“Mommy will be back in a little bit, baby. Chloe is going to play games with you. Be good, okay?”
Stryker runs over and hugs my legs. “Bye, Mommy.” He looks skeptically at Chloe until she sits in the middle of the floor and dumps out a box of toy cars. As soon as she starts making car noises, he runs over and joins her.
I smile hoping I’ve found my new night sitter. I met Chloe and her mom in the laundry room earlier this week. Chloe is sixteen and she and her single mom live in 3D just down the hall. Today is a good day to try her out since I’ll be in the building and can pop down and check on them from time to time.
I ride up to sixteen, looking at the key Brady gave me. Today is the first day of the season. They’ve probably already arrived in Arizona and I can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a girl waiting for him at the airport. He said they always find him. He has no way to call them to tell them he can’t see them. He has to do it face-to-face. He’ll have to do it twenty-six more times after today.
What if one of those twenty-seven doesn’t take no for an answer? What if they go to his hotel room and strip naked? Will he be able to turn them down? What if he decides I’m not enough for him, or rather, that Stryker and I are too much for him?
I shake off the notion. He has seven weeks to prove himself. There are a lot of cities and a lot of girls between now and then. There’s a lot of time for both of us to figure out what we do or don’t want.
I put the key in the door and turn it, feeling both like an intruder and like I’m coming home. After all, this is the apartment I wanted. The apartment of my dreams. And the man of my dreams is going to be living here.
I walk through his place picturing Brady in each room. He told me nothing about how he wants it. There are three bedrooms. One is obviously the master, but the other two could be anything. Does he have an office? A guest room? I don’t even know what furniture to expect, so how can I make decisions on what goes where?
There are a few boxes in each room. I wonder if the contents of the boxes would give me a clue as to what belongs in each room. If I look, however, I’ll be invading the privacy of the most private person I’ve ever known. I decide not to open them. He said he’d either live with how I arranged things, or he’d change it. It’ll be his own fault if I mess it up.
I run my hand across the granite countertop in the master bathroom. It’s smooth and sleek and much nicer than my marble one. I look into the large shower and think of him naked and wet, rivulets of water streaming off his broad shoulders. His shower is big enough for two. It has a bench on one end and my mind goes wild thinking of all the things that could happen there.
The doorbell rings and I leave my fantasy in the master bathroom as I let the movers in.
“Mrs. Taylor?” a large man with a clipboard asks.
I flush. “Uh, no. I’m Rylee. I’m just here to help organize his things.”
“Can you walk me through and label each room for me?”
I shake my head. “Not really. I mean, I can tell you which is the master, but as far as the other two rooms, I don’t even know what’s supposed to go in them.”
He gruffs in displeasure. “I was told there would be someone here who knows everything. We have three televisions to hang on the walls, one of them is seventy inches.”
My eyes go wide. “Oh, no. I can’t make those decisions. What if I’m wrong?”
He looks through his notes. “Ma’am, I’ve got strict instructions. Maybe you’d like to reschedule.”
“No, we can’t do that, you have all his furniture. He’d have no place to go. We have to do it today.”
“Then can we do the walk-through, please?”
“Can you at least tell me what kind of furniture goes in the other two rooms?”
“One had a desk and some shelves, so I’d guess it was his study. The other was a workout room.”
“Follow me,” I say, leading him down the hallway. I look at the two extra bedrooms, trying to figure out which should serve what purpose. One of the rooms has a better view and is closer to the living room. The other is smaller and across from the second bathroom.
“I think this one should be the weight room,” I say, motioning to the smaller room. “I think he’d rather have a nice view out of his office.”
“And where do you want the television?”
“He had a television in his weight room?”
The guy shrugs. “Working out is boring, ma’am – lots of people watch TV.”
“I thought everyone listened to music,” I muse aloud. “It’s what I do.”
He stares at me, waiting for my answer.
“I’m not sure. Can we move the stuff in and then decide? I don’t even know what he has.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but do you even know Mr. Taylor?”
I laugh. “I do. Well, I kind of do. I’m not sure anybody really knows him.”
For the next two hours, I direct four movers as they bring in furniture, boxes, electronics, and housewares. I cringe as they drill holes into his freshly-painted walls to attach mounting brackets for his televisions. If I’m wrong about the placement, he will have to patch the walls.
Before they leave, I sign the delivery order stating nothing was damaged and then I hand one of them the envelope on the counter that presumably has their payment or a tip.
Then I walk through his living room, hoping I’ve put everything where he wanted. I sit on his L-shaped couch that I oriented towards the large TV. I can see myself here, my head resting against Brady’s shoulder as we watch a movie.
My eyes go over to the many boxes stacked in the corner that are meticulously labeled with specific contents, and I get an idea. I’m not going to unpack for him, but if I could find the box with his bed sheets and towels, I could at least set those things up for him. I’m sure he’ll be exhausted from traveling when he returns on Thursday. Even though he’s not playing yet, he does practice with the team every day, and flying across the country is tiring. He’ll probably appreciate having a made bed to come home to.
I walk back into the master bedroom and see a box lying on its side, the contents of which are spilled across the floor. “Oh, shoot!”
This wasn’t one of the boxes the movers brought, it was one Brady carried over himself. An important one. And the movers must have bumped it on their way out. I close my eyes, hoping nothing is broken.
I fall to my knees and set the small box upright, then I load it back up again. “Please, please, please let nothing be broken.”
I pick up an old baseball and look at the signature. Babe Ruth. “Oh, my gosh.” It’s lying next to a glass case that has a Babe Ruth trading card inside. I pick the case up and examine it for cracks. It seems to be intact so I place the ball back inside it, next to the card.
I eye another baseball a few feet away. I reach over and grab it, reading the stitched inscription. ‘Brady Taylor – first home run – June 14, 2003.’ Upon further inspection of the ball, it’s stamped with ‘Cooperstown Dreams Park.’
Growing up in New York, and working for a baseball team, I know exactly what this ball represents. Cooperstown is a week-long tournament for twelve-year-old baseball players. Young players dream of playing there. Older players often reminisce about the once-in-a-lifetime experience; and you can bet many, if not most, MLB players have played at Cooperstown.
I look around but don’t find another case. I wonder if it’s because he likes to hold this one. Maybe he throws it up and catches it, over and over, thinking back on the time he only dreamed of playing professional ball.
I smile thinking of a young Brady. Then I frown, wondering how many times he’s thought about his own son who will never be able to throw a ball. He’ll never go to Cooperstown. He’ll never get to see his father pitch in a major league game.
My hand comes up to cover my gasp when I see a picture lying on the floor. It’s a small framed picture of a woman and a boy. One you might have on a desk or a bedside table. She is young and beautiful with long dirty-blonde hair. The boy is adorable. He has the same color hair as his mother, only he has a strong cowlick over his right brow. They are both laughing.
I feel a hot tear roll down my cheek. Although the boy doesn’t look like Stryker, they are the same age. They have that same sparkle in their eyes. They are full of life and love and possibility.
All of a sudden it hits me. How can Brady even stand to be around me? Around Stryker? Every time he looks at us, he must see them.
I carefully put the picture back in the box. Then I pick up a baseball glove, noting how old and worn it is and I wonder if maybe it was his Little League glove. I turn it over to see his named burned into the leather. My hand fits perfectly inside the weathered glove and somehow it makes me feel closer to him.
I pack the glove alongside the other relics and then I pick up one of the shirts on the floor. I hold it up and read it. ‘Bumbershoot 2009.’ I think this is the shirt I put on at his hotel last fall. The one he asked me to take off. It too is old and weathered. I wonder if this is the shirt he wears when he pitches. I calculate the year and think that it must have something to do with his wife – the woman who’s name I don’t know, but who’s face is now ingrained in my memory.
I fold it carefully and tuck it inside the box hoping he won’t notice the contents have been displaced.
I pick up the last thing that fell out of the box, another shirt. I have to hold back more tears. It’s the shirt I bought him at the White Poison concert. I peek back inside the box at all the other things he holds dear and wonder how this little old shirt won itself such a place of pride.
I bring it up to my nose and smell it, hoping it smells like him. It doesn’t. It doesn’t smell like anything. I wonder if he’s even worn it or washed it since coming home last fall. I fold it up and put it in the box and then I close the lid, running my hand over the top of it before I go in search of what I came back here for.
Twenty minutes later, I’ve got his bed made and his bathroom set up with towels. I contemplate laundering his sheets. They smell like him. In the end, I don’t do it. But I do lie down on them and pull his pillow close to me and think about the future.
A future I long for so desperately for my son and me. A future that might not be possible because of what sits in the box in the corner.