For One More Day (11 page)

Now I'd learned that after Posey Benetto, nurse, and Posey Benetto, beautician, it was Posey Benetto, cleaning woman. It angered me that she had dropped so low.

"Mom ... , " I said, haltingly. "Why didn't you just get money from Dad? " My mother set her jaw.

"I didn't need any more from your father. " "Mm-hmm, " Miss Thelma added.

"We got by all right, Charley. " "Mm-hmm, you did. "

"Why didn't you go back to the hospital? " I said. "They didn't want me. "

"Why didn't you fight it? "

"Would that have made you happy?” She sighed "It wasn't like today, where people sue over the slightest thing. It was the only hospital around. We couldn't just leave town. This was our home. You and your sister had endured enough change. It's all right. I found work. "

"Cleaning houses," I mumbled. She put her hands down.

"I'm not as ashamed of that as you are," she said.

"But... " I stumbled for words. "You couldn't do the work that mattered to you. " My mother looked at me with a glint of defiance.

"I did what mattered to me, " she said. "I was a mother. "

WE WERE SILENT after that. Finally, Miss Thelma opened her eyes.

" So what about you, Chickadoo? " she said. "You ain't still up on that big stage playing baseball?"

I shook my head.

"Naw, I s'pose not, " she said. "Young man's business, baseball is. But you'll always be that little boy to me, with that glove on your hand, so serious and all. "

"Charley has a family now," my mother said. "Is that right?"

"And a good job. "

"There you go. " Miss Thelma eased her head back. "You're doing awfully fine, then, Chickadoo. Awfully fine. "

They were all wrong. I wasn't doing fine. "I hate my job, " I said.

"Well... " Miss Thelma shrugged. "Sometimes that happens. Can't be much worse than scrubbin' your bathtub, can it? " She grinned. "You do what you gotta do to hold your family together. Ain't that right, Posey?

"

I watched them finish their routine. I thought about how many years Miss Thelma must have run vacuums or scrubbed tubs to feed her kids; how many shampoos or dye jobs my mother must have done to feed us. And me? I got to play a game for ten years–and I wanted twenty. I felt suddenly ashamed.

"What's wrong with that job you got, anyhow? " Miss Thelma said.

I pictured the sales office, the steel desks, the dim, fluorescent lights.

"I didn't want to be ordinary, " I mumbled.

My mother looked up. "What's ordinary, Charley? " "You know.

Someone you forget. "

From the other room came the squeals of children. Miss Thelma turned her chin to the sound. She smiled. "That's what keeps me from being forgot. "

She closed her eyes, allowing my mother to work on them. She drew a breath and eased lower into the bed.

"But I didn't hold my family together," I blurted out. My mother raised a finger to her lips for silence.

To my Charley on his wedding day

I know you think these notes are silly. I have watched you scrunch your
face over the years when I give them to you. But understand that
sometimes I want to tell you something and I want to get it just right.

Putting it down on paper helps me do that. I wish I had been a better
writer. I wish I had gone to college. If I had, I think I would have
studied English and maybe my vocabulary would have improved. So
many times I feel I am using the same words over and over, like a
woman wearing the same dress every day. So boring!

What I want to say to you, Charley, is you are marrying a wonderful
girl. I think of Catherine in many ways like I think of Roberta. Like a
daughter. She is sweet and patient. You should be the same with her,
Charley.

Here is what you are going to find out about marriage: you have to
work at it together. And you have to love three things. You have to
love

1) Each other

2) Your children (When you have some! Hint! Hint!)
3) Your marriage.

What I mean by that last one is, there may be times that you fight,
and sometimes you and Catherine won't even like each other. But
those are the times you have to love your marriage. It's like a third
party. Look at your wedding photos. Look at any memories you've
made. And if you believe in those memories, they will put you back
together.

I'm very proud of you today, Charley. I am putting this in your tuxedo
pocket because I know how you lose things.

I love you every day!

Mom

(from Chick Benetto's papers, circa 1974)

Reaching the Top

I HAVEN'T TOLD YOU YET about the best and worst thing that ever happened to me professionally. I made it to the end of the baseball rainbow: the World Series. I was only twenty three. The Pirates'

backup catcher broke his ankle in early September and they needed a replacement, so I was called up. I still remember the day I walked into that carpeted locker room. I couldn't believe the size of it. I called Catherine from a pay phone–we'd been married for six months and I kept repeating, "It's unbelievable. "

A few weeks later, the Pirates won the pennant. It would be a lie to say I was in any way responsible; they were in first place when I arrived. I did catch four innings in one playoff game, and in my second at-bat I smacked a ball to deep right field. It was caught, and I was out, but I remember thinking, "That's a start. I can hit this stuff."

It wasn't a start. Not for me. We reached the World Series, but were beaten in five games by the Baltimore Orioles. I never even got to bat. The last game was a 5–0 defeat, and after the final out, I stood on the dugout steps and watched the Baltimore players run onto the field and celebrate, throwing themselves into a giant pile by the pitcher's mound. To others they looked ecstatic, but to me they looked relieved, like the pressure was finally off.

I never saw that look again, but I still dream about it sometimes. I see myself in that pile.

HAD THE PIRATES won the championship, there would have been a parade in Pittsburgh. Instead, because we lost on the road, we went to a Baltimore bar and closed it down. De feat had to be washed away by booze in those days, and we washed ours away thoroughly. As the newest guy on the team, I mostly listened to the older players grumble. I drank what I was supposed to drink. I cursed when they all cursed. It was dawn when we staggered out of the place.

We flew home a few hours later–in those days, everybody flew commercial and most of us took hangover naps. They had taxis lined up for us at the airport. We shook hands. We said, "See ya next year.

" The doors shut in one cab after another, thump, thump, thump.

The following March, in spring training, I blew out my knee. I was sliding into third base, and my foot jammed and the fielder tripped over me and I felt a snap like I'd never felt before. The doctor said I tore the anterior, posterior, and medial collateral ligaments–the trifecta of knee injuries.

In time, I healed. I resumed playin baseball. But for the next six years, I never came close to the major league again, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how well I thought I was doing. It was as if the magic had washed off of me. The only evidence I had of my time in the big leagues was the newspaper box scores from 1973 and my baseball card, with a photo of me holding a bat, looking serious, my name in block letters, the smell of bubble gum permanently attached.

The company shipped me two boxes of those cards. I sent one box to my father. I kept the other.

They call a short stay in baseball "a cup of coffee," and that's what I had, but it was a cup of coffee at the best table in the best joint in town.

Which, of course, was good and bad.

YOU SEE, I was more alive in those six weeks with the Pirates than I ever felt before or since. The spotlight had made me feel immortal. I missed the huge, carpeted locker room. I missed walking through airports with my teammates, feeling the eyes of the fans as we passed. I missed the crowds in those big stadiums, the flashbulbs, the roaring cheers–the majesty of the whole thing. I missed it bitterly. So did my father. We shared a thirst to return; unspoken, undeniable.

And so I clung to baseball long after I should have quit. I went from minor-league city to minor-league city, still believing, as athletes often do, that I would be the first to defy the aging process. I dragged Catherine with me all over the country. We had apartments in Portland, Jacksonville Albuquerque, Fayetteville, and Omaha. During her pregnancy she had three different doctors.

In the end, Maria was born in Pawtucket Rhode Island, two hours after a game attended by maybe eighty people before rain sent them scattering. I had to wait for a cab to get to the hospital. I was almost as wet as my daughter when she came into the world.

I quit baseball not long after that.

And nothing I tried ever came close. I attempted my own business, which only lost me money. I looked around for coaching positions, but couldn't find any. In the end, a guy offered me a job in sales. His company made plastic bottles for food and pharmaceuticals, and I took it. The work was dull. The hours were tedious. Even worse, I only got the job because they figured I could tell baseball stories and maybe close a deal in the frothy hubris of men talking sports.

It's funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes.

"The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature, " he said.

"You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up."

I could spend a lot of time talking about my life after baseball. But that pretty much says it.

NOT SURPRISINGLY, MY father faded with my athletic career. Oh, he came to see the baby a few times. But he was not as fascinated by a grandchild as I hoped he would be. As time passed, we had less and less to talk about. He sold his liquor stores and bought a half interest in a distributorship, which more than paid his bills without requiring much attendance. It's funny. Even though I needed a job, he never once offered one. I guess he'd spent too much time molding me to be different to allow me to be the same.

It wouldn't have mattered. Baseball was our common country, and without it, we drifted like two boats with the oars pulled in. He bought a condo in a suburb of Pittsburgh, joined a golf club, developed a mild form of diabetes, and had to watch his diet and give himself shots.

And just as effortlessly as he had surfaced beneath those gray college skies, so did my old man slide back into foggy absentia, the occasional phone call, the Christmas card.

You might ask if he ever explained what happened between him and my mother. He didn't. He simply said, "It didn't work out between us. "

If I pressed him, he would add, "You wouldn't understand. " The worst he ever said about my mother was, "She's a hard-headed woman. "

It was as if they had made this pact to never speak about what drove them apart. But I asked them both the question, and only my father lowered his eyes when he answered.

The Second Visit Ends

"POSEY, " MISS THELMA WHISPERED, "I'm gonna visit with my grandchildren for a spell. "

She looked much better than when she'd rung the bell at my mother's house. Her face was smooth and her eyes and lips were done nicely.

My mother had brushed out her dyed orange tresses, and for the first time I realized that Miss Thelma was an attractive woman, and must have been a knockout when she was young.

My mother laid a kiss on Miss Thelma's cheek, then closed her bag and motioned for me to follow. We stepped into the hallway, where a little girl with her hair in braids was heading toward us, clomping her feet.

"Grandma? " she said. "Are you 'wake? "

I stepped back, but she walked right past us, never looking up. She was followed by a little boy–maybe her brother?–who stopped in the doorway and put a finger in his mouth. I reached out and waved a hand before his face. Nothing. It was clear we were invisible to them.

"Mom, " I stammered. "What's going on?” She was looking at Miss Thelma, whose granddaughter was now on the bed. They were playin' some kind of pat-a-cake. My mother had tears in her eyes.

"Is Miss Thelma dying, too?" "Soon," my mother said.

I stepped in front of her. "Mom. Please?"

"She called for me, Charley."

We both looked toward the bed. "Miss Thelma? She summoned you?"

"No, sweetheart. I came to her mind, that's all. I was a thought. She wished I was still around and could help her look pretty, not as sick, so here I was."

"A thought?" I looked down. "I'm lost."

My mother moved closer. Her voice softened. "Have you ever dreamt of someone who's gone, Charley, but in die dream you have a new conversation? The world you enter then is not so far from the world I'm in now."

She put one hand on mine. "When someone is in your heart, they're never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times."