“I promised Dad,” Alice enunciates slowly and clearly.
“Well he’s not here now, is he?”
“That’s the point, Mom.”
“What did we agree on last night?”
“We didn’t agree on anything last night. You made some pronouncements, I kept my mouth shut.”
“We agreed that if you get your grades up where they belong then you can do the garden.”
“I didn’t agree to that.”
“That’s the deal.”
“I can’t accept that.”
“You’re going to have to learn how to accept it. If your father were here—”
“—We wouldn’t be having this discussion.”
“If your father were here—”
“—Don’t go there, Mom.”
Alice stands up, puts the Fantastik under the counter, rinses the sponge in the sink, and walks out of the kitchen.
“Just where do you think you’re going?”
“To do my homework.”
Alice hears a cabinet door slam as she crosses the yard to her dad’s workshop, where she will most likely not do her homework, where she will most likely sit there wishing she could write a letter to her dad about fat, fast Uncle Eddie and the garden and the muck and the mud, and the way the machine was roaring under her hands as she guided it through its last pass around the garden.
She closes her eyes and it’s a September afternoon. Clear blue sky, bright sun, cool breeze. She and Matt are in the garden picking tomatoes. He finds a flawless Brandywine, wipes it clean with his shirt and passes it to her. He finds another one for himself, polishes it, and takes a bite, like it’s an apple. He pulls the kitchen salt shaker out of his pocket, sprinkles on some salt and savors every last bit of it, tomato juice running down his chin. Nothing has ever tasted better. The sunwarmed flesh of the tomato, the sharp, acidic tang of the first bite, the kick of the salt intensifying everything. This is a ritual with them. The finding, the picking, the perfect late summer beefsteak tomato, the salt shaker stolen from the kitchen, the hum of the crickets heralding fall, and the explosion of flavor in their mouths. No words required.
April 29th
It’s the Red Wings’ home opener against Syracuse. Alice is sitting in the bleachers with John Kimball, his father, his kid brother, Joey, and Mrs. Minty. A very short and very chubby high school girl from Mendon with beautiful long, dark hair has just sung “The Star-Spangled Banner.” How is it possible to belt out notes that high? The team sprints out onto the field to take their positions as the announcer introduces them. They get a welcoming standing ovation. Rochester loves its Red Wings. Not that Frontier Field is full; but it’s a respectable crowd. Rowdy, too.
It’s cool and windy but John and his father know where to sit to get some shelter from the wind and to take full advantage of whatever sun there is. They’ve got peanuts in the shell and, true to his promise, John has gotten Mrs. Minty a hot dog with all the trimmings.
Mrs. Minty is wearing her usual skirt, blouse, cardigan sweater, and tie shoes, but over this she has layered an extra sweater, her winter coat, and two scarves. She has also brought fuzzy mittens that look homemade, and to top it off she is sporting a well-worn Red Wings baseball cap. They are all wearing Red Wings baseball caps, which makes Alice feel slightly ridiculous.
Mrs. Minty has already purchased her season player roster and she has not one but two sharpened pencils in preparation for keeping up with the box scores. This is more baseball ephemera than Alice and her dad usually indulge in, though her dad reads the box scores every morning in the paper. Or used to.
She leans over to John.
“Do you understand box scores?”
“Yeah.”
“My dad explained it to me once, but honestly, I stopped listening after about two minutes.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Everybody’s a little stiff and formal, except for Joey who is happily dashing up and down the bleacher steps following one of the vendors around. Is this because none of them know one another well, or because Mrs. Minty is there and they’re all trying their hardest to be polite and not yell and swear, or is it because John is wishing he’d never invited this weird girl to a baseball game and John’s father is probably wondering what’s going on because he thought John already had a girlfriend? That Melissa Johnson who calls every night and wants to talk on the phone till all hours.
Joey is back, panting.
“Dad! Dad! I want to sell peanuts. Can I sell peanuts?”
“I think you have to be fifteen.”
He’s crushed. For a moment.
“Dad! Dad! Can I sell peanuts when I’m fifteen?”
“Sure.”
“How long ’til then?”
“Eight years.”
“You think I could be an assistant before then?”
“Ask him!”
“Ask who?”
“The kid you’ve been running after.”
“He wouldn’t have to pay me.”
“Don’t tell me, tell him.”
Joey sprints off, in pursuit of the fifteen-year-old demigod selling peanuts.
Mrs. Minty begins a discussion about the new shortstop, Rich Gelbart, and what the pitching coach is saying about him. John listens carefully but doesn’t say much as his dad and Mrs. Minty assess Gelbart and his strengths and weaknesses, until Mr. Kimball turns to John and says:
“You could be there, son. You work hard and you could be there. Right on that field.”
“Dad . . .”
“You’re quick, you can hit, and you’re not afraid to push yourself. Best shortstop Belknap High’s seen in fifteen years. Sounds like Peter, doesn’t it, Mrs. Minty?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, it does.”
There’s an awkward pause.
“Thank you for speaking about Peter, Jack. It’s a comfort to me to hear his name.”
“I know it is.”
John turns to Alice.
“Mrs. Minty was my dad’s high school English teacher.”
“She was not!”
“And she came to his games. Just like she comes to mine.”
“Mrs. Minty, I didn’t know you were a teacher,” Alice says.
“I gave it up for a while when Peter was young. But I went back to it after my husband died.”
“I heard you came back to teaching just so you could torture my dad,” John teases.
“I wouldn’t call it torture,” Mr. Kimball says.
“Were you hard on him?” John asks.
“I had high expectations for all my students.”
“Even the ones who didn’t give a . . . who didn’t care?”
“A climate of expectation fosters the possibility, even the near certainty, of achievement. If I believe in you, and I communicate that to you, you will find things in yourself you never knew were there.”
“Is this a theory, Mrs. Minty,” Alice asks, “or has it been proven?”
“Ask John’s father.”
“Mr. Kimball?”
“I wouldn’t have finished high school without Mrs. Minty. Well, Mrs. Minty and baseball.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a long story.”
Mrs. Minty gives him a look.
“Go ahead, Jack,” Mrs. Minty says.
He looks out across the baseball diamond as though he can see into the past and says:
“My father had a massive heart attack my sophomore year in high school.”
“He died?” bursts out of Alice’s mouth.
“At Gleason’s. On the factory floor. He was forty-five years old.”
Mrs. Minty is completely present; her attention is like a pair of strong hands resting on his shoulders.
“My mom was overwhelmed trying to take care of things and hold on to the house and find a job and feed four kids. I hardly went to school for the rest of sophomore year and barely passed my exams. That summer I worked on Gentle’s farm and played on the town baseball tea
m. I was trying to help my mom, but I met older kids on the job and that wasn’t good for me.”
“Why not?” Alice can’t help asking.
“Older kids with licenses, and fake IDs, and money for beer, and nothing better to do.”
John and Alice look at each other, taking this in.
“It was a mistake they put me in Mrs. Minty’s class. She taught the honors section. I didn’t know any of the kids in that class—their parents were the doctors and the lawyers in town—and I was in way, way over my head.”
“I asked for you to be in my class,” Mrs. Minty says.
“Why would you—?”
“I knew your mother. I knew you were in trouble. And I thought I could reach you.”
“So you were my angel, Mrs. Minty,” Mr. Kimball smiles.
“Gloria’s your angel, Jack.”
John’s father nods and ducks his head blinking furiously for a moment, as he thinks about his wife.
There’s an uncomfortable pause.
“Lovely day to open the season, wouldn’t you say, Jack?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I predict that Gelbart is going to have such a good season we’re going to lose him to the majors.”
“You could be right, Mrs. Minty.”
“I might even wager a small sum on that supposition, if you were inclined to take a gamble.”
“Five bucks suit you, Mrs. Minty?”
“Right down to the ground.”
John reaches over and takes Alice’s hand. She can’t stop herself: she turns to look at him in stunned disbelief, but he is not looking at her, he is watching Gelbart, on an 0 and 2 pitch, hit a line drive deep into left field.
She leaves her hand in his. His palm is calloused but his hands are warm, warmer than her hands. But what is he doing? He has a girlfriend. Does this mean he’s kind of a bum, seeing what he can get away with far from the prying eyes at school? And what about her? Two weeks ago she kissed Henry. Sort of. If that was really a kiss. Now this. What is this? She looks at him. He won’t look at her. She pulls her hand away.
Now John looks at her; he smiles at her, even more confusing, and takes her hand again. She glances over at Mrs. Minty who misses absolutely nothing. She doesn’t have the nerve to look at John’s father, so she sits there, holding hands with John Kimball and watching the season opener at Frontier Field in the weak but promising April sunshine. Until Joey returns, takes in the hand holding situation, exchanges a glance with his father, and then worms his way between them, laughing and chanting:
“John’s got a girlfriend! John’s got a girlfriend!”
“Shut up, you little twerp.”
John grabs Joey’s hat and sails it into the bleachers below. When Joey flies down the steps to retrieve his hat, John does not take Alice’s hand again. Which is a relief. Kind of. She shifts away from him.
“I thought you were going out with Melissa Johnson,” Alice says quietly, as Mrs. Minty and Mr. Kimball discuss the Red Wings’ new outfielder.
John pays extra close attention to the pitcher.
“Well?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I think that’s pretty much a yes or no answer.”
It’s a full count.
Is this why twelfth-grade boys troll for ninth- and tenth-grade girls, thinking they’ll be too wowed to protest or complain about anything as immature as cheating?
“Maybe you’re just trying to be nice to me. But I don’t really know you because I’ve never really even talked to you so . . .”
He turns to look at her.
“We’ve talked.”
“Hardly.”
“More than I talk to most girls.”
“That’s not possible. I see you with girls all the time.”
“That’s not really talking.”
“It looks like talking.”
“It’s just talk. It’s not anything real.”
“But . . .”
Gelbart steals second. Under the cover of the crowd’s roar he says:
“I like you, Alice.”
“You do not.”
“Why is that so hard to believe?”
“It just is, okay?”
“Why?”
“It’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, you’re a senior.”
“So?”
“It’s confusing.”
“I thought when you said yes to coming to the game that maybe . . .”
“I figured you were just getting all your good deeds for the year over with in one fell swoop: you know, old lady, sad girl from school,” Alice says even more quietly in case Mrs. Minty overhears.
“That’s not why I asked you.”
“And what about Melissa Johnson?”
“What about her?”
“I heard she spent a lot of money on her dress for the spring dance.”
“Which is why I can’t break up with her before then.”
“Because of a dress? That’s insane.”
“Yeah. But what kind of jerk would I be to break up with her now?”
Gelbart gets to third on a sacrifice bunt.
“I wanted to ask you to go with me,” John says.
“You’re just saying that.”
“No, I’m not.”
Alice looks at him, thinking, I don’t know you at all, and what I thought I did know about you turns out to be completely, totally wrong.
“I already said yes to Henry anyway.”
“Henry Grover?”
“He’s my best friend.”
“But do you . . . ?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you like him?”
“Of course I like him!”
“You know what I mean.”
Sammy Marston hits a double deep into left field, sending Gelbart home.
“Save me a dance, then,” he says.
“What?”
“One slow dance.”
“Wouldn’t that be . . . ?”
“It’s just a dance.”
“Melissa Johnson won’t think it’s ‘just a dance.’ ”
“Fair enough.”
They go back to watching the game.
“What happened to your mother?” Alice asks.
“Breast cancer.”
Alice registers that she has never heard a seventeen-year-old boy say breast before.
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine . . .”
“Yeah.”
Why is this so hard to talk about?
“You must miss her.”
“All the time.”
“How old was Joey?”
“Four.”
“Does he remember her?”
“Sort of. But I think his memories get mixed up with all the pictures we have.”
Alice pulls off her Red Wings hat.
“I can’t remember my dad’s voice.”
“Doesn’t he call all the time?”
“He’s missing in action.”
He looks at her.
“You didn’t say anything.”
“I never know what to say.”
“How long has it been?”
“Eight days.”
She looks at her hands.
“Alice . . .”
She can’t look up.
“He’ll be okay.”
She wants to believe that. She wills herself to meet his gaze.
“Let’s not talk about it anymore,” she says. “Let’s just . . .”
He’s still looking at her
“Are you close?” he asks.
“Yeah . . . Yeah. We are.”
He takes her hand again and Alice thinks, don’t ask me if I’m all right or I am going to totally lose it.
After a long pause he says, “I’m thinking of enlisting.”
“What?”
“I’ve been talking to the recruiters at school. I want marines, I think.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll get all this training. They’ll pay for college. And it’s really great experience. Plus, with my dad on his own, we can’t really afford—”
“What about baseball?”
“That’s a one in a million chance, Alice. You know that.”
“But you’re really good.”
“Thanks, but—”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I turn eighteen next month. I can enlist on my birthday. And head off to basic training right after I graduate.”
“Does your dad know?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this. They’ll send you overseas.”
“Probably.”
“Oh, God . . .”
“I thought . . .”
“Isn’t there any other way—?”
“It’s an incredible opportunity.”
“You can’t be all you can be if you’re dead,” she blurts out and can’t believe how much she sounds like her mother.
Mrs. Minty and Mr. Kimball both glance over.
“I thought you’d understand,” he says.
“I understand that there are a million things that could happen to you, a million things that could go wrong.”
“C’mon, the war could be over by the time I’m done with my training.”
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”
He focuses on the game again.
“Don’t do it. Don’t sign your life away. Don’t go,” she says, suddenly afraid he’s going to laugh at her intensity.
“Are you saying we could start something?”
“What? What do you mean? No—”
“And I could stay in Belknap and live at home and work in a garage, learn how to be a mechanic, or work at Gleason’s like my grandfather did, or get my electrician’s license and go into business with my dad.”
“No, I—”
“Marry my high school sweetheart and have three kids before I’m twenty-five, divorced by thirty.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“I want to get out, Alice. I want something more.”
“You sound like my dad.”
She has to let go of his hand to steady herself. She’s holding on to the bleachers with both hands and looking down trying to quiet the tumult inside of her when Benny Benjamin hits a home run and the hometown crowd is on its feet yelling and cheering.
A home run on opening day, she can hear her dad saying, that’s a good omen, sweetheart. That’s a good omen for the season to come.
Alice Bliss Page 19
