Casey's Home (4 page)

“I’ve
wanted to ask you out for years,” she said as they were seated. It was an odd
comment, mostly because she had, until six months ago, been married. Though, he
supposed, when it came down to it, that didn’t mean anything.

“Really?”
was all he could think to answer. He certainly hadn’t felt the same way about
her. She had seemed even more intimidating when she was married. “I can’t
believe that.”

He
sounded like an idiot, even to himself. But she just laughed and tucked her
napkin into her lap, prompting him to do the same. “Sure,” she said. “You’re
handsome, funny…” She trailed off.

He
ought to be complementing her, he realized. So are you, which was the first
thing that came to his overloaded mind, was thankfully stricken before it left
his mouth.

“You
look lovely,” he noted. “That’s a beautiful dress.”

She
blushed again, and he watched as it colored her skin.

“Do
you really think so?” She was smoothing her hands across her lap under the
table. He could tell from the graceful movement of her arms.

“Yes.”

“I
bought it when Stan and I…” she stopped. “Before I got divorced. But I never
had anywhere to wear it after that.”

“Well,
it is lovely,” he said and then the conversation stopped. Frantically, he
searched through his memory for some indication of what to say next. “So,
what’s good here?” There, that was all right, wasn’t it? She smiled, looking a
little pale under all that luscious tanned skin.

“Everything,”
she said.

They
stalled again. Run with it, he thought. Just pick up the ball and run.

“Have
you ever tried the steak?”

“No,”
she whispered.

He
was clearly thinking of the wrong sport. He was never much of a football
player.

“So…”
he said, mind whirring, “how are you doing? After the divorce, I mean?”

That’s
just brilliant, he hissed at himself. Ask about her divorce.

“All
right,” she said, and then smiled. “I’ve taken up some new hobbies.”

“Really?”
He was determined to find them fascinating, even if they involved taxidermy.
“Like what?”

“Swing
dancing.” God, she was shy about it. That no doubt meant she was into it and
would want him to learn to do it, should this go well. He nodded. “It’s just
great, really good for the coordination and balance. I’ve even gotten some of
my girls into it and it’s really improved their game.”

“It
sounds wonderful,” he said quickly when she stopped. “I wonder what it would do
for my boys?” He was kidding, and thank God, she caught it.

“Can’t
you just see it?” she said, one dark eye winking at him.

“There
are football coaches who make their boys take ballet,” he pointed out and the
conversation was off, easily touching each of the bases.

At
her door, she invited him in for a drink when he bent down to kiss her. He
wasn’t sure what that meant, especially since she went to pour him a glass even
after he’d pointed out that he didn’t drink. On her couch, he was actively
lurked by a black cat with one fang missing, which gave the animal a
snaggle-toothed rakishness. When Ben tried to pet him, the cat sneered and
slunk just out of reach.

Janine
brought him a shot glass with Baileys and kissed him before she downed her
drink. He kissed her back after she’d finished, setting his glass aside
untouched. He might want someone to talk to, but in the end, kissing was good,
too.

To
say he hit a home run, even in his own mind, did nothing to lessen the
cheapness of the whole thing. Lying on his back after she’d rolled off him, the
analogy just didn’t hold the sense of achievement he might have expected. One
thing he did note was that she hadn’t seemed to mind his stomach, or his mouth,
or any other part of him.

“You
realize I just wanted to get laid,” she said, and her voice seemed to vibrate
off his aching head.

“I
know,” he said, though he hadn’t known, not at all. He had the vague suspicion
he should have. “That’s fine with me.”

“Of
course it is,” she said, circling his nipple with a lazy finger. “I never
pegged you as a prude.”

God,
he thought, when did anticipating a second date make you prudish?

“You
can stay here tonight,” she said sleepily, dissolving into a yawn and burrowing
against him like an animal.

“Thanks,” he whispered, wishing there
was a polite way to slip away and not have to feel the firm strength of her
shoulder beneath his hand, the warm press of her body against his own. It was
better to lay in the dark alone, in his own bed, where the empty space was
familiar. Somewhere in the dim room, a clock ticked with a rapid rhythm. One of
the cats skulked in the window, a gray silhouette behind the white curtain. The
dry rustle of traffic on the road outside kept him awake long after Janine had
fallen asleep.

1976

The
fall before the Atlantics made it to the Series the second time, my father
threw a party. Not a small, intimate evening, but the sort of party where
people end up parking on the lawn and burning holes in all the furniture. This
was his first year as both a player and a manager, and he claimed it was
necessary to “help the boys relax.”

I
lay upstairs in my bed, wide awake in the dim green light of my alarm clock,
listening to the thudding of the bass from the stereo downstairs. I would have
said it was impossible for anyone to sleep through the barrage of sound, except
that on the other side of the room, my fourteen year-old sister Lee snored
slightly, her mouth open.

Though
we had more money than most families in Florida, my father thought it was
healthy for sisters to share a bedroom. This was in keeping with an unproven
but powerful notion he had that children were actually born spoiled and it was
his job to spend the next eighteen years making sure we understood the value of
everything. Sharing our room bred a natural sense of camaraderie, he claimed,
and a need for teamwork. Mostly, it led to a great deal of bickering over whose
stuff was where. Lee usually won, being older and neater. I was always
encroaching into her space, while she never managed to work her way into mine.

Still,
when necessary, Lee and I could band together and form a plan. Earlier that day
we had begun the begging. We had hoped to be allowed to stay up for the party.
We were absolutely convinced that we were missing something magical, some sort of
shimmering adult world where things happened. What those things were, we didn’t
actually know, but we were certain they must be exciting. Otherwise, why ban
us?

Lee
worked the edge of my mother’s dressing table, talking about how pretty she
looked in her red dress, how her black hair gleamed in the lamplight. They
tried the same lipsticks and giggled together, and I watched from the bed,
reluctant, but filled with yearning to join them. Lee was so like my mother, so
easily female, while I struggled with my gangly body. I seemed to lack her
ability to move with grace, to get my hair to sweep back from my face in the
thick waves so popular with Lee and her friends. It was obvious to me that I
was lacking something, some girl-gene that made it clear where blush went and
how to sit with my legs neatly crossed at the ankle.

As
my mother separated long straight strands of hair from around her face, she let
Lee roll them onto the curling iron. My mother kept one hand constantly
touching her hair to be sure it hadn’t burned, although my sister knew exactly
how long to leave it there. Eventually, feeling useless in the face of an
extended lesson on eye shadow selection, I ventured downstairs to help my
father mix up his secret, much-coveted barbeque recipe.

After
a little coaxing, he let me stir in a dash of something, cautioning against
overdoing it as he sprinkled herbs gleefully beside me. He was inordinately
proud of his sauce. To him, barbeque was a manly thing, like having the best
chili in the neighborhood, or being able to bench more than his body weight. I
could, I suggested, pass out plates. He said he’d consider it, and I returned
to Lee triumphant, sure this time we would be allowed to stay. But when the
doorbell rang for the first time, we were bundled off to bed without a second
thought, despite the fact that the sun was still setting.

No
matter how raucous the party became, we were not allowed to go downstairs. It
was a rule, and in our house rules had the finality of written law, as if my
father could whip out Life’s Rulebook and cite page twenty-six, paragraph A.
Which he might have done, if one had existed.

Lee
stirred briefly in the bed beside mine, pulling a pillow over her head without
waking. The sound of something breaking rose over the music, followed by a
scream and then more crashing. It was irresistible.

“I’m
going downstairs to get a soda,” I announced to the room. “I can’t sleep
through this.”

Lee
slowly opened one eye and examined me, peering out from beneath her pillow,
critical even when half asleep. Already she had developed a certain crispness,
as if she could bring a logical order to our childhood with simple strength of
will; the Mary Poppins of our family.

“You
can’t do that. You know we’re not allowed.”

“Why
are you whispering, Lee? We could shout if we wanted. See?” I said, pushing my
voice above the music.

We
both waited for a moment, breathless. Nothing happened.

“I’m
going down there to get a drink.”

Lee
sat up then, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Someone’ll see you,” she argued.

“So
what?” I answered. “They’re so drunk, they won’t care.”

Pulling
on my tennis shoes and an old pair of sweat shorts to go with the “rock and
roll will never die” t-shirt I’d worn to bed, I slipped from the bedroom and
out into the darkened hallway. Ahead, an eerie red glow came up through the
stairwell from the main portion of the house, as if we were living on the
vibrating edge of hell.

I
paused at the head of the stairs for a moment, enthralled by the spectacle of
bouncing, writhing people below. It seemed that if I descended, I might be
swallowed whole and regurgitated somewhere else. The banister shuddered under
my fingers like a track before an approaching train.

I
had thought it would be difficult to descend unnoticed, but the party seemed to
be just as interesting to the adults as it was to me. No one looked up toward
the bedrooms. At the bottom of the stairs, I ducked behind a group of revelers
as my father passed by, yelling something at a friend, their arms around each
other’s shoulders.

Ahead
of me, three players from my father’s team stood in a tight circle, shouting
over the sound of the music.

“…and
sat there for an hour, thanking God for all of this. I think we forget…”

The
other two nodded solemnly, their heads oddly in time to Tom Petty wailing: “God
it’s so painful, something that is so close… is still so far out of reach.” The
three men moved politely out of the way as a man rushed by toward the toilet,
his face a strange orange in the shimmering party light. To anyone else, a discussion
of religion in the middle of hundreds of gyrating bodies might have seemed
grossly out of place, but I understood that players were a religious and
superstitious bunch. On the field, I had watched them reach down between plays
and touch the grass, or jump over the white lines of the infield. At home, my
father refused to eat spaghetti because he once lost a game after one of my
mother’s hearty Italian meals. The fact that they were seriously discussing
their religious convictions while holding huge red plastic cups filled with
margaritas made a sort of sense to me. It was as if they couldn’t quite believe
that fate, too fickle to everyone else, had granted them this one, shining
example of a wish fulfilled.

The
oddest thing to discover was how easily I could move through the party,
listening in on conversations, watching sudden flirtations flare up like the
fireflies in our yard. Wives or girlfriends lurked around the edges, hanging
out with the type of women who were never either. They watched me the way they
would eye a spider in an unreachable corner of the room, sure I wasn’t meant to
be there but unwilling to bother swatting me down. Slipping through a group of
men singing along to a song that wasn’t playing, I made it to the kitchen.

Once
the door had closed behind me, the thumping of the music and the rhythmic
clinking of empty bottles were the only sounds. Surveying the countertops
covered in beer bottles, half-empty bottles of Jack Daniels and weird Russian
vodkas, I pushed a few of them into a garbage bag and cleared a space for
myself. Our normally sterile kitchen seemed to have mutated into something
sinister and a bit sticky, as if we had been visited by a strange yeast-fueled
virus. From the fridge, I selected a can of Fresca and then perched on a bar
stool in my small space. I was still feeling the rush of freedom, of having
flouted a rule. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t actually seen anything exciting.
For now, the initial act of rebellion was enough to keep my heart racing as the
door to the kitchen banged open.

A
drunken couple staggered in, the man pushing several bottles into the sink with
the wave of an arm. My father’s friends were like case studies in masculinity,
at least the kind that drinks too much beer and spends Sunday afternoons glued
to the game. I didn’t understand that not all men lived for sport, fetching and
hitting and sweating for a living. It seemed natural to me then, and set Lee
and me up for the sort of disappointment that comes with being the children of
men who don’t really work.

The
man and woman ignored me, opening the fridge and rooting through the contents
to extract two more bottles of beer. The woman was clearly neither a
girlfriend, who were always sorority-girl clean, or a wife, polished and prim.
This woman wore too much make-up and a shoulder-baring polyester dress that
looked half-finished against her dark skin. The man played on another team, one
that hadn’t made it last year, and he seemed to me to be fat, as if a few weeks
had already turned him from an athlete into someone ordinary. The woman leaned
heavily on the man, whispering in his ear.

“What,
baby?” he shouted. “I can’t hear you. No, I can’t hear...what?”

She
giggled and they closed the fridge door with a bang that rattled the bottles
within. I jumped at the sound and they swiveled, taking a moment to stop
rocking together.

“Shit!
A dwarf!” the man said, staring at me.

They
both erupted with laughter and staggered out of the room, the man yelling over
the music. “What? Baby, I said I can’t hear you! What?”

I
returned to my Fresca, irritated. It was my house, after all. The door opened
again and this time a tall, thin young man entered and set an empty bottle in
the sink. He was obviously a little tipsy, opening and closing his eyes as if
he couldn’t quite trust them. Smoothing my hair quickly, I sat up.

“Hey,
Ben.”

Ben
McDunnough smiled when he saw me, as he always did. To say he was the center of
my world would suggest I still had other concerns. Some young girls worship
rock stars or actors. The unreachable object of my affection liked to come over
on a Sunday afternoon and toss a few balls around with my dad. He was then only
twenty-two, though he seemed indescribably mature to me, lanky and yet strong,
like a dancer. He had a kind face, with more angles than most, and large, dark
eyes. I had an entire scrapbook of his sports photos hidden under my bed. I
smiled back and took a timid sip of my Fresca, intensely aware of every
molecule in the room.

“Howdy,
Sport. Whatcha doin’ up?” he asked, slurring the words slightly.

I
shrugged, trying to be the picture of childhood innocence. A child awake after
ten treads a thin line. “Couldn’t sleep. I was kinda thirsty.”

Ben
peered over the rows of beer bottles between us, his face a study in
concentration. I realized he was trying to stand still long enough to focus on
me in the spinning room.

“What
are you drinking?” Ben asked and I held up the can of Fresca. “Think I’ll have
the same.”

Retrieving
a soda from the fridge, he popped the top, took a sip and grimaced. I giggled,
and was delighted when he laughed in return. His world seemed to have slowed
enough to keep him steady, while mine was spinning like a merry-go-round.

“Well,
that ought to take the edge off,” he said. “So, Sport, you see anything you shouldn’t
have, wandering around down here? Hmm?”

I
shook my head, blushing despite myself. “Just drunk people,” I told him.
“Nothing scandalous.”

To
my great horror, he laughed.

“Scandalous.
That’s great. You’re going to have a ton of stuff for that school paper of
yours.”

“I
don’t write about home stuff, Ben,” I replied, trying to retain some dignity.

“‘Course
not,” he nodded, taking another sip of the soda and wrinkling his nose.
“Political stuff is more your forte.”

“You’re
teasing. I hate that.”

“Oh,
now, I’m not really teasing, Casey,” he reassured me, but his face was edged
with laughter. “You’re a very talented young lady.”

I
rolled my eyes. It was a bit like being told you’re “nice.”

“No,
seriously,” he said, resting his elbows on the counter and waving the Fresca a
few inches from the tip of my nose. “Your dad gave me one of your stories. You
could be a great writer.”

“I
don’t want to be a writer,” I told him.

“Well.”
He straightened up. “What do you want to do? Play ball?”

I
frowned, unsure whether he was asking me seriously or not. Just two years
before, Little League had begun to admit girls. I was already ten-years old at
that point and a seasoned pro from games in the park. The teams I’d been
allowed to participate in before had been the childhood equivalent of the local
softball leagues, where it was not uncommon to find a keg at third base, “as an
incentive.” I’d signed up for Little League immediately, delighted at the
chance to really play. Later that year, when I’d hit my first official home
run, my coach’s comment had been: “All that talent and nothing to do with it.”
I was still vaguely determined to prove them all wrong, though about what I
wasn’t yet sure.