or something.
Emily sent a scream face.
“What are you doing?” Kyle asked.
“Nothing.” His dad put his phone facedown and got another slice.
There were so many things Kyle wanted to talk about. Like, did they owe it to the wife to tell her what was going on, and how much longer were his parents going to wait to decide if they wanted to separate or divorce, and did either of them even have a conscience or, like, any ideas about maybe how to do the right thing in this situation? Like, hello? Anyone?
All of those questions somehow came out as, “Are you on a dating app?”
“No.”
“A hookup app?”
He gazed at Kyle in this way Kyle didn’t remember his dad ever looking at him before. Like they were in a challenge, caught in what Ito called a hitter’s count, advantage batter, and Kyle was the batter.
“Don’t worry, Kyle. No one wants me.” He shoved the folded piece of pizza into his mouth like someone was about to take it away from him and chugged his brown cow.
“Don’t make yourself sick, Jeff,” his mom would say if she wasn’t on an overnighter with her boyfriend. “Remember your blood sugar,” she’d say. “Remember how you feel after too much cheese.” And if it were a year ago, she would have kissed Kyle’s dad on the top of the head as she moved around the kitchen, putting some salad on the table with the pizza.
Two years ago, Taylor would have been there too, making their dad stay off his phone and teasing him about being addicted to fantasy football.
Five years ago, it would have been Kyle and Megan and Taylor fighting over the biggest slice of pizza, Megan trying to make Kyle laugh so that milk would spurt out of his nose while their mom passed out napkins and made them go around and say something about their day at school.
His dad would have been smiling when he came in and said, “Bringing home the bacon,” and his mom would have rolled her eyes or maybe patted his belly or opened a beer for him or said, “My hero,” like she used to whenever he came home with dinner and she didn’t have to cook.