Rafe squeezed a California roll between his chopsticks and brought it carefully to his mouth. “Did you hear what I said, Rafe? Do you know what this means?”
“I spend a week with Daddy and a week with you,” he replied simply.
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. We can ask the court to keep things the way they were.”
“That’s OK,” Rafe said. “I spent a week in Hawaii with Gramma and Grampa.” He watched more sushi boats sailing by with their cargo. He had no idea what most of them were and let them go. Either way, he didn’t want to think of the other stuff. As long as he sat here he could choose whatever he wanted; his mom ate the ones he picked that were too strange to eat. The ones he really liked were the California rolls, cylinders of rice stuffed with cucumbers and avocado and crab, but there hadn’t been any of those for a while.
“That was vacation,” Vicki said. “This will be on school days and music practice days and weekends too.”
Rafe’s attention was focused on a procession of freshly loaded boats listing with gleaming slivers of fish, rice cones overflowing with roe, and octopus arms trailing in the water. Then a boat loaded with a fresh California roll appeared around the bend. He watched anxiously as it sailed past the other diners, then he reached out and grabbed it.
“Don’t you want to try something else?” Vicki asked.
“I like these,” Rafe replied.
JASON WAS pacing the sidewalk when Vicki and Rafe returned to school. He loomed over Vicki’s Acura as soon as she stopped. “It’s my turn to pick him up — I’ve been waiting since quarter-to-six!”
Vicki glanced at her watch. “We went out for dinner,” she said. “What difference does fifteen minutes make?”
Jason yanked open the door of Vicki’s car. “C’mon,” he said to Rafe. “We’re going to be late.” Rafe reached for the little overnight bag he had packed — his Sylvester the Cat travel toothbrush, cable car slippers, a black plastic spider ring, his purple platypus Pillow Buddy. “This arrangement stinks and you know it,” Vicki said as Rafe got into Jason’s jeep. “This is his life, Jason. He’s got off from school on Thursday — do you have plans for him? He’s got music lessons Wednesdays, soccer practice Tuesdays and Thursdays, and play dates worked out for the weekend. You can’t handle that yourself.”
Jason looked at his watch. He had hoped to get to the Oakland Arena by seven and introduce Rafe to some of the Warriors. He had expected Rafe to be here, ready to go, and be well on their way by now. “Compared to having to deal with you, that’s nothing.”
“This isn’t about you and me, Jason. It’s about what’s best for Rafe.”
“That’s right.” Jason pressed forward, seeming to swell with self-righteousness. “Do you know the number one reason for teen pregnancy? Drug use? Depression? It’s not having a father in their lives.”
Vicki stared at him with unmistakable contempt. “He’s not a teenager.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“This is too abrupt,” she insisted. “We should do this more gradually … two days on, two off, something like that.”
He’d planned to be magnanimous in victory, but his lips curled with a contemptuous smile. “To quote the immortal words of Vicki Repetto — ‘Tell it to the judge.’”
NEW GIANT A FORCE OFF THE FIELD, TOO
B.A. Najarian, SAN FRANCISCO DAILY
Last fall when the Cincinnati Reds challenged the Cardinals for the divisional playoffs, their MVP in the stretch was former Stanford lefthander JT Thibodeaux. Pitching with the power and precision scouts always predicted, Thibodeaux finished the season with four straight victories and helped bring the overachieving Reds within one game of the postseason. Most players would spend the winter plotting a return to even loftier heights, but Jason Thibodeaux is more than a baseball player.
Thibodeaux is the guy who forewent his senior year at Stanford to raise his son. Actually, he almost forewent his baseball career, overlooked in the draft as a head case rather than a heart case. But Thibodeaux eventually found a home in the Reds’ farm system, where he earned his way to the Show and compiled a 24-27 record in 2+ years for the Reds. The only problem, the kid he had raised was two thousand miles away — in San Francisco. So Thibodeaux did something that no one has asked to do since their pennantwinning team three years ago — he asked to be traded to, not from, San Francisco.
The rebuilding Giants are counting on Thibodeaux’s strong left arm and senior-circuit experience to help put them in contention. Thibodeaux, for his part, is counting on proximity to his eight-year-old son, Raphael, to revive his starring role as a father. “I’m really happy to be with this team,” he said. “But I have to be honest and say that the main reason I’m here is my son.” Thibodeaux’s boy is a third grader at the Aurora Craverro School, a private arts school in the city’s Noe Valley (“Home of baritones and ballerinas,” JT says).
Besides a 98 MPH fastball, JT brings a scholar’s knowledge of NL hitters. As a student of Stanford’s Walt Baptiste, Thibodeaux kept notebooks on every hitter he faced. He applies the same kind of discipline to child-rearing. In a profession where men drop their seeds with the vigor of a full-grown Valley Oak and nurture them with the diligence of werewolves, this Giant is an oddball.
Thibodeaux challenges those in the league who say they spend quality time with their kids. “How many know what their kids’ favorite foods are? Their shoe size? The name of their favorite stuffed animals? That’s the kind of knowledge you only get by putting in the time.”
Maybe the Giants will win more games this season, maybe not. A twelve-game winner with the Reds last year, Thibodeaux most likely will replace twelve-game winner Rick Lambert in the starting rotation. But whatever happens on the field, the number of Giants pulling full-time duty on the homefront just went from zero to one.
THE GIANTS’ facilities were state-of-the art compared to the moldy basement the Reds skulked around in. The selection of new treadmills and Cybex machines, stationery bicycles, Stairmasters and Beaman weights inspired Jason to work out almost as much as his desire to make good in the city that housed his son. Living near PacBell Park, he became a regular at the Giants’ training facilities.
The Monday before Thanksgiving he came in for his workout as usual after dropping Rafe at school. His locker was two spaces away from the famous corner belonging to Isaac Sands, the premier slugger in the National League. Voted Most Valuable Player three times by the sportswriters he publicly disdained, Sands had negotiated an entire corner of the dressing room for himself, comprised of four lockers. The regulation lockers were already luxurious affairs, cherry wood cabinets with two polished shelves, a lock box for valuables, a compartment for street clothes on one side and baseball gear on the other, and a handcarved wooden shoe rack. The dividers in Sands’s lockers had been removed to make room for a CD and DVD tower, a 47-inch television, and a water cooler holding a ten-gallon jug of PowerAde.
Jason was surprised to find Sands himself sitting on his black leather couch, watching what looked like a highlight film of his own exploits, mostly a parade of images of his powerful left-handed stroke pounding balls over walls in various ballparks in rapid strobe-like succession. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a full handsome face, and the charisma of someone one hundred percent certain that the millions of people who thought he was the greatest ball player of all time were absolutely correct. He wore black slacks, a black turtleneck sweater, black shoes, a small diamond earring in his left ear, a thick gold-banded watch on his right wrist, and a heavy gold necklace with a crucifix.
Jason changed into Giants sweats, tied on his cross trainers and locked away his wallet and watch. He wasn’t sure what to do. Sands was notoriously uncommunicative, known for his loud home runs