Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  When I had wound up my sad little monologue, I said, “Angelika, how much time did you have before your grandmother … you know … uh?”

  She pulled her feet away from me and curled her arms around her knees. Suddenly, I could breathe. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how long was it between when you first knew something was wrong and when she totally couldn’t function anymore?”

  Angelika said, “So I’m guessing you haven’t told your parents about your grandfather’s blanking-out episodes yet? I’m sure it’s not the same for everybody, but I don’t think you have a huge amount of time. I think with Grandma, from the first time we noticed anything major to the time she needed to be put in a home was only maybe six months. But you know, Pete —”

  “I know. I should tell my mom everything.”

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say … even though you know I was thinking it. I was going to say, if you need any help with the video, I’ll be glad to come along.”

  “Thanks. I’m going over to his house tomorrow to do some more filming. Maybe I’ll ask him if it would be all right. I mean, I’d really like to have you there.”

  Angelika stretched so that her feet were against me again. “OK,” she said. “Now I have a question for you. What kind of girls does Adam like?”

  I moved away from her. Of all the questions in the world, this had to be up there with the all-time, world-record-breaking mood killers. I was tempted to say something that would reflect really badly on AJ. But then again, he was my best friend. I would just have to be as noble as I could in this horrible situation. “Well,” I said, “he’s — um — well, I don’t think he likes one specific type of girl.”

  Translation: He’s so hormone-crazed that if you’re breathing, you’re his type.

  “OK, I’ll break this down. Does he like short girls?”

  Yeah, like I couldn’t freaking see where this was heading. But I nodded. “Sure,” I said. Because, you know, short girls generally do breathe.

  “How about dark-haired girls?”

  Crap. I nodded again, and edged all the way over against the far arm of the couch.

  “With glasses?”

  Good God, why didn’t she just rip out my heart and stomp on it? I used every ounce of my willpower to wrestle my mouth into a grin. “Glasses are fine,” I said. “I’m telling you, AJ just isn’t that picky. OK?” I tensed my legs and got ready to walk out of there with some shred of dignity intact.

  “Wow, this is perfect!” Angelika exclaimed.

  I didn’t see what kind of perfect this was, other than perfectly screwed-up. I stood and grabbed my cocoa mug.

  Angelika jumped to her feet, and said, “Elena is going to be so happy!”

  I put down the mug and whirled to face her. “Elena? Elena who?”

  “Elena Zubritskaya!”

  “Elena Zubritskaya?”

  “You know, the Russian girl with the really big, um …”

  “Accent?”

  “Yeah, her. See, I’ve been working on my photos of Adam — you know, for the project? Catch ’em lookin’ good?”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “Well, I was carrying a big blowup poster I made of Adam blocking a shot in basketball, and she asked what I was carrying. When I showed her, she said, ‘I always think he so cute!’ So I figured maybe … well, Adam just seems so lonely sometimes, so I thought maybe the two of them could … I don’t know … get together. What do you think?”

  Now my smile was genuine. Also huge. “I think it’s genius! Because, truthfully, I had kind of thought that you and Adam — AJ — Adam … I kind of thought you and he, um, had something.”

  She laughed. “Me and Adam? Are you kidding?”

  “Well, he’s this big sports stud, and he’s so much fun to be around. And I’m, like, Mister Depression. Plus, you sleep in his bed, and you’re suddenly taking pictures of him. Then he’s coming over to your house, and you’re all mad at me for not telling him about my arm. So I just figured —”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me down so we were sitting on the couch together. Close together. “Pete,” she said, “you’re right. Adam is cute, in a big sheepdog kind of way. And he is really fun. But I like intense guys. Smart, intense guys. I like you.”

  “But …”

  “Believe me, OK? Listen, I’ll tell you why I like you. Remember the first time we met, when I caught you staring at me, so I made a joke about it — and you blushed? And then you laughed and got busted by the teacher?”

  “Um, I wasn’t staring, I was … all right, I was staring. So?”

  “So then I asked to switch classes, too. Because …”

  “Because that teacher was a moron?”

  “Well, yeah. But also because I wanted to get to know you. Not Adam. You!”

  “Really?”

  “Peter, I don’t care who can throw a ball harder. You’re the one that blushed when you looked at me. You’re the one who’s so concerned with your grandfather — guys never show that kind of emotion. You’re different. And then — remember when I came over to do your portrait?”

  “Of course.”

  “And do you remember how much I was flirting with you?”

  “You were doing that on purpose?”

  “Duh.” Wow, I thought. AJ was actually right about a girl. Who knew? She continued, “So there I was, like, playing with my bra strap while you snapped away. But the one picture you chose out of the whole set was the one where I wasn’t posing at all.”

  “The one with the brownies.”

  “The one with the brownies. It was like you’re so sweet that you made me look sweet. Does that make any sense?”

  “Nope,” I said, and leaned toward her. When we kissed, I could feel that she was smiling.

  Every day for the rest of the long Thanksgiving weekend, I did two things. First, I went running in the freezing cold with AJ. Next, I headed over to my grandfather’s house with a camera and shot video. He really seemed to love talking about his life, and I found out a ton of stuff I had never known. Some examples:

  He had gone to Vietnam as a newspaper photographer, gotten shot down in helicopters twice, and won a journalism award for his coverage of a big battle called the Tet Offensive right before my mom was born. But he gave up his career as a combat photographer when my grandmother called him home. Or, as he put it, “She told me I could sleep in ditches and get shot at all day, or I could come home, sleep in our warm bed, and change diapers. It was a close call — some of your mother’s diapers were pretty toxic — but the only thing in the world more important than your career is your family. Never forget that.”

  He had shot the weddings of three future members of Congress, two famous rock musicians, one murderer, one reality-TV star, and all four children of a legendary race car driver. He had done weddings in chapels, in huge megachurches, in mosques, on the tops of mountains, on an airplane, in the middle of the ocean on a yacht, and even underwater with scuba gear. But his all-time favorite wedding was the very first legal gay marriage performed in Connecticut, between two middle-aged men. “Why?” I asked. He grinned. “It was the easiest shoot ever,” he said. “No bride!”

  He and my grandmother had been married for half a century, and had only had three major arguments. The first was when he came home from Vietnam and found out she had gotten their house painted pink. “Your grandma Joanie told me it had looked like more of a brick red on the paint sample sheet,” Grampa said. “A wonderful woman, but she had no sense of color.”

  The second argument was the day after my mom’s high school graduation, when my grandmother had accidentally walked into his darkroom and ruined three rolls of film — every picture he had taken of Mom in her cap and gown. “That one was my fault,” he said. “I didn’t lock the door. I always, always locked the door. But my mother had cancer at the time, and it was getting pretty close to the end. I was so excited to get everything developed so I could rush over to the hospital and show he
r the photos of her granddaughter all grown up … eh, you know what? The reason doesn’t matter. Whenever you’re mad, there’s always a reason. All that matters is, never yell at your wife. And you know what your great-grandmother said when I got to the hospital? I ran in there with a big bunch of flowers and told her the whole story. She said, ‘I know how beautiful my own grandchild is. I don’t need pictures for that.’ Then she made me march right home and give Joanie the flowers.”

  The third argument had happened just a few weeks before my own grandmother’s death from heart failure. Even four years after the fact, Grampa could barely talk about it. “I tried to get her out of bed. It was a beautiful day, and the docs kept saying the more she walked around, the better it would be for her heart. And we had always gone walking together. But she wouldn’t get up. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. Over and over. But I wouldn’t stop asking. Finally, she turned to me and said, ‘I walked with you for half a century. Today, I can’t do it. So would you please be quiet and just lie down next to me?’” Grampa started crying, and asked me to pause the recording for a minute. When he told me to start up again, he said, “Where was I? Oh, the last fight … you know what? Sometimes, letting go is the best you can do.”

  Grampa sat there for a while, nodding his head, lost in the memory. I stopped recording again, and waited without saying anything. For the first time I could remember, Grampa was the one who broke the silence. “Do we have any tuna fish?” he asked.

  I got up, ran into the kitchen, and checked. “Yes,” I said. “We do.”

  “Um,” he said, “do I like tuna fish?”

  That was the bad part of spending so much time there: I had a close-up view of all the ways Grampa was slipping. He could remember the dress his dead wife had worn fifty-four years before, but in the present he wasn’t sure whether he liked tuna. He could name maybe two thousand brides, but kept forgetting whether he had brushed his teeth that morning. And, because staring at someone through a zoom lens for an hour a day really makes you notice details, I saw that other things were starting to go: his collars were frayed. His sweaters were stained. His hair was a little clumpy. There were dust bunnies all over the house.

  On Sunday afternoon, I asked him, “Grampa, are you all right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean … are you doing OK living alone here?”

  He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes for a while. Then he said, “It’s hard, Peter. And it’s getting harder. But I’m not ready to give up yet. All I want is to be the one that says when. All right?”

  I nodded.

  Suddenly, he leaned forward and clapped his hands together. “Well, that’s one discussion over with,” he said. “Now, do we still have any of that tuna?”

  Ah, December. The month of peace and candlelight. The month when all the good little children are lying snug in their beds, with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. The month when your best friend drags you to an unheated, godforsaken warehouse three times a week to practice for baseball tryouts.

  Or maybe that last one just happens to me.

  AJ’s mom works for a lumber-distribution company, and every year since fifth grade or so, AJ and I have started our pitching/catching workouts in January in an empty corner of their massive storage facility right outside of town. This year, though, AJ was determined to start earlier than ever. He was obsessed with being in “sick he-man condition” in time for the indoor February junior varsity tryouts, and apparently, running me halfway to death was only the first part of the equation.

  Thus, despite the constant warnings of my mother (“Do you want your arm to just fall off completely?”) and my now-on-again girlfriend (“Do you want AJ to just punch you in the face and never talk to you again when he finds out the truth?”), I went with AJ. I kept meaning to tell him what was going on. But the moment had to be right, and the longer I waited, the harder it got. Plus, he really did need a practice catcher, and I wasn’t hurting my bad arm just by warming him up. This might sound like an excuse, but the more time went on, the more I wanted AJ to make the team.

  I wasn’t totally stupid: I told him I wasn’t ready to throw yet, so we brought a bucket of balls, and I just rolled each one off to the side after I caught it. Still, I could hardly believe that there I was, crouched down in catching position behind the home plate that AJ’s dad had spray-painted onto the concrete floor back when he was still around. I was trying to field fastballs, breaking pitches, and my best friend’s random thoughts all at once.

  “Dude,” he said, one morning between Christmas and New Year’s, “was that a strike? By the way, thanks for the gift idea for Elena. When I gave it to her, she said, ‘Is perfect!’ How did you know she would get all happy about a book of love poems in Russian?”

  “Angelika. She’s like the Online Shopping Queen. She even got me this beastly Derek Jeter jersey for Hanukkah, when I never said anything to her about him.”

  Thwack! The next pitch exploded into my mitt, which really stings when it’s only fifty freaking degrees in the room. “Uh, I gave her that idea,” AJ said. “So, were the last two pitches strikes?”

  “The first one was. The last one missed the corner.”

  Thwack! “How ’bout that one? And by the way, how do you expect to be ready in a month and a half if you won’t even lob the ball back to me yet? Plus, do you think I need to update my style?”

  “Um, strike, mind your own business, and why?”

  Thwack! “Elena said I dress like a peasant.”

  “A peasant? She said that?”

  Thwack! “Well, yeah, but I think she meant it in a gentle and loving way. She doesn’t have the biggest vocabulary, but we manage to communicate.” Thwack! “What are you laughing about? We do communicate.”

  “I bet. Anyway, you could probably use a little fashion upgrade.”

  “Oh, because you’re so spiffy in your closetful of oversize sportswear?” Thwack!

  I couldn’t help noticing AJ had put a little something extra on that last pitch. “Hey, this isn’t about me. You asked me what I thought. Anyway, just ask her to take you to the mall. Girls love taking their boyfriends shopping. It’s well-known.” Heh-heh. It felt amazingly great to say that to him, for a change.

  Thwack! “Maybe I’ll try that,” he said. “By the way, have you told your parents about your grandfather yet?”

  See, it does totally suck when your significant other and your best pal are friends with each other, because then they can tag-team you. I shook out my throbbing hand, and said, “Can we try some off-speed stuff for a while? You, uh, don’t want to burn yourself out too early.”

  “Good point. Just let me throw five more fastballs, all right? Now, about that grandfather thing. You know your parents are totally going to notice eventually, right?”

  Thwack! “Yeah, but —”

  “And what if your grandfather hurts himself in the meantime?”

  Thwack! “Well, I made him promise to call me if —”

  “Dude. Listen to yourself. It’s not your job to be responsible for him all day. You’re not his grandfather; he’s yours. Trust me, secrets suck. You’d feel so much better if you let this one go.”

  Thwack! Wow, I thought. When did AJ suddenly start sounding logical? “I’m working on it, all right?”

  Thwack! “Like you’re working on your throwing arm?”

  Thwack! Without warning, AJ put everything he had into his last fastball. I barely got my glove up in time, and my hand felt like it was turning into hamburger meat. “What the hell was that?”

  “Nothing. I’m just working out. Somebody has to be in shape for the season!”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’m doing what I have to do. Now, are we done for the day? My hand is killing.”

  He whipped his glove into the ball bucket and stormed off to his mother’s office, where his little brothers were frolicking all over the copy machine. “Well,” I muttered into the vast emptiness of the
warehouse floor, “that went well.”

  I spent the whole stupid month worrying: What if my grandfather did fall or something? How was I supposed to tell AJ I could never play again without making him mad at me forever? And was Angelika tipping AJ off about stuff? Between all of that and getting ready for first-semester finals, I felt like I was in some kind of nightmarish, inescapable tunnel of stress. Plus, Angelika and I had to finalize the yearbook layouts for all of the fall sports, and get as much done as we could for the winter ones. On the bright side, that meant we could squeeze in some time together between my visits to my grandfather, the workouts with AJ (which kept going even though AJ was being mighty touchy for a guy with a brand-new girlfriend), and the studying we both had to do.

  There’s nothing more romantic than working side by side with your partner by the warm, toasty glow of the computer monitor, judging, cutting, and pasting photos of other girls in skimpy uniforms. I mean, yes, we had to lay out all of the guys’ sports, too. But guys at least wear some freaking clothing for most of their activities. And there isn’t so much spandex involved. I was dying. And Angelika knew it.

  The fun never stopped. If it wasn’t the volleyball team, it was the gymnasts. Or the cheerleaders. The dance team. The cross-country girls in their ultra-short shorts. And Angelika kept asking, “So, do you think she looks pretty in this shot? Or how about this other girl? You don’t think she’s too, um, sweaty, do you?” I swear, the biggest relief of my life came when it was time to pick the shots for the golf team — thank God for nice, long khaki pants, I always say.

  Naturally, Angelika gave me the hardest time over the swim team. It seemed like every third picture featured Linnie Vaughn, who was always smiling seductively, always dripping wet, and always wearing the smallest suits of any competitive swimmer in history. Angelika scrolled through everything we had with Linnie in it, and then stood up. She stuck out her hip in a supermodel pose and said, “Make me look beautiful! Darling, I am a star!” Then she strutted around the tiny office, repeating it. “Make me look beautiful! Make me look beautiful!” Then she bent down next to my ear and whispered, “Do I look that beautiful, Pete?”