Casey's Home (22 page)

“I want to see him completely. I
want the parts to fit together.”

He was quiet for a long moment,
eyes down on the half-destroyed label of his bottle of root beer. The kitchen
was painted with sunset; rich purple shadows, the momentary glitter of gold
highlights on the stainless steel. “There used to be this kid who played for
FSU named Aaron Gershwitz,” Ben began. “Little Jewish kid with something to
prove, I don’t know why. I mean, it’s Tampa.” Ben spread his hands on the
table, fingertips bending slightly. “He was preaching to the converted, if you
know what I mean.”

I smiled and he caught it,
continued. “Anyway, he used to crowd the plate. He’d hunch over it like he was
trying to protect it. It drove our pitchers crazy, since if you let him get
away with it, your strike zone was suddenly about the size of a paperback. They
used to brush him back, over and over. Up he’d come and then back he’d jump as
the ball practically singed the buttons off his shirt. Drove Billy crazy.

“Well, come the final game of the
regular season and we’re only up by half a game. The team right behind us had
already won that day and we knew this was it, do or die. It’s a tie game, and
they’ve got a runner on second and third. Big kid named Evan Klein is up on the
mound. He was a good kid, good control. We all watch as Gershwitz comes up to
bat and Billy calls a time out. Goes up, talks to Klein and then comes back to
the bench.

“I ask him what he’d said and he
tells me he’d made sure Klein wasn’t thinking of trying to brush him back. If
he walked him, we’d have the bases loaded and the middle of the order coming
up. ‘Just throw the goddamned ball,’ Billy recounts to me. ‘That’s what I told
him. You know where the strike zone is, so use it. Let the ump do his job.’

“So up steps Gershwitz and he’s
practically standing on the base. Klein looks over at the bench and throws the
pitch. Inside, the ump says. Now, from where I was sitting, it looked sweet, right
over the edge of the plate. So Gershwitz steps in again and Klein winds up. And
sure enough, another tight fastball, right over the plate and the ump calls it
inside. Now, I can tell Klein’s pissed. He doesn’t want to walk this guy, he
doesn’t want to pitch to him, he just wants to get an out and get us the hell
out of the inning. So he winds up again and whack, hits Gershwitz right in the
ribs. Walks him. Billy’s irate, screaming from the dugout. At any rate, we get
lucky. The next guy goes down easily on four pitches. Klein comes back to the
bench expecting to get his ass chewed out and Billy doesn’t disappoint.

“’I told you not to try to brush
him back,’ Billy shouts. Klein doesn’t say a word. ‘That’s fifty extra laps for
you tomorrow, Klein,’ Billy says. Now this pisses Klein off. Just the day
before, another of our pitchers had brushed Gershwitz back off the plate three
times and Billy had only made him run an extra twenty-five. ‘What the fuck
for?’ Klein says. Billy looks him up and down and sniffs. ‘Twenty-five for
brushing him back when I told you not to.’

“’And the other fucking
twenty-five?’ Klein shouts. Billy looks him in the eye and the whole dugout is
silent. You could hear the crickets in the outfield. ‘Those are for missing,’
he says.”

I snorted and Ben grinned.
“That’s a great story,” I said.

“I know,” Ben agreed. “And it’s
quintessentially your father. He wasn’t angry if you took the initiative, but
he’d kill you for dropping the ball.”

We were silent, then Ben stood
and gestured to the fridge with his bottle. “Another one?”

I nodded and watched him as he
stood for a moment in front of the open door, sighing in the cool air.

“I’ve got to get a new
air-conditioner,” he said and set both of the bottles on the countertop. An old
metal bottle opener was under the sink and Ben flicked off the cap of his
bottle and tossed it into the sink.

I should have gone home. Lee and
Jake were there, crying together, or however it was they shared their grief.
Instead I stood and stepped up behind Ben, hugging him tightly around the
waist. He hesitated, then set his drink down, sliding his hands down my arms
from the elbows to interlace his hands with mine.

“I’m glad you haven’t fixed your
air-conditioner,” I said, my cheek pressed against the damp fabric of his back.
“I’m tired of everything being perfectly controlled.” Then I slid my hands free
from his and moved them to his waist. When I pulled his shirt over his head, he
lifted his arms like a child. It wasn’t until I pressed my mouth against the
bones at the base of his skull that I got the reaction I was, until then,
unknowingly hoping for. Ben gasped and grasped the countertop.

His skin was smoother than I
expected, dappled dull gold and sepia in the waning light. When I reached the
base of his spine, his breath was fast and thick, as if he had been running.
Turning slowly, he let me kiss from the tight skin of his navel to the
already-damp places in the hollow of his throat before he gripped my arms and
stilled me, bending to kiss me. I was astonished to find the interior of his
mouth cool and sweet from his drink.

This was not how it was with
Mark. I’d forgotten, or perhaps I never knew in the first place, what it was
like to want it so badly your body forgot itself. Ben wrestled my hair free
from its combs and clutched it as if he was afraid of being swept off the floor
of his kitchen into the approaching night. I wasn’t sure what was keeping me
there, either.

He found a chair and pulled me
down onto his lap. My skirt slid roughly up my thighs as I straddled him, a
sweet friction, resting around my hips. Beneath me his body was lean and hard
with a suddenly familiar muscularity. He pressed up against me and I returned
the pressure. We moved together for a moment, teasing one another. This was
what it would feel like, when it happened. Ben stopped suddenly, hands on my
face, his breath tickling my nose as he tried to gather his control.

“Bedroom,” was all he managed to
get out.

It took us several minutes to
find it. Ben kept pushing me back against doors or walls that I found didn’t
lead to soft pillows and cool sheets. I was trying to keep him focused on our
goal, but it was impossible to ignore his mouth on my neck, on the space just
above the clasp of my bra. And his hands were everywhere.

Then when we did find his bed and
stripped off what remained of our clothing, I was distracted by his long, bare
feet. All of him was bare before me, and I couldn’t help but slide down his
body to touch his toes, and stroke his insoles. He was panting when I started,
but purring when I moved up his legs, squeezing his calves, the strong muscles
of his thighs. I’d never wanted to touch someone everywhere before. It was a
novel thing, to be that immersed in sensation, to feel the invisible connection
of his desire, of his pleasure washing over me as I explored his skin. I wanted
to know what it felt like when I did that, and that... and how about that?

Everywhere he kissed me he left
trails of cool air behind him.

After, Ben collapsed beside me,
his arm over his eyes as if he was devastated, and perhaps he was. I was unable
to move, disheveled and blissful, as if I’d spent the day at the beach,
swimming in the surf. Propping himself up on one arm beside me, he brushed the
hair back from my cheek. He opened his mouth and then closed it again. I wanted
him to say something, I wanted to say something, but neither of us was willing
to try something new.

“Can I stay?” I asked at last. He
nodded and pulled me close to him, wrapping one strong arm around my waist. It
was no coincidence that we were not facing one another. Neither of us was ready
to discuss all the possibilities that were suddenly waving their bright flags
in front of us, competing with our caution. Ben stroked the bare skin of my
stomach, letting his fingers follow the curve of my hip to settle there. I
drifted in and out until dawn cast new light into the room. In that time of
half-awareness, Ben’s hands sought out mine. I turned to him at last and we
began again.

1990

The last time I spent any length
of time alone with my father, he was flying out to the West coast for a
coaching conference and decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak,
by also visiting me. That was exactly how he put it, when he called to notify
me two weeks before his arrival. While I tried to be overjoyed that I was, at
last, going to get a visit, it annoyed me that he felt he still needed another
excuse to get on the plane.

Of course, my father had picked a
miserable time to come. In addition to the fact that I had just violently pried
myself out of a relationship so ridiculous and damaging I couldn’t look back on
it even five years later without wincing, I had been teaching at the college
for just a few months and couldn’t yet afford a nice place. He said nothing as
we pulled into the moldering complex, not even commenting on the meaningless
Indian name, Tama Qua – the sort that kind of place always seemed to end up
with. It wasn’t until we were past the Seventies brown glass of the entryway
that he let loose.

“You would think that damn
publishing house would have paid you something for that book,” he said as I led
him into my studio apartment. To be truthful, it wasn’t that bad. The carpet
was clean and though technically the view in the winter consisted mostly of the
airport, in the spring the trees filled out and my balcony looked out on a wall
of swaying shades of green.

“They did,” I explained. “I used
it to buy the car.”

“The car,” he said. “Isn’t this
area supposed to have great public transportation? What the hell do you need a
car for?”

“I don’t.” Hanging my coat over
the back of one of the chairs of my dinette set, I watched as he sank into my
old sofa like a man sitting in a large yellow cloud. “I just wanted one. A big,
fast car with tons of power that eats gas and contributes to the gradual
destruction of the planet.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. I was
just asking.” He eyed my TV for a moment. “Does that thing get cable?”

“Sure Dad,” I said grimly. “I’m
living in a shit-heap, but I’ve got cable.”

“Thought so,” he answered,
flicking it on and thumbing through to ESPN. It was extraordinary how quickly
he found it in the mass of local cable stations, as if he could sense baseball
happening, somewhere. “Sox are going to get creamed. You keep up?”

Shrugging, I set my purse down
next to his suitcase and settled on the arm of the couch to watch with him.
“Sometimes.”

“You’re lying,” he said. “You’re
still hooked. Lee marries one and doesn’t have a damn clue what the hell he
does, and you… well, at least you watch.”

“So Dad,” I said. “I thought we
could go to Pike Place Market if you want.”

He grunted as the pitcher threw a
ball, just outside and a bit too high. “Why would I want to go there? What have
they got, fruit, right?”

“Yeah, and vegetables.”

“I can get vegetables at home. I
want to do something here I can’t do at home. Oh,” he shouted suddenly.
“Goddamn it! You don’t pitch to him like that, you stupid fuck. Jesus. These
kids haven’t got the control, you know? I mean, doesn’t anybody work with them
once they hit the majors, or do they just let them ride around in first class
sipping martinis and talking about how many classic cars they can park in their
damn garage?”

I watched the ball drift silently
over the far wall.

“Let’s go to the mountains,” I
said, “and hike.”

“Fine, good,” he said, leaning
back and settling in. “I like that idea.”

“You wanna beer, dad?”

“Huh?” he grunted and seemed to
suddenly see me perched there, regarding him like a little brown bird. “Yeah,
that’d be great, Case.”

I popped open two beers, which
was just about the entire contents of my fridge, despite my repeated vows to
eat “healthy”, and handed him one.

“So,” I said, “who do you like?”

“Mmm...” He leaned back and gestured to the TV with
his beer. “The Reds are good this year. They could make it. We'll have to see
how they do against Drabek and whether Bonds and Bonilla can be contained.”

I nodded and let him talk about
baseball for a few minutes, comforted by the familiar analysis. I wondered in
that moment if he ever knew how badly I had wanted to play for him.

“Now,” he said at last. “You’re
being very quiet over there. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Dad,” I began, unsure how to
disappoint him, though I’d done it so many times before. “Chris and I aren’t
going to get married.”

He was silent, letting that sink
in, I supposed. Adding it to his list.

“Why not?” he said, and his voice
sounded cautious.

“He just...” I trailed off. We
had flown out to visit my family the year before, when Chris had proposed. And
what a miserable trip it had been, as he whined his way through my childhood.
“I guess I just decided I’d had enough of the yelling and the indecision.”

For a moment, I thought he might
be angry, but then he laughed, slapping his knee and spilling a bit of the
beer.

“Well, it’s about fucking time!”
he said and my look of complete surprise only seemed to make him laugh harder.
“Jesus, Case, that boy was such a goddamned loser. I can’t tell you how
thrilled Lee will be when you tell her.”

“Really?” I squeaked. “You don’t
mind?”

“Mind?” He was serious suddenly.
“Why would I mind? You’re a grown woman. Even if I’d liked him, you didn’t have
to marry him to please me.”

“But...” I began and he stopped
me with a hand on my leg.

“You don’t both have to marry
baseball players.”

And there it was, out in the
open. “That wasn’t why...”

“Yes it was,” he said firmly.
“Don’t be stupid. No one in their right mind would put up with that asshole for
even half a second if it weren’t for his contract. Casey...” He leaned over and
tapped my knee. “He plays for the Mariners, for God’s sake. It’s not like he’s
any good.”

I laughed then, feeling
infinitely relieved and somehow slightly disappointed at the same time. “If you
knew, all that time... why the hell didn’t you guys say anything?”

He looked at me, his face shrewd.
“Would it have made you leave him any sooner?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Exactly. Now, where are we going
tomorrow?” He winked and toasted me with his beer. “I’ve only got one day and I
want it to be good.”

And it was, once we got going. On
the drive out to Tiger Mountain, we listened to the game on the local sports
radio. Dad called the shots before the commentator, a feat of prediction that
would have astounded anyone on the psychic network. I found that after the
first few moments I was no longer listening to the announcer, but instead to my
dad’s voice, as warm as the sun through the windshield.

My father was so genuinely
impressed by the early fall weather that he couldn’t even attempt to grouse
about the rain, or lack of it. Brilliant flashes of golden deciduous trees in
the evergreens seemed to jump out above a pulsing red layer of undergrowth, as if
the mountain were on fire from within. We hiked through the crisp, clear air,
me struggling behind my ever-athletic father. It was as if we had returned to
the happiest times of my childhood, camping together, leaving Lee and my mother
to argue over a game of gin rummy in the trailer.

I was, in fact, their third
child. My eldest sister was stillborn. Half-way through her pregnancy with me,
confined once again to her bed for months on end, my mother declared she would
not be having any more children, end of discussion. So my father, allowed to
name me, chose Casey. Third and final time at bat and the mighty man strikes
out. Still, I did my best. I wore Toughskins and fought with the boys. My
mother, happy with one girly daughter, let me run wild as I liked.

The year I turned seven, my world
shifted as if someone had run into it and knocked it spinning out into space.
My father and I went to the park to practice my swing, but ended up watching a
group of local kids play out a game. We formed a tiny cheering section in the
metal bleachers as a thin young man stepped up to the plate and delivered a
blistering seventy-five mile-an-hour fastball within an inch of the batter’s
nose.

Outraged, the batter screamed at
the pitcher: “What the hell, are you trying to kill me?”

The high schooler, his back
turned, rubbing his palms over his pants, answered: “Not really. If I wanted to
do that, I’d have aimed at your head, not your nose.”

My father had him practicing in
our backyard within the week. Suddenly, I was no longer the favored child, the
only hope, the son my father could never have. I could say I was scarred by
this, but it wouldn’t be entirely true. Because, sitting on those bleachers,
holding my legs up to keep the bare skin below my shorts from touching the burning
seat, I fell as deeply in love as I have ever been. It’s simple, really. If you
can’t be something yourself, you will come to adore someone who can.

I couldn’t have picked a gentler
object to desire had I fallen for a puppy. Ben came from what used to be called
a “broken home”, living with his mother and grandparents in that massive old
Florida farmhouse on the edge of town, its trellised foundation seeming to
either be sinking into or rising from the swampy earth, depending on how you
looked at it. It was the most absolutely silent house I have ever been in, as
quiet as the pasture outside. I once sat on the horsehair sofa in the living
room, or as Ben’s grandmother would have said, on the davenport in the parlor,
and waited for him to come play catch with me and my father. We Wellses are not
a quiet bunch; silence unnerves us. We looked at one another, but were unable
to break the quiet of the room, the only sound being the slow ticking of a
clock on the mantle. I could hear Ben come down the stairs and along the
hallway so clearly, it was as if he were stomping his feet right in front of
me.

“That’s why he pitches so well,”
my dad once said. “Because the whole time, he has a stillness inside.”

If Ben was as anxious for a
father as my father was for a son, I have no idea. He remained polite and
diffident throughout his time at our house, slightly remote from the screeching
tumble that constituted our Sunday afternoons. There are photos in my scrapbook
from this period, where my father stands with his arm around Ben’s shoulder, my
mother rests a hand on Lee’s arm and I am standing in the middle, still looking
more like I belong to the laughing family than Ben ever did. I believe he knew
he would lose us, even then.

My father had long given up on
creating a son in his image by the time he flew to Seattle. Standing on the
crest of Tiger Mountain on a cool September afternoon, we were comfortable with
one another, panting with the triumph of a difficult hike. After a long swig
from his water bottle, my father surveyed the surrounding hills, the hovering
groups of paragliders with sails as blue as the sky, the gentle roll of the
land toward the sea.

“Now that’s a view,” he said.
“I’d love to build a house right here.”

“As long as we could have a damn
road,” I wheezed, propping myself up with my hands on my knees.

My father looked over at me and
laughed. “And you wanted to play ball.”

“I did,” I confirmed. “But I gave
that up a long time ago.”

“You were good,” he said gruffly.
“I never met someone with as clear a sense of when to hit a ball.”

I simply stared up at him, bent
double, trying to catch my breath.

“But you know,” he said quietly.
“I never wanted you to be a boy, Case, not really.”

“Oh come on,” I managed, my heart
slowing painfully.

“Ok,” he said. “Maybe when you
first popped out. But then I saw you had your grandmother’s big brown eyes and
sweet mouth, and I thought, thank God she isn’t a boy, ‘cause she’d probably
turn out gay.”

“Oh nice,” I said and listened to
him laugh all the way down the mountain.

In the car on the way home, we followed the final game
of the American League play-offs. Sometimes, sitting in the cheap seats in the
Kingdome, lulled into drowsy contemplation by the canned air and the inevitable
boredom of my date, I could almost feel how it would be. To step up to the
plate, listening to, but not really hearing the sound of the crowd behind me. I
wouldn’t have been a pitcher, like my father. I had no sense of how to throw,
it just wouldn’t come for me. My father’s childhood heroes: Walter Johnson,
Christy Mathewson, hell, even Babe Ruth when he still pitched, didn’t hold that
same thrill for me. Even Nolan Ryan or Sandy Cofax. I couldn’t connect with a
pitcher’s game. I was a child of the new era, where power mattered more than
precision. I wanted to hit and to run. I wanted to stand back between second
and third and catch a howling grounder, hurtling it to first just in time to
catch the furious batter. I liked the infield because my arms were shorter – I
lacked the power for outfield play – but also because the game was faster
there, more acrobatic. How wonderful it would be to hear the solid sound of a
wooden bat on a small, hard ball, rather than the hollow ponk of aluminum on
soft, graceless leather. I had grown to hate softball with a passion. Not
because it was really any less difficult to play, but because it wasn’t
baseball.