by Sam Carter
Once they started speaking he noticed more about her than just her choice of wardrobe. Harlan noticed her beautiful green eyes that would make the evergreen trees of western Washington pale in comparison. He finally saw her perfect, long blonde hair and her body, oh that body, that make-traffic-stop-from-Seattle-to-Tacoma body. Once Harlan realized just how gorgeous Emily was, he was glad he hadn’t noticed earlier. He knew if he had, the likelihood that he would still be talking to her was slim to none. But he brushed that thought aside and turned his attention 100 percent to the world’s one and only Perfect Ten.
Harlan and Emily sat on the porch until 2 a.m. just talking. They talked about Junior Griffey and debated whether the trade for some tall, lanky, mullet-haired pitcher was the ace the Mariners’ staff had spent years searching for. They talked about their families, their ambitions, and how they were going to change the world. It’s amazing how much you can learn about someone when you just listen, and every word Emily spoke was amazing to hear.
They both came from very loving, though quite different, homes. Growing up, while Harlan was an only child, Emily was number three of five—right smack dab in the middle. While Harlan got all the attention his parents had to give, Emily was that middle child that sometimes got lost in the shuffle, but she never let that bother her. She continued to work hard to accomplish every goal a teenage girl could possibly imagine. If Emily wanted something, anything at all, she would get it because she knew she could. Her family didn’t have much money growing up only fifteen minutes from the Canadian border in the small town of Custer, Washington, but she felt privileged. For that reason, she wanted to be a high school guidance counselor in the most destitute and impoverished place she could find in Seattle. She was amazing. She was perfection. Absolute and utter perfection.
Before he answered, Harlan took another deep breath and reminded himself that Emily was not calling to re-confess her love for him and read him some long, sappy poem she had written about how she couldn’t live without him. As much as Harlan wished that would be the case, he knew there was no way it would ever happen. He didn’t deserve her. Never did. He just wished he hadn’t screwed up so much that she had finally realized it.
“Hey, Emily. How goes it?” Harlan was still smooth after all these years.
“I’m good, Harlan. I hope that I’m not catching you at a bad time. Jack said you were going to have a busy day today, and I know how that can be for you.” Just hearing her voice caused his heart to skip another beat. Too much of this and he was going to end up in the emergency room himself.
It wasn’t just her voice, but the fact that her first worry continued to be making sure the other person was in the best position possible. She was never worried about life being inconvenient for her. Even after all Harlan had put her through, she still wanted to make sure all was right for him.
“Nope, now’s great. Just on my way to come get Jack for the game.” As he said that, Harlan became worried that was the reason she was calling him in the first place. Could Jack not go? Had something happened to change Emily’s mind? Or maybe it was Jack who didn’t want to go?
“I was hoping I would catch you before you got too close.” Shoot. Emily was about to deliver the hammer and let Harlan know he would be alone that night again. Could anything go right today? “Jack is staying a little later at school today to help tutor some kids, so he is going to meet you at the park. Does that work for you?”
Harlan exhaled a little too loudly, because, by the gasp that Emily let out on the other end, he could tell he had surprised her. He was still coming, thank goodness. “Perfect. How’s he getting there? The bus? He’s not driving, is he?”
“Nope. He’s not quite ready for that. He is, but I’m not. He’s taking the bus. It’s pretty much a straight shot for him from school. And don’t worry, he’ll be there about 6:30 so you two can grab some food and still be in your seats for the first pitch.”
“Great. I will be waiting for him outside the gate we go in for each game,” Harlan said, hoping that he could somehow drag this conversation out longer and they could talk forever. “Just have him call or text if he is running late.”
“Will do. Have fun tonight. This is all he has been talking about for weeks. Thanks for being there for him. He deserves a dad.”
And you deserve a good husband, Harlan thought as they hung up, and I wish it were still me.
Chapter 11
Because he didn’t have to pick up Jack, Harlan got to Safeco, home of the Mariners, much earlier than he had planned. This worked for him because it gave him a few minutes to change into his Masterson jersey. Those few minutes meant he didn’t have to go to the game wearing his shirt and tie. He hated when he had to do that.
It also gave him the time to do two more tasks as he waited outside the ballpark for Jack. The first was to worry, one of the things that Harlan did best. Worry. Worry about his patients. Worry about traffic. Worry about the starting lineup for the game. But most of all, worry about Jack as he traveled to the game. He knew that Jack could handle the bus ride just fine, but it still made Harlan pull out more and more hair each time he did it.
If Harlan had his way, Emily and the kids would be living in a much safer part of western Washington, but that was not what Emily wanted. Three years ago she had landed her dream job, high school guidance counselor, at Franklin High School right in the middle of Seattle, and she insisted that they live close to the school. She felt that there was no way that she could guide these kids through their tough and significant years if she lived in plush living conditions in some Seattle suburb.
Plus, she wanted to be in her kids’ school. She felt it made the job mean even more. So she up and moved the kids to a small home right around the corner from the high school. It was not a dangerous area for Seattle, but it still made Harlan nervous. He felt justified in his worry because that was what he felt a good dad should do. And he probably wouldn’t stop being concerned about Jack’s traveling to the game until he saw him waving when he finally got there.
The second task Harlan did while he waited was check his Twitter account to see what news he could get about tonight’s game. He typically listened to the radio as he drove, but he had been distracted by Emily’s call and never even turned it on.
He unlocked his phone and opened his Twitter app to see what the people he followed—not stalked, followed—were talking about. Harlan didn’t like to brag, but he had to have the most creative name on Twitter of anyone in the history of the social networking site: @DocAllred. He didn’t like to reveal to people how he came up with this inspired and innovative name, but it involved a very expensive marketing firm and months and months of research. Either that, or he looked at his name tag at work.
First thing Harlan searched for was the Mariners’ Twitter account because they would have posted the starting lineups before the game so anxious fans could know. After scrolling through his feed, he finally found the tweet, but he was confused by what he saw. Everything looked normal except for one glaring mistake. Next to the SS for the starting shortstop was Salmon, not Masterson.
Harlan tried to wipe away whatever had to be in his eyes that was making it difficult to read properly because there was no way that what he was seeing was real. But when he read the tweet again, it said the same thing. He looked through more of their tweets hoping that there would be a correction, but he found nothing. Masterson was really not starting.
As a fan, Harlan could understand this decision by the Mariners not to start their star today. It was the last game of the season. The playoffs would be starting in a few days, and they needed Masterson healthy. A fluke injury could happen at any moment, and they could not afford that if they wanted to bring home that World Series title.
But also as a fan, Harlan could not make sense of this decision at all. Today was the day the fans were going to experience history being made. Masterson’s not playing would suck a lot of joy out of today’s game. This must have been what it was like
for the people of Mudville when Mighty Casey struck out.
Now Harlan had something else to worry about—how in the world was he going to break this news to Jack? For Harlan, his biggest worry in life was that his kids would end up even slightly like him in any way. If they could just be 110 percent like their mother, they would have happy lives and would be well-adjusted members of society. Unfortunately, he knew, as did every other parent in the world, that was impossible. Whether on the nature or the nurture side of the argument, he had to admit that kids always seemed to get some of both their parents’ characteristics. Bad and good.
For Jack, this meant he had a passion for his favorite sports teams. Actually, it was more like an obsession. It was a crazy, over-the-top, all-consuming obsession that Jack inherited from both his father and grandfather. It meant not being able to watch any sports highlight shows the morning after a loss. It meant that when his favorite player got hurt, he didn’t go online for fear of reading another article about it. It meant pacing halls at night in frustration when his team lost any game, so for the Allred men it meant that most seasons they were, you guessed it, sleepless in Seattle. With that in mind, Harlan had to figure out how he would tell Jack the news so that it would not ruin their night together.
Harlan looked on his phone and noticed it was 6:15, which meant he only had fifteen minutes to formulate the perfect way to let Jack know about Masterson. He was never very good at this kind of stuff when it came to Jack and Leslie. He could tell a family that their child was not going to make it through the night in a way that would help them feel as much ease as they possibly could, but when he had to tell his children he was out of ice cream or their favorite team lost, he turned into a bumbling fool. He knew they would handle it just fine, but it didn’t make it any easier for him. Strange how life works.
After thinking about it more, he finally realized that there was probably only one way to make sure he did this right the first time—call his dad. The great Dr. Alan Allred had years and years of practice breaking bad sports news to his own son, and he always seemed to have done it perfectly. He consistently knew exactly how to talk to Harlan even when he was being, as his father always so lovingly put it, a first-class moron.
Harlan pressed the speed dial for his dad and after two rings he picked up, but skipping his usual hello said, “No Masterson, I see.” He always knew why Harlan was calling. He was either a physic or a genius. Or perhaps both.
“Not tonight, it seems. The guy plays the first one hundred and sixty-one games and now they sit him down? Crazy with what he is about to accomplish. You would think the Mariners would want him on the field for it.”
“True. But you can’t risk having him get injured just to put on a show. Unfortunate, still.” Harlan was not surprised his dad had gone through the same thought process about Masterson sitting out. How does the saying go? Great minds think alike? Or maybe it’s fanatical minds think alike. Either way, they were both on the same wavelength on this one. Harlan was right to call his dad.
“Jack is meeting me here in just a few minutes. He has been looking forward to this game—to see Masterson finish off the season on the field—for weeks. Seeing that he was lucky enough to have been born with the Allred Crazy Sports Fan Gene, how do I break this news to him?” Harlan felt like a little kid asking his dad to help him with some impossible math word problem about two trains driving toward each other at different speeds. Luckily, his dad always knew how to figure out those questions, too.
“Funny you ask. I was just thinking of calling you so I could break the news to you first.”
“I think I am going to make it this time, but thanks, Dad,” Harlan said through the laughter. “Honestly, I am concerned about Jack. What should I do for this one?”
“This might be a tough one, but I think I have something.” Thank goodness, Harlan thought, because he still had nothing. “Do you remember what happened during the 1983 Seahawks season? It had to do with your sports idol at the time?”
Harlan pondered about this for a second and then remembered. “That was the year Chuck Knox decided to bench Jim Zorn in the middle of the season.” Jim Zorn was Harlan’s favorite football player as a kid—the quarterback from day one in the 1976 season when Seattle finally got an NFL team. He was not the world’s best quarterback, or really a very good one at all, but he was fun to watch—a charismatic leader who loved to run around the field and sling the ball as hard as he could. Harlan loved that guy, and the day they decided to sit him down on the bench for good was not a happy one in Harlan’s life.
“That’s the one. You were just twelve, and he was all you talked about during the football season. Your room was covered in his posters and your handmade drawings from top to bottom, and I use the word drawings loosely. When you played football with your friends you always had to be quarterback and you played just like him. Running around like an animal, trying to make throws that weren’t there. If I remember correctly, your neighborhood team won about as often as those Seahawks teams did.” Alan laughed again, but not at Harlan. He was just laughing at another fatherhood memory that kept him going.
“You stuck with him when everyone was calling for anyone else in the world to start. You were so blinded by your love for Zorn, you could not see what everyone else could see. It was time to move on. I knew it, and you know what? Zorn probably did, too. But you wanted him to be wearing number ten for Seattle forever.”
Alan paused for a moment, as if he was reliving the memory all over again. “I think it was the sixth or seventh game of the season, and it was just brutal. Zorn was a disaster. I woke up the next morning early, went out, picked up the paper, and turned right to the sports page. First thing I saw was a quote from Seattle’s coach saying it was time to move on for good from Zorn. Do you know what my first thought was when I saw that?”
Harlan knew he’d thought about how his son would take the news.
“It was about you, son. Just like you right now, I only had a few minutes to come up with the perfect plan before you bounced down the stairs. I thought about shielding you from it, taking you out of school for the day so there was no way you would hear it. But I knew that wasn’t an option. Eventually you would hear. Plus, your mom would never let me take you out of school for a whole day. So responsible, that woman. Do you remember what happened next?”
Harlan could tell Alan was hoping that this instance had stuck with him like it had for Alan; it had been a major bonding occasion in their lives. Harlan racked his brain for this memory. He wanted to remember for both his dad and for Jack. What was it? What did his dad do for him that day?
Sensing Harlan could not remember, Alan spoke up. “Honestly, I wouldn’t expect you to. It was so small. Only the person who did it would probably remember. Before you came down the stairs, I got out a pair of scissors and cut the article out. Of course, I thought of just throwing it away, but instead I got out a piece of paper and glued the article to it. Then I placed it in a binder and put it on your chair at the table.”
“I do remember that. I remember going to my seat and seeing the binder. I remember wondering what it was and you wordlessly telling me to open it up. I remember reading the article and hoping that there was more on another page saying that they were going to give Zorn one more start. I looked up at you, tears starting to form in my eyes, and you said that was just part of being a fan. The names on the back of the jersey change, but it’s the name on the front of the jersey that matters most.” Harlan smiled at that memory. How his dad knew exactly what to say and helped him get through the sports crisis of a twelve-year-old boy.
“That’s the funny thing, Harlan. I didn’t say anything at all. I just looked at you and let you work through it. You came to that conclusion yourself. I just chose to treat you like a man. And you responded. Like a man.”
Harlan was unsure what to say as tears formed in his eyes once more. He fought them back and said the only thing he could think of. “Thanks, Dad.”
�
��You’re welcome, son. Even though you lost your way for a bit, you’re a good dad. Give me a call tomorrow and let me know how it goes with you and Jack.”
“Will do. How about instead we have breakfast together tomorrow? I plan on getting to the hospital at ten, so how about eight? I could use a little home-cooked meal at la Casa de Allred.” Harlan didn’t get to the old house often enough, and tomorrow seemed like the perfect time. He could use some doctor-to-doctor advice, too.
“It’s officially on the schedule. I’ll let your mom know. I am sure she will make something elaborate and special for you.”
Harlan laughed. “I am sure she will. Tell her that her famous peanut butter and jelly sandwiches will do just fine, even for breakfast.” Now Alan laughed, too.
“All right. Now go. Enjoy the game with Jack. Give him a hug from his old Grandpa.”
As they hung up, Harlan smiled. He really was glad he called his dad. When he was young he always thought that his dad was Superman. As he got older, he started to realize that he was fortunate. His dad really was Superman.
Harlan continued to smile as he looked up to see Jack walking over from the bus. Game time. Time to be like the dad that Harlan had as a kid—that he still had today. Time to be the dad that his son deserved.
Chapter 12
Clara sat at the nurse’s station on the fourth floor exhausted and beside herself, wishing she could be any place other than work. Not that she didn’t love her job. She did more than words could describe, but this was the sort of night that made her wish she worked in a much less involved field, something where she could just clock in and clock out and not give a crap about what happened when she left through the door. Health care, especially nursing, was not that way at all.
And what about Marcus? She was supposed to be out with her firefighter tonight. Not to be selfish, but she could use another night out with her muscle-bound freak of nature. Luckily, he understood that Clara needed to be here, another thing that made him so great. He understood that she needed to be with her patients. Unlike her policeman, Dalton, whom she was with just last night. That dude was so needy.
