Plunking Reggie Jackson (23 page)

“I don't know if I can or not.”

“Then what are you saying?” At least she was looking at him again.

“I'm not going to fight him. Even if I could beat him up, I'm not going to fight him. I'm going to give him an offer he can't refuse.”

“Oh, really. D'you think this is like the
movies
or something? This is reality.”

“No, I don't think it's the movies. I just think he'll listen to reason.”

“I can't believe what you're saying to me. You just decide all by yourself that we're going back, so you go to the airport and buy tickets. What about me? What about what
I
want?”

“I'm not forgetting about you, Bree, believe me.”

“Why should I believe you? You act like this whole thing is just about
you
.”

“For once I agree with you. This whole thing
is
about me. It never has been, not since I met you. I haven't made a single decision, at least not a real one. This is a real one, and it's all mine.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“You will, though. Sooner or later, you will.”

Chapter Seventeen

On the return flight she gave him the silent treatment. For the moment, he felt compelled to try to explain to her how he perceived their relationship. “To tell you the truth, Bree, I don't think you know any more about being in love than I do.”

But her only response was to put a tape in her new Walkman and fit the headphones over her ears. Coley didn't mind. Maybe it was better this way, maybe she wouldn't be interrupting him to ask if he was mad or to beg him to forgive her for lying. Maybe he would say it better this way. “The point is,” he told her, “none of this was ever an accident. None of it just happened.”

She wasn't listening, of course. She had cranked up the only tape she had with her,
Butterfly
, by Maria Carey. The volume was up loud enough that Coley could hear traces of it himself. The music was slipping out from beneath the edges of the foam pads that covered her ears. He went on: “You knew I had just broken up with Gloria, and you thought I was cool. Everybody thinks I'm cool. I get written up in the sports pages, I get interviewed on TV, and blah, blah. I'm supposed to be a major-league pitcher someday. Plus I'm supposed to get rich.”

The flight attendant came by with a cart. She offered them a Coke or a Sprite, but only Coley took one.

He took a sip before he continued, “You figured if you got pregnant, or at least if we
thought
you were pregnant, we would get married. Then live happily ever after, I guess. Me as a big-league star, you with lots of money to spend, the two of us layin' out on the beaches of Cancun or the Bahamas. But think about how lame it all was, really.

“Who knows what might have been if that tampon had flushed away the way you thought it would? Not me. I can't blame you for the things you do, though, not after the way you've been treated by Burns and your real dad. That's why I'm not mad at you. The truth is, I feel sorry for you, which is probably worse than being mad. I love the sex we have and I pity you. That doesn't make for much of a relationship, not a real one anyway.”

He stopped talking so he could finish his Coke. Bree's head had fallen to the side. Was she asleep? “You've had lots of problems, Bree, but you'll never get out from under 'em by running away. The way Bobby Ricci puts it, we have to get our minds right. We can't do that by running away.”

When they landed at O'Hare, they found the car right where they'd left it, in the long-term parking section. It hadn't been towed, it wasn't chained down, it didn't even have a ticket or note on the windshield. Paying the bill reminded Coley they'd been gone only four days. It felt more like four weeks.

The drive home took the same length of time—three and a half hours—as the flight had. But it was more of an endurance test for Coley. Bree was as sullen and silent as she'd been on the plane, and he felt thoroughly exhausted from the sleepless nights and the emotional trauma that had drained him throughout this Florida fiasco.

Once, during the drive, when he asked her if she was hungry, she ignored his question altogether. But she did remove her headphones long enough to remind him, “He's going to beat me, you know.”

“Not that again, okay? I told you I'm going to deal with that.”

“I don't know how you think you are. Then after he beats me, he'll probably hit my mother because she'll try to protect me.”

Her remarks opened up his nerves despite his guarded optimism. What lay ahead for both of them could be ugly. The consequences were too much to think about. “Can you trust me on this?” he finally asked.

“I don't know why I should. You're still thinking of yourself.” Without waiting for any response, she slipped the headphones back into place.

Coley didn't get really nervous until he pulled the car around the corner at the end of her block. It was late afternoon.

He was lifting her suitcases out of the trunk when Burns came out the door and across the lawn, walking so rapidly he was nearly jogging. He might have been running but for the beach thongs that flopped on his feet. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of blue shorts.

The confrontation, the part where he got right up in Coley's face, nose-to-nose almost, occurred halfway up the sidewalk. Coley put the suitcases down. He spread his feet just slightly, for balance. If there was going to be a fight, he was ready. “Back off,” he said to the stepfather.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I said back off. Get out of my space.” Suddenly his nerves were not the nerves of fear and apprehension, but those of a swift and sure adrenaline rush. Like getting ready to strike out a batter in a clutch situation.

“And I said, who the hell do you think you are? You're probably on your way to jail, you know that?”

“Stop it,” Bree demanded. “Both of you have to just stop it.”

From the corner of his eye Coley could see her mother hurrying out the front door.

“I wouldn't know where to start with you,” said Burns. “What I'd like to do is just knock the shit out of you right here and now.”

“You can try,” said Coley. “Bree says that's your usual method.”

This remark seemed to catch him up short, if only briefly. He hesitated slightly before he said, “Do you think because you're a big sports star you can do anything you want? You think laws are for other people?” The big man kept opening and closing his fingers. Fists, then no fists. Then fists again.

“No, I don't think that,” Coley told him. “What I'd like to do is apologize, but if you don't back off of me, I'm just gonna leave.”

“Let him apologize,” said Bree's mother. She had the helpless look on her face Coley associated with news film of forlorn mothers in refugee camps.

Burns didn't take his eyes from Coley's, but he did step back, a full pace. “So you think an apology can make up for what you've done?”

“No, I don't think it can. What we did was wrong, and it was mostly my fault, not Bree's. I'm sorry. For what it's worth, I'm sorry.”

“Bree's not even sixteen yet. You can go to jail for kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, probably even rape. Have you thought at all about the consequences for what you've done?”

“Yes and no,” Coley answered. “Not enough, that's for sure.” At least there wasn't going to be a fight. The two of them were still squared off, alert and balanced, with Bree and her mother clinging somewhere in between, trying to act as buffers and stay out of the way at the same time.

“Apologies aren't going to cut it, Coley Burke. What you've done goes beyond that, way beyond. As soon as we press charges, you'll be facing an arrest warrant, and if you're lucky, it'll be only one.”

Coley felt calmer now. All of this was going more or less the way he'd expected. He said, “You'll do what you have to do, I guess. But I want to give you somethin' to think about.”

“What would that be?”

“Our family lawyer is Stanley Irlbacher. You've probably heard of him; he's the best attorney in town.”

“You can't throw that country club shit at me,” said Burns with contempt. “I move in those same circles myself.”

“Okay, then, let me throw this shit at you.” He pointed at Bree and said, “I know that you hit her. Sometimes you slap her and sometimes you hit her with your fist. She's told me all about it. I've seen the cuts and I've seen the bruises. Maybe you'd like to deal with that in open court.”

“You don't stand here on my lawn and make accusations. What goes on in this family is our business, and you're out of bounds to make presumptions.” But Coley had seen him flinch. No more fists, either.

“Any chickenshit that likes to slap around women and girls makes it everybody's business. There's no privacy that goes with that. I'm no genius, but even I know that.”

“Are you threatening me? Are you standing in front of my family and threatening me?”

“I'm tellin' you this: I don't have a lot of friends on the high school staff, but I do have one. Her name is Mrs. Alvarez, and she's a counselor. If you ever lay a hand on Bree again, I'll know about it. One way or another, I'll know about it.”

“You're threatening me with a high school counselor?”

“You could say that. Because as soon as I know it, Mrs. Alvarez will know about it. Here's how the law works: If a school counselor has even a
suspicion
that a student is being abused, they have to report it to the authorities.” He thought about adding that this point of law was something he'd learned in human dynamics class but figured that would sound too juvenile.

“You are threatening me.”

“Call it what you want. But the way it would go would be like this. Mrs. Alvarez tells DCFS, they tell the cops, and then it goes to the district attorney's office. You can figure out the rest. It would be sort of like a chain of command. You would know all about that from your years in the military.”

“Okay, you've made your point, now drop it.”

But he wasn't ready to drop it, not quite yet. He said, “The difference is that this is not the military. Bree and your wife aren't under your command. Besides, even in the army I doubt if they let the officers slap the troops around. You tell me.”

“I said you've made your point. We're not going to resolve all of this here and now.” Burns put his hands on his hips. He went into a lot of neck stretching and shoulder flexing, but what was clear was that he was looking for a way to save face. It was damage control time. He turned to Bree. “Are you okay, baby?”

“I'm okay.”

“Did he hurt you?”

There were tears running down her cheeks as she looked in Coley's direction. “I'm okay. He didn't do anything to hurt me. Coley never hurts me.”

Burns put his arm around her shoulder before he turned his face back to Coley. “I'd say emotions are running a little high at this point,” he suggested. His voice was much more subdued, to go right along with his body language. “Maybe we'd all be better off if we declared a sort of cooling-off period.”

Even Bree's mother seemed a little relieved at this point. “You need to go home, Coley. Your parents have been worried terribly. Your poor mother and I have been on the phone half a dozen times.”

“Yeah, I know. I'm ashamed about it.” He knew it was time to go home. But before he turned to leave, he said to Bree, “I'll see you soon, Bree. I'm not sure just what the circumstances are gonna be like, but I'll see you soon. And I'm sorry, I really am.”

“Go home now, Coley,” said her mother. “Your mother needs to see you.”

“I'm on my way.” To Burns he issued one last reminder. “Just remember what I said.”

Chapter Eighteen

On the fifth of June, Coley sat on the hood of his car beyond the outfield fence, watching the play-offs. If the team won today, it would mean a regional championship, which would put them in the sectionals. It didn't look likely, though; they were already behind. Quintero was pitching. He would be good someday, but he wasn't ready yet.

Sitting in this remote location allowed him to satisfy his curiosity, but without having to worry about causing any distraction. It was enormously painful. He wanted to be here, but he couldn't be part of it. He glanced up at the sky, where the gathering clouds indicated rain was on the way. Why not? It seemed like it had rained every day all week.

That was when Ruthie Roth showed up. Coley hadn't noticed her approach, but she was suddenly next to him, leaning against the fender. “Is this seat taken?” she asked him.

He smiled before he answered. “These are just the general admission seats. Like bleacher seats. First come, first served. Are you a baseball fan now, Ruthie?”

“I think you know better than that. I've been up in the newspaper office. They asked me to write an article about National Honor Society for the last issue of the year.”

“So did you write it?”

“I was going to, but then I changed my mind. Instead I decided to write an article called ‘Coley and Bree's Excellent Adventure.'” She was smiling.

Coley's grin was sheepish. He looked down. “So you heard about that.”

“Heard about it? I may be out of the loop, Coley, but I'm not off the planet. Everybody in school heard about it. You two are lucky it wasn't in the papers.”

“Yeah, we were lucky. That would be the word.” He turned his attention back to the game, where Rico was batting. On the third pitch he got a line-drive single to left. “Yes!” Coley declared in a high-decibel whisper. He pumped his fist.

“God, this must be hard on you,” said Ruthie.

He looked at her. It seemed like the softest thing she'd ever said to him. It sounded
sympathetic
. He decided to take the risk. “Hard on me? Only like I've got a knife stuck in my gut, which gets twisted every once in a while.”