The Comeback Season

by Jennifer E. Smith

  Chapter Eleven

  * * *

  RYAN HAS ALWAYS LOVED NIGHT GAMES BEST. There’s something about seeing the field bathed in white, the sky above hazy and glowing as if the whole world is focused on this one block in Wrigleyville.

  Chicago doesn’t have a long history of evening games. The stadium lights, which were meant to be ready for the 1942 season, were instead donated to the war effort, and the idea wasn’t discussed again until the 1980s when the Tribune Company bought the team. The issue was tied up for years by grumbling neighbors and officials, who worried over the volume level of the neighborhood on summer nights. “Noise pollution can’t be much of a problem,” one state representative argued. “There’s nothing to cheer about.”

  Apparently, enough people agreed with him. In 1988, the first night game was played, and—predictably—rained out after three and a half innings.

  The last game Ryan and her dad attended was on a warm night in September, when the air was still sticky with summer and an orange moon appeared low in the sky toward the start of the ninth inning. With no shot at the postseason, other teams might get lazy and other cities might despair, but not Chicago; the team hustled in the outfield as the close of the game drew near.

  It was the tail end of the season, and for once, the wait-till-next-year philosophy wasn’t all wrong; the following year, 2003, would be their best in nearly two decades.

  But this—this pitiful string of games—was the last season Ryan’s father would ever see. He rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward in the seat, and pointed as the Cubs’ shortstop lunged for a ground ball, throwing his body into the dirt and just barely managing to snag it. “Look,” he told Ryan. “The game’s basically lost, the season’s almost over, but that—that!—is what being a Cub is all about.”

  “Catching the ball?”

  “That,” he said, “and getting dirty.”

  Ryan slumped into his side, rubbing her eyes. The stadium pulsed and rang with ninth-inning cheers, the last desperate calls of a dying season. Dad was wringing his hat in his hands, his eyes bright. He nudged Ryan to her feet as the crowd rallied around them. Everyone yelled until they were hoarse, until all the shouting, all the cheering, all the screams became one rising sound, a symphony of noise beneath the white-hot bulbs that bore down on the field like spotlights.

  “I wouldn’t be a Yankees fan for all the money in the world,” Dad said, shaking his head. “If you win that much, it takes all the character out of it.”

  “So you like it that we lose all the time?” Ryan asked, and he playfully swatted the brim of her cap.

  “Nobody likes to lose,” he said. “But there’s some good in it too.”

  Ryan considered this. “Like how it makes you want to win more?”

  “Like how it makes it that much better when you do.”

  “But what if we don’t?” she asked. “What if they don’t ever win?”

  Dad looked out over the field, the milky lights of the stadium, the navy dome of sky above. The players moved across the grass like actors, the whole field a stage.

  “We just have to be patient,” he said, smiling. “There’s always next year.”

  It was true; the following season, the Cubs would come maddeningly close to the World Series. They broke records and defied expectations, and those fans who thought it wasn’t possible to yell any louder than they’d been doing all their lives found a whole new volume.

  But not Ryan’s dad.

  It could be argued that he was saved from having to watch them come so close only to break his heart once again. But Ryan knows differently. He should have been there beside her, shouting his head off for their team, stomping his feet and whistling. He missed those last few nights of misfortune—the infamous foul ball, the futile efforts to turn things around—but he also missed a whole season of hope, an entire summer of promise and possibility.

  Ryan doesn’t remember that the Cubs lost that last ball game they’d gone to together. All she remembers is the rumble of the crowd, so loud she had to cover her ears with her hands until Dad lifted her onto his shoulders to see. She doesn’t remember the last few outs, and she doesn’t recall the final score. She has no memory of the ride home after the game.

  All she remembers is that of everyone there that night—over thirty thousand roaring fans—it was her dad who was cheering the loudest. And if this was not actually so, then it was, at least, the way it seemed. It’s the way she will always remember it.

  It takes Kevin nearly forty minutes to find a parking spot he deems suitable for the sky blue convertible he’s had since before marrying Mom. This would be unforgivable if they were running late, but since he’d insisted on leaving nearly two hours early, they still have plenty of time. When Ryan used to come down with Dad, they always took the ‘L’ train. He’d been of the opinion that no die-hard Cubs fan should drive to Wrigley. It’s the sure badge of a tourist, an infrequent visitor to the land of Cubdom.

  Kevin inches along the crowded streets in Wrigleyville—street parking being out of the question for a whole litany of reasons that Ryan has only half-listened to—until they come across a far-flung lot with two harmless-looking attendants.

  “We may as well have walked from home,” Ryan says with a sigh as they catch up to the mob of people drifting toward the stadium. Kevin doesn’t hear her. He’s looking over his shoulder at the car they’ve left behind, no doubt worrying over the golf clubs in the trunk.

  “You know,” he says, as they cross Clark and make their way up to the entrance, “I’ve never been to a Cubs game before.”

  This doesn’t surprise Ryan in the slightest. “Have you been to any game before?”

  “I think I once saw the Phillies play when I was a kid,” he says. “Or maybe it was the Steelers.”

  “The Steelers are football.”

  “That’s right.” Kevin laughs. “Then I guess it was the Phillies.”

  Once they’re standing in the hollow underground of the stadium, their voices tinny against the concrete floors, Kevin hands over her ticket stub. “Want to keep it as a souvenir?”

  Ryan shakes her head. She still carries the one from her last game with her dad in her wallet, and there’s nothing in her that wants to continue collecting them.

  They wait in line to get hot dogs and Cokes, watching the pregame show on the little TV sets angled in the corners of each booth. Dad never would have bought food beforehand. He always found a distinct joy in waving down the vendors, in the camaraderie of passing your money across the aisle and then watching the change come back the other way. It was part of the experience.

  Their seats are along the first base line, and Ryan’s grateful to be on the opposite side of the stadium from where Dad’s had been. She can see them now from where she’s sitting—high on the second tier with the press boxes to their left and the lake to their right—and she’s able to make out the fuzzy forms of two old men in the spot where she’d watched so many games with her father. Across the outfield, the sun glances off the bleachers, and the giant green scoreboard stretches wide against the sky. The back wall of Wrigley is lower than most stadiums, so the brownstone buildings lining the block have views from their roofs, and most of them are already filled with people barbecuing or hosting parties before the game.

  Kevin balances the cardboard box with their hot dogs on his lap and hands her an enormous pile of napkins. “So are the Cubs good this year or what?”

  “Or what,” Ryan answers, turning to face the field. After a promising start, they’d lost two consecutive series on the road and had dropped down to fourth place in their division. Today’s matchup against the Pirates, although still early in the season, is a division game, and so an important one, and Ryan can’t help wondering what Nick is doing instead of sitting here beside her.

  She feels a small flush of anger at the thought of him watching it on television. There’s no good reason for him not to be here right now. If he’d decided to come and
they hadn’t spoken the whole ride down, then that would have been just fine. If he’d had a problem with her and they argued through the first few innings, then so be it. If there had been a long, awkward silence as the game wore on, then still, it would have been better. Because nothing should matter as much as this: being at Wrigley on a perfect summer afternoon with the team running out onto the field below to warm up, their uniforms bright against the grass.

  Kevin finishes the last of his hot dog and leans over. “Are we white or gray?”

  “White,” Ryan mutters, resting her elbows on her knees, her eyes drifting over to the two seats on the third base line, where all those seasons ago she’d watched the Cubs lose beneath the dusky lights. The whole time—through warm-ups and the national anthem, the start of the game beneath a white-hot sun—Ryan’s eyes keep coming back to that spot. It’s easy, in this way, to go back in time. It’s the simplest thing in the world.

  Beside her, Kevin points at home plate as they move into the bottom half of the first inning. “Look at the screwy way that guy’s standing,” he says, and Ryan sees that the Cubs’ left fielder is up to bat, a guy with an odd habit of turning his knees inward at the plate, whittling away his strike zone by crouching so low. Before she has a chance to explain this, Kevin folds his arms and nods sagely. “Now if he were a golfer,” he says, “that would really cut down on his range of movement. …”

  But Ryan has stopped listening. She watches the pitcher throw two more balls, and the batter rips off his glove and jogs to first base, where he throws his head back to laugh at something the Pirates’ first baseman is saying. If she were with her dad, he would be doing his best impression of the conversation right now, using a high, girly voice for the player on the opposing team: What an outrage, he would mimic, as if he could hear from across the field. The most deserving team in the whole league has gone the longest without a championship.

  That’s not what he’s saying, Ryan would giggle.

  Dad always arched an eyebrow. It’s what he should be saying.

  But not in that voice.

  Fine, he’d say, sighing dramatically. If you’re going to be a stickler about the facts.

  The catcher for the Cubs is now up to bat, and he hooks a long shot to right field, the ball coasting up toward where they’re sitting, and for a moment, Ryan thinks it might come close. But it arcs past them into the next section, where a man gets hold of it off the first bounce and hands it to his son. Kevin raises a hand to flag down a vendor selling popcorn, and Ryan stifles the urge to tell him this is not a movie theater.

  A few innings later, there’s still no score—Ryan feels sorry for the guy behind the scoreboard lifting all those zeroes into their slots—and the Pirates pause the game to replace their pitcher.

  “I can see how this could be a fun tradition,” Kevin says, fumbling through the box of popcorn. “A good thing for fathers to do with their kids.”

  Ryan bristles, keeping her eyes on the field.

  “Maybe someday when the baby’s old enough, we’ll take him or her down here,” he’s saying. “The same way your dad did for you.”

  Something wells up inside of Ryan then, a sadness so profound it feels as if her heart is actually being twisted. She knows he’s only trying to be nice, but she can’t help thinking of what she’d give to have her father here today instead of Kevin. She struggles to keep her eyes from the two seats that stick out so sharply, so readily in a stadium brimming with people.

  Kevin’s cell phone begins to ring from his pocket—a merry little tune that makes Ryan want to cry—and he sets down the popcorn to answer it.

  “Hi, honey,” he says, covering his other ear with his hand. “How’d it go?”

  Ryan takes a deep breath. The Pirates throw out a Cubs player at second base, and the next batter springs from the dugout and walks to the plate.

  “I thought we were going to wait,” Kevin says, frowning, and Ryan watches the player tap his shoes with the bat and spit at the ground.

  “No, I’m not mad,” Kevin’s saying, ducking his head against the noise as the batter steps into the box. “I’m sorry if it seems that way, I’m just—” He stands from his seat, several pieces of popcorn falling from his lap, and shrugs apologetically at Ryan as he squeezes around her and past four other people out into the aisle. She watches him pace back and forth along the railing, the crowd around him rising to their feet as the batter slices one into a pocket just past the shortstop. The whole of the stadium is up and hollering as he safely overruns first base.

  Ryan stays sitting, as if bracing herself.

  When the noise dies down and the fans collapse back into their seats, she sees Kevin skip up the stairs, nudging his way along the row and past Ryan to sit back down. He holds up his cell phone.

  “So,” he says, grinning broadly. “It’s a boy!”

  Below on the field, when nobody’s watching, the runner steals second. And even though she’s happy for the Cubs, the other team’s pitcher looks so forlorn that she almost feels sorry for him. He paces the dirt on the mound with a sort of dazed air about him, as if wondering how the play had slipped so quickly from his grasp.

  Ryan thinks she knows how he feels.

  Chapter Twelve

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT AT DINNER, RYAN SITS SLUMPED IN HER chair, picking at the cooked carrots on her plate while Emily peppers Mom with questions about the new baby.

  “Will his eyes be open when he comes out of your tummy?” she asks, her own eyes large and round at the thought. “Will he have hair already?”

  Ryan’s about to make a snide remark about Kevin’s gene pool, something witty about the growing bald circle on the back of his head—now a bright shade of pink after the day’s excursion—but she manages to bite back the words. There is something undeniably permanent about what had happened today. It—whatever had been growing in Mom’s stomach—was now a him. What had before been something vague and shapeless was now a tiny boy, a little brother. And no matter what, he would always be a part of Kevin, too.

  Riding home from the game, Ryan had rested an elbow on the window and watched the buildings slip by against the lake. Kevin fiddled with the radio, flipping past the Cubs postgame report—no doubt a lament on the afternoon’s sorry performance—and eventually settling on an oldies station. Ryan wondered whether the new baby would like this kind of music, too. She couldn’t help marveling at the idea that soon, there would be a new person in the world that came from her mother without any part of her father. Would he look like Kevin? Would he be musical and culinary and good at math? Would he have a long face and a nice smile and a tendency of rubbing at his forehead when he’s worried?

  Ryan tried to think of herself like a recipe—one part Mom and one part Dad—without much luck. She had her mother’s dark hair and her father’s small nose, Mom’s green eyes and the same lopsided smile as Dad. But it was more than just the way she looked. Ryan had inherited Dad’s hopeless tendency toward dreaminess, his lack of interest in the facts. He’d always been firm about everything happening for a reason, and even now that he’s gone and there’s no reason Ryan can see for that, she still struggles to follow his example, moving from one day to the next with a hope like a habit she’s unable to break.

  But Kevin is as stable and steady and grounded as Mom, and Ryan wonders about the lack of balance, how this baby will move through life without those ingredients that had so far kept her from floundering completely. Mom is high-strung and worried and careful—all things that make her a good mother—but Dad had been wistful. He’d been impulsive. He’d been funny. And where would the baby be without all of that?

  Emily kicks her from underneath the table, and Ryan looks up, startled. “What’s your pick?” she repeats, her hair—dark as Mom’s—in two braids, and her eyes—gray as Dad’s—asking a question Ryan isn’t sure how to answer. “For a name?” Emily says, prodding. “For the baby?”

  Name him after Dad, Ryan wants to say. But inst
ead, she surprises even herself by saying “Kevin,” and the word is the biggest gift she can offer right now. It is wistful and impulsive and funny all at once. It’s the part of her that is her dad, and it’s the best she can do.

  Kevin smiles at her across the table, and Mom laughs.

  “It’s a nice thought,” she says, reaching out to place a hand on Ryan’s. “But I don’t think we need that sort of confusion around here.”

  “My grandfather’s name was Percy,” Kevin suggests, and Ryan coughs.

  “No way,” Mom says, winking at her. “We can do better than that.”

  “I know,” Ryan says. “I’m not worried.”

  In the morning, they drive through grassy subdivisions and neat rows of houses to drop Emily off at day camp. Mom keeps one hand on the wheel and runs the other through her hair, humming a soft, lilting tune while Ryan fidgets in the front seat.

  “Why doesn’t Ryan go to camp, too?” Emily asks, leaning forward between the seats. Her backpack is balanced on her lap, and her shoes are already untied.

  Mom stops humming and gives her a grave look in the rearview mirror. “Ryan flunked archery one summer,” she says, shaking her head.

  “For real?” Emily looks unconvinced.

  Mom’s about to say no, but Ryan cuts in. “The goal is pretty much not to hit other kids with an arrow.”

  Emily’s mouth falls open. “You hit someone with an arrow?”

  Mom shoots her a look across the front seat. “You’re worse than your dad.”

  Ryan tries not to look quite so pleased with herself.

  They wind along a tree-lined road that slopes south as it cuts away from the lake, and at the end of the street, a few dozen kids in camp T-shirts are milling about on a brownish soccer field. Ryan squints out at the assembly of campers, those ready for the day and those already waiting for it to end, and hands Emily her brown lunch bag.