Never Blame the Umpire (4 page)

The bus stop is almost halfway between our two houses. Instead of going our separate ways, we both walk to Ginny’s. Mama has arranged for me to stay with her every afternoon until the three-week class is over. Mama and Dad both work until about five o’clock and they don’t want me and Ken home alone all that time. They’ve arranged for Ken to spend the day at one of several places: the ballfield, the swimming pool, or a friend’s house. Mama and Dad have a permanent arrangement with Mrs. Loden from across the street to be Ken’s “daytime mom.” Ken has his own cell phone and has to let her know where he is, even if he’s at home.

Ken doesn’t like that arrangement much, but Dad
told him, “Think about it. It’s better than the alternative.” Which would be for him to have an actual babysitter. Ken realizes he has more freedom this way. And the thought of him having a babysitter makes him so mad his ears turn red.

Mrs. Loden is about my grandmother’s age. I don’t know if they’re paying her or she does it just because she’s a nice neighbor and hardly ever goes anywhere.

A few minutes after I get to Ginny’s I get a phone call from Mama.

“How was school?” she says.

“Great! Today was the most fun yet.”

“I’m glad,” she says, but her voice sounds kind of funny. Not funny funny, but different somehow. There’s something in her voice that makes me think something’s wrong. “I’d like you to come home now,” she says. “I would have called you earlier, but this was something your dad and I decided on at the last minute.”

“What’s up?”

“A picnic. The four of us are driving to the lake for a picnic.”

She means Corbin Lake. It’s only about ten miles away. We go there to swim a lot.

“Now? Aren’t you at work?”

“You dad and I both got off early today, just so we could have this picnic.”

It seems a little strange to me. They hardly ever leave work early. Yesterday she was too sick to come to my game, and today she leaves work to go to a picnic. That’s not like Mama.

“Can I bring Ginny?”

“Not today,” she says. “Next time, for sure.”

Things are getting weirder all the time. She usually doesn’t mind if I bring Ginny along whenever we go somewhere.

When I tell Ginny and her mom that Mama wants me at home, Ginny says, “Too bad. I was going to play my new Lisalette Krebs CD for you.”

I don’t tell her about the picnic. She might not understand why she’s not invited. Since I don’t really understand either, I decide it’s better not to even tell her.

I run home fast. Dad is tying a rope around the inner tubes we always take to the lake with us. They’re big—too big to fit inside our van. Mama is carrying out a cooler. I can guess what’s inside: hamburgers, hot dogs, tomatoes, relish, onions, jello squares, cans of soda. I would guess potato salad, but probably not today. If Mama just got home from work, she probably wouldn’t have had time to make it. Along with the marshmallows, Ken is carrying a bag of potato chips.

Dad must have seen the puzzled look on my face. He says, “It’s too nice a day to spend working.”

I’m not used to seeing Dad dressed like this on a weekday. He almost always wears a suit, or at least a pair of slacks and nice shirt and a tie and sport coat. Today he’s wearing faded blue jeans, sneakers, and a tattered t-shirt he picked up at a yard sale. The shirt is gray with the word DOGS in red print. On the front of the shirt are faces of four dogs. The back of the shirt shows the same four dogs from behind.

“Hurry up,” Ken urges. “I can hardly wait to get to the water.”

Dad laughs. “And that food, I imagine.”

“That, too,” Ken says. He says to me, “Come on, slowpoke.”

It’s a strange day. But all I say is, “Do I have time to go to the bathroom and get my swimming suit?”

Mama smiles. “Of course. The lake will wait for us.”

I go inside. From the living room window I see the three of them outside our van, and it looks like a normal family outing.

Except it sure doesn’t feel like one.

Three things I like best about Corbin Lake: it’s close enough to home that we can go there a lot, it has a sandy beach and sandy bottom that makes it nicer than lakes with sharp rocks that poke your feet, and the water is almost the perfect temperature in the summer. On a hot day like today, you want to stay in forever.

What’s even better about today is it’s a weekday and we’re about the only ones here. We have the lake practically to ourselves. On summer weekends it’s pretty crowded.

We float for awhile on our inner tubes. Then Dad calls out, “Time for a game of Keep-Away Frisbee!”

We take the inner tubes up by our picnic table and divide into teams. Dad and I are on one team,
Ken and Mama on the other. We’re all good swimmers, so the teams are evenly matched. In the shallow water I love to crouch and time my leap so I can shoot up over Ken’s back and snatch the Frisbee inches before he can grab it.

After fifteen minutes of Keep-Away and the joy of dunking Ken at least a dozen times, we all swim out to the raft.

“When do we eat?” Ken says. “That made me hungry. Especially with Kate landing on my back all the time and practically drowning me.”

“That’s just because you don’t have my strength and stamina,” I say. “You can’t keep up with me.”

“Yeah? Race you around the raft!”

We jump off. Ken gets the inside track. The only thing that keeps him from winning is that I grab his foot on the final turn, pulling him under. While he gasps for air, I swim to victory.

“Not fair!” he protests. He pleads his case to Mama and Dad. “You saw it!”

Mama smiles. “Do you need an umpire?”

I know how an umpire would have called it. “I guess not,” I say. “I guess you might have won, little brother, in a fair race.”

“Might have? I was so far ahead, it was awesome!”

“Well,” Mama says, “after that awesome victory, I guess you deserve some dinner. I’ll swim back and
get it ready.”

“I’ll help,” I tell her.

“No, that’s okay,” Dad says. “I’ll help your mother. I know about your help. You’d help by eating all the marshmallows. Untoasted. And not have any room left for hamburgers.” He winks and dives off the raft.

“There’s always room for hamburgers!” I call after him.

Ken and I sit on the edge of the raft, dangling our feet into the water. The water seems cooler at the raft’s edge, but not cold. Just right. I watch Mama spreading food on a tablecloth. Dad stands next to the grill.

“What do you think’s wrong?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“You saw them last night. And this morning. Mama seemed…different.”

“Different? You’re crazy.” Ken lifts his right foot and slaps it down onto the water, splashing drops upward into a miniature fountain.

“Maybe,” I say. “But I’m worried about them.”

“You always worry too much. Everything’s cool. We’re having a picnic. I mean, they got off work early just so we could come here.”

“That’s what I mean. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Have they ever taken off work before so we could go on a picnic?”

Ken’s only answer is a shrug.

Mama waves to us, and we dive from the raft and swim to shore. We learned to swim almost before we could walk. We’ve always done athletic things together as a family—softball, tennis, swimming, golf. I have good friends I like to be with, but my favorite times are when our family does things together. I’m lucky. Not many of my friends can say that about their parents, except maybe Ginny.

I know it’s silly to worry when there probably isn’t anything wrong, but I still can’t shake the feeling that things aren’t right.

After we finish eating, we all sprawl out on a big blanket Dad brought, one big enough for all four of us with room still left over. I’m stuffed from all the burgers and marshmallows. I don’t know what I was so worried about. The day has been great. I can’t imagine how it could be better. For one thing, class was really fun. The weather is perfect. We had the lake to ourselves earlier. Since we got out of the water a few others have come, but it’s still not very crowded.

Today’s picnic was something I didn’t expect, but it’s nice that Mama and Dad came home from work early so we could all come here. Ken has the right
idea. Why worry when there’s nothing to worry about?

I haven’t written my new poems for Monday yet, but I’m not worried about that, either. I have the whole weekend and I know I can get at least two or three new poems out of what’s happened at this picnic. I already have one in mind, how a big army of ants dropped down on our food. That didn’t happen, but I think it will make a good poem. I think I’ll write another one that is true, about my race with Ken.

Dad interrupts my thoughts. He clears his throat and says, “Kate. Ken. We have some bad news. We’ve wondered about the best way to tell you.” He pauses. Then he says, “But there isn’t a best way.”

I suddenly feel chilled all over, like somebody poured ice water over me. That great feeling I had a few seconds ago is gone. It’s like somebody just flicked a switch. There’s something in his voice I’ve never heard before. Something that scares me.

I look at Dad, but I can’t make eye contact with him. His eyes don’t stay on any one thing. They move back and forth from the ground, the lake, the picnic table. Everywhere but us. I try to imagine what the bad news is. How bad can it possibly be? It can’t be a divorce. A lot of my classmates’ parents have gotten divorced, but I know mine never will. They love each other too much.

I hope we’re not going to move. I’ve lived in the same house practically forever. All my good friends live close by. I wonder if something’s happened to Grandma or Grandpa.

“We don’t know quite how to tell you, and we thought being together here at the lake might be the best way…”

Now I’m really scared by the way his eyes look, by the trouble he’s having trying to talk. I see Mama’s eyes meet Dad’s, and I see her give a quick nod of her head.

I can only stare at her. I feel Ken beside me. I can’t see his face, but I can hear his silence. It’s like he’s stopped breathing. Or maybe it’s me who has stopped breathing. I feel almost like I’m a dream. I wait for someone to say something. Maybe when somebody finally speaks again, I’ll wake up and whatever Dad had said about bad news will be nothing more than the end of a bad dream.

I’m surprised to hear my own voice: “What bad news?”

Mama’s body seems to stiffen. “I have cancer.”

The word pounds me like a tidal wave. I feel myself drowning. I take a deep breath, trying to stay above the water.

I can’t even force myself to speak. Then I hear Ken’s voice. It seems far away. “Hannah, from my class at school—her dad had cancer last year, and
he’s fine now.”

Silence seems to grow into an ocean, and I feel myself in the middle of it, surrounded by waves twenty feet high.

Mama is sitting on the blanket now. She’s leaning against Dad. His arm is around her shoulder. She looks the same as she’s always looked. She doesn’t look sick. How can you have cancer and not look sick?

“Your father and I agreed that we shouldn’t keep anything from you,” Mama says. “You’re old enough now. You should know everything, so we can face it together.”

I want to scream for her to stop. I know somehow that anything else she might say will be too terrible to hear. But the scream won’t come out.

“The cancer is…advanced,” Mama says. “The doctor doesn’t think it will get better.” Her voice is calm and gentle. Her voice doesn’t match the words.

I feel Mama’s arms around me. I don’t even know whether I moved toward her or if she moved toward me. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I’m in Mama’s warm embrace.

“Will you have to have an operation to get rid of the cancer?” Ken asks. His voice seems louder than usual.

Dad clears his throat. “The doctor talked about all the possible treatments. But your mother’s cancer is…is just too far advanced. There’s nothing…the
doctor said…” His voice cracks and he turns away.

Mama says, “There’s nothing surgery can do.”

“What about…chemo-something?” Ken asks. “That will make you better, won’t it? That’s what Hannah’s dad had.” He talks really fast. I’ve never heard him talk so fast.

“I wish it could,” Mama says. She releases her hold on me. She shakes her head ever so slightly. She reaches out to touch Ken’s hair, but he twists his head away.

“Chemotherapy and radiation treatments are still an option,” Dad said, “but…” His voice trails off again. He doesn’t seem able to finish a sentence.

I’m glad he doesn’t finish his thought. I don’t want to hear the words. I don’t want to hear any more about the cancer. Not ever again. If I don’t hear any more, then maybe none of it’s true. Maybe it’s all just been something I dreamed. Maybe this whole afternoon is just something I dreamed.

Mama’s cheek is pressed against mine. I feel tears, and I know I’m not dreaming the tears. They’re real. What I don’t know is if they’re hers or mine.

“I know this is sudden,” Mama says, “but we just found out for sure from the doctor yesterday. We’ve never kept secrets from each other. And it wouldn’t be fair to any of us to keep this from you.”

I finally force myself to speak. “Maybe he’s
wrong. The doctor.”

Dad moves to Mama. She releases me, and Dad takes her hand and pulls her toward him. She almost floats into his arms. Ken is still standing away from us, out of everybody’s reach. “It’s not just one doctor,” Dad says. “They’ve run tests and done consultations.”

Everything seems to be frozen in place: the sun’s reflection sticking to the still lake, a diver in midair off the wooden raft, a small child with one foot raised at the edge of the water. It seems like forever before I’m able to find my voice. “You’ll be all right, Mama.” My voice sounds small to my ears. I don’t even recognize it as my own. I can barely hear my own words. No one says anything. I wait for her to agree with me, but she doesn’t.

“How can the…it be so bad?” I say. “You haven’t even been sick. Just last week we played that great tennis match, three long sets. How many games?” I mentally calculate the scores. “Thirty. You couldn’t have done thirty games if you were sick.”

Mama moves from Dad’s arms and puts out a hand toward me. She stops and stares out toward the lake. I look out and try to see what she’s seeing. The diver is in the water now. The small boy is still dipping his foot into the water with his mother right beside him.

“At first I thought the doctor must be wrong,” Mama says. “I’ve been having some pain lately, but it hasn’t been bad. I just thought it was a combination of too much exercise and getting older.”

“You’re not old, Mom,” Ken says.

She smiles and I feel a quick burst of anger. What does she have to smile about?

“Well,” she says, “thirty-four isn’t old, of course. But it’s not like being twenty, when I played tennis in college. Except for the exhaustion of healthy exercise, I’ve never really known what pain is. As you get older, and you start getting little aches, you think they’re just part of aging. I guess that’s why I didn’t go to the doctor sooner.”

No one says anything, and I wonder if everyone is thinking what I am. I want to scream the words, but I keep them to myself: If you had gone to the doctor earlier, they would have found the cancer and they’d be able to make you well again! How could you not go earlier?

But I’m glad I don’t say it. It wouldn’t do anybody any good.

I run toward the lake, almost knocking over the little boy who’s wading in the shallow water. I start swimming toward the raft, water splashing against my hot tears. I don’t look back to see if anyone is coming after me.

When I get to the raft, I see them still sitting on
the blanket, even Ken. I wonder what they’re talking about now. Is there more about the cancer they’re telling Ken?

If there is, I’m glad I don’t have to hear.