Pretend You Love Me (5 page)

I said flatly, “You’re coming to my game. Let me guess. You’re bringing Ma too. A show of family. Oh wow. I’m all choked up.
I’ll save seats for you guys. Wait. I’d have to save the whole cheering section for her.”

Darryl just looked at me. I reciprocated the gesture. His eyes drifted down to my body, swept me head to foot. “You know,
you look more like a guy every day,” he said.

“Thank you.” I elbowed past him.

“That crap you drink. What’s in it? Steroids?”

“Get real,” I muttered.

“You get real. I mean it, Mike. You’re getting too…”

I whirled on him.

“Hard,” he finished.

I smiled. Hard. Just what I wanted to be. Inside and out.

“You could, at the minimum, shave your pits.”

“Why? So you can glue the hair on your head?”

No response. Okay, it wasn’t that funny.

I kicked the second box over to him. “You finish this. I have to go.”

I helped myself to a hoagie from the top of the box. I’d earned it. Dropping the sandwich into my duffel, I double-checked
my gear: cleats, batting gloves, a Tampax. I hoped to God I wouldn’t need it halfway through the game. Shouldering the duffel,
I held a palm out to Darryl. “Keys?”

He dug into his jeans pocket. Then teased me with the keys so I had to grab for them. Butthead.

“Be back by three.” He trailed me to the screen door. “Me and Gordo are heading up to Oberlin to see his cousin about this
funny car a guy wants to sell. We might go in on it together.”

Like I cared. Gordo was a gonad. All Darryl’s friends were. “Where are you getting the money for that?”

“It’s coming out of your inheritance,” he said.

That did it. “You’re not missing work, are you? Or didn’t you get the job at the Suprette? I can’t imagine them not being
impressed by your vast on-the-job experience in plumbing and heating. Your managerial expertise. The last two years you spent
running the family business into the ground.”

Darryl came after me with a fist, but I slammed out the door. Even if he could catch me, which I doubted, he couldn’t hurt
me. No more than he already had.

At the outskirts of town, I made a pit stop at Nel’s Tavern. As usual, Nel was on the phone behind the bar. She waved me in.

I slid onto a bar stool to wait. There was a clump of old timers at the end of the bar—truckers, railroad engineers, drunks.
They barely glanced my way. Nel never refused to sell to me, and she probably should have. More than once I’d bought a quart
bottle of Old Milwaukee and taken it home instead of to River View.

“How’s your ma?” Nel asked, hanging up.

I hated lying to Nel. She’d always been good to me and Darryl. “You know. The same.”

Nel sighed. She reached across the bar to cradle my chin, but I pulled back. Not today. I couldn’t handle her kindness today.
Hers or anyone else’s.

“The usual?” she asked.

I nodded. She packaged the beer and rang up my sale. I handed her a ten and she counted out change. As I grabbed the paper
bag by the neck of the bottle, Nel held on and said, “Tell your ma I’ll try to stop by to see her soon.”

Like me and Ma talked. “Okay.” I separated from Nel and swiveled off my stool.

“She’s been through a lot, Mike,” Nel said at my back.

We’ve all been through a lot, okay? You don’t see me giving up on life, do you? I didn’t say it. I didn’t dare. Instead, I
stiff-armed through the door, thinking this beer might not make it to River View.

“Hey, watch it,” someone barked in my ear. “What’s your rush?”

I’d almost mowed Miss Millie down in the doorway. “I’m sorry, Miss Millie.” I reached out to steady her. “You okay?”

She blinked at me, her rheumy eyes sloshing around in loose eye sockets.

I reeled back. The odor emanating from her set off my gag reflex.

“Two years.” Her face flooded with recognition. “Two years today,” she said, aiming a limp finger at my face.

Great. If Miss Millie remembered, the whole town did.

There was no river in River View, no river anywhere in Coalton. The streambed that ran along the south side of town had been
dry as a cracker barrel as long I’d lived here. Which was forever. I guess it was supposed to sound serene: River View. View
of the river. What view? Floating corpses?

I pulled up alongside the row of junipers that had been planted on Arbor Day last year as a wind break. Waste of money. Once
the wind began to blow on the Kansas plain there wasn’t any living thing that could break it. I grabbed the beer and took
off in search of Dad.

He was in the same place. Duh. What did I expect, that’d he get up and leave? He lay between Darryl Michael Szabo II—Grandpa—and
Camilia Lynn Szabo.
INFANT
, the headstone read. Sister. My sister.

“Hey, Pops.” I curled cross-legged in front of his headstone, setting the beer beside me for the moment. Propping my elbows
on my spread-apart knees and lacing all ten fingers together, I rested my cheeks on my knuckles and asked, “How’s it going?”

Just once I’d like to hear his voice. In my ears, not my head. I couldn’t remember the last thing he’d said out loud to me.
It wasn’t, “Goodbye.” It wasn’t, “Have a nice life without me.” I squeezed my eyes shut. A breeze prickled my skin and I shivered
in my sleeveless uniform. The wind rustled the trees. Was that him? I’d take it as a sign. I’d take anything.

I opened my eyes and tried to feel his presence, his warmth surrounding me. His strong arms around me. “Jamie says hi.” I
plucked a few blades of grass and tossed them aside. “Dad, guess what? I met someone.” I smiled at his imagined surprise.
“Well, yeah she’s pretty. Think I’d pick a dog? Actually, she’s bee-oo-tiful.” He’d laugh to hear me imitate him. He used
to say the exact same thing about cars and women: “Ooh, baby. She’s bee-oo-tiful.”

“Xanadu. That’s her name. Cool, huh? You’d like her, Dad. Except, she’s a talker. Man, can she talk. I know you always say
when people talk too much there’s something they’re not telling you. Usually, the truth. I don’t get that with her. She’s
totally honest. I wish you could meet her, Dad. You’d see. I wish—”

The words stuck in my throat. I fought them down. Wishing, hoping. It was destructive. “Doesn’t matter. She’d never be interested
in me. What?” I paused. Unfurling my legs, I bent forward and put my ear to the ground. “Anything’s possible? Yeah, you would
say that.”

I straightened to sit up. “I do think she likes me. She isn’t repulsed, let’s put it that way.”

A prairie dog chirruped a few feet away. The colony was growing larger. Last time I was here, on Christmas day, there were
half as many mounds. I’d counted. Twenty-five. I’d thought it was a sign. Twenty-five, December twenty-fifth. Weak. I watched
as the prairie dog sat up on its haunches and barked a warning. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I won’t be here long.”

“So, anyway,” I said to Dad, “things are about the same. Darryl’s a wastoid. But you knew that. What else is new?” We miss
you, I wanted to say.

I couldn’t say it. I wasn’t sure Darryl
did
miss Dad. They were always hacking on each other. Especially the last year. Darryl and his cars. Dad and his drinking. Dad
telling Darryl to get off his butt and get a job. Right, Dad. Talk about wishful thinking. Darryl was a slacker. Dad knew
that. He reminded Darryl often enough. Darryl probably praised the Lord the day Dad offed himself.

My stomach knotted. Two years today. I removed the bottle of beer from the paper bag and unscrewed the lid. “To celebrate
your anniversary.” I saluted him with the bottle. “Here’s to ya, Pops. Cheers.” I scrambled to my feet. Ceremoniously, I sprinkled
the beer all up and down his grave. “One for the road,” I told him. “Drink up.”

Did he laugh? Did his hearty boom echo across the open cemetery?
Did I feel him take me in his arms and smother me in a hug? Then smell his stinking boozy breath all over my face. God. I
hated him.

No, I didn’t. I loved him.

I hated him.

I loved him.

I lingered another minute until all the foam was gone, swallowed up by earth, guzzled in the ground by him. Absently, my hand
ran along the curve of his marble headstone. Too big, too expensive. They didn’t have to buy a headstone this ornate. They
didn’t have to buy one at all. I read the engraving aloud, “Darryl Michael Szabo, the Third.” He never went by Darryl. “Here
come the Mikes,” people would say. “Mike and Mike Junior.” Or as Jamie called me, “Miss Junior Mike.”

People. They were still talking about it. Two years. They couldn’t let it go.

I touched my baby sister’s headstone too. She’d only lived five days. I couldn’t remember how she died, or why. Not for the
first time, I wondered if life would’ve been different with three of us, a younger sister. If Camilia would’ve looked like
me. Hopefully not. If Mom would’ve loved her, the way she did Darryl.

Never me.

Back to Dad. He loved me. He loved me more than anyone in the world.

“Rest in peace, Pops.” I broke the bottle across his headstone. “If you can.”

T
he team was in the outfield warming up when I finally found Cleaver Field. You could get lost in the maze of streets and avenues
and courts and drives in Garden City. Coalton was easy. First Street through Tenth, east to west, square grid. We only had
the one stoplight at the west end of town as you came off Highway 40.

I parked the truck in the paved lot behind the dugout. Which was an actual dugout, rather than a lean-to aluminum shell like
we had. As I started toward the field, I remembered this wasn’t Coalton and returned to remove the keys from the ignition.
I noticed then how the insignia on the side panel of the truck was fading. S
ZABO
P
LUMBING AND
H
EATING.
Italics underneath: T
HE
N
AME
Y
OU
K
NOW AND
T
RUST.
The name was running a little low on trust these days. I rubbed off the grime around S
ZABO.
The least Darryl could do was keep the truck clean. Out of respect, if not for Dad, then for the family name. The business.

What business? I asked myself. The business was in the toilet.

“Mike, there you are. I thought you weren’t going to make it.” Coach
Kinneson scribbled a hurried note on her clipboard as I rounded the dugout.

“I made it,” I told her. “I’ve never missed a game in my life.” If she didn’t know that by now… A ball came whizzing in from
the field and my hand shot up in reflex to cup it.

“Just seein’ if you showed up to play,” T.C. called to me, grinning.

I sidearmed a stinger back to her. “There’s your answer.”

“Five minutes,” the ump hollered from behind home plate.

Garden City was already through with warm-ups and they looked good. Prepared. At least prepped-out in their flashy new yellow-and-brown
uniforms.
BUFFS,
their uniforms read on front. Short for Buffalos. Who’d want to be called buffalos? Big, lumbering animals. Every player’s
last name was appliquéd on the back. Shoes to match. La di da. Coalton Cougars wore your basic black-and-gold jerseys with
ironed-on numbers. So what? I loved my uniform, the feel of it, the way the stretchy fabric fit nice and tight around my quads.
My cleats were getting a little stretched and holey, but they’d last another season—I hoped. I couldn’t see dropping a hundred
bucks on new cleats if I was only going to be wearing them one more year.

I gathered my team together in front of the dugout. “Huddle up, ladies.” We jammed into a closed circle and put our arms around
each others’ shoulders. “What do we know about buffalos? They’re hairy and they smell bad.”

Everyone snorted.

“They almost went extinct,” T.C. chimed in.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s finish the job.” We stacked hands. “Go Cougars!”

It looked like most of Coalton had driven down to watch us play. Which wasn’t unusual. Didn’t matter if we had a winning season
or not, girls’ fastpitch always attracted a crowd.

For some reason Coach Kinneson put me first in the batting order. I would’ve asked her strategy, but was afraid she didn’t
have one. She’d
only volunteered to fill in while our real coach, Coach Archuleta, was in St. Louis helping his mother through hip replacement
surgery. He was planning to be gone for a couple of weeks—five or six games—but his mother wasn’t recuperating as fast as
he’d hoped and we were stuck with Coach Kinneson. Supposedly, she’d coached a junior rec league somewhere in Pennsylvania.
A league with lower standards, obviously.