Keeping Score

by Linda Sue Park

  He stopped and glanced at Maggie quickly, and she knew he was thinking about Dad's accident, maybe wondering if the reminder would bother her. She bobbed her head at him; it was okay because Dad was okay.

  New Guy raised himself up on one elbow and looked at Maggie. "You Joe's kid?" he asked. "Teeny Joe?"

  Maggie nodded, wondering. Dad's name was Joe Fortini. There were a lot of Joes around, so ages ago he'd gotten the nickname "Teeny Joe," which was funny because he was a big guy with a big voice and a big mustache and nothing about him was teeny. Only his good friends called him Teeny Joe.

  The new guy sat up and extended his hand. "Pleased to meet you, miss."

  Maggie shook his hand. "Who are you?" Probably sounded rude, but curiosity won out over manners. "And how come you know my dad?"

  "Got me the job, didn't he," he said. "Name's Jim Maine."

  So that was it. Dad interviewed guys who wanted to be firemen. He talked about his work a lot; he was proud of picking out the ones who would stick, who would make it through the training and then do good on the job, and he called them his boys.

  "Hello, Mr. Maine," she said politely.

  Jim grinned up at her. "Jim'll do," he said. "And if you're Maggie-o, then it's true about your name."

  Maggie blushed. Dad must have told him. It was odd to think that they had talked about her.

  Her father had grown up in the Bronx, just a few blocks away from Yankee Stadium, a Yanks fan from the guts out. When Maggie's brother was born, he was named Joseph Michael—Joseph for his dad, sure, but also for Joe DiMaggio.

  Maggie had heard Dad tell the story a hundred times. "And when a girl come along two years later, I knew just what I was gonna call her," he would say whenever the subject came up. "Maggie-o! Don't matter that they're not exactly the same. DiMaggio ... Maggie-o, get it?"

  But Maggie's mother had refused to let him put "Maggie-o" on the birth certificate. It read "Margaret Olivia." Maggie's great-grandmother in Ireland had been a Margaret, and Olivia de Havilland was Mom's favorite actress; Gone with the Wind had come out two years before Maggie was born, with Miss de Havilland playing that nice girl Melanie, and "if Scarlett had been more like Melanie, there wouldn't have been nearly the trouble, so you're Margaret Olivia after your great-grandmother and Olivia de Havilland, never mind what your father says" was how Mom always finished the story.

  Now Jim put his hands back behind his head and chuckled. "Good ol' Teeny Joe," he said. "Your old man's really something, y'know? Even if you don't like the Yankees, you gotta give him credit. Naming both your kids after your favorite player—that's class."

  Maggie tilted her head and half shrugged, half smiled. She was pretty sure she liked this new guy.

  "So how's come you're not a Yankee fan like your dad?" Jim asked.

  Maggie frowned. The idea that she could be a fan of any team other than the Dodgers! But it wasn't a dumb question. The Yankees' and Giants' fans in her neighborhood were, as Mom might say, as rare as peaches in winter, but they were usually whole families following the same team.

  "Dunno," she said. "Guess it's 'cause I was born here. I mean, I knew my dad was a Yankee fan, but me and my brother, we always listened to the Dodgers' games."

  "Yeah, and you know what else?" George growled. "Teeny Joe never listened to the Yanks here. Nosirree, he knew we were a Dodger house and we—we respected him for respectin' that. Not like some."

  And George ran his hand over his head and turned away. Jim and Maggie grinned at each other behind his back.

  "Gotta go," Maggie said.

  "Be seeing you," Jim said.

  And she heard the last out of the game while she was in Mr. Aldo's shop getting a box of sugar for Mom. 2–0, a close one, but the Dodgers won, and Maggie skipped home.

  1—PITCHER

  The phone rang early the next morning. It was Treecie.

  Maggie and Treecie were best-friends-for-life, sworn way back in second grade. Not a blood vow—they had both been too scared to prick their fingers with a pin—but a spit vow, which everyone knew was almost as good.

  Treecie's whole name was Mary Theresa Brady. Her mother was Mary, too, so Mary Theresa was called Theresa, which had gotten shortened to Treecie. She was shorter than Maggie, but they both had brown hair and blue eyes and freckles. Treecie had more freckles than Maggie—they had once tried and failed to count them, but you could tell just by looking. Maggie got tan in the summer, like her dad. Treecie freckled.

  Their birthdays were exactly one month apart—November 19 for Treecie, December 19 for Maggie. They had already chosen their confirmation names: Treecie was going to be Mary Theresa Margaret Brady, and Maggie would be Margaret Olivia Theresa Fortini. Even though they wouldn't be confirmed until they were thirteen, it was nice to have it planned out.

  Treecie wanted to be a photographer. Last year, when they turned nine, Treecie had gotten her first camera, a used Brownie. Ever since then, Maggie had spent a lot of time posing for Treecie. Inside, outside, portraits, action shots, candids.... Film and developing were expensive, so Treecie didn't actually take very many photos, but she had Maggie pose all the same. "It's good practice," Treecie would insist as she peered through the viewfinder. "I have to develop my eye."

  Treecie was calling to say that she wanted to take photos of Maggie "with nature stuff." In Brooklyn that meant the park, and half an hour later, Maggie stepped out onto her front stoop just as Treecie came into sight from around the corner.

  "We should have brought Charky," Maggie said as they passed between the concrete pillars that marked the park's entrance. "He loves the park."

  The entrance they used was diagonally across the street from Maggie's house. The girls were allowed to go to the park on their own so long as they stayed within calling distance of the pillars.

  "Not this time," Treecie said firmly. "I got stuff I wanna do; he'd just get in the way." She looked around. "There," she said, "that little tree."

  Maggie walked over to the tree and turned to face Treecie.

  "No, not like that. I want you to stand farther back and put your head in between the branches. So there's leaves all around you."

  Maggie ducked under the lowest branch to get behind it, but straightened up too quickly.

  "Ouch!" she said, rubbing her head. "Never mind, I'm okay." She parted the leafy twigs, trying to find a place to pose comfortably. "Yeesh, scratchy."

  Leaves were tickling the back of her neck—at least she hoped they were leaves. What if they were bugs? She brushed at her neck with her hand just in case.

  At last she turned her face toward Treecie. "Hey!" she said.

  Treecie was standing a few yards away. She had made a square using her thumbs and forefingers; with one eye closed and her hands in front of her face, she peered at Maggie through the square.

  "You don't have your camera with you?" Maggie said. "First you wanna take pictures of me without any film, and now without a camera even?"

  "It's called 'framing the shot,'" Treecie said. "I'm learning how to frame a shot. I don't need the camera for that."

  "I do!" Maggie protested. "I mean, I don't need a camera, but I need you to have one! I look like an idiot standing here and—and posing—and no camera...."

  Treecie lowered her hands from her face. "You're a photographer's model," she said earnestly. "It doesn't matter what you look like—it's the shot that matters."

  "So you're saying that I do look like an idiot?"

  Treecie put her hands on her hips. "No, I did not say that. Did you hear me say that? Did you hear me say, 'Maggie Fortini, you look like an idiot'?"

  Maggie laughed; she couldn't help it. Treecie looked relieved that Maggie wasn't mad anymore. "I won't make you stay there for long, promise," Treecie said. She put the "square" up to her face again, and with a sigh, Maggie went back to posing.

  The results: Zero photos, but one bruise on her head, one scratch under her chin, and one mosquito bite.

  Not that she was counti
ng.

  Treecie was lucky, Maggie thought, to be so sure about what she wanted to be when she grew up. Maggie didn't know yet, and she worried about it. She tried on different ideas. Working in a shop, maybe. "Because you get to meet people, and I could listen to the games while I'm working," Maggie explained.

  "But you'd never get to see anything new," Treecie objected. "Just the same stuff every day. That would get boring."

  Another time Maggie had proposed becoming a nurse. Treecie's mom was a nurse, and so was Maggie's aunt Maria in Canada. Treecie had replied, "No. Not a nurse. A doctor. Wait, I know—a surgeon. And I'll take pictures of your operations."

  "Maybe," Maggie said. It sounded kind of gruesome, but Treecie's ideas were always interesting, that was for sure.

  Both of Treecie's parents worked, which meant that every year when school ended, she and her two younger sisters went to Long Island for the summer, to stay on the farm owned by their uncle. Maggie had spent a wonderful week there two years ago, the only time she had ever been away from home on her own.

  A few days after the photo session in the park, Treecie left for Long Island. Maggie was used to it now, the summers without Treecie, but being used to it didn't mean she liked it. She always missed Treecie terribly, especially during the first couple of weeks. Sometimes Maggie played with other kids on the block: hopscotch, jumping rope, the playgrounds in Prospect Park during the day, and after supper a regular game of kick the can. But when Treecie was away, Maggie's best friends were the radio and the guys at the firehouse.

  And Charky. Of course.

  It was so hot that a ragged band of sweat was already darkening Joey-Mick's cap as he left the house for baseball practice. Every inch of Maggie's clothes seemed stuck to her. The Dodgers had a day off, and the July afternoon would feel even longer and hotter without a game to listen to. Maggie knew that the players needed their rest, but she was counting the hours until the game started tomorrow.

  Joey-Mick was in his first season in a real league. Not stickball on the street but games on the diamonds in Prospect Park—a regular schedule, a manager, an umpire. Just like in the major leagues.

  Uniforms, too. When Joey-Mick first put his on, Maggie thought it looked like pajamas, all baggy in the shirt and floppy in the legs. But then she saw the rest of the team at their first game, and Joey-Mick's uniform fit better than almost anyone else's. He was one of the tallest boys on the team.

  Joey-Mick played second base, same as his favorite player, Jackie Robinson. And if he got to first when he was at bat, he would move around on the base path—hopping, prancing, faking a steal—just like Jackie.

  Last season, when Maggie first started listening to the Dodger broadcasts—really listening to them, paying attention, learning the game—she decided that Jackie Robinson was her favorite player, too.

  Not because she was a copycat. Or because he was the first-ever Negro in the league, which everyone knew was a big deal. So big that even though Dad was a Yankees fan, he was a Jackie Robinson fan, too. "Biggest thing that's ever happened in baseball" was how Dad put it.

  But Maggie had been only five years old when Jackie broke in, and she hadn't understood very much about baseball back then. So she didn't have any real memories of his first year with the Dodgers. And now, four years later, almost every team had Negro ballplayers.

  No, it was the spark Jackie had, how he seemed to light up the whole game when he was on the field. So she told Joey-Mick that Jackie was her favorite player, too.

  "No dice," Joey-Mick said immediately.

  "Why not?"

  "'Cause he's my favorite player. We can't both have him as our favorite player, and I had him first. So you gotta pick someone else."

  "But why can't both of us—"

  "Because," he said firmly. "Now, who's your second-favorite player?"

  Maggie hesitated. She still wanted Jackie, but it was an interesting question. "Pee Wee," she said. "No, wait. Roy Campanella."

  "See, there you go. One of them's can be your favorite player."

  She had chosen Campy in the end, which was no shame—he was terrific, both at the plate and behind it. But she didn't feel the same way about Campy that she did about Jackie. She wondered why she hadn't fought harder. Joey-Mick wasn't in charge of the world. Since when did he get to decide favorite-player rules? But if she had stuck with Jackie, her brother would think she was copycatting, no matter what she said.

  Joey-Mick slammed the door on his way out. Maggie sighed and tugged at the collar of her dress so she could blow down the front of it. Then she wandered into the kitchen, opened the Frigidaire door, and took out a bottle of milk. Not to drink, but so she could press the cool glass against her forehead.

  "Put that back," Mom said automatically without even looking up from the onion she was chopping. "And I'll go to my grave telling you to keep the Frigidaire door closed!"

  Maggie put the bottle back on the shelf. She let the door swing shut and made sure to stand right where she could feel the last puff of lovely cool air.

  "What's for supper?" she asked, more out of boredom than curiosity.

  "Sausage and macaroni," Mom answered. "It's Wednesday, so it is."

  Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were macaroni nights. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday meant potatoes. Sundays alternated. That was how it had been ever since Maggie's parents got married—Rose Fitzpatrick and Joe Fortini, Irish and Italian. The only time the pattern was interrupted was when one of the uncles came for dinner. If it was Uncle Pat, Mom cooked potatoes no matter what day it was; for Uncle Leo, macaroni. Maggie liked both potatoes and macaroni, and she was glad she didn't have to eat just one all the time. At Treecie's house they almost always had potatoes.

  Mom nodded toward a plate on the countertop. "There," she said, "for that dog friend of yours." And she pointed the tip of her knife at the naked bone that had already done double-duty in Sunday's roast and Monday's soup.

  Maggie gave Mom a hug. "Thanks," she said.

  "Oof. Don't be hanging on to me in this heat. Go on with yourself now."

  Maggie smiled as she took the bone and left. Mom wouldn't have a dog in the house, but a week never went by that she didn't have a little something for Maggie to give Charky.

  The dog greeted her as usual, half a block from the firehouse. Maggie made him sit, beg, and speak before she gave him the bone. He hurried back to the station, looking over his shoulder as he loped along, to make sure she was following.

  When Maggie got near the firehouse, she could see the new guy—Jim, she reminded herself, Jim Maine—sitting out front with his radio. The Giants' game. Nobody else was around; the other guys were probably inside.

  Jim had a notebook on his lap and was writing in it. He didn't look up when Charky bounded past and went to his bed, where he lay down, gnawing joyfully.

  Jim seemed very busy with whatever he was working on. It would probably be rude to interrupt him. Maggie turned to leave.

  "...and Mays rounds third—he's going to try to score! The throw comes in—he slides—the ump ... SAFE! HE'S SAFE! He's in under the tag! Mays has just scored from first base on a single! Howdya like that!?"

  Jim let out a whoop and raised his arms in celebration. That was when he saw Maggie.

  "Hey there!" he said.

  "Hi. I just—I brought a bone for Charky."

  Jim turned around to look at the dog and grinned. "Lucky dog," he said. "Say, did you hear that last play? Wasn't that something?"

  Maggie nodded.

  Jim shook his head, still smiling. "It's gonna seem like a mistake," he said. "Later, if anyone sees this, they're gonna think I left out a play—a throwing error or something." As he scribbled in the notebook, his voice lowered, so he seemed to be talking to himself, but Maggie could still hear what he was saying. "Scoring from first on a single ... drew the throw too, so now they got a runner on second."

  Maggie took a step closer and tilted her head so she could read sort of sideways rather than ups
ide-down. There was writing on both pages of the open spread, and a lot of little squares filled with tiny numbers and letters and lines. In a column on the left side of each page, Jim had written the names of the players—the Cubs on one page, the Giants on the other.

  "What's that you're doing?" Maggie asked.

  "You never seen anyone keep score before?"

  She shook her head. "What do the numbers mean?"

  His eyebrows went up. "It's kinda complicated," he said. "I dunno—oh, hold up a minute."

  The next batter hit a hard liner caught by the shortstop, who then beat the baserunner back to second: Unassisted double play to end the inning.

  Jim shook his head. "Great play," he said ruefully as he wrote something down. "Okay, where was I? The numbers. Well, for a start, you gotta know the game pretty good."

  Maggie stuck out her chin. "I know the game just fine."

  Jim stared at her for a moment, then grinned. "Wouldn't doubt it, you being Teeny Joe's kid. Even seeing you're a girl. But lemme see you prove it."

  "How?"

  "Well ... okay. What was so special about that scoring play just now?"

  Maggie shrugged. "Nobody hardly ever scores from first base on a single," she said, with a bored little drone in her voice, as though she was reciting a lesson at school. Who did this guy think he was, quizzing her on baseball? "Depending on where it's hit, you usually only get to second, but if it's hit to right field and you got good speed, you could maybe get to third, but if the right fielder has a strong arm it'll prob'ly be a close play, so for him to make it all the way home—he musta had a big jump on the pitch, or maybe the hit-and-run was on, and then—"

  Jim held up his hands, laughing. "Okay, okay! Wow, you oughta be on the radio your own self! The thing is, keeping score, you gotta be more than just a fan...."

  His voiced trailed off. He was looking at her hard, his head tilted and his eyes narrowed, but there seemed to be a twinkle there, too. Maggie looked right back at him and kept her chin high, but inside she squirmed a little. It was like he was trying to see right inside her brain.