forty-two
Vivian
We stepped onto the field. The grass was pristine, and the decomposed granite that made up the dirt parts was smooth and even. The lines hadn’t been drawn between the bases, but the square sacks that marked the bases were pristine white in the rising sun.
“It’s been a long time,” I said.
“Since you were on the field?”
“Yeah. Ten years. I was fifteen, and everything seemed as big then as it does now.” I spun to look at the stands.
“I was playing college ball ten years ago.” He pulled me to home plate. “Here, touch this.”
“Touch what?”
“Home plate.”
I leaned down and stroked it, thinking there was a texture he wanted to share, but once I did it, he took my hand and led me down the first base line.
“My first day on the job,” I said, “I wore makeup because I thought I’d be on TV. By the second week, I barely brushed my hair.”
“I bet you were still beautiful.”
“Hey, I was too young for you, mister.”
“Right. Forgot.”
I jabbed him with my elbow. “How is it no one ever gets an interview with you?”
“I did Rolling Stone last May.”
“On camera.”
“I don’t come off well on camera. Tag first.”
“What do you mean? You’re on camera all the time. You’re gorgeous.”
He pulled me back and pointed down. “Tag first.”
He tapped first base with his toe. I stuck out my foot and tagged. Satisfied, he took my hand and walked me toward second base.
“When I was a kid. Second grade. Fourth grade. Up to sixth. I was a mess.”
He stopped talking. I waited. I dealt with kids all day, every day. I knew what a kid with problems looked like, but I didn’t know what young Dashiell with problems looked like. So I waited while he paced slowly to the next base.
“I didn’t know how to regulate myself is what the therapist said. And I was both overstimulated in areas and under-stimulated in others. My brain wasn’t wired right. Still isn’t. But it’s subtle, so it looked like I was just disrespectful and inconsiderate.” He put his finger up and looked at me finally.
Once I could see him, I knew that what he was saying might have seemed inconsequential, but it was critical for him, and the words came hard.
“I was talking to my friend in the hall. Second grade, I think, and we were in line for the fountain. We were talking about, Jesus, who even remembers… something about drinking from the fountain and spitting it out. How far it would go if the drain wasn’t there. And I wanted to show him how far, so I spit in his face.”
I laughed.
He smiled. “It’s funny now. At the time? I got suspended. It was always something like that. I had zero impulse control. When I had a tantrum, I had a fucking tantrum. Right? This is going somewhere, I promise.”
I squeezed his hand. “You’re not boring.”
“Whatever you say. Tag second.”
I leapt forward and landed both feet on second base and cried victory. “Stand up double.”
He high-fived me. “Nice play.”
He tapped second with his toe and took my hand so we could continue to third.
“Okay, so my parents loved me,” he said. “They gave me everything, and they were at the end of their rope. My mom… one day she took video of me flipping out so she could show me what I looked like. Maybe if I could see it, I would catch myself before I lost it again, right? And knowing she was doing that, seeing her with that little camera? I went… crazy.”
He shook his head, his expression changing from mild amusement to shame to horror to courage to dismissal to guardedness in flashes so quick I had no idea how he was feeling. He stopped at the midpoint between second and third. Though he turned to face me, he looked up at nothing in the stands.
“So I hit my mother.”
I felt how difficult it was for him to say it. If he had told a million people before me, you’d never have known it because it seemed so hard I could have been the only person in the world he’d told.
“I was in sixth grade, but I was big. It was the low point of my life.”
I squeezed his hand. He’d been in sixth grade. Eleven or twelve years old, yet he carried it like a dead weight on his soul.
“And the cameras,” I said, leading him to third. “You remember that when they’re on you.”
He pointed at two spots in the stands. “There and there.” He pointed up at the announcer’s booth. “There.” He turned to the scoreboard and walked backward a few steps. “There and there. A couple more. When I’m playing, I’m fine. But as soon as I talk, I hear the way I screamed, and I feel like I’m that out-of-control kid again.” He barely paused, glancing at me then away. “You think I’m crazy.”
I tagged third. “No. Crazy is thinking you had to hit your mother. Sane is making sure you don’t do it again.”
He tapped the base and put his arm around me, walking me home and holding me tight.
“I did,” he said. “I got it together.”
“What did you do?”
“My dad wrestled me down, but it had all gone out of me. My mother had a bruise on her cheek and that little bit of video. It did the trick. I saw myself, and I hated it. I got my shit together. I took my meds. Kept a journal of how I felt until we hit the right ones. I let my parents set routines, and I stuck to them. I played baseball because I needed something to fill my time when hockey was off, and it was…” He put his hand on his chest and directed it outward as if the world expanded from it.
“Less chaotic,” I said.
“Exactly.”
We made our way to home plate. The sky was fully blue now, and the birds of Elysian Park had quieted a little.
“I was good. I was at home with baseball. But I set my routines, and I need them. I can’t… I can’t play without them.”
He didn’t say anything else until we got to home plate and stepped on it at the same time. He put his hands on my face and looked at me directly, as if putting a tunnel of attention between us. His thumbs rested on my cheeks.
Why hadn’t I seen it the night before? Or an hour ago? Why hadn’t I put it all together from the exhibition games and the spring training video? He was coming apart at the seams.
“You,” he said. “You threw it all in the fire. Things started collapsing right before you, and when you came, everything went to hell. It’s you. I denied it because if I let you in, I had to start over. I tried to bend it around to not want you. But I can’t deny it anymore. There’s no center without you.”
I was breathless. I wanted this, heart and soul. I could fall into him in a blink and lose myself in him in a breath. I wanted him, but it was too much. He was asking me to be the conduit between him and his talent. To be responsible for his center, his routine, his very sanity. I didn’t know how to be a man’s center. He brushed his thumb along my lower lip.
“I’m just a regular woman. I’m not special.”
“I disagree.”
He kissed me, flooding me with his needs, commanding my body’s response while my mind was drowning in its own questions. I had no resistance in me.
“Will I see you tonight?” he asked.
“Dad and I always watch opening day together.”
“I figured. I got him a seat too.”
“Wait! What? Where?”
He motioned thataway. “Behind the dugout.”
Oh.
My.
Fucking.
God.
I was about to gush, but he cut me off. “If you want a skybox—”
“No! God, no. It’s too far. You read my exact wish.”
“I want to see you in the stands for every game. Can you?”
“I’ll try, Dash. I’ll try.”
I wanted to discuss the finer points of traveling while holding down a job, but he kissed me, and I figured I’d let the details take care of themselves.