The Might Have Been (31 page)

“Might?” Edward Everett asked.

“Encourage you,” Ron said quietly. “I really hate this.”

“I don’t even know what the problem was,” Edward Everett said.

Ron regarded him in a manner that Edward Everett took to mean he was considering giving him information someone—Renee?—had asked him not to.

“Ron,” Rhonda called from another room. “It’s pretty late.”

Ron shook his head sadly. “I wish things were different. But they’re not. That’s all.”

After he and Grizzly were outside, on the deck, Grizzly dashing ahead of him for their own yard, Edward Everett watched his neighbor through the window. Ron sat down heavily at the table, idly flipping the edges of the papers lying there for a moment. He seemed old and tired and Edward Everett knew that his visit had made him that way. They had been friends but now they weren’t: the Sunday chicken dinners, Ron’s awkward, drunken embrace at his and Renee’s wedding, Ron chuckling as he called him “my new son”—none of it mattered, and now, after a decade, they were just people connected by an accident of adjacent addresses, another part of his life closed off to him.

The next morning, he called Collier, who said, “Hike on up to the estate.”

Collier’s house was once again swarming with workpeople, this time a carpet cleaning service—three men in olive green coveralls unloading a machine from a van, wheeling it through the front door.
Edward Everett stood in the open doorway. “Hello?” he called into the house. “We’re in here,” Collier replied. When Edward Everett stepped into the foyer, he found Collier and Ginger in the living room, sitting with a woman in a tailored suit, a large book of drapery samples open on Ginger’s lap.

“My hero,” Collier said, jovially. “You saved me from hours of looking at fabric.”

“Coll,” Ginger said in a tone that was half-scolding.

“Honey, you know the deal. Your taste, my checkbook.” He got up from the sofa, gave Ginger a quick kiss on the top of her head and came out to greet Edward Everett.

“Nick of time.” He slung his arm around Edward Everett’s shoulder and guided him past the dining room, where the carpet cleaners were plugging in their machine and switching it on, the cleaner lurching as the worker lost control of it for a moment, then hissing as he began steaming the carpet. He and Collier headed out to the sunroom.

“I won’t dillydally,” Collier said even before they had settled into the recliners that looked out on the town. Below—far below—pockets of people were sandbagging, along the edge of the parking lot for the elementary school, near one of the Baptist churches. Until that moment, Edward Everett hadn’t realized that the town was flooded: was it possible he had been so caught up in his own turmoil that he’d missed the news? At the high school football field, just the tips of the goalposts rose above the water, a soccer goal bobbing in it. Beyond that, an entire neighborhood was submerged, water lapping against front doors and bay windows, a police johnboat puttering among the houses.

“It’s a good-news, bad-news thing,” Collier said. “What do you want first?”

Edward Everett saw no point in delaying. “Bad news, I guess.”

Collier laughed. “Attaboy. Get to the problem first. Bad: the ballpark is for shit. Turns out the asshole who snaked the drains called the health department. I won’t go into details but it’s some big fucking list of reasons the ballpark is the A-number-one killer in P. City. Drains, asbestos. All kinds of crap. When they got into it, they kept
digging. It’s cheaper to knock it down than fix it up. Short answer: no more games at Francis P. Collier Field.”

“We’ve got another thirty—”

“Yeah, I know. Home games. I got Mavis working on that. We got a contractual obligation to finish out the season, and as I said, we’re not going to pull a Piedmont.”

Mavis has to work fast
, Edward Everett thought.

As if Collier knew what he was thinking, he said, “Got a lead on a place. It’s … well, a sweet country spot, and it’s regulation. We talked to the league. Beyond that …” He shrugged.

Edward Everett imagined a meadow somewhere, baselines marked by an umpire pacing off distances, paper plates tacked down in place of the bags.

“Two,” Collier said, holding up his index finger and thumb. “The good: found a buyer. Contacted me almost right away, soon as the broker got the news out.”

There are brokers for sports teams?
Edward Everett thought.

“Three,” Collier said, holding up his thumb, index and middle fingers. “Bad is, he wants to move the team to Corn Row, Indiana.”

“Corn Row?”

“That’s not what it’s called but it’s some town he comes from. It’s a sad day for P. City; baseball’s been here since Ike was president.”

“Who is this guy?” Edward Everett asked, thinking simultaneously,
Get the house ready for the market; find an agent in Whatever Town, Indiana
. Then the idea struck him:
I have no idea whether I’ll be with the club next year
.

“He does something in TV. I haven’t met him; just on the phone and a couple emails. Lawyers doing most of the talking. But …” Collier hesitated.

“What?” Edward Everett asked.

“What are your bosses saying?”

“About …?”

Collier regarded him a moment; had they called him about Webber’s accident?

“What have you heard?” Edward Everett asked, his neck prickling.

“We’re changing affiliation,” Collier said. “That’s good for me, since I couldn’t’ve sold her without an affiliation. Cincinnati.” He shrugged. “You sure your outfit never said anything to you about what they’re doing to replace P. City in the organization?”

Edward Everett shook his head; he had the sensation of growing physically smaller. Why wouldn’t Marc Johansen, MS, MBA, have said anything about this? Maybe that was why he hadn’t contacted him about Webber’s injury: it didn’t matter; Edward Everett was obviously persona non grata with the big club. He saw himself getting his mail a few months down the road, maybe the day after Christmas again, another thin envelope:
Your services are no longer required
.

“Those fucking bastards,” Collier said. “How many years you been with them?”

“I don’t know,” Edward Everett said. He couldn’t think clearly: how long had he been with the organization? Before Perabo City, he’d been with another single-A team for a year, in Lexington. Eleven years and out, a man with no savings to speak of; a man with no 401(k), no IRA, an old man but still someone too young to collect Social Security.

“You all right?” Collier was saying.

He stared out of the bank of windows, the glass so clear it might not even have been there. Three years ago, the organization had wanted him to move to Danville, double-A, be a hitting coach, but that was when Ron had had his heart attack, and Renee hadn’t wanted to leave her father, and the organization had agreed to let him stay for another year. Then another. Then another. And now, end of the line.

Down on the water, the police drew the boat alongside a house where a woman leaned out of a window. She was large, her bulk filling the window, and when the officers helped her into the boat, it settled significantly in the water before it puttered off toward dry land, the woman clearly leaving behind everything she had.

Get over yourself
, he heard his mother saying.
There are people with worse problems. Yes
, he thought. A little water in the basement was as bad as the storms had made it for him. Still, he felt his chest tightening and realized he was shaking. He saw himself the next
year as one of the pathetic old men he’d known when he was a kid in the game: a codger who kept his house only by renting rooms to players, someone willing to clip money off the rent if they listened to his stories:
There was this time in Montreal …

“I know this leaves you in something of a lurch,” Collier said. “I don’t know if it will do any good, but I put in a word with this guy.” He shrugged.

“That’s great,” Edward Everett said. Nothing would come from it; the Reds would have their own people. He thought: he would have to sell the house, hope there was enough equity in it to let him live until he could find work. But his house was in no condition to sell. He hadn’t painted anything since Renee and he gave it a polish before she moved in. The leak in the basement. The kitchen looked like something from 1975.

“We been friends a long time,” Collier said, his voice soft. “Ain’t many people in this town I can talk to, you know, mano to mano. The folks here …” He swept his arm to the side. “Doctors, lawyers. They got education. All I got come from the College of Bust Your Ass Till You Get Blisters.” He reached into his pants pocket, jiggling his body in the recliner, the braces creaking, and came out with a folded piece of paper. A check. Collier opened it, read the amount as if he had no idea what was written on its face, folded it but continued to hold it. “I know I ain’t obligated, you know?”

“I know,” Edward Everett said.

“It’s just a small token, you know. Appreciation and blah blah blah. But you’re gonna have expenses.” He held it out to Edward Everett, who reached for it, but Collier pulled it back slightly. “You can’t breathe a word of this. Not a word to nobody. Especially not the wife. God, especially not her.” He laughed.

“I won’t.”

Collier extended the check once more and Edward Everett took it, thinking: three thousand, five thousand, enough to reface the cabinets, enough to hire the college kid painters who tack their flyers to the bulletin board at the supermarket. He started to slip it into his shirt pocket but Collier said, “Go ahead,” winking. Edward Everett unfolded it. Three hundred dollars. He was not certain whether to
laugh. How could Collier be enough of a businessman to run a meatpacking business and have no idea how small an amount three hundred dollars was, even to someone like Edward Everett? “Now, I’m sure you gotta scoot,” Collier said. “And I gotta get on Mavis’s buttocks to nail down that place for you guys to play out the string here.”

Edward Everett stood to leave but Collier grabbed hold of his sleeve, keeping him back. “You know I wouldn’t of sold if I had a choice,” he said. “If the town fuckers would of anted up for a new ballpark … but that’s as likely as Mrs. Collier saying her days at Macy’s are over.”

“I know,” Edward Everett said. In the living room, Ginger and the woman in the tailored suit were still looking at fabric swatches, three large books already on the floor.

“Now, this one costs a little more, but I think you’ll see what I mean,” the design consultant said. Ginger ran her hand over the material with her eyes closed. “Yes, yes,” she said. “I see what you mean.” She opened her eyes. “Coll?” she said.

“Jesus, woman,” Collier said, “you’re gonna break me.”

Edward Everett let himself out.

L
ater that afternoon, Edward Everett was on his way out to meet Collier, Vincent and Dominici to look at the field Mavis had found, when Nelson’s wife showed up at his house. If his printer hadn’t jammed in the middle of running out the MapQuest directions Collier had emailed, Edward Everett would have missed her visit altogether.

When he opened the door to find her on the porch, along with a policeman, he didn’t immediately recognize her. Grizzly began yapping from the kitchen, rattling the baby gate that corralled him, and Edward Everett stepped onto the porch, shutting the door. He assumed they were collecting for a charity, some organization that supported widows of policemen. “Sorry about the dog,” he said. “He’s small but he’s feisty about his territory.”

Neither the woman nor the police officer laughed at his joke and then he realized who she was; he tried to remember her name but it didn’t come to him. She was a different woman from the one who had invited him into her trailer during the storm, who had given him a towel to dry his hair and had asked him to sit as if he were any other guest and not someone there to ruin her husband’s life, and then had tried to use her children as a feeble argument against the club’s irreversible decision. Now she was pale, dark circles swelling
under her eyes, her hair pulled back in an untidy ponytail, a dried blot of what he assumed was baby spit-up on the shoulder of her Sugarland T-shirt.

“What happened?” Edward Everett asked, seeing Nelson’s dead body turning up in an alley in Urbana; seeing him in prison, arrested after trying to rob a liquor store.

“Maybe it’d be better if we came in, sir,” the policeman said, laying his hand gently against the small of Nelson’s wife’s back. He was a poster boy for law enforcement, tall, his torso that of a weight lifter, his blond hair in a buzz cut.

Inside, Edward Everett left them in the living room to go to the kitchen to give Grizzly a snack to quiet his barking. When he came out, Nelson’s wife and the policeman were sitting side by side on the couch, the policeman’s arm around her; he was speaking quietly to her but she was shaking her head.

“I’m Cindy’s brother,” the policeman said. He stood, extending his hand to shake Edward Everett’s. “Earl. I’m not here in any official way. This isn’t even my jurisdiction.”

“The police here aren’t interested in helping,” Nelson’s wife said.

“They can only do so much,” Earl said in a tone that suggested it wasn’t the first time he’d explained that to her.

“But they’re not doing anything.” She pounded her fist against one of her knees so hard it made Edward Everett wince as if he was the one she had struck. Earl sat and took her hand, gave it a squeeze and then set it on the couch between them.

“What’s going on?” Edward Everett asked in a tone he hoped sounded consoling.

“Ross has gone missing,” Earl said, “and we’re trying to talk to anyone who might have some information.”

“We haven’t seen him in more than a week,” Nelson’s wife said. “I tried to file a missing persons but—” She laughed bitterly, making a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Cin, I’ve explained—” Earl started to say but she interrupted him angrily.

“They wouldn’t even listen to me,” she said, fiercely. “ ‘He’s an adult, ma’am,’ ” she said, clearly imitating someone, her voice deep
and flat. “ ‘He has the right to come and go.’ He wouldn’t just come and go. He has children.”