The Might Have Been (24 page)

He took Grizzly to the front yard. As the dog trotted over the lawn searching for a place to do his business, Edward Everett surveyed the damage from the storm. Next door, the Duboises’ Bradford pear had snapped and lay at the curb. At Mrs. Greiner’s across the street, the limb of a maple lay across her walk and there were branches down in other yards as well. Not a light shone: not the porch light that the Maxwells left on every night because their twenty-year-old son worked the overnight shift at Walmart, not even the streetlight in front of the Duboises’ that Ron Senior had once shot out with a BB gun in a fit of love for Rhonda when she had the flu and complained she couldn’t sleep because of the light.

Much of the rest of the town was in similar condition. For a long stretch of his drive to the ballpark, it was dark, traffic lights out for blocks. At some intersections, the police had set up temporary stop signs in the middle of the road, and down one street, Algeier, he could see the work lights of a Central Iowa Power Cooperative crew, hear the generator rumbling, watch a workman riding a cherry picker up alongside a utility pole where there was a downed wire.

At the ballpark, he pulled into the lot beside Collier’s silver Escalade. The only other vehicle there was the rusted, fifteen-year-old powder blue Plymouth mini-van that Pete Winston, the night watchman, drove. Edward Everett found them in the home clubhouse, standing at the edge of the darkened shower room, the beams of their flashlights bouncing off the walls and the black pool of sewage.

“I can’t tell if it’s going down,” Collier said.

Winston crouched like the catcher he once had been and focused his flashlight on the center of the room, where the drain was.

“This really sucks the sow’s teat,” Collier said when he saw Edward Everett. The shower room was perhaps three inches deep in black ooze; flecks of paper floated on the surface and the stench was so overpowering that Edward Everett had to cover his nose with his hand to keep from choking. Around the drain, the sewage bubbled slowly.

“I can’t afford any more work on this fucking white elephant of a ballpark,” Collier said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“That’s what it is, all right,” Winston said, standing up, wiping his hands on the legs of his jeans. “The visitor clubhouse is the same. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Win,” Collier said. The three stood at the edge of the shower room for another moment, staring at the sludge. Edward Everett may have been mistaken but it seemed it had receded while they were there; the line of concrete that was merely coated instead of submerged seemed to be as much as two inches wide now, whereas it had perhaps been an inch when he’d arrived. Still, at the rate it was sliding back down the drain, it could be hours until it was gone. Then someone would have to clean it up.

As if Winston had read his mind, he said, “You know, Claire and I would come in with mops and some bleach and scour the place real good if that’d help.”

“I’d give you a hundred dollars,” Collier said.

“Shoot, Mr. Collier. I’d feel like I was taking advantage of someone’s misfortune if you paid me that much. Make it fifty.”

Collier regarded Winston. If Edward Everett hadn’t been there he was certain Collier would have taken the offer but, glancing at Edward Everett, he said, “No, we’ll keep it the hundred.”

Later, after Winston left them, Collier and Edward Everett stood together in the parking lot. Suddenly the hillside above the ballpark became illuminated as, all along it, the lights in a hundred houses came on. Near the highest point of the hill was Collier’s home, a massive, five-thousand-square-foot place on an acre lot. The entire western side of the house was a sunroom with a vaulted ceiling. As the lights there went on, the west wall gleaming, he said, “Shit,” and pulled his cellphone out of his pants pocket. “Ginger, turn off the damn lights. We’re burning a hundred dollars’ worth of electricity and it’s five-thirty in the fucking morning.” He ended the call and put his phone back into his pocket. Edward Everett had no idea whether he had actually spoken to his wife or just left a message, but a moment later the house went dark.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” Collier said. “You
have any idea how much I’ve lost the last five years?” He patted the roof of his Escalade. “I coulda bought a fleet of these. Bought a fleet and drove them all into the river, and it woulda been the same thing.” He let out a small, bitter laugh. “I remember when my dad bought the team and moved it here. I was five or six and he come home and said, ‘Your daddy bought you a toy.’ Shit. I thought he bought me a box of Lincoln Logs.” He shook his head. “We’ve had some good times here. Remember that stretch when you first come, three league pennants in a row? That parade after the first was something.” Edward Everett had not thought of the parade Collier staged as impressive: six “Collier Fine Meats” refrigerated trucks, two floats and a half-dozen convertibles carrying those players who had showed up, waving embarrassedly to the sparse crowd, trailing the Perabo City High marching band for four blocks. Collier draped an arm around Edward Everett’s shoulders in a surprisingly familiar gesture. “It’s gonna die with us, amigo. We’re the last of the …”

“Old fools?” Edward Everett said, finishing Collier’s sentence.

“Old somethings anyway.”

It was only when he was back home, sitting at his kitchen table, drinking coffee and paging through the newspaper, that Edward Everett realized it was his birthday. Turning to the horoscopes, he saw the familiar date:
If your birthday is today …

In most years, he gave the event little thought. They were in-season, the day little different from any other: the game, and long hours in the office before and after. Today, however, he had nothing to do and the prospect of the empty day stretched before him in a way that made him uncomfortable. “You work to avoid real life,” Renee had said a few months earlier. It struck him then: was that when she had decided to go? If he had said,
You’re right
, changed his habits, come home at eleven instead of midnight, would she still be there? He wondered if she would relent long enough to acknowledge his birthday; maybe he would find a card from her in the mail. His first wife, years ago, had been friendly after their divorce and sent him cards for a time until she told him that her new husband thought
the practice odd. “You understand,” she said in a note. “It’s not that he suspects anything or is jealous.” Whatever her new husband had been, she’d stopped sending cards after that.

When the mail came, there were more than a dozen cards, but nothing from Renee. Most were from former players. One, Jack Clarendon, who was platooning at second base with the big club, getting into the lineup when they faced left-handed pitching, sent him a hundred-dollar card for Best Buy. Winston, God bless him, sent him a five-dollar card for Starbucks. Even Renee’s father, Ron, brought by a card with a twenty-dollar gift certificate for Lowe’s. When Edward Everett answered the door, Grizzly barking and skittering across the kitchen tile, Ron was uncomfortable, glancing repeatedly toward his own house, as if he were doing something illicit.

“Don’t tell Rhonda,” he said after declining Edward Everett’s invitation to come inside for coffee. Bending to scratch the dog under his chin, he went on, “She’s, well, she don’t want to do anything that suggests we’re taking sides. Between you, me and the lamppost, though, I’m hoping you guys work things out. Renee … I ain’t telling you something that’s a shock. Once she gets an idea, she’s like a dog with a bone. But …”

“But?” Edward Everett asked, wondering if Renee had confided something, the “but” being the one thing he could do that would cause her to change her mind, come home as she had before.

“I gotta get back,” Ron said, ignoring his question. “You’re not going to end up spending the day alone, are you?”

“No,” Edward Everett said. “I’ve got plans.”

“That’s good.” Ron turned to go, but hesitated. “You ever need anyone to watch the dog, you know where I am. He’s like a grand-doggy to us and I’d hate to see him go to one of those kennels.” As if he understood what Ron was saying, the dog stood on its hind legs, pawing at Ron’s shins. He bent down, gave him a pat and was gone.

Around noon, Biggie Vincent called. When Edward Everett saw the name on his caller ID, he let it go to voice mail. “Happy birthday!” Vincent said, his voice singsong, making Edward Everett wonder if he was celebrating the day off with a few beers. “Since there’s
no game, amigo, how about you, the missus, Janice and me go to Outback? Not that I’ll pick up the check. You know how much I’m paid. Or not paid.” He laughed.

He considered calling Vincent, telling him that Renee had left. Vincent would take him out for the steak, just the two of them. He’d say the right things, condemn Renee or encourage him to court her, depending on what he perceived Edward Everett wanted. But the thought of the effort Vincent would exert made him tired. “It’s just you and me, Grizzly,” he said to the dog, deleting the message. Grizzly was lying in a corner of the kitchen and, on hearing his name, picked his head up, regarded Edward Everett and then laid his head back down, covering his face with his paws, as if to say:
Pity party? Count me out
.

“Yeah,” Edward Everett said, opening the freezer to find something for lunch. “That’s what I think, too.” He took out a dinner and put it in the microwave. How, he wondered, had he ended up celebrating his sixtieth birthday with an epileptic Pomeranian as his only companion, standing in the kitchen, watching a Lean Cuisine lasagna, a frozen meal Renee had left behind, rotating in a microwave in a house with a leaky basement in a town where he managed a team that played its games in an honest-to-God cesspool?

A
lthough he had once promised himself he wouldn’t stay in the game if it meant celebrating his thirtieth birthday in a minor league town, he did: Holloway, Iowa. He was with the Cubs organization then, playing for their double-A team at Racine—his fifth franchise in less than three years; St. Louis, Cleveland, Oakland, Baltimore, Chicago, the trajectory of his career akin to a pinball bouncing off bumpers and flippers. He sometimes thought—back to hours on a bus and four-in-a-room at Travelodges and Motel 6s, deep in the heart of the heart of America, where, he was convinced, the only people who were there had gotten lost on their way to somewhere else—that the worst thing that had happened to him were the weeks he’d spent with the Cardinals until he got hurt. It was as if he had been tussling in the backseat with the prom queen: she was passionate, she let you touch her here, here, here, but not there, not just yet, before she dashed off to the powder room, just for a sec, just to freshen up, leaving you waiting with a hard-on, wondering, did she ditch you, was she laughing with her friends, the queen’s court, about leaving you there, but then thinking that maybe she didn’t after all, and you remember your hand in her bra, and maybe she was standing at the sink, dabbing the corner of her mouth to smooth out the line of lip gloss, thinking about you in the car, and so you waited, the
promise enough to keep you waiting in the backseat as the moon set.

In the hinterlands of the Cleveland organization after the tryout camp—Erie, Pennsylvania, hitting .293—he was the number four outfielder and should have read the portents then: the prom queen doesn’t come back to the car for number four outfielders. The next year, back at Erie—never a good sign, two seasons in the same minor league town, the professional version of your tires caught in the mud, spinning—and then later that season traded to the A’s, at Peoria, Illinois, three weeks there, a throw-in as part of a seven-player deal, hitting .413 in forty-six at-bats, but then shipped out again, to the Baltimore organization, playing at Raleigh but then let go when the season ended, the market cold for twenty-nine-year-old singles-hitting outfielders. He should have read the signs
then
but didn’t, the last man in America who still had faith he could get back to the major leagues. So he stuck it out, made some calls, landed with a Cubs minor league team, and woke up starting the fourth decade of his life in a little town he couldn’t pick out on a map even though he’d been there.

At the ball game at Holloway, the organist played “The Old Gray Mare” when he stepped to the plate for the first time, and a drunken fan in the stands behind home plate shrieked the words of the song at him—a red-faced man maybe twice his age, venting whatever his life’s disappointments were on someone he didn’t know, as if it would bring him back whatever he had lost. When Edward Everett struck out, swinging wildly over a pitch that broke down and outside, the old man jeered at him: “Yeah, you go sit down now.”

After the game, at a Ponderosa, one of his teammates tipped a waitress—a buxom girl with steak sauce and chocolate pudding staining her apron—to bring him a corn muffin with a candle stuck in it, along with a note calling him “Mithoosla,” which took him a while to tease out as “Methuselah.” Looking down the table as they grinned back at him over their steaks and their baked potatoes slathered with sour cream, he realized how much older he was than they, thirty an impossible number for them to comprehend. A decade earlier, when he was their age and at single-A, still on his way up—
up
the only conceivable trajectory—and his hitting coach marked his thirtieth birthday (in a far more dignified manner than Edward Everett would; his wife and daughter meeting him at the ballpark, the daughter shyly offering up to him a package wrapped in paper she’d colored herself), another player confided, his face solemn, “I’m killin’ myself the day before I turn thirty.”

In his kitchen nearly a third of a century after that dinner at Ponderosa, taking the lasagna from the microwave and raising the steaming plastic dish as a toast to his sleeping dog, he thought he should have seen the writing on the wall
then
, but hadn’t. Thirty-one, in Dorsett, Nebraska, with the Brewers organization the next season, a year and a half older than the pitching coach, his legs starting to go, average sliding: .271. His roommates—nineteen, twenty, twenty-four—chipped in and bought him a cheap cane with a plastic handle shaped like a baseball. On the bus one night, riding along a dark blacktop road in Illinois, they reminisced about television shows he’d never seen—
Hong Kong Phooey
and
Speed Buggy
—because while they’d been slumped on their parents’ couches watching cartoons, he was on another bus coursing through the Midwest or trotting out to left in the shadow of an outfield wall. At one point, his roommate Mikey Phillips, sitting beside him, started a chorus of a TV theme song Edward Everett had never heard and most of the team began shouting the lyrics in unison until the bus hit a pothole, blowing a front tire, one a.m. in the middle of nowhere. Most of them disembarked while the driver tried to rouse a tow truck using the CB radio. As Edward Everett’s teammates stretched out in the grass along the shoulder, chatting or smoking cigarettes, he wandered up the road, away from them, to where the manager, Adam Johnson, was talking quietly with the pitching coach. “… let him go,” Johnson was saying and Edward Everett’s skin prickled, certain they meant him. “You weren’t supposed to hear that,” Johnson said. Edward Everett felt a stone drop in his belly. “Don’t say anything to Phillips. We need him for the series in Urbana.”