I felt like hiding in the ladies room and having a good cry. Either that or a stiff drink and a good night’s sleep.
The Cheers had been soundly trounced, as the sports pages would no doubt announce in tomorrow’s papers, though it didn’t dampen Romeo Hicks’s determination to celebrate afterward at one of the local bars, surrounded by a bevy of pulchritudinous fans.
I refused to permit Sophie to join them. No way was I going to allow her to get mixed up with a ballplayer, especially one who so clearly enjoyed playing the field. But my daughter wasn’t exactly thrilled about my efforts to micromanage her social life, particularly since she was now a college graduate, ostensibly out in the world on her own.
“Damn, even the champagne had an editorial comment,” she observed grumpily, opening one of the bottles that had been intended for a victory drink. “It’s gone flat.”
That night, the SportsOn1 show led off with, “If you were up at deMarley Field in the Bronx tonight, you got to witness an eclipse of Venus, when her Bronx Cheers were pounded by the Long Island Sound.”
Charming.
“I’m looking forward to getting out of town,” I said to Sophie. “The New York press corps is merciless.”
“I’m looking forward to our away games, myself,” Sophie sighed. “Are you still mad at me about Tommy DuPree?”
“If he continues to suck as badly as he did tonight, yes I am,” I admitted.
“He’ll settle down. It’s just nerves,” she replied authoritatively. “You can’t expect to polish a diamond in the rough in just a couple of weeks.”
“I’m not so sure about the diamond thing, Soph. Dusty says ‘you can’t polish a turd.’”
“Well, ol’ Crusty Dusty has a way with words, hasn’t he?” She smiled and patted my leg. “Don’t worry, Mom, I’m a shrewd judge of talent. You just have to trust me.”
Well, I wanted to. And as much as I adored my daughter, I wasn’t sure my gut wasn’t a better arbiter of baseball talent, at least where Tommy DuPree was concerned. But I was reluctant to have it out with her over Tommy’s skills, not just because it was too soon in the season to be certain she’d been wrong about him—but because if I did confront her, I was afraid I’d lose her.
We dropped our first two home games, and then it was time to hit the highway for our first road trip of the season.
“How can you name a team the Fairies?” Ahab Slocum wanted to know. He was lounging across the back row of seats in the team bus, eating a peanut butter and beef jerky sandwich. “Yo, Holly! You should be right at home there. Maybe Barry and Venus should trade you!”
“Not the Fairies—the Ferry. They’re called the Bridgeport Ferry.” Hollis Golightly rolled his eyes.
“I don’t get it.”
“Oh, read a map, for goodness’ sakes!” Holly lobbed a road map toward the back of the bus. “It’s like a local landmark or something. You have to take a ferry to and from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to get to Long Island.”
“Yo, Venus! Damn…woman can’t hear me with them headphones on. Always got her headphones on. What kind of tunes you listenin’ to, Venus?”
I wasn’t listening to music, actually, and I’d heard every word Ahab had said. The kid drove me crazy, but he was one of our better defensive players, and one of the few who was hitting with any consistency; and unless he said something really offensive again, it was the better part of valor to just ignore his existence. Otherwise I’d be sorely tempted to kick his arrogant butt with my stilettos.
Shoji Suzuki, with a Manga book in his lap, was trying very hard not to let his teammates see him cry, but his shoulders were heaving up and down. I took off my headphones, switched off the CD player, and went and sat beside him.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him gently in his native tongue.
“Nothing,” he replied reflexively in Japanese.
“There must be something wrong,” I replied, hoping I was getting the tenses right. In any event, my maiden effort at Japanese was no better than Suzuki-san’s rare attempts at English. “Are you homesick?”
The center fielder gave a barely perceptible nod. “No one talk to me here,” he said. He had to repeat himself four times before I could understand him, which embarrassed both of us.
“Hey, I can speak Japanese,” Pinky Melk said, rapping his knuckles on the back of my seat. “How’s this: Sushi. Teriyaki. Honda. Mitsubishi. See how good I can speak!”
“Asshole clown,” Shoji muttered in Japanese. I gave him a befuddled look. He translated his remark by whispering in my ear.
I laughed. “I’ll practice your English with you, and you can teach me Japanese. Because the CD I’ve been listening to isn’t very good, I think. How’s that for a fair trade?”
Shoji looked stricken. “You…trade me?” he gasped.
“No—no, Shoji. Not trade you. That’s not what I meant. I meant an exchange. Of knowledge.”
His face brightened. He was a sweet kid, if a bit strange. I still wished he didn’t have blue hair. “Okay! Good deal.”
He nodded to me, a quick bow of the head, and I responded in kind. “Domo arigato, Shoji.”
“You very welcome, Miss Venus. I want to…to good English speak.”
“Ganbare, Shoji!” I said to him in his own tongue. “You can do it!”
Shoji blushed at the encouragement.
My attention was drawn away by a wolf whistle coming from the back of the bus. “Romeo and Sophie sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.” Ahab was chanting the snarky little song we used to sing when we wanted to poke fun at two kids enjoying a puppy-love crush.
“Romeo and—Sophie?” I slid out of the seat next to Shoji and walked toward the back of the bus. She must have sneaked back there while I was trying to cheer up our center fielder. There she was, cuddled up with the sexually peripatetic first baseman, oblivious to Ahab’s teasing or to the leers of the other Cheers.
“Ah-ha-hemm!” I cleared my throat extravagantly, and Sophie’s eyes blinked open. Romeo grinned at me.
“Sophie, come up front and sit with me.”
She looked torn. And altogether too comfy.
“Hey, Venus. It was just a little cuddle. No harm, no foul, right?”
“Wrong, Romeo. She’s my daughter. And I’ve got my eye on you,” I warned him.
“Mom, I’m a grown woman,” Sophie whined.
I grabbed her by the arm and nearly lifted her to her feet. “Honey, I will not let you turn into me,” I hissed, as we headed for the front of the bus. “I’ve been where you just were—more or less—remember? It’s how you got here. I know it seems like I’m being harsh, but I’m trying to keep you from making at least some of the mistakes I made.”
“But I’m not you, Mom. And I can make my own decisions.” She glared at me with such ferocity that I shivered.
It was going to take a lot longer than a bus ride to Bridgeport for us to resolve our differences on this issue. And I couldn’t really have it out with her on the bus, or it would embarrass us both and, worse, make us look weak.
I was at war with myself, totally unsure of how much to push or demand or try to control, and how much to step away and let human nature take its course, allowing Sophie the opportunity to screw up, so that she might learn something from the experience, rather than attempt to prevent it, in an effort to shield her heart—and other body parts—from getting taken for a ride. So far, I’d found no easy answers. Would the two of us ever be on the same page?
Bottom of the Sixth
In our first away games, the Cheers’ numbers were no better than the stats they’d posted at home. Facing a bunch of left-handed batters he should have sent straight back to the dugout, the Melk-man failed to deliver and we lost the first game to the Ferry by a score of 5 to 1. The following night, Tommy DuPree’s second start of the season resulted in a shutout. If we hadn’t been the team that was shut out, it might have been a cause for celebration. Tommy had taken to grunting each time he released the ball; and it wasn
’t long before the opposing team decoded the grunts, which, evidently, were slightly different for each type of pitch. Whether it was a slider, a sinker, or a fastball, the Ferry heard ’em coming.
It was a glum ride back to New York City. The Cheers were already last in their division, and my daughter wasn’t talking to me.
“Move over, kiddo.” Dusty sidled into the seat beside me. “Chin up, Venus.” He kneaded the knots out of my shoulders with surprisingly expert massage skills. A moan escaped my lips before I could check it. I felt myself blush. “Rosa used to have a saying in times like these. ‘Dusty,’ she’d say to me, ‘things always get worse before they get better.’ The woman was a veritable Yogi Berra.”
He placed a gentle kiss between my shoulder blades. “Rosa had another saying, too, for times like these, ya know, when you feel like a total fuckup and a failure at just about everything in the game of life. ‘Just remember: you’re not as bad as you think you are,’ she’d tell me.”
“I’m not as bad as I think I am, huh?” I sighed, as I relaxed into Dusty’s strong hands. “Gee, what a comforting thought.”
Next thing I knew, I was dreaming that Dusty and I were riding in his motor boat, but instead of gently undulating waves, the surface beneath us was nothing but frenetically bobbing baseballs.
The Cheers were now in a bona fide slump. We’d hit a horrific heat wave as well. Our team mascot passed out from sunstroke while dancing atop the dugout in his heavy leather bomber jacket and had to be taken off the field on a stretcher, a rather inauspicious hitch, since it occurred on Mascot Bobblehead Day. The un-air-conditioned locker room became so stifling—and stinky—that tempers were testy even before the Cheers took the field. I plugged in a bunch of rotary fans, but all they did was spin the foul air in lazy, fetid circles. Even the most intrepid sports reporters resisted venturing into a low-ceilinged venue smelling of sweat socks and jockstraps. I began to think that if I had to look at those fading blue and white uniforms for one more day, I would go nuts.
Morale was in the toilet. It was time for a shake-up. If I couldn’t affect it from the inside out, then I’d have to try the opposite tack. The team needed a major league makeover. A totally new look.
So I did what I’d done back when I was dancing for a living and my performance persona was no longer exciting the customers. I’d used the same strategy with my girls when a revue began to get stale and business started dropping off. In New York City, everything was at my fingertips, and in some cases, right within walking distance. I dug out my sketch pad and colored pencils and strolled up to the garment district for some fabric swatches.
Joy Ashe sounded surprised to receive my phone call. “I’ve got an idea I’d like to run by you,” I told her. “And I need your skills as a calligrapher. It’s about the Cheers. I wonder if you can help me with some prototypes.”
A few days later I called a meeting of the management, including Marty deMarley, who owned enough shares in the team to warrant his inclusion at the table, if only as a courtesy. Besides, even though I couldn’t stand him, he was still Dad’s nephew. And I wasn’t going to be a sore winner.
We convened on neutral territory, in Cap Gaines’s conference room. Citing the Cheers’ lackluster performance, and dwindling interest from the fans, who, from my reading of the attendance figures, seemed to have given up on the team by degrees over the past three seasons, I announced that I was establishing a couple of key cosmetic changes.
“For starters, we’re going to revamp the Cheers’ uniforms.”
You should have seen the appalled faces. I might as well have told them I was replacing the players’ paychecks with carnival scrip. I reminded them all that professional sports teams redesign their uniforms practically as often as the players change socks. The last time I checked out the San Diego Padres, they no longer wore brown and orange, but were attired in blue and buff, colors more befitting Lord Nelson’s navy than their namesake monks who founded Southern California’s missions.
I pressed my point. “Not only do totally new uniforms give the team a fresh look, but it’s also an excellent marketing tool. With attendance down, the Cheers have been steadily hemorrhaging money, and we need to find alternative ways to recapture the funds we’re losing at the gate. We redo the uniforms, and everyone will want to buy jerseys and caps in the brand-new colors and styles.” Referring to the Cheers’ current outfits, I insisted that “blue and white is basic and boring. It’s totally generic and says nothing about who we are—what our ethos, our zeitgeist is.”
Barry Weed looked nervous before I even dropped the other shoe. “She’s talking German at me,” he muttered to Peter Argent.
I rose to my feet, leaving the rest of them gazing up at me. Dick Fernando’s eyes glazed over. He was probably looking up my skirt. “We’re the Bronx Cheers, right? Right. So—what’s a ‘Bronx Cheer’? C’mon folks, think jargon!”
“I get it!” Cousin Marty exclaimed. He stuck his tongue between his lips and blew, fluttering his lower lip with a loud putt-putt sound. “A raspberry! Of course!” Then he gave me an utterly stymied look. “Wait—I don’t get it. What does a ‘Bronx Cheer’ have to do with uniforms?”
“I’m changing their color,” I said emphatically. “Executive decision.” I looked around the table. “Don’t even try to talk me out of it.” I opened my briefcase and took out my sketch pad, on which I’d rendered, in full color, a drawing of the Cheers’ new duds.
“Ohmigod, they’re pink!” Linda deMarley shouted.
“Fucking pink!” echoed Peter Argent. “You want the Cheers to wear fucking pink uniforms!”
“I don’t know what shade ‘fucking pink’ is, exactly,” I replied smoothly. “‘Shocking pink’ would be closer.”
“Well, I, for one, am shocked,” Dusty muttered, holding his head. “Venus, what the heck do you think you’re doing? The kids are gonna look like a bunch of queers in these uniforms.”
I ignored his tone-deaf remark. “Don’t you get it, folks? They’re raspberry-colored. The exact same color as raspberry sorbet.”
Dick Fernando practically raised his fist at me. “Sorbet, my ass. They’re the color of the inside of a vagina, for Chrissakes.”
“Only you would think that, Dick.” The man thoroughly disgusted me. And if he was going to continue to stare at my tatas, I wished he would have a fatal heart attack in the process. It would serve him right.
“No one’s gonna like this, Olivia.” Dick turned to the other limited partner. “I knew she’d be a total disaster, Peter, but never in my hairiest nightmares did I think it would be this bad.”
“If Uncle Augie saw these, he’d start spinning in his grave,” Marty snarled. I could tell he was still mad at me for eating his dinosaur cookies.
Linda smacked his arm. “He doesn’t have a grave, you putz. He was cremated, remember?”
“It’s a figure of speech, Linda. Lighten up.”
Barry Weed lit another cigarette and began to pace. “People with penises are going to wear these, Livy. They’re going to look like fucking fruits!”
“Actually, raspberries are a fruit,” Linda said helpfully.
“And while we’re on the subject,” I said, ignoring my detractors’ cacophony, “we’re going to have a brand-new mascot, too. With a new logo to match.” Joy had done a bang-up job with the lettering for the new logo. I turned the page on my sketch pad to reveal a drawing of the revamped, revitalized mascot costume. “Ta-da!”
Dusty looked at me, aghast. “You’re kidding me, right? You want to turn the Bronx Cheers’ mascot into a giant raspberry? Oh, for the love of Mike, please tell me I’m dreaming. But this is mild—this mascot—this I could maybe wrap my brain around by the end of the century and finally get used to it. And the little grinning raspberry logo I might be able to live with some day, too. It’s the rest of the equation that gets my goat and strangles it. Venus, you want to put a bunch of barely postadolescent, testosterone-fueled athletes in pink uniforms!” H
e glanced at the pampered Yorkie in Linda’s lap, who was sporting a fuchsia bow in her topknot. “I mean, this is how Linda dresses her lapdog, for cryin’ out loud!”
“You’d better not be insulting my Rosebud!” Linda exclaimed, her face turning as pink as her pooch’s hair bow.
“You people have the courage of agoraphobics,” I said. “Put your prejudices aside for a minute and really think about this from a marketing standpoint. Let’s just discuss the issue of the mascot right now. What does a baseball-headed guy in a bomber jacket have to do with a team called the Bronx Cheers? Now, this is perfect,” I said, pointing to my sketch. “It is a Bronx Cheer. You can’t get any more accurate—or whimsical—for that matter, than a ginormous raspberry. Minor league baseball is supposed to be fun! It’s entertainment—which is something I do have a lifetime of experience in.”
Marty deMarley lovingly looked down at his ubiquitous blue jersey with its white piping. “Holy crap!” he shouted, as if he’d just sat on a thumbtack. “Does this mean I’ll have to wear pink shirts for the rest of my life? Say it ain’t so!” he moaned, glancing at his wife for moral support.
Linda gave him a funny look. I wondered what was going on inside the woman’s head as she caressed her yapping dust mop.
Linda suppressed a giggle. Olivia’s new raspberry-colored uniforms might in fact be one of the best things that ever happened to her marriage. Maybe Marty would finally begin dressing like a grown-up at home, in preference to sporting polyblend shirts in a color that only Elsa Schiaparelli would have appreciated. “I think the new uniforms are wonderful,” Linda said, flashing me a professionally whitened smile. “And I fully support your decision to change them. Not only that—I think the new logo is positively adorable, and the mascot is genius. Genius!” She couldn’t wait to get home, pop the champagne, and crow to Marty, “Venus has really done it this time!”
Choosing Sophie Page 15
