Batting Order

by Mike Lupica

  She was on her way to the newspaper for the next few hours. She had made Matt a sandwich and left it in the refrigerator, even though Matt said he was capable of making his own sandwich.

  “You don’t even want to make sure he’s home before you head over there?” she said.

  “Nah,” he said. “He might tell me not to come.”

  “You might be making the trip for nothing,” she said.

  “Who’s always telling me that you have to at least try to do the right thing?”

  “You make me feel as if I’m debating myself here,” she said.

  Matt said, “You gotta know that I watch every move you make.”

  “Hope this move is a good one.”

  “Same,” he said.

  “Things have been kind of calm lately,” she said. “I just don’t want this to be a solution looking for a problem.”

  “Mom,” Matt said, “I got this.”

  “You know what you want to say to him?”

  “I kind of do,” Matt said. “Now I just gotta make sure I’m able to say it.”

  • • •

  Ben’s dad answered the door.

  “You looking for Ben?” he said.

  Not “hello.” Not “Hey, Matt.” Just that.

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  “Ben didn’t say anything about anybody coming over,” Mr. Roberson said. “He knows I’m working at home today.”

  “I didn’t tell him I was coming over,” Matt said. “I was just out on my bike.”

  It wasn’t a lie. He was out on his bike, even though he made it sound kind of random when it was the opposite of that. He was here because he wanted to be here. But he wanted to talk to Ben, not his dad.

  “Well, Ben rode his bike into town to pick up some things for me at the pharmacy,” Mr. Roberson said. “You just missed him.”

  Matt didn’t know what Ben’s dad did for a living, or what kind of work he was doing from home. But his mom did the same thing all the time. Maybe he was working more from home these days because Mrs. Roberson had moved out.

  He was wearing a gray Yankees T-shirt and cargo shorts and unlaced white sneakers. Standing right in front of Matt this way, he looked as big as his own house.

  “You want to wait for him?” Mr. Roberson said finally.

  “Do you know how long Ben might be?”

  “Shouldn’t be too long,” he said. “You can wait inside if you want.”

  “Out here is fine,” Matt said.

  He didn’t know whether he was afraid of Mr. Roberson, or just intimidated by him, or a little bit of both. He wished it had been Ben who’d answered the door, because he could feel himself running out of nerve with the things he wanted to say to Ben, things he’d been rehearsing in his head on the way over here.

  He had nothing for his dad, who suddenly said, “I’m not so bad you know,” as if he’d been reading Matt’s mind.

  Matt was still staring up at him, but didn’t know how to respond. So he didn’t say anything at all.

  “I know what your mom must think of me,” he said. “But the problem, at least the way I see it, is that we just have different philosophies about baseball. And I still think that if the situation in that one game had been reversed, and I was the one coaching, she would have been looking out for you the way I looked out for my kid.”

  Matt didn’t plan to say what he said next. It just came out of him. Sometimes he stopped, sometimes he couldn’t stop himself.

  “No, sir,” he said.

  “No sir . . . what?”

  He took a deep breath. Now there was really no stopping.

  “My mom has never called out one of my coaches,” Matt said. “Ever.”

  “All due respect, son,” Mr. Roberson said. “But she’s not a coach just because Sarge stuck her down there at first base.”

  Just turn around and leave, Matt told himself. This was a mistake, coming here. Just get on your bike and go.

  Matt didn’t do that.

  “All due respect to you, Mr. Roberson,” he said. “But my mom is ten times the coach you think she is.”

  If his mom could stand up to him, so could he. Probably it was another thing he got from her.

  Mr. Roberson surprised him then.

  He smiled.

  The only times he’d ever seen him smile was when Ben would go deep.

  “You’re as tough as my kid says you are,” he said to Matt.

  “Thanks,” Matt said.

  “That impresses me, you sticking up for your mom that way,” Mr. Roberson said.

  Matt wasn’t trying to impress him. But he didn’t say that.

  “Tell you the truth,” Mr. Roberson said, “I wish my boy was more like you. I know he looks strong enough to kick a hole in the outfield wall. But the boy’s so soft sometimes. I call it soft, anyway. His mom says he’s just sensitive.”

  He put air quotes around “sensitive.”

  “I don’t see Ben that way,” Matt said.

  Now he was sticking up for Ben, to his own dad.

  “You don’t know him the way I do,” Mr. Roberson said.

  Then they both heard:

  “No, you don’t. Know me, I mean.”

  The street behind the Robersons’ house was closest to town. Ben must have come home that way, and just walked his bike across their backyard. And there he was, holding a white plastic CVS bag, staring at his dad.

  “Maybe that’s our real problem, Dad,” Ben said. “I’m sensitive and you’re not nearly sensitive enough.”

  “I don’t appreciate your tone,” Mr. Roberson said.

  “Well I guess that makes us even,” Ben said. “I don’t appreciate what you just said about me.”

  He took a few more steps, and handed the bag to his dad. “Here’s your stuff,” he said.

  Then Ben turned to Matt.

  “You want to get out of here?” he said.

  “Sure,” Matt said. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere,” Ben said.

  He walked back to where he’d left his bike near their garage. He rode it down the driveway, stopping where Matt had left his. Then without another word between them, they started riding up Lenox Avenue.

  They could hear Mr. Roberson yelling for Ben to come back.

  But in that moment, he was talking to the ocean.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Matt suggested they just go back to his house. Ben said that was fine with him.

  “You like being there, right?” Ben said. “Your house?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “I don’t like being in mine right now,” Ben said.

  “Isn’t your dad going to be mad that you just rode away like that?” Matt said.

  “He’s mad about everything else,” Ben said. “He might as well add that to his list.”

  Matt’s mom wasn’t home yet from the Dispatch. So he texted her and told her that he and Ben had just decided to head back. He could explain later why they had, and what had happened at Ben’s house.

  Matt got them both bottles of water out of the refrigerator. He asked if Ben wanted something to eat. Ben said he was fine. Matt asked if Ben wanted to go out in the backyard and throw a ball around. Ben said that sounded like a good idea to him, he needed to be outside and moving around. Matt went and got his glove, which always had a ball in the pocket, from his room and his mom’s from the front hall.

  Matt handed his mom’s glove to Ben. He took the ball out of his own glove. The ball felt really good in his hand at that moment. Matt knew that baseball wasn’t going to change what had happened and what had been said between Ben and his dad. Baseball wasn’t going to make things a whole lot better.

  But it sure wasn’t going to make them worse.

  As they were walking out to the yard, Ben said, “You think your mom is going to be here soon?”

  Matt said he was pretty sure that she was.

  “Good,” Ben said. “I could kind of use a mom right now.”

  •
• •

  When Rachel Baker got home from the paper, Matt and Ben took turns telling her what had happened. Matt went first, relaying the conversation he’d had with Ben’s dad before Ben came back from CVS. Ben picked it up there.

  They were all sitting on the back patio, glasses of lemonade in front of them on the table.

  “You have to understand something,” Matt’s mom said to Ben. “Sometimes people think it’s in their best interest to act their strongest when they’re feeling weakest.” She smiled. “Men more often than women.”

  “But I know he thinks that about me,” Ben said. “That I’m weak. I think the only time I’m strong enough for him is when I’m hitting home runs.”

  She said, “And when does he seem to think you’re weakest?”

  “When I talk about how much I miss my mom,” Ben said.

  As big as he was, the way he said that made him sound to Matt like a little boy. One who wanted his mom.

  “Do you still talk to her?” Matt’s mom said.

  “Just about every day,” Ben said. “But I try not to do it when my dad’s around. If he hears me in my room talking to somebody, even if it’s not her, he comes in after and asks if I was talking to her. That’s what he calls her now. He doesn’t ask me if I was talking to my mom. Just ‘her.’ ”

  Ben closed his eyes, let out some air. “And if he knows that I have talked to her, he always wants to know the same thing,” he said. “What she said about him.”

  Matt was watching his mom, seeing what a good listener she was, how she was getting him to open up to her.

  “You understand that adults can act out same as children do, right?” she said. “He’s hurting right now, and he’s angry.”

  “At her,” Ben said.

  “But she’s not here,” Matt’s mom said. “And you are.”

  “But this isn’t my fault!” Ben said.

  “He knows that,” she said.

  “He doesn’t act like he knows it,” Ben said. “He just wants me to be as mad at her as he is.”

  “But you’re not,” she said.

  “I just miss her,” Ben said. “The only thing that makes me really angry is her being gone.”

  He stopped then. Suddenly his eyes were big and red. Matt didn’t want him to cry, and knew how much Ben didn’t want to cry in front of them.

  Matt would have felt the same way.

  “I don’t think she’s coming back,” Ben said.

  Matt’s mom said, “You don’t know that.”

  “What I know,” Ben said, “is that sometimes she acts as angry at him as he is at her.”

  “With you caught in the middle.”

  Ben looked at her. Matt still thought he might start crying.

  “When Matt’s dad left,” Ben said, “were you mad at him?”

  She turned and looked at Matt now, and smiled at him, even though he knew this wasn’t close to being one of her happy smiles.

  “Sad,” she said. “Sad for this guy, mostly. That he was going to grow up without a dad present in his life.”

  “Mom,” Matt said, “you know I’m fine with that.”

  “Matt and I are both fine with it now,” she said. “But I’m not going to lie to you, Ben. It wasn’t easy, especially at first, trying to be two parents at once. Took me awhile to understand that I didn’t have to be.”

  They sat there in silence then. Matt sipped some lemonade. So did Ben, who finally said, “I can’t be what he wants me to be.”

  “But you can be there for him,” she said.

  “I don’t even want to be with him right now,” Ben said. “Nothing I do is right. Nothing I say is right.”

  “Maybe the best place is to remind him that you love him,” Matt’s mom said, “but that the one hurting the most right now is you.”

  “Mrs. Baker,” Ben said, “do you really think that will help?”

  “It can’t hurt,” she said.

  She told him then that he was welcome to stay for dinner, but that he’d have to clear it with his dad first. Ben said he would. But before he did, he wanted to ask her for a favor.

  “Would you mind going over to the park and pitching to me a little bit?” he said. “Would that be okay?”

  She turned to Matt. “Did he just ask me if it was okay for us all to play ball?”

  “Pretty sure he did,” Matt said.

  “And did he act as if I would be the one doing him a favor?”

  “Yup,” Matt said.

  Then she jumped up from the table and said this would give her a good chance to break in her new baseball shoes.

  • • •

  They all did some throwing when they got to the park. Ben asked Matt if he wanted to do some hitting, too. Matt said no, he was good, he was happy to shag balls in the outfield. Before he did, he and Ben dragged the pitching screen out in front of the mound.

  “One question,” Matt’s mom asked Ben. “Are we gonna do this your way, or mine?”

  “Yours,” he said.

  Then she took Matt’s bat out of his hands, got into her own batting stance, and exaggerated the toe-tapping move she’d shown him before. Matt sat in the outfield grass and watched them.

  She handed the bat back to him, got a few feet away, and acted as if she were throwing an imaginary ball. Ben showed her the short stride she wanted. Then she made him repeat it about a half-dozen times, throwing one imaginary pitch after another.

  When she was satisfied, she went back to the mound, and began throwing real baseballs again. Ben missed the first few. But then he began connecting. The swing was better. Not a lot more compact. But shorter than it had been before.

  He started to connect. There was a line drive to left, then another. He didn’t step out of the box. Matt knew there were a couple of dozen balls in the ball bag, and Ben acted as if he wanted to swing at every one of them. Pretty soon Matt was chasing down balls from left field all the way to the right field line on the back field at Healey.

  He was picking one up in right when Ben blasted one off the top of the wall in dead center. Even from out here, Matt could see the smile on Ben’s face. And he thought: If I were feeling it right now the way he is, I’d be happy too.

  Matt watched him and wondered when the last time was that Ben felt this happy, and relaxed, on a ball field.

  Or anywhere.

  Finally, knowing they had to be getting to the bottom of the bag, Ben hit one a mile to left-center, over Matt, over the wall, in the general direction of the ice cream truck parked in its usual spot near the field where they played their games.

  And then Ben was the one dropping his bat the way the little boy Christopher had that day with his dad. Then it was Ben tearing around the bases, pumping his arms over his head as he did, laughing all the way.

  Matt watched him go, and wished Ben’s dad were here to see him.

  Maybe he’d be happy himself for a change.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Ben stayed for dinner. They didn’t talk about his dad any more, or his mom. They talked about baseball, about hitting and the Astros’ last regular season game, and about the playoffs, in which the Astros had already clinched the top seed.

  As they did, Matt thought about everything that had happened since he’d gotten on his bike and made the trip over to Ben’s house. But even with everything that happened after that, he knew he would have signed up for what was happening right now at the dinner table:

  He and Ben sitting around like this and talking the way friends did.

  When it was time for Ben to leave, he said he would text Matt later and tell him how the big talk he planned to have with his dad had gone.

  Only he didn’t text, or call that night, or the next day. He didn’t respond to the text Matt sent him.

  Then he didn’t show up for the Astros’ practice, their last before their game against the North Shore Phillies. Sarge said Ben’s dad had called and said that Ben was grounded.

  “Did he say why?” Matt said, even thoug
h he was pretty sure he knew why.

  “Just said that it was something between him and his son,” Sarge said.

  “Is he going to get to play against the Phillies?” Matt said.

  “I didn’t ask,” Sarge said, “and he didn’t say.”

  All Matt could think about was his mom having told Ben to make sure to tell his dad that he loved him, no matter what. Now Matt wondered if Ben had even done that. And if he had, it didn’t seem to have helped him very much.

  Matt’s mom was late for practice, having had to stay longer at the paper than she’d anticipated. As soon as she got there, Matt told her about Ben being grounded.

  “Because he left the way he did with you,” she said.

  “Nothing else makes sense,” Matt said.

  On the way home in the car, his mom asked if he’d told Sarge about the scene at Ben’s house. He said he hadn’t. It wasn’t his place to talk about what Ben’s dad had said about Ben not being strong enough. And, Matt told his mom, even if Sarge knew, it wasn’t going to change anything anyway.

  “I tried to go over there yesterday to help him,” Matt said, “and got him into so much more trouble that now I really have to find a way to help him.”

  “Maybe the best way to help him right now is by doing one of the hardest things in the world for you,” she said. “And for me, by the way.”

  “What?”

  “Being patient,” she said. “Because for now we’ve both done as much as we can.”

  “It wasn’t enough,” Matt said.

  “It’s just like sports,” she said. “Sometimes your best isn’t enough.”

  She said she was sure that Matt would hear from Ben, maybe as early as tonight. He did. Ben called while they were still in the car and said he wasn’t allowed to play against the Phillies, and might not get to play at all for the rest of the season.

  • • •

  “This isn’t fair!” Matt said when they were in the house.

  “Sounds as if things haven’t been too fair for Ben for a while,” she said.

  “This is all my fault,” he said.

  “No,” she said, “it most certainly is not.”

  He wanted to go straight upstairs to his room. But his mom sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and said, “Step into my office.”