twenty-five
Vivian
Greg Duchovney was a closer. He kept his hair and beard long because it was lucky, earning him the name “The Samson of Elysian.” He didn’t have more than fifty pitches in him per game, but of those fifty, eighty percent were brilliantly placed tricks of air and physics. The rest were signs he was getting tired. That was why they called him “The Forty.”
“Jesus, Wallace.” Duchovney turned the ball over in his hand, a blue Sharpie wedged between two fingers. “You John Hancock or something?”
“There’s room,” Dash said, stretching up to turn on the third air heater in the yard. The gas flame whooshed to life. “Stop whining.”
Duchovney had a brace on his left knee. It was quite a contraption of brushed metal wingnuts and rods, bridging the space between the outdoor couch and the coffee table. I had a hard time keeping my eyes off it. Though it didn’t look as though Greg was uncomfortable, the titanium cage told a story of pain.
I tried not to giggle when he handed me back the ball, signed. I was at his house for dinner as his friend’s girl, not in the stadium as a giddy fan. So I tried not to throw his stats back at him or tell him how he’d been robbed of a Cy Young Award two years earlier. Dash had already warned me against mentioning the accident. He didn’t say why. He just said I shouldn’t bring it up unless I was pressed.
And I wasn’t. We got all the way through dinner with two professional baseball players without bringing up knees, trips and falls, the good or ill health of anyone in the world, the pitching roster, or the Cactus League. Yet once we had established the life story of the dinner’s newcomer (me), we talked about nothing but baseball. The deftness with which painful subjects were skirted was world-class but exhausting. When Dora Duchovney started clearing the table, I jumped up to help.
Dora had an accent straight out of Minnesota, which made sense. Duchovney had been a rookie with the Twins and failed as a starter.
“Thank you so much for not asking,” she said, rinsing dishes as I stacked and scraped. “I mean, I’m sure you were raised to ask how someone’s doing when they have a leg that looks like that.”
“Dash told me he wouldn’t want to talk about it. I get it. My dad has arthritis, and he says he feels like it defines him. He has lots of other things to talk about.”
“Yes. Well, I’m sorry about your dad.” She ran the sponge over the edge of the carving knife too fast, nearly cutting her thumb.
“He’s all right. Will Steve get better though? What’s the prognosis?”
She shook her head. “He’s never playing again. And you know, unfortunately, baseball defines him, so he’s pretty down.” She rinsed her hands under scalding water. “It was such a stupid accident.” She shut off the faucet and snapped the towel, rubbing her hands as if she wanted to break her fingers.
Duchovney had picked up a chopper and was taking a step to throw the ball to first when he tripped on the ridge between the pitcher’s mound and the grass. But it wasn’t just a little trip and catch. He’d been moving forward too fast, and the catch had unbalanced him. The edge of his foot caught and twisted.
It should have been nothing. Except that he’d been unlucky. A series of tiny angles and trajectories had broken his tibia.
“It didn’t look like anything on TV,” I said. I’d expected him to get up and walk away.
Outside, Dash and Greg leaned on their chair arms, engaged in serious discussion.
“I know. Just bad luck. But he started taking apart everything he did before the game.”
“It was the second game of a doubleheader. It was late.”
“And he was tired. But I made him these meatloaf sandwiches for every game, and on that day, I made him one and not two.” She reached for the stack of serving dishes, slipped, almost fell over the open dishwasher, caught herself, and laughed. “Golly. I’m not even drinking.”
“He doesn’t blame you, does he?”
All the buttoned-up subjects of dinner must have gotten to me because the question was wildly inappropriate, yet it slipped out as if through the fingers of a clutched fist.
“I’m sorry,” I rushed to explain. “That’s ridic—”
“He tries not to,” she cut in, closing the dishwasher. “But how can he not? I’m not the best housekeeper already.” She indicated the half-done counters. “And we had a cook. I made the sandwiches, but the cook let us run out of meatloaf. I should have kept on him. I feel like I let it all slip. The sandwich. Everything. So he doesn’t have to say much.” She snapped the towel off the sink. “Anyway, my goodness, you didn’t come here to hear this nonsense. Are you traveling with our Mr. Wallace this summer?”
I was caught off guard. Did that happen? Did I want it to? Now I felt like the one putting the brakes on the relationship because the thought of leaving Dad and my life for months to chase around a pro ballplayer overwhelmed me.
The screen door scraped open before I could answer. Thank God, it was Dash in his polo and jeans, a demigod slipping half in, half out of the human-sized house.
“You need help making coffee?”
“Coming right up!” Dora’s smile was meant to lighten up the room, but knowing what was behind it made it look sad.