Alive on Opening Day (3 page)

The phone rang a second
time, and Dan could hear the line pop to life on the other end.
“Good morning, Bisler residence,” a pleasant female voice greeted
him.

“
Um, Mrs. Bisler?” Dan
said, pulling himself out of the calendar for a moment. “Is Chris
there?”

“
Oh,” Mrs. Bisler said,
sounding surprised. “Why, no, no he’s not.”

“
Oh,” Dan replied,
disappointed. “Well, do you know when he’ll be back?”

“
Chris is still in
Lafayette,” Mrs. Bisler said, her voice tinging with suspicion. “He
won’t be home again until summer.”

Now it was Dan’s turn to
be confused. “What’s he doing in Lafayette?” Then a thought hit
him. “What about baseball?”

“
Say, who is this?” Mrs.
Bisler had finally recovered from Dan’s initial
greeting.

“
Oh, oh!” Dan realized he
had been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t even
identified himself. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bisler. Can’t believe I was
so rude. This is Dan, Dan Hodges.”

There was a pause, and
then Mrs. Bisler sounded angry.

“
Young man, you may think
that you’re clever, but you’re not,” she scolded. “This is not in
the least bit funny.”

Dan agreed: there was
nothing funny about this conversation, but he wasn’t
trying
to be humorous,
either.

He considered for a moment
that maybe Mrs. Bisler was teasing him, but that didn’t make any
sense. He had known her for five years, and she had never joked
with him, not even once. She was nice and sweet, but humor was not
part of her repertoire. So Dan decided to go with the
story.

“
No, ma’am,” he said. “I’m
really not trying to be funny. I’m sorry if I upset you, but I
really would like to talk to Chris. Do you have his number in, um,
Lafayette?”

The line was silent for
several seconds, and Dan thought maybe Mrs. Bisler had hung up on
him. “Um, Mrs. Bisler?” he prodded. “Are you still
there?”

When she spoke again, Mrs.
Bisler’s voice was quiet. “Yes, yes, I’m here,” she said. “Dan, is
that really you?”

Dan was relieved to hear
her call him by name but confused by her hesitation. “Yes, it’s me,
Mrs. Bisler. Do you think Chris would want to talk to
me?”

Mrs. Bisler ignored the
question. “Where are you, Dan?” she asked instead.

“
Well, I’m at home, Mrs.
Bisler. Why?” He had no idea why that mattered to her, unless she
was going to bust him for skipping school.

From the other end of the
phone line, Dan heard Mrs. Bisler let out a huge sigh, and then she
said, “You stay right there young man. I’ll be over in just a few
minutes.”

That
really
baffled Dan and he started to
protest. “No, it’s OK, Mrs. Bisler. I don’t need you to come over
or anything. I can talk to Chris later.” After a hesitation, he
finished: “I … I mean when he comes home for the summer.” It
sounded absurd coming from his lips, but he thought it best to
maintain Mrs. Bisler’s storyline.

“
Stay put!” she commanded.
“I’m on my way.”

The line went
dead.

Dan was stupefied by his
odd conversation with Chris’ mom, and he stood with the phone to
his ear for several seconds after she had hung up. Finally, he
replaced the receiver in its cradle on the wall and turned toward
the kitchen table, intending to sit down. Before he could take a
step, though, something caught in his mind and he wheeled back
around to peer at the calendar next to the phone.

He hadn’t noticed it
before, but the month he had been looking at was
not
March of
1973.

It was March of
1974
.

CHAPTER FOUR

Reunion

Fifteen minutes later, Dan
still sat at the table, flipping through the 1974 calendar trying
to make sense of what he was seeing when the doorbell rang. He
looked toward the front hall but then turned his attention back to
June, where the 15th day was circled in fat red marker: “Dan’s 20th
birthday!” the writing inside proclaimed.

The doorbell rang again,
followed immediately by a loud banging, and Dan could hear a
muffled voice through the front glass.

“
Dan! Dan! Are you in
there?” It was Mrs. Bisler. “Let me in, Dan. I’ve called your
mother, and she will be here any minute.” A pause, followed by,
“Da-an!”

Dan stumbled to his feet
and dropped the calendar on the table. “I’m coming,” he called out,
but it came out as a dry, cracked whisper. He cleared his throat
and walked toward the door, yelling again: “Coming!”

The knocking and shouting
stopped, and Dan peeked out the long window beside the front door.
He could see Mrs. Bisler standing on the stoop in her full-length
June Cleaver dress, wrapped in a light woolen shawl. He unlocked
the door and pulled it open and, as he did, Mrs. Bisler bounded
over the threshold and clamped him in a bear hug.

The force nearly knocked
Dan over backwards but he managed to catch himself and found his
arms wrapped around Mrs. Bisler’s neck, his face buried in her
shawl. “Oh, I’m so happy to see you, Dan!”

Dan thought it was an
ironic thing for her to say considering there was no way she had
actually
seen
him
in her bull rush. After several seconds of bone-crushing embrace,
Dan managed to push away from Mrs. Bisler, and he held her at arms’
length.

“
Whoa, Mrs. Bisler!” he
said, and instantly felt guilty for his exclamation. He pulled his
tone down a notch and continued with, “Well, I’m happy to see you,
too, Mrs. Bisler, but we just saw each other …” Dan stopped to
think of when the last time was he HAD seen Chris’ mom. It should
have been the day before at the sectional game, but that was still
a black hole in Dan’s memory. “… um, at our last baseball
game.”

There, that was safe, he
thought.

“
Oh, Dan, you really don’t
remember, do you?” Mrs. Bisler asked, and Dan felt uneasy because
it was as if she had read his thoughts.

Dan wanted to be
respectful, but he’d had about enough of the strange way Mrs.
Bisler was acting. Not only had she barged into his house when his
parents weren’t home, but she was treating him like a child or an
invalid. If she had been anyone other than Chris’ mother, Dan might
have been concerned for his safety. As it was, he wanted the
nonsense to end.

“
Remember WHAT, Mrs.
Bisler?” he said, his voice rising. The older woman recoiled, and
took her hands off his arms. “What is it I’m supposed to remember,
and just why are you acting so strange?”

Mrs. Bisler’s worried eyes
shifted to the front door. She pulled her hands together and began
fidgeting with her purse strap.

“
Well, Dan, it’s just that
… ” She was stumbling over her words. “I think I’d better go back
outside and wait for your mother. I’ll be in my car if you need me,
dear.”

With that, she rushed past
him and out the storm door, making a beeline for the shiny Pontiac
standing at the curb. Dan snatched at her shawl as she went by, and
he called after her, but she didn’t even look back.

Dan stepped out onto the
front stoop, hands held palms-up at his side in wonder at the scene
that had just transpired. He was completely befuddled about what
Mrs. Bisler was up to, but he thought the best thing to do would be
to wait for his mother. What he WANTED to do was go to school, but
he didn’t see anyway he could get past Mrs. Bisler’s car without
her seeing him, and probably stopping him. So he went back inside
and sat at the kitchen table again, but he left the front door open
and turned his chair to face the street. From where he sat, he
could keep an eye on Mrs. Bisler to make sure she wasn’t up to
anything
really
weird, and he could see when his mother pulled up.

Although it felt a lot
longer to Dan at the time, the clock on the stove told him only six
minutes passed from the time he sat down until Clara parked her car
and walked over to speak with Mrs. Bisler. The other woman was
agitated and pointed toward the house several times, then got out
of her car again. The two women stood at the foot of the sidewalk
speaking in hushed tones for a good five minutes, one of them
occasionally glancing in Dan’s direction, before hugging and going
separate ways. As Dan’s mother walked toward the house, Mrs. Bisler
climbed back into her car and drove away. She tooted her horn twice
as she passed by after turning around.

Dan watched Clara clop up
the sidewalk in her “working clothes,” as she called them — a khaki
blouse and blue jeans, with a red bandana tied behind her head to
keep her long red hair teased into a wavy pony tail. Dan always
thought, had his mother been born 15 years later, she would have
made a great hippie. As it was, she made a pretty good mom and he
was really glad to see her.

Maybe it was just the
ordeal with Mrs. Bisler, or maybe it was because he STILL couldn’t
remember what had happened the night before, but Dan had an
overwhelming feeling of homecoming when his mother put her hand on
the storm door and called out his name. It felt as if he were
seeing her for the first time in a
long
time, and his sadness began to
subside, though the source of his gloom remained a
mystery.

In spite of the fact he
considered himself a full-grown man, Dan squealed and shot to his
feet. “Mom,” he called out and ran toward the door, arriving in the
entry way just as his mother stepped inside. She dropped her purse
and jacket on the floor, wrapping her arms around him.

“
Oh, Danny!” she cried.
“You’re really here!”

Even though Dan was
slammed with the same surge of emotion which moved his mother, he
had no idea why. But the moment felt so much like a reunion he
decided to just ride the wave for a little while, and both of them
sobbed. It was the strangest thing Dan had ever done, but it seemed
right.

—

Ten minutes later, when
Dan and Clara had composed themselves and wiped away their tears,
she led him back into the kitchen and told him to have a seat,
which he did.

“
Have you had anything to
eat?” she asked him, shaking her head as if correcting herself. “I
mean, do you feel like eating? Are you hungry at all?”

Dan had been awake about
an hour at that point but had not even considered eating. Normally,
he would feel faint if he missed a meal by a few minutes, but the
morning had been too crazy for him to notice the gnawing in his
belly.

He nodded and smiled.
“Yeah, Mom, I am.”

She wiped tears from her
eyes and said, “Hmm, how about some pancakes and bacon?”

Dan raised his eyebrows.
“And scrambled eggs?” he asked.

Clara laughed and clapped
him on the shoulder. “Yes, Dan, and scrambled eggs.”

“
And Mom?”

“
Yes, honey?”

“
You have a story to tell
me, don’t you?”

She began to tear up
again, and her voice was thick. “Yes, honey, I do. You sit down and
we can talk while you eat.”

Dan pulled his chair up to
the table and watched his mother make breakfast. It was a scene
that seemed resurrected from Dan’s ancient past. He asked where she
had been that morning, and she told him she had been volunteering
at the library, which is where Mrs. Bisler reached her. Clara said
she had been spending more time at the library “since” … and she
let the word hang. Next she finished with, “We can get into that in
a few minutes.”

She pulled a large plate
from the cabinet next to the stove and loaded it high with
pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs, with maple syrup and hot sauce
as toppings. Then she filled a large glass with milk.

Finally, she brought the
food to the table and set it in front of Dan, taking a seat across
from him. As he ate, she reached across Dan’s meal to tussle his
medium-length brown hair and grabbed one of his hands in hers,
gazing into his hazel eyes to begin her story.

“
Here’s what happened,
Dan,” she said.

Dan nodded, eager to hear
the tale of his lost day, but nervous to find out the
truth.

Clara went on, “It was the
night of the sectional game against Melville …”

CHAPTER FIVE