He pressed “off” and the world of Major League Baseball vaporized. Vicki put her arm around him and they walked together toward the living room. “Did you have a good time?” Rafe nodded. They stopped beside the piano, its bulkiness a formidable new presence in the townhouse. “How do you like your new piano?”
“Good,” he responded. Then, “Thanks for the party, Mom. The pizza was really good.” She squeezed his shoulder just as the phone rang.
“It’s probably your father,” Vicki said, reaching for the phone. “I need to talk with him first.”
“You guys’ll just fight,” Rafe said glumly.
“Just for a second … Hello?”
“Hi.” It was Jason. “Is the birthday boy there?”
“He’s here. He’s a little tuckered out from his party.” She smiled towards Rafe, who shook his head vigorously. “He got a piano for his birthday!”
“I wonder who got him that?” Jason replied. “Let me talk with him.”
“Did you ever find that red sweater my father gave Rafe for Christmas?”
“I told you, I have no idea where it is. I’ve never seen it.”
“Could you look for it? He says he left it there.”
“It’s not here, Vicki. Put him on, will you please?”
“I know I packed it, the last time he went to Cincinnati — ”
“You mean the one time you let him come here and visit?”
“ — and now we can’t find it. It was a special gift from my father.”
“Mom, it’s not important,” Rafe called out. “We can get another one.”
“I don’t have the faintest idea where it is,” Jason said. “Would you put Rafe on? I didn’t call to talk to you!”
“Just take a minute and look, will you please? That’s not too much to ask.”
There was a pause, then Jason’s voice, low and tight. “I’m paying you four thousand dollars a month and you’re bitching about a fucking sweater? PUT RAFE ON THE PHONE!”
Rafe was already on the way to his bedroom when Vicki hung up. “He’ll call back later,” she said. “He just needs to calm down.”
CHARLIE GIORDANO flashed four gnarled fingers, then 2-2-4-2-2 and set up for a slider, low and inside. Jason gripped the ball along the inside of the seams, stretched his arms slightly away then back to his body, and turned his head to check the runner at first. Ray Burriss leaned towards him, glove open, and over Ray’s shoulder he saw the kid. Eight or nine years old, wearing a Giants cap and a white t-shirt and a look of rapturous concentration on his face, his right hand tucked inside his baseball glove, watching, waiting with the man beside him, his dad no doubt, a father and son out on a warm summer evening in Cincinnati for the timeless American past-time of baseball. Maybe the kid was living with his father, or it was visitation day. That was it — tonight was Wednesday! The night that every divorced Dad who couldn’t be a Dad got to play at being one with their “visitation rights.”
Jason stepped off the rubber and scuffed the dirt, thinking of the last time he had seen Rafe, in San Francisco. He had gotten him a seat in the owner’s box with some friends from school, and he would never forget the look on Rafey’s face when the public address announcer broadcast “A Giants’ welcome to the students of Aurora Craverro School and to Raphael Thibodeaux, son of Reds’ pitcher, Jason Thibodeaux. Welcome to the Big Leagues, Rafe!”
That was two months ago.
He rubbed the ball and looked toward the kid. Maybe the guy wasn’t the kid’s father. Maybe it was his stepfather, or a neighbor, or his mother’s boyfriend — some guy he doesn’t really care about and his real father was gone, pissed off, hopeless. Jason’s eyes swept the stands. He’d been playing baseball since he was four; it had always been his refuge. The bellowing of his father’s drunkenness or the silence of his indifference evaporated in a crowd roaring at a called third strike or a bang-bang double play. His mother’s sobbing in the ice-bound bungalow in Port Barrow melted in the chatter of infielders calling his name. But now all he could think of was Rafe. What was he doing? What would he think if he were here watching the game? How did he end up two thousands miles away from his son?
“JT.”
He was surrounded — Giordano and Burriss and Vucovich, who’d come to the Reds the same time as he, and the shortstop, Carlos Guardell. The umpire hovered impatiently behind Vuco, his mask off. Voices in the crowd shouted for Jason to pitch.
“What’s going on?” Vucovich asked. Jason shrugged.
“Is it your arm?”
Jason shook his head. Guardell whacked him on the rear end with his glove and trotted back to shortstop. Vuco leaned in close. “I’m comin’ over for breakfast tomorrow,” he growled. “And I want pancakes. Now get this guy out.”
Giordano signaled again for the slider, low and inside, but Jason shook him off. He wanted to throw heat. He wanted to throw a pitch so fast that even the batter would be giddy with awe as it screamed into the catcher’s mitt. Finally Giordano gave in — fastball, outside part of the plate. One more out and he had a complete game. Not a pretty one, 5-4, eight hits, two of them home runs. But the guys had come through and all he needed was one more out and they could go out for some beers and follow the score from LA.
He went into his stretch and checked the runner — and there was the kid again. He kicked and unleashed the fastest ball he could throw, and he knew instantly that he would never see it again. It streamed down the center of the strike zone and just as quickly reversed, taking the most direct trajectory deep into the left field bleachers. He heard the collective groan of the fans and watched his teammates trot towards the dugout.
VUCO SHOOED a yellow jacket off the syrup-soaked pancake, cut off three pie-shaped pieces and speared them with his fork. He chewed for a moment, then pushed the plate away. “I can’t believe your kid likes these things. They taste like shit!”
They sat on the broad brick patio behind Jason’s four-bedroom house in Park Hills, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati’s River Front Stadium. An unlandscaped half-acre sloped down to a stream between his house and his neighbor’s two hundred yards away. A single tree broke the expanse of weeds and grass. A golf club and a pile of balls sat nearby on an Astroturf mat.
“You’re going into therapy,” Vucovich said.
“Fine,” Jason replied. “But I still want a trade.”
“Let me guess — San Francisco?”
Jason pointed at Vuco’s plate. “You want some more?”
“Not on your life.” Vuco gazed over the enormous expanse of lawn. “Why don’t you get some cattle or something?”
“Nobody to take care of ‘em.”
“Get one of those au pair girls. You can get ‘em on the Internet now.”
“That’ll look great in the papers. ‘Thibodeaux Hires Online Concubine.’”
“I’ve seen worse.” Vuco picked up the nine-iron and hooked a ball sharply towards the stream. He tossed the club aside and turned on Jason. “You’re gonna kick yourself in the ass big-time for not taking your shot seriously.”
“C’mon, Vuco. If anything, I’m taking it too seriously.”
“Horseshit. You’re stuck in some endless re-enactment of the Alamo, losing the same battle over and over again and loving every second of it.”
“I don’t love it. Do I