Conviction (15 page)

“I don’t know if I want to do that anymore.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t know if I want to do that anymore. Try to get a contract right away in the minor leagues.”

“That’s what you’ve always wanted.”

I kicked my feet against the floor mat. “I know. But I was thinking maybe I want to go to college first instead.”

“College ball, huh?” he said. “Not like your old man?” There was maybe something kind of weird in his voice, but when I looked over, I couldn’t read his expression.
But I could tell I’d said something wrong. Maybe it was that I’d made him think of Trey. Then he added, “You know they don’t pay you to play in school.”

“That’s okay.” College ball, at least, there’s no trades. When you’re on a team, that’s your team.

He shrugged. “Well, you don’t have to decide right this second.”

“Okay.” I pushed off both my cleats and twisted in my seat so I was facing out the window. “Dad? It felt weird playing against Jacob.”

“Why? You won.”

“It felt weird.”

He sighed, like I was being dumb. “That’s life, B. You think you’re going to play with the same boys forever?”

“If it was the minor leagues, and you were my coach, would you ever trade me to another team?”

“Not if you were good.”

“Only if I was good enough?”

I wasn’t looking at him, but I knew from the pause he didn’t like the question. He said, “You think too much.”

I shrugged. One of the parents had brought Skittles for everyone after the game, so I tore the package open and ate a few. My dad held out his hand, and I dropped a single one into his palm.

He laughed. He smacked the back of his hand against my thigh. “Who the heck raised you to be cheap with your own
father
?”

“I’m just kidding. Here.” I shook out a handful for him, and he popped them into his mouth. Then he screwed up his mouth and blinked one eye at a time. “You didn’t
tell me these were the sour ones.”

“You don’t like those?” I said, like I’d forgotten. Then I said, “So if I had a bad season, that’d be it? You’d be done?”

“You’re still thinking about that?” He frowned. “Braden, it’s a stupid question. Do I coach minor league baseball? No. So don’t ask me stupid questions like
that.”

“Really, because you said on your show there’s no such thing as a stupid question when your kid—”

“That’s work,” he said sternly, because he didn’t like when I quoted him. Sometimes I thought he didn’t even like when I listened. “You’re
you.”

I ate a few more of the Skittles. “I just thought since Jacob used to be on our team you would’ve been nicer to him.”

His face changed then. I never did that—questioned him that way. “Braden, I’m not in the mood for this.” Then he added, “Anyway, you saw Jacob miss that throw to
second by about ten feet. The kid’s got shortbread cookie where his muscle should be. You care what people say about you, then you make darn sure you give them a reason to respect you. Did
Jacob do that? No. So forget him. You played like that, I wouldn’t be able to show my face at your games. You know what? I was ashamed of those last two pitches as it was. How do you think it
feels to have everyone know the one who did that was my son?”

He went silent for a long time. He drove fast, weaving between cars and laying his foot on the gas when someone tried to get in front of him. When I worked up the nerve to look over at him, I
could see something twitching in his neck. I said, quietly, “We were up five runs. I knew we’d win.”

“There’s no need to talk back, Braden. I’m telling you because I love you and I don’t want to see you turn out a complete failure. You know that.”

He did love me, he’d been there for me more than anyone, so I knew I shouldn’t say it and I knew I should just shut up, but instead I said, “Well, I thought you were mean. I
was ashamed of
you
.”

“Oh?” He reached over and cupped my cheek in his hand, very lightly, and a prickling feeling lit up the back of my neck and landed like fireflies down every vertebra of my spine. He
said, so quietly you had to strain to hear, “Care to try that tone with me again?”

I crumpled the empty Skittles bag into a ball. I tried not to move. “It’s just Jacob was my friend.”

“Your
friend
?” he repeated. “Your friend?
That’s
what you think matters? You think God gave you a gift and I spent your whole life working with you so you
could piss it all away because you think someone’s your
friend
? That’s how you repay us?”

His hand felt hot against my face. I stayed as still as I could, but inside I felt like a remote-controlled car going haywire—buzzing, about to crash.

“Throwing easy pitches at him was pathetic, Braden.
Pathetic.
You think you throw someone crud pitches like that it’ll make them like you? Is that what you think? You want
anyone to give a whit about you, you have to earn it. You hear me? You better grow up and make damn sure you’re going to be good enough to ever matter. Because how could anyone but me ever
like you when you do things like
that
?”

Something squeezed in my chest like all the air in the car had been vacuumed out, and before I could stop myself, before I even thought about it, I muttered, “Then I don’t know why
you always lie and say my mom died when really it was just that you weren’t good enough for her or Elaine to stay with you.”

Even before he reacted, before his expression went stunned and then hardened into something worse, I couldn’t believe I’d said that. I stared at him, panicked. He looked frozen, or
like a fish, his mouth moving without any sound coming out. He stared at me for so long I finally peered around him at the other lane.

“Dad, come on,” I said nervously. “Pay attention.” He didn’t turn his head away. “Dad,” I said again, and he just looked back, his expression blank, and
a red Honda went by us and cut in front of us and he wasn’t watching in time to brake. I braced myself and swallowed a yell, but there was no collision; the Honda accelerated, a puff of smoke
escaping from its exhaust pipe, and sped away.

But he still didn’t look. His car started to drift toward the lane line then, toward a pickup coming up on our left, and my heart thundered and I reached for the wheel, and then his face
unraveled and he drew his hand back and hit me, hard, across the face. It was the only time in my life he’d ever done that, and at first I thought the sound was the impact of another car, and
for a second I was blinded. But that was just the sun flashing off the hood, and then the throbbing started to spread across my face, and when I put my hand to my cheek, stunned, and looked through
the window again, we were back between the lines.

“Braden,” he said, his voice low and his eyes fixed on the road, “your mother didn’t leave me, because we were never together. It was one night, I was wasted as hell, she
was barely half my age, and when she showed up on my doorstep with you thirteen months later I didn’t even remember her name. You really want me to say that instead on my show? You like that
one better? Your mother didn’t leave
me
, Braden. She left you.”

At school the next day, my teacher, Mrs. Yates, pulled me aside at recess and asked me what had happened to my face. I liked her; she’d told me she listened to my
dad’s show every morning and she never yelled at us in class, and on Mother’s Day when we all made cards for our mothers, she told me I should make one and keep it and that my mom was
probably watching me from heaven and feeling proud I was hers, which meant something to me even though I knew it wasn’t true. But when Mrs. Yates looked at my face like that, I almost
suffocated from the shame. I knew it meant everyone else was looking, too. I stared at the ground, my face hot, and said, “Baseball.”

“It’s from playing baseball?”

I nodded.

“Does your father know?”

I told her he’d taken me to the doctor, and she let me go. When I came home from school that day, the house was silent, and my dad’s door was closed. I tried to tell myself he was
just oversleeping, but I knew better.

He came out for dinner three hours later. He moved stiffly, and I could tell he was trying not to look at me. In the kitchen, he pulled out a frozen pizza. He ripped open the plastic wrap and
stuck the pizza in the microwave, standing in front of it for a long time before he hit
START
, and then he leaned forward so his hands were resting on the counter as if they were the only things
holding him up.

“Dad?” I whispered. My voice was shaking. “Are you still mad at me?”

He didn’t answer. As the seconds wore down on the microwave, he stayed that way, hunched over the counter, and that was the first time I understood the worst part of hell: the rejection
from God. If I ever taught math, that’s how I’d explain what it means for something to be exponential, how every second that comes next is that much worse than the one before.

Finally, finally, he straightened. “Braden,” he said, and he closed his eyes and then he reached up and rested his hand against his cheek and stood there like that for the whole
remaining three and a half minutes before the time on the microwave ran out. When there was just a second left, I lunged for the microwave to stop it so it wouldn’t beep. He opened his eyes
when I moved, and he looked at me, and when he did, I saw he was crying.

That night, when he was asleep, I snuck downstairs and got the scissors from the kitchen drawer. In my room, I picked up my favorite stuffed horse off my pillow, the one Trey and Emily had won
for me at the fair. I hugged my horse tight, then I was disgusted because I was too old for this anyway, and if you make your dad hurt you, you don’t deserve
toys
. I cut into my
horse’s neck, gripping the blades hard enough to get through the fake fur, and I kept cutting until the head fell off. I pulled out all the stuffing and then I balled it up and threw it in
the trash. Even though I knew it was pathetic, I was sick with grief, and I hid my head under my pillow and cried. I missed my horse already. I felt its body there all night until I finally got up
and took the trash downstairs; then, an hour later, I took it outside. The garbage truck didn’t come for three more days.

A
fter losing to Brantley I skip youth group the next week. I know that looks cheap, like I just wanted something from God and now that I
didn’t get it I checked out, but I don’t exactly have the luxury of feeling pissed off or betrayed—there’s still too much at stake for that—and it’s more that I
feel ashamed to face him. Like I really thought I was special to him, that he’d do something just because I asked him to and because I considered myself his, and it turns out I was just
deluding myself and he didn’t feel the same way about me.

I’ve been hiding out in my room all week, too ashamed to face Trey. He hasn’t mentioned the game, probably because there’s not really much to say—
Hey, it was cool the
way you kept putting guys on base out there, good work.
I’ve been lying low at school, too, keeping my eyes on the teacher in the classes I have with Maddie.

Now, instead of going to church tonight, I do something I told myself I wouldn’t: listen to one of my dad’s old shows. It feels about exactly as depressing as I figured it would,
like something you’d go home and do after a memorial service because it was all you had left.

The episode’s from a few years ago when there were some wildfires going on nearby, and I remember it because he got a lot of flak for what he said, which was pretty much that as a country
we’d brought this on ourselves—that we shouldn’t expect God to stick around where he clearly wasn’t wanted. I didn’t pay close attention at the time, I guess because I
personally hadn’t done any of those things he thought God was judging us for, but I’m listening for something specific tonight. It comes near the end, when someone calls in to ask how
you know when God’s shutting you out because of some kind of sin in your life.

“How do you know?” my dad repeats. “When you feel that nagging guilt you keep hoping will shut up and leave you alone. When you lie awake at night feeling uneasy and you drink
or smoke or watch garbage trying to drown it out and nothing works. That’s how you know. That’s your conscience warning you to get yourself right with God before he brings something
even worse. You can lie to yourself a while, and people do it all the time, but eventually you pay the price.”

I take my headphones out and shut my eyes like I’m praying, which I’m not. I don’t know why I thought this would help me shake the fear and the emptiness that’ve been
chasing me all week. I close my computer.

Around ten that night, I’m in my room getting ready for bed when there’s a knock on the door. I freeze up a second, hoping it’s not Mr. Buchwald again, or another reporter
swooping in like a vulture. I hear Trey go answer it, and then I hear little feet padding erratically on the hardwood and Kevin say, “I brought her here to wear her out before I lose my
mind.”

“Would it’ve killed you to call?” Trey says, but he doesn’t sound mad. Their voices fade into a murmur as they go back into the kitchen. I hesitate a moment or two, then
put my jeans and a shirt back on again. I know he’s not here to see me, but maybe I can talk to Kevin.