by Ginger Scott
My body shivers, and I lean forward enough so my mouth dusts his with a kiss.
“I’m here because of you,” I say, the meaning of that sentence deeper than Wes realizes.
Thirteen
The pumpkins disappeared at midnight.
Wes brought me home, and my father was passed out in the middle of the hallway, halfway to his bedroom. He helped me carry him to bed, and I kicked myself for believing in change.
Wes told me it would take time, my dad was making progress, but it felt like more of the same. Only this time, he lifted my hopes before dropping them to the ground.
I assumed this morning was off. That’s why I didn’t set my alarm. But Wes called. He called six times, dialing over and over again until I answered. He and my father were at the field, and he wanted to make sure I was coming.
“Goddamned functioning alcoholic,” I mutter to myself, my finger caught in the heel of my running shoe as I try to slip it on without untying it. I find my cleats in the garage and stuff them in the side pocket of my equipment bag, then sling it over my shoulder and pound my feet heavily in protest throughout my walk to the school fields.
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stand him up. But Wes asked me to. I’m coming for Wes. Not for him.
I clear the gate and my eyes zero in on my father crouching, and the boy I dreamt about all night throwing from the mound. The scene is exactly as it was the first time I saw them working together. It’s like I’m on one side of the glass, and they’re on the other. They’re laughing, talking freely, but the closer I get, the less chatter I hear, until I’m upon them and their talk has stopped.
My bag slides from my shoulder, falling heavy on the ground, a cloud of dust kicking up with its impact. They both pause their throwing, my dad standing, wiggling his legs as he rights himself after catching.
“Well,” I say, hands on my hips. “I’m here. I didn’t want to come. Because you’re a liar,” I seethe, my hand motioning to my father. “But I think I’m good, and I think I can be great, and I decided sometime in the last week or two that I’m going to play Division I ball. And fuck if I don’t need your help to do it, so…here I am.”
My father’s eyes are locked on me, his expression empty. It irritates me.
“Either get mad or say you’re sorry or something. Don’t just stand there like that,” I say.
“Joss,” Wes whispers, stepping up next to me. My eyes dart to his, and the anger extinguishes with one look from him. My eyes fall, and I bend down to grab the straps of my bag.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “I’m just…disappointed.”
I drag my bag to the dugout and pull my cleats out to switch my shoes.
“I know,” Wes says, his hands hanging on the dugout roof, his body leaning in over the steps. My mind drifts to last night, to his touch, and it soothes me.
“Let’s do this,” I say, tossing my running shoes on the bench and pulling my favorite bat from my bag. I step up to the plate to swing from the left side, where my father has been frozen since I arrived. Wes moves out to the mound.
“Start with that bat, over there. The one on the fence,” my dad says. I glare at him, then glance to the small bat propped up to the side.
“I think I’ll stick with mine,” I say, my lips bunching with my shrug.
“Yours is too heavy. You’re going to be slow until you get used to it again. That one’s three ounces lighter,” he says.
“It’s a fucking T-ball bat,” I say, shaking my head. I tap the plate twice and spit into the dirt, covering it with a kick of my cleat.
I nod to Wes, and he motions for approval from my father, which irritates me. I dig in and wait as Wes holds a ball, winding up to throw it into the zone. I swing fast, but I’m late, so I dig in again.
“It’s an awkward angle, because you’re throwing overhand,” I say. “Do it again.”
“Do you want me to try to throw the softballs? I can go underhand, but I’m not as accurate,” Wes says, holding the ball up, signaling he’ll swap it out.
I open my mouth to answer him, but my father cuts me off.
“Horse shit. The angle’s just fine. She’s late because she’s stubborn. Let her miss ten or twelve more and then maybe she’ll listen to me,” he says from behind me. Ah, the familiar tone is back.
“I’m not late,” I say, kicking at the dirt and twisting my pivot foot, ready to load. My dad only chuckles.
Wes throws the ball again, and I miss. I can feel it, though, and I’m closer.
“Again,” I say.
My dad tosses the ball back to him, and I hear him laughing. It fuels me.
Wes begins his windup, and I start my pre-swing early, my arms primed, and when the ball reaches the plate, my bat is there to send it hard and fast right down the line. I watch it roll all the way to the fence.
“Nice shot,” Wes says, looking at it in the distance.
My father only laughs.
“What’s funny? The fact that you were wrong?” I ask, leaning my weight on my bat like a cane.
My father looks down, pursing his lips, his glove bent with his hand against his hip. “What are you going to do?” he questions, kicking a rock out of the way before looking up at me. “Are you going to hope every pitcher throws you the same speed, the same pitch, exactly where you want it so you can start your swing early enough to hit it? Or are you going to pull your head out of your ass long enough to know that’s not how this game works, and they are looking to strike you out, so you need to refine your weapons?”
He’s making good points, but all I hear is head out of my ass, and I’m lit up.
“I can’t do this,” I say, shaking my head and tossing my bat end-over-end toward my things and the dugout. I pull the Velcro on my gloves away and look toward Wes, who’s chewing at the inside of his cheek, disappointed in me.
“Don’t you take his side. That…that…that isn’t coaching. He doesn’t even talk to you like that,” I yell.
Wes chuckles once, and I glare at him.
“What?” he says, his arms out. “That’s exactly how he talks to me. And it probably means I’m not listening when he does.”
I pause and chew on his words before tugging my hands free of my gloves and glancing back at my father who is now standing with his arms folded, his face painted with the familiar disgust.
“Yeah, well, maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal except that’s how he talks to me about everything. And I’m his goddamned flesh and blood!” I yell, picking my bat up from the outside of the dugout and throwing it hard toward my bag, the metal ricocheting off the bench and sending a few balls rolling in stray directions. “Fuck!” I scream, throwing my gloves on top of the mess before sitting down to take my cleats off.
This was a mistake. A huge mistake. Believing was a mistake. Wanting something was a mistake. Striving was a mistake.
Goals are mistakes.
This was a pipedream.
I notice Wes walking over to my father while I pull my feet free and swap my cleats for my regular running shoes. I swear under my breath over the knot left in my laces, and I have to bring my shoe up to my mouth to tug the lace loose with my teeth, because my foot will no longer just slide in. The dirt hits my tongue, and I spit it out once I untangle the knot.
My bag packed, and my shoes finally on my feet, I tug the straps together and step out from the dugout, saluting Wes and giving my father the finger as I spin to walk away.
“Joss, don’t leave. Just…” Wes says, and I feel bad, because I hear the pleading in his voice.
“Just, what, Wes? Just stay here and let him make me feel small and responsible for all of the bad shit in his life? Nah…I’m done doing that,” I say, turning to leave again.
“Joss…” Wes calls. I pause, but only because he sounds desperate. “Eric…you have to tell her. She deserves to know.”
What?
I turn to face them again only to see my dad’s head slung forward, his hands on his hips, the glove
on one hand and Wes leaning lower, trying to catch his gaze, to urge him to tell me…
My dad exhales a sigh that sounds as if it weighs a hundred pounds, then he flings the glove from his fingers onto the ground in front of him. He pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand and rubs the other on his neck. I study his small movements, until he finally lets go of his face and his eyes look at mine. The expression in them is the same one that was there the day I walked into the house and caught him fighting with my mom—the day she left and our relationship shifted into poison. His eyes are sad and regretful, but they’re also angry and wild.
“What’s going on?” I say, my feet moving back toward them without my control. “What is it? Is it…are you…are you sick? Is that what this is? Is this some elaborate set up so you can tell me you’re sick? And that’s…that’s why I should feel sorry for you? That’s what makes it okay for you to be an addict and for you to treat your only child like a worthless pile of crap? Because…what…you got sick?”
“Goddamn it, Josselyn! I’m not sick. It isn’t me. I’m fine. It’s…it’s your mother,” he says, his chest heaving with the extraction of those words. His face is ghost white, stripped of blood and life, and his eyes have cleared of every emotion but fear.
My mother.
I shake my head, and ignore the water forming at the corners of my eyes. We don’t even know where she is. I haven’t seen her in years. I barely remember her. I…
“She’s dead, Josselyn. She passed away two weeks ago,” he says, and my legs can no longer hold me. I fall to the ground quickly, but Wes is there before impact, his arms under mine, his strength holding me up until I can make it to the first bleacher on the other side of the backstop. I sit down and he sits next to me, never letting go. I can’t feel him.
I can’t feel him!
“I don’t understand,” I say, my eyes lost in the dried blades of grass poking through the dirt in between my father and me. My dad steps closer, but doesn’t walk to the other side of the backstop, instead leaving the fence barrier between us as his fingers cling to the metal and his foot steps up on the wood panels along the ground.
“Shit,” he huffs.
My chest burns, and my mind is moving faster than I can handle. It’s making my head hurt, and I bring my hands to my forehead, squeezing, wanting to make things stop, wanting to slow it all down for just a beat—one breath. I need one full breath.
“I thought you didn’t know where she was? I thought she was dead to you? You hate her? Isn’t that…how…how is she…”
I lean forward, dry heaving, nothing coming out but my stomach twisting and revolting against me. My instincts are begging me to fight, to flee, but I’m too weak. I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t…
“I haven’t talked to her since she left. I…I got a call, two weeks ago Thursday. I didn’t know the number, so I ignored it…it was during practice,” he says, and I laugh once—a harsh laugh, because practice is precious. My mother was fucking dead, but can’t interrupt practice with his boys.
“I got to my car and played the message. It was her mom, your other grandmother. She…she thought I’d want to know,” he says, his voice breaking with the last word. He brings his hands back to the bridge of his nose and pinches tight, his eyes squeezing. He’s trying to keep the pain at bay.
He shouldn’t be allowed.
“How’d she die?” I ask, my eyes now centered on one blade of grass. It’s a piece of rye, grown tall enough to blossom, five prongs of prickly grass poking out from the center like a skeletal flower. It’s exactly how I feel. The wind is pounding it flat, but it’s not breaking. It’s stuck there, in the ground.
Stuck.
Feeling.
Hurting.
“How. Did. She. Die!” I seethe, my eyes darting from the place they were lost to my father’s face in an attack.
He moves his lips, wetting them, as if he has to prime them to work, to speak, to say what is probably a terribly simple answer.
“Breast cancer,” he says quietly, moving his hand back over his mouth and rubbing. I bet that’s how the doctor delivered the diagnosis. Simple and quick. Two words. I shut my eyes.
“Joss…” My father says my name like he wants to comfort me.
“Don’t,” I say, standing and moving from Wes’s hold. “You knew,” I say, turning to Wes, walking backward toward my things. “You knew this whole time, didn’t you? That’s why you believed my father changed. That’s why you told me to give him a chance. You knew!”
I start to cry, so I turn and grab my things quickly, picking up my pace. Wes rushes to my side and grabs at my bag. I jerk it away.
“You knew!” I scream. I yell loud enough for my father to hear several feet away, for him to look down in shame and retreat to the bleacher seats behind him.
“I knew,” he says. He doesn’t placate me, or fight me, or argue. He just agrees.
Good.
“I’m going home,” I say, lifting my bag to a comfortable spot on my shoulder as I begin to walk the dirt path back to campus.
“I’ll take you home,” Wes starts, but he doesn’t step toward me. I can tell by the fading of his voice that he’s stayed where I left him behind me. He knows I don’t want him to. I want to hide. I want to feel, without anyone seeing it.
My anger fuels the walk home, only when I reach my house, my feet keep going. By the time I push open the creaky door in Kyle’s garage, my emotions have started to mix, and I’m so sick to my stomach that I pass directly by Kyle and the tangled web of cords for the video game console into the back bathroom. I slam the door closed behind me, but Kyle catches it with his hand, and when the contents of my stomach rip from my guts, Kyle quickly pulls my hair around my shoulder and places a hand on my back.
“I’m fine,” I growl, standing back up, jerking away, and running my sleeve over my mouth.
Kyle stares at me, slowly crossing his arms. I flinch at him and squint my eyes—game face.
“My mouth tastes like shit,” I brush past him, my steps picking up as I move to his dad’s liquor cabinet, which is always unlocked. I pull the vodka out along with a glass and begin to pour. A hand grabs my wrist the second the glass touches my lips.
“Stop.” I close my eyes and breathe through my nose. Wes doesn’t yell. He doesn’t pull or push. He gives me a quiet command, but even his hold on my wrist is just a touch.
“I can’t…” I swallow hard in the middle of my words. “I can’t handle this.”
His hand moves along my wrist until it reaches the small glass, pulling it from my grasp and setting it on the table.
“You can,” he whispers in my ear.
“She’s gone…” I barely finish before the cry hits my chest with the force of a freight train. I double forward, my legs giving out again, and Wes’s arms wrap around me from behind.
“I got you,” he says, sliding one arm down to my legs, lifting me against him, and carrying me to the Marley sofa. I press into him, wanting to press so far, so hard, that I disappear. And I cry—an ugly cry that makes me choke.
Wes holds me. Kyle sits next to him and rubs my back. And my family—my friend, and my heart—let me be, holding me up when it starts to be too much, and pushing me through the barriers until I finally feel like my lungs can handle the sting of taking a breath.
An hour passes before I can speak again. I look at Wes, and let my head fall with the disappointment shadowed in my eyes.
“You knew,” I say, the words heavy while quiet.
His eyes narrow on me, but his expression is soft—sincere. He nods slowly, and I let the weight of my head fall completely to the cushion next to me as he does the same. We stare into each other as I try to understand.
“You didn’t tell me,” I say.
“It wasn’t mine to tell,” he responds.
I feel the weight of the sofa shift behind me as Kyle stands. He moves around the couch, closing the liquor cabinet doors
as he passes, then moves to a chair opposite Wes and me. He sits down, his hands folded and his elbows on his knees as he leans forward. His eyes are serious.
“You knew too,” I say to him.
He offers the same quiet nod—the movement barely there, but just enough for me to understand.
“Your dad let it all out at practice. He…he had a pretty heavy breakdown the next day, and he begged us not to say anything,” Kyle says.
I hear him. But I don’t really hear him. I stare at him, until he grows so uncomfortable with the weight of being my center of focus that he has to stand and leave. My eyes move to the empty pillow that was behind his back instead, and I stare at the buttons and worn threads until my eyes burn from not blinking.
Eventually, the sickness of my life overcomes me, wrapping around me like a heavy blanket. Kyle’s house is always my escape—it has been for years. But even it feels foreign now.
“I want to go home,” I say, still staring.
“Okay,” Wes says, his voice a quiet hum next to me. Neither of us move.
“Take me,” I say.
“Okay,” he says again.
After ten more minutes of nothing, I stand to my feet, and Wes rises with me. He pulls my hand in his, each finger weaving through mine, and he guides me out the door, raising my bag of equipment over his arm and tossing it into the back of his truck. He drives me home, and walks around to my door, lifting out my things from the back and holding the door open for me while I climb out.
“I need to be alone,” I say, my focus on the ground, on the hundreds of steps before me that I have to trek to make it into this house, to pass my father, to lock myself in my room.
“I understand,” he says. I don’t let myself look him in the eye. If I do, I’ll reach for him to hold me, and I won’t be able to ask him to let go again.
He doesn’t leave until I’m inside the house. Even then, I don’t hear the truck pull away. I want him to go. But I also want him to stay there, ready—just in case.
