Casey's Home (24 page)

For a moment he saw Beatrice open
her mouth, but then she closed it again. Screw this hearing being about
determining competence. He knew he was competent. This was about something
more. It was about him.

“I’m no fool. I know I won’t
bring in the kind of players this school needs. Not because of what I briefly
did twenty-two years ago, but because of what I didn’t do. I didn’t win two
World Series. I didn’t win three Cy Youngs. I didn’t throw a perfect game, or
twenty K’s. I was a damn good pitcher, for a little while, and an even better
coach. But I’m never going to be Billy Wells, no matter what I do. So I’m not
going to argue that you should keep me here, because I don’t believe that arrangement
would suit any of us. I need to be somewhere where I’m appreciated for who I
am, not somewhere where all they can see is who I’m not. So let’s not waste any
more of these good folks’ time. You’ve made your decision, and I’d like to hear
it.”

In the silence that followed his
declaration, Ben was certain he could hear Billy laughing. That’s showing them,
he would have said. Tell those fucking assholes how you really feel.

Oh, Billy, he thought, staring at
the blank expressions quickly being rearranged in front of him, that’s not
telling them a thing about how I feel. That’s telling them the truth. The real
truth, not the one Casey thinks they should know. I may not have been a great
pitcher, he told the old ghost of his friend, but I’m a better man than you
ever were.

The funny thing was, he knew the
ghost agreed. He always had.

Beatrice rose at last, smiling
slightly at him. She was far too young for this sort of thing, he thought. No
one under the age of fifty should be on the board of any institution.

“Well, Ben, that was... well, I
think you’ve rendered us speechless. If nothing else, I’m sure the student body
owes you its thanks for that small miracle.”

Someone in the audience chuckled.
Ben knew why Billy had liked this woman, even if he hadn’t liked her enough to
marry her until after she’d picked someone else.

 “I would like to be able to tell
you that you’re wrong, of course,” she continued, “but I can’t. You are
absolutely correct. The decision was made this morning, over the objections of
several of the members who felt you were owed this opportunity. You haven’t
proven us wrong in that regard, not at all. I’m glad you took this chance to
express what you were feeling. I’m only sorry it won’t make the difference that
perhaps it should have.”

Another member of the board
directed a dark look in her direction and Beatrice shifted tactics gracefully.

“We have made a selection, but
before we go ahead with our announcement, we would like you to know that the
person we have selected for this position is someone who apparently thinks more
highly of your worth than you do. He has requested that we extend to you the
continuation of your current position here at the university, with an increase
in pay and benefits to be discussed once the coaching position has been
finalized. It is my sincere hope, Ben, that you will accept this offer. We
would be fools to lose you.”

Ben smiled at his old friend and
then shifted his seat to face Jake. As he had suspected, the big man was bright
red and met Ben’s gaze with a reluctance that made Ben feel slightly small. He
had trusted the board to make a decision based on fame, not on ability. It
hadn’t occurred to him that there might be someone out there who had both.

Beatrice nodded and said: “We are
very pleased to announce that Jake Munsey has accepted our offer of the
position of Head Coach, beginning in October of this year. Would you like to
say a few words, Jake?”

Jake stood and made his way to
stand beside the table, towering over it. Ben could practically hear Billy choking.

“Ben, my contract holds me to the
team, even with my injury. I would be honored if you would hold down the fort
until I’m able to take charge, and then I’d really like it if you’d stay on.”

Well, it wasn’t exactly gracious,
but it was heartfelt. It was so tempting to say “no”; to be bitter, just a
little bit. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Casey, leaning forward
with her elbows on her knees, watching him. How easy it would be to just walk
away into that shadowed future. But with a little planning, with a little time
spent, he might have something more substantial to walk toward.

“I’d be delighted to stay through
October,” he said, standing and shaking Jake’s meaty hand firmly. “We’ll see
from there.”

There was a round of polite
clapping, as if the hearing were a play or a musical act, and then Beatrice
spoke again.

“If you don’t mind me asking,
Ben, have you already made plans for next year?”

He turned from Jake, who dropped
his hand and stepped away, clearing his throat madly. Ben had never known
another player as soft as Jake. It may have infuriated Billy, but Ben liked him
for it. There was bravery in accepting your own weakness.

Beatrice waited, pearls circling
her throat, a ten-karat diamond on her left hand. How easy some people have it,
he thought. Strangely, he felt no envy. Behind him, he heard people begin to
rise. He looked back to catch Casey’s eye, to hold her there a moment longer.
She nodded and began to make her way to the table.

“To be honest, Bea,” he said at
last, “I’ve got all these options I never dreamed I would have. I guess I’ll be
working on finding a way to fit it all together.”

Beatrice nodded and smiled at
Casey, who was looking at her as if she should know who she was, but didn’t.

“Good luck,” Bea said as the
board rose to congratulate Jake publicly. “I sincerely hope you manage to make
it all fall into place.”

“So do I,” Ben replied, grinning
as someone opened the doors to the street and the bright, hot air rushed in.
“So do I.”

2000

Ben has one hand on my knee, the other
holds a plastic cup of soda, and he is trying not to laugh at the misfortune of
others. We are watching as the Mariners get creamed again. They’re in a streak
and it’s not a good one. Behind us sit the still-terrible members of the Pacific
Northwest Community College baseball team, who are supposed to be learning
something about playing ball today. I think we picked the wrong team as an
example. But maybe it’s a good thing to learn that everyone loses, and
sometimes it’s when you most want to win.

Ben slips his fingers over mine, passing
me the shared soda as an excuse. One of the boys points to a fielding mistake
that any Little Leaguer would recognize and says: “That’s an error, right?”

The day is beautiful, a perfect slice of
late-summer in the new stadium. The fans are restless around us, willing the
team to snap out of this slump. Individual voices rise in the still air,
bubbling over us and out to the players, crouching on the field. Across the
stands and past the cranes that mark where the Kingdome used to stand, the sun
slips across a pale blue sky, lighting the mountains with crests of gold and
orange. The islands shimmer in the smooth water of the bay like showgirls,
dancing with the fat white ferries and the broad bulks of cargo ships.

Ben shakes his head and turns to the boy
behind him. “Yeah, but it won’t count as an error,” he says patiently. “The
runner was too slow to make it to the base, even if the throw had been right on
target.”

Ben could tell these boys the essential
secret to being him, to holding the sport within your body and knowing it like
a part of yourself, and they’d still point to the ball dribbling from a
fielder’s mitt and say: “That’s an error, right?” These are not baseball
players. They’re engineering majors and math students and kids who don’t know
where they’ll end up but are pretty sure it isn’t on the new-grown grass below
us. They love him unconditionally, with the fervor of fans who have no hope of
getting to the majors.

“I’m going to go get some ice cream,” I
tell Ben and the boys. I can’t believe I actually slept with someone their age,
and it feels so long ago. Maybe I was like a collapsed star then, smaller and
far denser than I am now. This is what I tell myself, anyway. “Anyone coming
with?” No one volunteers, though Ben expresses an interest in rocky road,
should I manage to locate some. It doesn’t matter; he’ll eat the mint chip I
end up with, grumbling as he scoops out yet another spoonful. And then he’ll
grin at me when I call him on it and I’ll forget exactly why I was pissed off.
Love is an astonishing thing.

The food courts are confusing, but I know
where the ice cream is from bitter experience, having once walked a complete
circle of the stadium before finding the booth tucked behind another stand just
a few hundred feet from our seats. We come here a lot, Ben and I. When things
grow quiet between us, when we start to forget what it was that made our blood
race, we come here and it’s regeneration. Redemption through mutual affection.
Nothing makes me hotter than watching Ben watch baseball. Hence the ice cream.
They have mint chip, as always, but no rocky road. They never do, but Ben is
always hopeful. I pay extra and get two bowls. Familiarity breeds what?
Experience?

When I get back to the stands, I have to
walk down several rows to reach our group. They are a solid bank of boys in
matching T-shirts and baseball caps, and they look like a team. At least that’s
something, especially if they feel like one, too. Negotiating children wearing
puffy hands and the harried adults following behind them, I pause when I hear
my name.

“... Casey going to get married, or what?”
one of the boys says, pushing Ben’s shoulder with good-natured concern.

“I can’t even get her to move in with me,”
he laughs and something in my chest tightens briefly.

When I sit down beside him, I hand Ben his
ice cream and lean over to kiss him, straight on the lips, which provokes a
giggle or two behind us. I would like to love this man forever, and while I’m
not sure this is really possible, I’m all for being cautiously optimistic.

Ben’s old team, the boys at Florida State,
have slid down a rung or two since Jake took over. It’s not that he’s a bad
coach, exactly, but he’s had to learn what makes a great team, as opposed to
what makes a great player. The necessary shift from individual to group. Lee
keeps me updated through email, which she has recently discovered. I get short
missives decorated with rings of ivy or blinking Christmas lights or jack-o-lanterns
that take forever to load, filled with facts and no emotion, but hell, at least
we’re communicating. This is an improvement on the days when my father called
only when he was about to visit, as if heralding his own arrival. Do not be
afraid, my child, he comes in peace.

I would be a liar if I were to say I don’t
still harbor some serious resentment. Ben keeps telling me to forget about the
past, as if that were possible for any of us. I spent too much of my life
trying to block out what made me, what shaped me, until I could no longer see
who I was. I would like to remember now, even if it stings. Last year, Andy
Richter, the other starting pitcher for the Atlantics in the ’76 Series, died
of cancer. I kept waiting for some death-bed confession, something that felt
like justice. Ben didn’t even notice until I pointed the death out. He lives
without resentment, without regret. I believe this is a first for him, though
he’d never admit it. Do I have something to do with that? Probably, in the
concrete sense, but in the abstract, I believe that Ben has simply decided to
live well. We make love a lot.

When I flew home from Florida, I missed
him so badly I felt like I was walking around without my arms, or perhaps my
head. It would certainly be a more appropriate analogy. Ben stayed on until
October, when Jake arrived in a flurry of cameras and ESPN microphones, then he
slipped quietly out the back door and no one even noticed.

All I did was pass his name to the head of
our Athletics department and the next thing I know our former coach, who taught
Russian History far better than the infield fly rule, was out and Ben was in.
There is something about the mere possibility of greatness that stirs the heart
of the small, the lowly. The PNCC team hadn’t won a season in twenty years. We
won’t win this year, either, but we’re closer. For a bunch of math whizzes and
kids with glasses, they play like it matters, and I suppose it does, just not
for the same reasons as Ben’s old team. What is more pure, then? To play
because you hope to make a career, or to play because the game itself is so
beautiful? I think I am finally figuring out the answer.

To my great astonishment and horror, Ben
sold his old farmhouse and most of the furnishings. Packed into a fifteen-foot
U-haul, he drove his entire world across the country, just beating the snow on
the Rockies to meet me at a little motel outside of town. No, he didn’t stay
with me. He still doesn’t.

Florida money won’t buy much here, but he
managed a down payment on a house that was suspiciously bigger than he really
needed. In the evenings we sit on his couch and watch the games on his giant
TV, perched precariously on its own cardboard box. Ben is settled, but he is
waiting for something, and I know what it is. Late one night, when my head had
come to rest in his lap, he leaned down and said:

“I’ve got the house; you’ve got the
furniture. Maybe we ought to get together.”

If that was a proposal, I missed the
romantic part of it. But I know what he wants. What I want to know, what keeps
me awake at night, is what I’m waiting for? Ben creates a life and I
manufacture additional reasons to hold myself back. What if love doesn’t last
and I end up worse off than I was before I knew it could be this devastating,
this monumental? What if after all these years, we discover we really don’t
like one another at all? What if, what if? What if I’m thirty-five years-old,
without a clue how to invite someone into my life? What if that person won’t
wait for me to ask? Is that a good thing?

What if I stopped asking questions and
tried to answer the ones I’ve already asked, what then?

This morning I finished the eighth chapter
of a new book and emailed it to my agent, who is probably doing some sort of
mystical writing dance of joy on her desk right now. She keeps telling me the
chapters are wonderful. I think she’s lying to me, but I appreciate the
encouragement. I write about my father. I haven’t decided if it’s fiction or
non-fiction yet, or if I even understand the distinction.

The Mariners offer yet another run to the
gods of baseball and are denied by the wide glove of the center fielder. The
boys grouse and Ben slips an arm around my shoulders. He leans close and
whispers to me, in a seductive voice I recognize from several nights ago, when
he woke me at three in the morning.

“Are you having fun?”

There is much more inherent in that
question than just this game.

“Yes,” I answer. “Absolutely.” I squeeze
his thigh for emphasis.

He is looking at me as if he would like to
tell me he loves me, but I know he won’t.

“Good,” he says and turns back to the game
before his students learn something he doesn’t want them to know.

Ah, the ninth inning. How do we always end
up in dire straits? Didn’t we come into this several games up? The Mariners
slide out of the eighth inning with no further improvement. They can still turn
this thing around, but it will have to be soon, or we’ll all have gone home
without them.

Ben finishes his ice cream and swipes a
taste from mine, though I give him a glare calculated to freeze his hand. He
just laughs me off. Ben has priorities. So do I, really. I would like to finish
my novel and hey, maybe publish the damn thing. Then I’ll have two books to
track over at those on-line bookstores. I can pit them against one another,
weeping on the day when the first eclipses the second. Laying my father to rest
is high on the list of things I’d like to do. He hangs around my thoughts like
a commentating ghost, calling all the plays before I’ve even made them. It’s
tremendously annoying and oddly reassuring at the same time, much more so than
he was when he was alive. And while I’m at it, I’d like to make Ben happy,
because I do love him, though I know he has to make his own happiness. I keep
thinking... it’s just a theory really, but isn’t it possible that if I work at
making us happy, I’ll get a bit happier at the same time?

Yeah, I know, it’s just a theory, as I
said.

We drop and fumble our way through the top
of the ninth, groaning in unison at each lost opportunity. Go team, go! We
stomp and scream “Charge!” We drive the needle of the noise meter into the red
with our desperate zeal. There is nothing anyone else can do now, it is up to
the players themselves. They are representing us, but not above disappointing
us.

The bottom of the ninth, and we are out:
one... two... three. That’s it, game over. The boys are chatty as we gather up
our things, trying to figure out what went wrong.

“It’s not the end of the season,” Ben
points out. “We can still make it into the post-season, even if we’re the wild
card.”

Sometimes, I miss the Kingdome. We file
out onto the clean, bright stairways of the new stadium, unable to catch more
than a glimpse of the water beyond. It is totally unlike the old days, when the
wide ramps filled with fellow fans herded toward the exit like cattle and just
as grouchy, blinking together as we immerged into the night from our closed
environment.

We are disconnected from each other on the
stairs, losing members of our little group as we descend. Relocating at the
bottom, we step out into the night, marveling at the shimmering remains of the
summer light in the ocean-blue sky. Can it really be 10:15, we ask one another,
as if it wasn’t this bright and gauzy yesterday and the night before. Ben
clasps my hand in his without embarrassment as we wait at the train tracks for
the obligatory freight train to pass with its rattling dominance. The boys
jostle each other and threaten to toss one another out onto the tracks.

“I think it’s going to rain tonight,” Ben
says and it seems impossible until I turn to see the dark band against the
western edge of the horizon, blotting out the stars. As we hurry toward our
car, the wind picks up and sends bits of paper whirling past us, down the
tracks after the retreating train.

“Goodnight, Coach,” the last boy calls as we
leave them behind. Ben beams and waves and everything inside me shifts at his
delighted expression. Who am I to make this so difficult when Ben is clearing
the way with his joy? “Goodnight, Casey,” they call and I wave too.

At the car, he can stand it no longer. I
think he’s reaching around me to open the door, but he isn’t. Ben presses me up
against the warm metal and kisses me deeply, without reservation. It has been
nearly ten years since he first seduced me by his car. I respond as I did then,
because the response is elemental and overpowering. My mind switches off and my
body dismisses it with a kick.

When he pulls away, his mouth is wet, his
eyes are narrowed and he’s grinning. Behind him I can see the great girdered
bulk of the stadium, lit up like a jellyfish in the night. The roof is closing,
a slow progression of parts until the lights will be covered. How marvelous to
live in an age when a building can be both open and closed, at a whim. Ben
slides a finger down my nose and says, without preamble: