Heft (12 page)

I look at her quickly across the room and I’m happy when she returns my glance.

Five-minute presentations each, says Pottsy. Visual aids required.

Then he walks up to the board and draws an exclamation point, his favorite thing to do when we have misbehaved.

After class Lindsay comes up to me and says, You’re my partner!

I am, I say.

Lindsay says, So, should I come to your house, or should you come to mine, orrrrrr . . .

It is a question I have too. Since we have been hanging out, Lindsay and I have met at various places—the movies, the mall—and twice I have picked her up from her house, but both times she was waiting for me on her porch. I have never been inside. I imagine that the inside of Lindsay’s house is cavernous and light. I imagine that if she saw my block she would be frightened. But maybe I’m wrong.

Your house is closer to school, I say. You don’t wanna come to Yonkers, anyway.

These are the jokes I make in advance. When I first got
to Pells I played up my difference because I felt that it earned me a strange kind of respect. Realizing that I could not
beat anyone from Pells Landing at being someone from
Pells Landing, I became someone from Yonkers—which is a
perfectly nice place to live, actually. But it’s not Pells. Now
I am so closely tied to Yonkers that it is what I am called. My friends from home would laugh at me. They’d be disgusted by me.

My house, then, says Lindsay. Can you come after practice tonight?

The answer is yes. I walk out of the classroom feeling light with anticipation.

In the hallway, I see a dozen people I know in quick succession and they all shout some version of my name. I am going to an appointment with my guidance counselor, Ms. Warren. She is going to tell me about all the colleges I can’t get into.

• • •

W
hen I walk into Ms. Warren’s office she is eating a sandwich
and part of it falls out into her lap. It’s only 9 in the morning. She scrambles to remove the clump of ham and mayonnaise-y lettuce from her blue skirt and then dabs at the spot with a napkin.

Oh my gosh, she says. You surprised me.

Sorry, I say.

Ms. Warren is young and plump and she always has very red cheeks. From being embarrassed or from being overheated I don’t know. She has lots of curly blond hair that she wears long down her back. She touches it constantly, flipping it back and forth with her hand. I can tell that she wants to be both young and old. She wants to be our age and she wants us to be damn sure that she’s older than us.

I think I am making her nervous so I ask if I can sit down.

Sure, she says, and sort of pulls the other chair forward halfheartedly. She is facing her desk which is facing the window. She sits on a swivel chair and she turns slowly toward me after I have sat down. She is checking her face with her fingers. She is running her tongue over her teeth. She was not popular.

What brings you here today, Kel? she asks.

I look at her for a moment. You asked me to come, I say.

Oh, right, she says, and laughs. I forgot! The reason I asked you, she says, ruffling through some papers on her desk. The reason I asked you is because we still don’t have information from you on where you’re applying.

This is what Pells is like. In Yonkers this would not happen. In Yonkers if you wanted to go to college you would seek out a guidance counselor who would not know your name. You would make an appointment and if your grades were good they would tell you you could get in anywhere and if your grades were bad they would tell you to apply to several local colleges, mostly community colleges, and then transfer after a year. In Pells they practically stalk you. I think everyone goes to college. I don’t know anyone who’s not going.

Which is why Ms. Warren is surprised when I say, I don’t think I’m actually going to apply.

She looks at me. She is speechless. I have just noticed a bread crumb on her collar.

What would you do instead? she asks.

Play baseball, I say.

Isn’t that—what college is for? she asks.

—You can play baseball outside of college.

—Where?

—The majors.

She does not know whether to be skeptical. She opens and closes her mouth. I could rescue her but I don’t. I could tell her about the scouts, about my private practice with Gerard Kane, the reason I have reason to hope. But I don’t. I want to watch her talk—I want to smile and nod.

Now Kel, she says. I know you’re very good at baseball. But who actually.

She doesn’t finish. I am still quiet.

—Aren’t the odds of
anyone
making it slim? Not just you, but, like.

She seems young now.

Of course, I say.

So. If you played baseball in
college,
you could have the best of both worlds! she says. She looks relieved. As if she has come across the answer.

I shake my head. I’m not good at school, I say.

She pulls up something on her computer. It is my record. C’s across the board which is almost impressive if only because it is consistent. I got one F in English my freshman year and my mother yelled at me because she was so embarrassed. Because she still worked there. I got A’s in phys ed and in art. Besides that, C’s.

Now look at this, she says. A’s in art?

I nod.

What if, she says. What if we could find you a school with a great art program? And you could major in graphic design, or in art, and you could play baseball on the side.

It’s the first suggestion anyone has made to me that sounds remotely appealing. But I only say, Maybe.

There are several reasons I do not want to go to college. One is that I am afraid that if I don’t go running after something with my whole heart that it will disappear as a way of punishing me. Another is that I sincerely do not think I will be good at college. And last there is my mother. I hate her but I want to help her. I want to make money doing something I love and I want to make lots of it and I can’t make money in college. I want to make money so that I can hold it over her head and order her to stop pretending to be so sick. Order her to stop drinking. I want to buy her a huge clean house like the Harpers’ or the Cohens’. I want her to invite Dr. Greene to her huge clean house and tell him Look what I have. Look at the things I have and the son I have. I want to buy her puppies to take care of and I want her to maybe meet a new husband. And maybe meet friends. I want to not have to worry about her all of the time. I want to get her a very good doctor. And I want to be close to her. Geographically. I have to stay close to home. There is no way I could go to any of the colleges that have recruited me because the farthest away is in California and the closest is two hours away. Two hours away is too many. My mother would not survive. I know that she wouldn’t. I know that if I weren’t there to come in and take the bottle out of her hands and pat her head and cut her hair and soothe her and tell her No, don’t do a handstand, No, don’t build a fire in the fireplace, No, you drink too much to do any of these things—that she would, when she got lonely enough she would, when she knew there would be no one checking in on her she would. She would kill herself. Slowly or suddenly she would kill herself.

Now I know that if I played professionally I would also be away, but it would not be so permanent. I’d go down to Florida for training, but I would not be there for four years. Or even for one year. I’d be able to tell her I was checking on her. I’d be able to go back and forth. And I would make money for us, very soon if I was lucky. Most important of all: I could bring her with me. Wherever I was she could come.

I can’t tell Ms. Warren this so I tell her instead that I’ll think about what she’s suggesting. I say,
Thank you, I’ll consider it.
Using my best adult voice. She is handing me things, brochure after brochure. She has found an art school that would be perfect for me. In Rochester. What doesn’t she understand.

Or, she says. There’s always community college too. Could you go to community college while you’re playing professional baseball?

I can tell by the way she says
professional baseball
that she doesn’t believe I can do it and furthermore she knows nothing about it.

I guess I could, I say.

I think her goal is to keep PLHS’s statistics as pristine as they can be. I think her task is to make every single student go to college because then PLHS can say that every single student goes to college. On their goddamn website.

As I’m getting up to leave she says my name.

Yep? I say.

I want you to know that I care about your future, she says.

I know, I say.

—Everyone cares about your future.

Again I have a vision of her as a high school student. We wouldn’t have been friends.

• • •

A
fter school, inside the locker room, the boys are getting
ready. The walls are painted green and gold: Giants colors. It is warmly damp and it smells like chlorine even though we have no pool. There is something like a church about it. Mostly it is quiet. I love it in here and I always have. In movies they show locker rooms as rowdy places but I think they are not: here we’re quiet and slow-moving. We breathe more evenly. We speak lowly. If somebody looks worried we leave him alone or we clap him on the back one time.

I’m the quarterback. I’m very good but I’m not the best in the state or even in our conference. Funny enough, that title belongs to Dee Marshall who I was friends with growing up in Yonkers. Whose mother Rhonda was friends with my mother, once upon a time, before my mother stopped having friends. They grew up together. Dee was my bad best friend in middle school, the one who I got into trouble with. In some ways he is the reason I am here. My mother was very glad when we stopped talking much after I went to Pells. She used to say things like
Rhonda’s a good person but not a good mother.
As if she should talk about good mothers. Or
Rhonda was nuts growing up. It’s no wonder about that poor kid.
Dee is half black and half Rhonda and is the best athlete I’ve ever seen. He was my best friend for fourteen years. When I think of my old friends from Yonkers I hope they aren’t mad at me but I think they are. I see them sometimes—on weekends I see them or at the store. Mostly I keep my head down. When I do see them we say some words to each other. At first they called me all the time and I called them back half the time. Now they don’t call me anymore. They live in another world from mine.

Yonkers is part of our conference. In football and basketball they are better than us and mostly they win. For some reason this makes me happy. But in baseball we are better than they are, and we win every time. When I play any game against Yonkers I avoid eye contact. I say hello to my old friends and then I avoid eye contact with them thereafter. Dee Marshall is the most frightening and the angriest. I play him in basketball too and that is the worst. Even when we were kids it was the only place he ever showed any emotion. It’s scary. It’s the sight of him barreling toward you, all six feet and four inches of him, all of his muscles and veins working hard and together to plow past you or, if you are especially brave, to bowl you over. When his team wins, which is usually, he cries out once in victory, slaps the backs of his useless teammates, jumps occasionally into the air, bringing his heels up to meet his thighs. When we were sophomores I was assigned to guard him. After they beat us he pointed right at me and it was the most hateful look I ever got in my life. Dee I’m sorry, I wanted to tell him. I miss you every one of you. My teammates who leave from games in cars that are nicer than anything your parents can afford don’t matter to me as much as you do.

I am all padded and suited up early, for once, and I walk out to the lobby of the gym, where PTA mothers sell concessions to their children, not to me. I always bring my snack from home. Trevor and Kurt and Chuck and Peters and Kramer and Cossy and Brian Heller and Jonesy and Matt Barnaby are all out there already, sitting on some benches. As soon as I walk toward them Trevor goes, You! And! Lindsay! Harper! which is apparently the only thing he can say these days. I don’t know what you’re talking about, I say, but I am smiling very much.

What the fuck, says Kurt.

Matt Barnaby is silent because he used to go out with Lindsay. She dumped him at the start of the year. I am sure he still likes her, who wouldn’t. This does not make her off-limits to me. Matt and I are not friends. He is a junior. I don’t particularly like him.

When did this happen? says Kurt. Is that where you’ve been every weekend?

I shrug. Maybe, I say.

I don’t know exactly why I haven’t told any of my friends. Why I waited for them to find out. I knew they would eventually. I guess it was that I didn’t want to fuck anything up. I didn’t want to disturb what was good and important to me. It was the same feeling that kept me from telling Ms. Warren my news. Saying things aloud makes them dangerous.

Have you been to her house? asks Kurt. He is the most talkative of all my friends and the girliest. He is also the second-best ballplayer we have.

I’m going after practice tonight, I say, leaving out the part about our history project, feeling mildly guilty for the lie it implies.

Have you been to fourth base? says Kurt. He is trying to be funny.

Have you? I say.

Matt Barnaby gets up from the bench and stretches and tries to casually walk away, pretending to go talk to some friends of his, but I know it’s really because he wants to call me out but is afraid.

I sit down next to the rest of them and take out the snack I have brought in my backpack: I have a pack of Slim Jims that I bought at the deli on my corner and I have a hard roll with butter from the same place. I have a cookie that one of the lunch ladies gave me for being cute. I have a giant bag of chips that I should not eat while I’m in training but I can’t help it, I love chips. I have a G2 from the vending machine. And peanut butter crackers that I make for myself at home and bring in a big Ziploc bag. I’ll eat a little of this now and save the rest for after practice.