“Hello?”
“Bell, it’s Greg.” He does this every time, as if my caller ID doesn’t tell me who it is or that after knowing him for seventeen years, I’ve forgotten his voice.
“I’m aware.” Since he walked out on Chase and me, I’ve been less than cordial. It’s a slap in the face to think you’re happily married to your high school sweetheart and running a very successful business, only to find out that your husband not only had an affair but got his mistress pregnant and has chosen her over his family. Fun times all around.
His lackluster parenting is what really prompted our move to Richfield, Montana. It’s hard enough going through a divorce, especially when it takes you by surprise, but when your eight-year-old son (at the time) misses his father and Daddy can’t be bothered to spend any time with him, divorce becomes incredibly messy. Greg didn’t balk when I told him that we were going to move to Montana — he just said he thought it would be a great idea, and that he had an old college buddy here that could “help me out” when I needed something. Now, even though we’re hundreds of miles away from each other, he’s constantly in my business. He couldn’t have cared less when we lived in the same city, but now I can’t eat dinner out without Greg knowing.
I don’t need anything bad enough from him to deal with that shit.
Besides, his college buddy is the same man who keeps cutting my kid from the baseball team. So, once again, Greg fails his family. So much for him ‘helping out’.
“Tryouts ended today?”
I roll my eyes. He already knows. “Yep.”
He must adjust a stack of contracts on his desk because I can hear papers shuffling. Not to mention he’s sighing heavily and muttering under this breath. “Bellamy,” he says my name with such frustration and exaggeration. I imagine he’s pinching the bridge of his nose. “He didn’t make the team. Brett called me right after. He really needs to try harder or he’s never going to amount to anything.”
I pull my phone away from my ear and flip it off, wishing like hell he could see me. “There’s more to life than baseball, Greg.”
“He’s a boy. Boys play sports.”
“And read books, play video games, ride bikes . . . he’s living the life of a ten-year-old, not that you would know.”
“Bell . . .”
“Don’t Bell me. Are you coming for Easter? You’re supposed to.”
He sighs. “Priscilla—”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses, Greg. I just want an answer. You need to spend some time with your son. If you’re coming let me know. As far as baseball goes, I don’t know why he didn’t make the team; Brett didn’t say anything to me so you can ask him yourself if you want to know why. Chase has done everything he can to get better. He’s gone to camps. He’s done all the workouts with Brett. So, I don’t know what else to do, but I do know it’s really none of your business.”
“He’s still my son.”
“Ha!”
“Bell, your attitude doesn’t help. I’m trying to do my best.”
“Right. Anything else?”
He grumbles something unintelligible. “I’ll talk to Brett. Maybe Chase can practice with the team.”
“And what, not play in the games? Where’s the fun in that?”
“It’s better than nothing and it gets him out of the house, making friends.”
He has friends . . . except he really doesn’t. He tags along with a few of the neighborhood kids, but no one ever comes over to the house and asks him to play. I glance at the house, wondering what my son is doing.
“Do you want to talk to Chase?”
“I’m on my way to a meeting. I’ll call him later.”
That’s code for no.
“Whatever, Dad.” I hang up, not giving him a chance to respond. He calls his son once a week, if that, and only for a few minutes. I squeeze my phone and scream, wishing like hell I could wring Greg’s neck. After a few minutes with my temper tantrum, I emerge from my car and head into the house.
When I walk through the door, I know I won’t find Chase in the living room or kitchen. He’s either in his room or in the backyard, trying to get better at baseball. I knock on his door and hear his tiny voice telling me to come in. His walls are decorated with posters of different sports players. I have no idea who they are, but he talks about them like he’s known them all his whole life.
Chase is on his bed, facing the wall. I lay down next to him on his comforter which has every baseball team logo on it. It was a gift from Santa last Christmas. “What’s for dinner, bud?”
“Dunno.”
“I’m not familiar with that restaurant. Or is it food? Does Grandma know how to make it? Do you know what’s in it?”
Silence.
I reach for his hand and he gives it freely. I know there will be a day when holding your mom’s hand is uncool, but until then, I’m going to do this until he tells me we have to stop. “I know you work hard, Chase. I wish there was something I could say or do to make things seem fair.”
“It’s because I’m not friends with Matty and B Mac. They’re the cool kids. They decide who’s on the team.”
“Well I think you’re a pretty cool kid.” I push his hip a little bit, hoping he laughs, but he doesn’t and that makes me want to cry.
“You have to say that because you’re my mom.”
“Actually, I don’t.” As much as I hate letting go of his hand, I do it so I can turn and face his back. I run my fingers through his light brown hair and wish things were easier for him. “When I was a little girl, my dad used to tell me that if I wanted to be friends with someone, I just had to walk up to them and tell them.”
“That was the olden days. It doesn’t work like that anymore, Mom.”
Ouch, bud. “Well, how about we have a party for your birthday? We can invite all the kids from your class. We can get one of those jumpy castle things and a pinata.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“You’re my baby.”
“Kids will make fun of me. They already call me a baby and a loser at school because I’m so short.”
There’s no holding back my tears no matter how hard I try. I pull him to my chest and weep. His plight breaks my heart. I don’t even know what to do to help him, except love him and try to give him every reassurance I can. My words though, fall on deaf ears because of the actions of others. I know my son isn’t perfect. I know he has faults and can be a sasshole sometimes, but he’s still just a child who should only have to worry about his homework and when to come in for dinner.
We stay like this well into the night, with dinner long forgotten and my ringing cell phone ignored. There isn’t a single person that I need to speak to that can’t wait until later. At some point, Chase turns to face me.
“How come Dad doesn’t come visit me?”
Loaded question. I inhale deeply, giving myself a moment to compose my thoughts. As much as I want to badmouth his father, I won’t. With only his nightlight illuminating the room, I smile. “Bud, I wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t. Your father is busy at work and your sister is still really little.”
“She’s not my sister.”
“She is, but I understand why you say that. The decision your dad made, it’s not her fault. It’s not yours either. You’re both just caught up in adult drama.”
His eyes start to water. “I don’t care. I hate him,” he says through tears. “I hate him so much.”
Me too, bud. I pull him to my chest and hold him while he cries. Anger burns deep inside me . . . at his father, at the Little League coaches, at the kids who just can’t be nice. I don’t want to be that mom, but I can’t sit by and watch as my son loses a bit of himself each time he gets knocked down.
When Chase is finally asleep, I slip out of his room. My purse and briefcase are by the door where I left them. There are real estate contracts that need to be signed, scanned, and emailed but those are going to have to wait until later. I pick up my cell phone,
scroll through my contacts until I come to Brett Larsen’s name and hit the text bubble.
Hi, Brett - it’s Bellamy Patrick, Chase’s mom. What can I do to help my son? Two years in a row now he hasn’t made the team. I’ve sent him to camps, clinics and have paid you for private workouts. Is he that bad of a player?
I read and reread the message, hoping I don’t sound desperate. If my son needs a different hobby, I need to know. But this coach, Brett, who is friends with my ex-husband, insists Chase has what it takes yet won’t give him an opportunity. My stomach growls but I’m not sure I can eat anything, and when I look in the refrigerator, nothing looks appealing.
Brett makes me wait almost an hour before he responds. My finger hovers over the alert, afraid of what his message might say.
Meet me tomorrow and we can discuss.
Where?
My office, lunch time.
I’ll be there.
Maybe something positive will come from this meeting.
Hawk Sinclair has been placed on the 10-day injured list. No word yet on what his ailment is, but we do know it has to do with his throwing arm. Sinclair left the game the other night and while most of us thought it was a pitching change, Sinclair was pulled due to injury and sent back to Boston for further evaluation.
* * *
When we reached out to pitching coach, Cole Fisk, he gave us a Bill Belichick type response, saying that Hawk flew like a bird! I don’t know about you, BoRe fans, but having two smart ass coaches in Boston is way too many for our liking.
* * *
With Sinclair out of the rotation, all eyes are on Max Tadashi, waiting to see if he will remain day-to-day.
GOSSIP WIRE
Ethan Davenport’s niece, Shea, took a foul ball to the shoulder the other day. The kicker? It was off her uncle’s bat. No word on if the two are on speaking terms, but grandmother assured us that Shea is fine and angry that her uncle was too fast on his swing.
* * *
With the off-season acquisition of pitcher, Seth West, his girlfriend (Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, Seraphina Davies) has joined him in Florida and seems to be fitting in with the other WAG’s. Welcome to the Renegades, Seth.
Three
Hawk
By the third inning, I’m garbage. I’m fighting to stay in the game, shaking off any type of fastball Gonzalez is asking for because I can’t muster up the strength to get my arm to throw with any velocity. In between innings, he’s in my ear, asking me if I’m okay. I give him one-word answers because anything else just won’t suffice. I’m waiting for him to go to Fisk or Wilson and tell them that I need to be yanked. But he won’t. There’s a creed among pitchers and catchers. We have each other’s backs, no matter what.
It’s the bottom of the fourth. My coat is off, my glove is in my hand and I’m walking to the mound along with Gonzalez. He bends and picks the ball up, holding it in his hand. “Are you sure?”
“Of course,” I lie to him.
With visible reluctance he sets the game ball into my glove and walks toward the plate. Once he crouches down, I start my warm-up pitches. My arm protests and I have no doubt in my mind that my face shows every detail of the pain I’m in.
The batter steps into the box. I hide my face behind my glove so only he and Gonzalez can see my eyes. If they saw my face, they’d see me gnawing at my lower lip. I inhale deeply and let the air out of my lungs as slowly as possible. I don’t want to do this, not anymore. I need rest, medical attention, and a freaking ice bath. The sign is given, fastball-high-inside. My body goes through the motions. My arm cocks back, my leg kicks out, and I’m grunting. I give it everything I have to get this ball to the plate.
As soon as I release the ball, I double over in pain and scream out. There’s commotion all around me but all I see is blurry cleats. Hands are on my back and multiple people are asking me questions that I can’t answer because I can’t catch my breath.
Wilson crouches down so he can look at me. “What’s up, Hawk?” I don’t even have to say anything, he knows. “Is it your back? Can you walk?”
“No, I can walk. It’s my arm.” I straighten and glance into the stands. The nice thing about spring training is that it’s intimate, our fans are close. It also means they don’t miss anything when something happens to a member of the team. I can see the concerned look on their faces and pray my parents aren’t watching this game. If they are, there’s no doubt my mom is on the phone, trying to get a hold of anyone who can give her answers. Our GM, Ryan Stone, made the mistake of giving her his cell number years ago and I bet he’s regretting that now.
“Let’s get you to the trainer.”
I don’t need help walking but he keeps his hand on my back the entire walk to the dugout. Everyone in the stands is clapping. I raise my arm — my left, not my right — and wave to everyone. Wilson passes me off to Fisk, who walks with me to the training room.
“Pulled a muscle?”
“I don’t know, Coach. I can’t feel my arm.” I happen to look at him when I say those words and wish I hadn’t. I don’t need to ask him what he’s thinking because it’s written all over his face — he’s deeply concerned. And I know he can see that mine is screaming, “I’m fucking scared.”
Inside the training room, a couple of the trainers are setting up the machines we often use: Stim and ultrasound, but something tells me that neither of these are going to work. I’ve never had an injury that’s resulted in scarring, that I’m aware of, so ultrasound really isn’t going to do anything for me. And stim . . . well everyone thinks stim fixes everything. I’ve never been a fan of the deep pulsating action, but what do I know?
Cait, our lead trainer, has me sit on the table. When Stone hired her, the guys were very hesitant about coming to see her. Mostly because she’s very pretty. After a few days on the field with her, we realized she’s just one of the guys. Doesn’t mean we don’t try to flirt with her though.
She and Fisk talk for a minute before he turns to leave. He has a group to coach, after all. “So, what happened?” she starts preparing the electrodes. “I turned away right before it all went down.”
“Dunno, can’t feel my arm.”
She pauses for a moment and sets the electrodes down. “At all?”
I shake my head quickly. “If I do, it burns and feels heavy. It’s an effort to move it.”
“Bad stretch?”
This is where I lie. “Maybe I slept on it wrong?” It’s too early to hit the IL and my team needs me. The last couple of years, we’ve been expected to make a playoff run but we always seem to fuck it up when it counts the most. Whatever is going on with my arm needs to be fixed within ten days, at the most.
“Possible, but unlikely to cause you this much pain. Lie down, please.”
I do as she asks. She starts moving my arm in every direction she can, adding pressure in different places. I know the whole time while her hands are trained to feel for any abnormalities, she’s trained to watch our faces because try as we might, we can’t hide pain forever.
“I don’t feel anything pulling and definitely no knots. I’m going to start you on stim and then we’ll do massage for a bit. See if that can loosen whatever is going on in there.”
She places the electrodes on my arm, turns on the machine and disappears. With my free arm draped over my eyes, I try to visualize the annoying sensation actually doing something to help my arm, but it’s hard. Every so often, I jump from the stimulation and when I do, my sore arm throbs so much that the pain brings tears to my eyes.
“Are you okay?”
I hadn’t heard her come back. I nod, but I’m sure she knows what’s going on under my arm. There’s no need for me to make eye contact with her. The last thing I want to show her is that I can’t take the pain. Cait removes the electrodes and adds some oil to my skin. From her first touch, I hiss.
“Stop,” I tell her.
“It hurts when I touch your arm?”
“It hurts no matter what. I thi
nk the stim made it worse.”
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to go make you an appointment with the physician.”
“For what?”
She gives me a sad stare. “I’m not sure.”
Over the last couple of days, I have been poked, prodded, and studied as if I’m some medical mystery. I can’t explain it. My arm hurts when I lift it, leave it by my side, when it’s in a sling, and especially when I bump it against something. I can’t drive, at least not with my right arm. Sleeping is almost impossible. Dressing myself is even harder and for the first time in my adult life I wish I had a damn girlfriend or wife, or at least wish my mother was here so someone could help me. Although, asking my mother to pull down my shorts so I can use the bathroom is not high on my priority list. I’m not sure I’d even ask a girlfriend, but a wife — definitely. It’s that whole sickness and health vow that I’d take advantage of.
Today, I’m stuffed into a tube for an MRI. The nice tech gave some old-fashioned headphones, the kind we got back in the late eighties/early nineties with our Walkman. She didn’t, however, ask me what type of music I’d like to listen to, which I think is a ploy on her part. I can’t move, not that I want to anyway because doing so would cause excruciating pain in my arm, and the music she has playing through these headphones is soft jazz or classical. I’m not a music aficionado by any means so I can’t be sure what’s playing. What I do know is it’s putting me to sleep, which is fine. Everyone can use a thirty-minute power nap during the day.
When the table I’m lying on starts to move, my eyes flash open and blink rapidly to adjust to the lighting. I make sure the johnnie I’m wearing is still covering all the important parts and try to sit up without using my arm so much.
Hawk: The Boys of Summer #4 Page 2
