by Joe Schuster
Although he knew it was crazy, he suggested they meet at the Holiday Inn. He wouldn’t get there until almost midnight and would have to leave the next morning by five to get back home to prepare for the game, and yet he didn’t want to be alone.
“What makes you think I can just pick up like that, at this hour?” she asked, and then, as disappointment was settling on him, said quickly, “Just kidding. I didn’t think I’d get to see you until after the season, when you’d exploit me to help you pack to move.”
This time, even stopping at home to care for Grizzly, he was at the hotel first and had to wait for her, worrying that she had changed her mind. He sat on the edge of the bed, half watching the MLB Network, video of the best plays of the day, men doing extraordinary things on the field: a first baseman for St. Louis leaping onto a rolled-up tarp to backhand a pop foul; a Tampa Bay shortstop diving into left field to snag a deep ground ball and then throwing to second while still on his back. If Webber hadn’t gotten hurt, that might have been him in a few years. Not long before Webber’s accident, Edward Everett remembered, he was convinced that it would be Webber who survived the season and that he would be out—but the story is not over until the story is over; he was still in the game and Webber was back home in Ohio, going through physical therapy to build up the muscles in his damaged shoulder, but only so he could live a normal life in the World. It would not be enough for him to ever play again.
When Meg got there, she tapped nervously on the door, quietly, as if she were afraid someone in the hall might hear. When he opened the door, she was wearing a London Fog raincoat, which surprised him, since it was dry and 90 degrees, but in the room, the door shut, she dropped it to show him that she was already naked under it.
“I always wanted to do that,” she said, hugging him, helping him pull off his shirt. “It was something on my bucket list. So there you have it, check off something else.”
After sex, he was usually sleepy, but tonight he was alert, nervous, and she fell asleep while he lay there, thinking, first inning, second inning, third inning, going through the Quad Cities roster in his mind, thinking, If they bring in Wong, I’ll pinch-hit Perkins; if they bring in Didier with Rausch up, I’ll tell Rausch to look for the slider.
At one point, Meg woke and saw him sleepless. “I think it’s sweet you care so much about this for them,” she said, shifting so that her head lay on his shoulder. He kissed her hair and realized she didn’t smell of tobacco.
“I quit a week ago,” she said as if she knew what he was thinking. “Now, don’t run scared, because I’m not expecting anything from you. I’m going to miss you when you go to Costa Rica but maybe you’ll come back, and then, who knows? That’s something to live for, in my book.” She opened her eyes, looked at him briefly, and then shut them again. “And at my age. Who woulda thunk it.”
Chapter Thirty-four
On Sunday morning, Edward Everett left the hotel at four, slipping out quietly and not showering because he hadn’t wanted to wake Meg, who didn’t stir when he got up. It was still dark when he got home and as he opened his back door, the thought came to him that it was likely most of his players’ last day in baseball. Nineteen years old, twenty, twenty-one, certain for most of their lives that, beginning in late winter, they would be on a diamond somewhere under the sun in some southern state, jogging, working out the kinks, throwing, hitting. He thought about his first professional camp, short-season rookie ball, Johnson City, Tennessee, late June 1967. He was thin as a rail then, waist thirty-one, inseam thirty-four. He saw himself stepping out of the dim tunnel from the clubhouse on his first day, his nose twitching from the mold that grew on the dark, cool concrete, the ballpark already alive with the sounds of the game that never failed to make his heart beat faster, his teammates running and shouting and tossing baseballs. All of his teammates from then were long out of the game now, some when they were as young as Edward Everett’s players, who were going to get their own dismissals any day. Only three from his cohorts made it as far as the big leagues, and none lasted more than four seasons. A pitcher. What was his name, the relative long-timer? George? Ken? Joe? God, so long ago, he thought.
By the time he showered, finished eating cereal, having first one and then a second cup of coffee, and read the slender Sunday paper, it was only seven-fifteen. If he still had an office at the ballpark, he would have gone to it—there were many mornings when he woke early and restless and had gotten to his office while the sun was beginning to crest above the stands along the third base line. But he did not want to go to St. Aloysius and sit alone in the poorly lit, reeking locker room.
He wished he had waked Meg and asked her to come with him. He could go back to bed with her, clean and fresh-smelling, and then thought: That part of my life should be over. To be sixty and randy was absurd, but he was. He calculated the distance from the hotel to his house, thinking about waking Meg in the room—where she, no doubt, still slept—asking her to drive down. By the time she arrived, however, it would be past nine. Besides, he thought: did she have clothing to wear? She must have, but he imagined her driving back to her house, naked, truckers who saw her giving a long blast of their diesel horns, Man, you wouldn’t believe what I saw!
The notion of going to Mass occurred to him. He’d been once in the last year, the past Christmas Eve, not long after Renee had come back from the first time she left, when he was doing everything he could to keep her from leaving again. She had said, “You know what I miss? Mass.” Then, going up the steps to St. Monica’s in a light snow, she had seized his elbow just before he opened the door. “Are we going to be struck by lightning? What do we have between us, two divorces and who knows what else terrible?” But the choir inside began singing “Adeste Fidelis,” and she had closed her eyes in a kind of bliss he hadn’t seen in a while, and they’d gone in. Back then, the church had been decorated for the holiday, but the last Sunday of the baseball season was just a Sunday in Ordinary Time—there would not be the pomp of Christmas, the crèche adorned by lights, the tree near the altar with porcelain angels hung on it, the excited children frantic for the next day, when they would come down in the morning and find their own presents under the tree their parents had decorated.
He went to Mass. The congregation was sparse, but still, he noted, it was far more than what would show up for the last game ever in Perabo City: maybe 150 people scattered in the pews. Throughout the service, he was distracted. It did not help that there was something wrong with the priest’s radio microphone and for long periods of the service, sitting on the aisle in the last pew, he could not hear anything but the buzz and pop of the audio system and the priest’s mumbled prayers. During the homily, long stretches went by without him being able to hear anything, just an occasional phrase: “today, Jesus,” “the lesson of the leper,” “our neighbors suffering from flood.” Nonetheless, he tried to focus on the prayers, tried to follow in his own halting, half-remembering way the hymns that the small guitar choir strummed through—but other business kept pushing into his head: What was he going to do the next day or two weeks from now? What did he need to do to sell his house? The market was bad and he should have called an agent the day after he came back from meeting with Johansen. He thought about his bullpen: who would follow Sandford if the starting pitcher faltered; if they could get a lead by the fifth inning and if Sandford could last that long and if they held on to win the game, it would be Sandford’s twentieth, the magic number that Johansen had asked for.
He thought: I should buy champagne for if we win, at least a case so that my players can follow the rituals they’d seen on the networks when the major league teams won championships and the players sprayed one another with bubbly. Then he thought: half the team was underage; he’d have to buy sparkling grape juice—look the other way if any of them who were not twenty-one took a sip of alcohol.
At Communion, at first he decided not to go: he was not in any state of grace, had not been to confession for decades. Remarria
ge after divorce was a mortal sin. As the two women and one man who occupied his pew stood to move to the front of the church, he stepped into the aisle to let them pass but when the first woman indicated he should precede her, he decided to go. When he got to the front, he was surprised to see that Renee was the extraordinary minister holding the chalice of wine. She was in a beige linen suit with an organdy blouse, one of the collar points turned up slightly. As Edward Everett reached her, she swiped the white linen cloth across the rim of the ceramic cup and held it to him. “The Blood of Christ,” she said. It was only then that she recognized him, and she nearly dropped the chalice as he gave it back to her. When he stepped away, she glanced at him as if she wanted to say something more but did not. “The Blood of Christ,” she said to the woman behind him, stammering slightly.
At the end of the Mass, he looked for her, not sure of what he would say but feeling he ought to say something. I’m leaving town. Something.
When he found her, she was talking to a man who towered over her, someone who was nearly six foot six and who looked familiar. As he approached them, Renee kept glancing between the man and Edward Everett. He stopped at what he thought was an appropriate distance to wait for her but she laid her hand on the man’s elbow, turning him slightly to face Edward Everett. Then Edward Everett knew where he had seen him: her former husband. Art. The one who had left her for his cousin.
“Art,” Renee said. “You remember Ed.” Art colored slightly but extended his hand to shake Edward Everett’s. His palm was massive, engulfing Edward Everett’s. “Can I talk to Ed for a minute?” Renee asked. Art eyed Edward Everett in a way that suggested he suspected he might assault Renee but nodded and stepped away. Renee gave him a nod, meaning, a little farther, and after hesitating, he left them there, walking to the vestibule, glancing over his shoulder several times.
“So,” Renee said. “You finally tracked me down.”
He realized that she assumed the only reason he had been at Mass was to see her. “No,” he said. “I just decided to come to church.”
“Just decided,” Renee said. “Right.” She shook her head sadly. “I thought, since you signed the divorce, you had let go. You really need to, Ed. I’m not coming back.” She held up her left hand, a slender gold band glinting from the fourth finger. “Art and I remarried.”
“I thought—what happened to his cousin?”
“We’ve all made mistakes,” she said. “It’s not common but sometimes life lets you use a delete key.” She shrugged. “This was one of those times.”
“That was …” Fast, he was going to say; how long had it been since he signed the divorce papers?
“You know what? As far as Mother Church is concerned, we were always married—Art and I. No divorce in the Church.”
“What about us?” he said.
She shrugged. “In here,” she gestured to take in the church, “we never happened. So maybe it’s best if you think of it that way. I’m really not coming back. It’s not like before.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t trying …” he began but then just said, “I was just coming up to say good-bye.”
“What?”
“I’m leaving,” he said. “I have a new job. In another country.”
“Another county?”
“Country. With an ‘r.’ ”
She furrowed her brow and cocked her head to one side—what he had come to know as her sign that she was dubious.
“And I forgive you,” he said on impulse.
“You forgive me?” she said. “That suggests—”
He didn’t want to argue and so he interrupted her. “I’ve got to go.” He left her there, although she snapped, “Wait,” her voice echoing in the church. “Wait!”
Outside, small knots of families chatted amiably. Standing on the top step leading to the street, the priest shook his hand. “Thank you for coming. Have a blessed day.”
It was a benediction, he thought, walking to his car, feeling peaceful. Whether it was the Mass or his conversation with Renee that had allowed him to put a period at the end of their relationship, he wasn’t sure—it was not absolute absolution but perhaps the promise of one, and as he got into his car, he did feel blessed.
As he put on his jersey for the game, he found that some of the threads affixing the initial “P” in the town’s name had broken, the top arc of the letter flopped over. Leaving the jersey unbuttoned, he went to the kitchen to fish through the junk drawer to look for a needle and thread. Before he got there, however, his doorbell rang.
When he opened the door, Nelson was on his front porch, more disheveled than he’d been the last time Edward Everett had seen him, running away from St. Aloysius. Blades of grass clung to his four or five days of beard and there was a redbud leaf stuck behind his right ear, the leaf skeletonized by an insect. He wondered if Nelson had been sleeping outdoors. His face looked as if he had been in a fight: scratches across his left check, his eyes swollen. His clothing was torn: his nylon gym shorts; the sweatshirt that seemed stretched out longer on the right than on the left; his canvas skater shoes.
“Jesus, Nelson,” he said, not meaning to. “You look bad.”
“How did you expect I’d look?” he said, glancing over his shoulder as a car passed.
“Come on in,” Edward Everett said, not wanting him to but not wanting him on his porch, either. Taking the step up from the porch into the house, Nelson staggered, clutching Edward Everett’s arm to steady himself, nearly pulling him down. That close, he thought he smelled beer on Nelson’s breath, on his clothing.
“I brung you this,” Nelson said, pulling a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from his sweatshirt pocket and thrusting it toward Edward Everett.
“I just thought you could use something,” Edward Everett said, not taking the money. “You need to eat,” he said. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He tugged at the fuzz on his chin, hard enough that it seemed it should hurt. “Yesterday, maybe. Fuck, what day is it? What does it matter?”
“It’s Sunday.”
“Sunday,” Nelson said in a way that suggested the word was one he was trying out for the first time. “Sun. Day.”
“You should use that,” Edward Everett said, nodding at the bill in Nelson’s hand.
“I’m no charity case,” he said. “Besides, a twenty ain’t going to fix much, Skip.” He held out the bill but when Edward Everett didn’t take it, he let it flutter to the floor.
“Look, Nels—Ross, sit down. I’ll get you something to eat. I have to get going.”
“Ball game?” Nelson said. “Season’s still going on?”
“Last game,” Edward Everett said. “We’re—” Tied with Quad Cities, he was going to say but caught himself. If he were Nelson, he wouldn’t want to know anything about that. He finished his sentence, “—wrapping things up.”
“The guys miss me, Skip?” Nelson said. “I know how it is. It’s like I was never there. I seen it when I was one of the guys that stuck. The hole closes up behind you. Shoomp. Like a fucking vacuum.”
“No, Nelson—Ross.”
“Don’t lie to me, Skip. It’s like a fucking vacuum.”
“I’m going to get you some food,” he said. “If you just eat—”
“It’s feed a cold, starve a fever,” Nelson said. “This ain’t a cold, Skip.”
“Look, I’ll get you something,” he said; he went out to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He had no idea what Nelson would want. “What are you in the mood for?” he called, as if he were entertaining an ordinary guest, a friend who had just dropped by for a visit.
Nelson didn’t respond. Edward Everett took a loaf of bread and three wrapped slices of cheese out of the refrigerator. He could at least make him a sandwich; something was better than nothing.
From the living room, he could hear Grizzly growling in a low, menacing way and he went to check on him. Nelson was standing on the couch, rocking side to side on
the cushions to keep his balance. It reminded Edward Everett of a child bouncing on a bed. Grizzly was crouched low, his hindquarters up, his teeth bared.
“Get him the fuck away from me,” Nelson said, slapping at his sweatshirt pocket. When he brought his hand back up, he was holding a gun.
Edward Everett dropped the bread and cheese. “What the fuck, Nelson?”
Grizzly lunged toward the couch, trying to leap onto it, but fell short. Startled, Nelson tumbled over the back of it, slamming against a box of the game log cards Edward Everett had brought up from the basement weeks earlier, the box tearing open, cards skittering across the floor. Again Grizzly leaped for the couch, and made it that time, barking furiously, Nelson scrambling to his feet, slipping on the loose cards, pointing the gun in the direction of the dog, his hand shaking. Edward Everett eyed the front door and then the kitchen behind him: which was the easier way out? If he ran, would Nelson shoot him?
“Ross,” he said in a voice he hoped was calming, but he could hear a tremor in it.
“Do something about the fucking dog,” Nelson shouted, still pointing the gun toward Grizzly, who was barking and leaping toward him. “I hate dogs.”
“Let me get him.” Edward Everett took a tentative step toward the couch. “Just getting the dog,” he said, holding up his hand at an angle: a foolish gesture, he realized, as if that would shield him if Nelson pulled the trigger. He snatched at Grizzly’s collar but the dog twisted, snapping at him, biting the base of his right thumb, drawing blood and getting away. The second time he reached for the dog’s collar, he managed to snag it, picking him up, Grizzly flailing the air with his paws, his teeth flashing. He held him at arm’s length, barely keeping his fingers laced through the collar, managed to open the door to the closet near the front door, hurled the dog in and slammed the door. On the other side, Grizzly flung himself against the door, the hangers on which Edward Everett had hung his coats clanging.
