Starting From Scratch (7 page)

happened yet. And every time she’s
not
pregnant, I feel like

a failure.”

My eyes actually misted, I loved him so much. Laying

a hand on his shoulder, I tried to think of the right thing

to say, realizing with unobstructed certainty that revealing

such feelings to a woman rather than one of his male

buddies was a true sign of how much our friendship meant

to him. at he trusted me with such a personal thing…I

was truly touched and I didn’t want to ruin the moment.

Nor did I want to stretch it out too long.

“It’s gonna happen, sweetie,” I said with a confidence I

definitely felt. “It just takes time and that has nothing—

nothing
—to do with anything resembling failure on your

part. Nina would slap you for even thinking such a thing

and you know it.”  at made the corner of his mouth

twitch up. Nina was a little spitfire and she’d have his ass in

a sling if she knew he was taking on full responsibility for

conception. “When it’s ready to happen, when it’s

supposed to happen, it will. You have to believe that.”

“You really think so?”

“Absolutely. And in the meantime, stop bitching about

the pressure and just relax and enjoy the multitude of

opportunities to fuck your wife silly.”

at time,
he
sputtered, sending beer spittle across the

bar and making me grin. Just as he could mess me up by

using raunchy guy talk with me, I could do the same to

him. I handed him a couple napkins.

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Starting From Scratch

“Slob.”

47

CHAPTER FIVE

I sucked so furiously on the straw in my water bottle

that I was surprised my entire skull didn't cave in. It was

the following  ursday, the day before the long Memorial

Day weekend and the air was chilly. I didn’t know if the

kids were tired from their week, too cold to play, anxious

about maybe taking a family trip for the holiday weekend,

or just trying to make me pull my hair out. Whatever it

was, they were driving me mad with their lack of attention

and focus and I was trying hard not to blow a gasket in

front of the four parents who occupied the bleachers that

day. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how moms and

dads did this every single day of their lives.

I had them set up in fielding positions, but Jordan was

sitting on his butt just behind second base, and Katie kept

wandering away from third to get a sip from her bottle of

juice that sat next to the bleachers. After her fourth

abandonment of her post, I gave up.

“All right. Bring it in,” I called, waving them toward

me at the pitcher’s mound. “Grab a seat.” When they were

all parked on their little rear ends in a horseshoe around

me, I studied them. I was hoping my hands on my hips,

coupled with my expression of quiet disapproval would

resonate and make it clear to them that I wasn’t happy

with this practice session, but a couple of their gazes began

Georgia Beers

to wander and I sighed.
ey’re five and six,
I had to remind

myself.
ey probably don’t get body language yet.
I’d have to

spell it out while reminding myself to stay positive.

“Our first official game is next Saturday,” I told them.

ey murmured and actually sounded excited about it,

which brought a little grin to my lips.

“But we’ve still got some work to do before we’re as

ready as we can be.” A couple grimaces told me how they

felt about that. “You didn’t concentrate today as much as I

would have liked. I know there’s a long weekend coming

up and you’re probably excited, but we have one more

practice, on Tuesday, and I want you to come ready to play,

okay? No fooling around.” I noticed Mikey smiling and

waving at a car that had pulled up. “Mikey? What did I

just say?”

He looked at me blankly, and pursed his lips. “Um.”

en he studied the grass.

“at’s what I thought. Max, would you tell Mikey

what I just said?”

Max sat up a little straighter, as if he’d just been given

a big responsibility. “Coach King said we have to come

here on Tuesday and contrate. No fooling around.” He

smiled at me and I couldn’t help but smile back in return,

he was so cute.

“Exactly. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Mikey said quietly, looking sheepish.

“Everybody? Got it?” I looked around at the rest of the

team as they nodded. “Good. Okay, grab me the bases and

then go. Have a great weekend.” I shooed them away like

flies.

ey scattered as various cars pulled up, some parents

getting out, some not. I bagged the equipment as bases

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Starting From Scratch

were dropped at my feet, muttered “Bye, Coach”’s floating

by me. I was completely exhausted and looking forward to

the long weekend without having to deal with the kids. I

was hoping to plant some flowers, take Steve to the park,

and try a new cookie recipe with Grandma. So lost in my

upcoming plans was I that I didn’t hear the approach of

one of the parents.

“Hi there.”

It was Max’s mom, the one who’d leered at me so

openly that first day of practice. She hadn’t stayed for every

practice; in fact, I’d only seen her once or twice since that

first time. Max carpooled with another kid the other days.

I hadn’t paid her much attention, and she’d apparently

returned the favor, disregarding not only me, but Max and

his tee-ball play as well. He still turned to her when he did

something well, his adorable face lit up with pride. Each

time, I watched it fall with disappointment when he saw

her absorbed in whatever electronic device she happened

to have brought with her that day.

Forcing myself to remain professional, I replied, “Hi.

You’re Max’s mom, right?”

With a nod and a smile, she stuck out her hand.

“Cindy Johnson.”

I returned the handshake. “Avery King.”

Max saved me from more small talk when he ran up

to us. “Did you see my hit, Cece?” he asked Cindy, all

dignified and proud.

I stayed focused on him, well aware from my

peripheral vision that Cindy’s focus was not on him, but on

me. “I must have missed it, buddy,” she said with little

interest.

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Georgia Beers

I met her gaze. “It was a very solid hit,” I told her.

“He’s doing very well.”

“I’ve got a knot,” Max said, looking down at his shoe.

“Are you new around here?” Cindy asked me. “I don’t

recall seeing you before.”

“No, I’m not new, but it’s a good-sized city,” I replied,

trying to take her in without giving her the wrong idea—

which was exactly the idea she wanted, I suspected. Her

gaze was intense, her eyes a light brown with gentle crow’s

feet at the corners. She wasn’t a small woman—not heavy,

just rather big-boned—but her expensive clothes hid it

pretty well. Her brown hair was cut in a stylish bob, the

slightest hint of gray showing at the part, telling me she

was due for a coloring soon. I saw no ring on her left hand,

which made me feel only minutely better about her

obvious flirtation.

“It is. It’s just…I’ve been here my whole life and I’m

kind of surprised we haven’t run into each other, you know,

at Blink or the Pink Rhino or something.”

Two of the gayest places in town. She was fishing for

my sexuality and much as it made me a little

uncomfortable, I had to admire her smoothness.

“Yeah, well, I don’t go out much,” I offered, caught

between embarrassment and amusement.

“I’ve got a knot,” Max said again, louder this time,

bouncing up and down impatiently. I squatted to help him.

Anything to get out of the spotlight of Cindy’s stare.

“We could fix that,” she continued, apparently not at

all fazed that her son was right there and I was working on

his shoelace. “Maybe we could have a drink some time.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I hedged, wishing I had the balls

to simply say that I thought her approach was

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Starting From Scratch

inappropriate, given the close proximity of her son and me

being his coach. But before I could figure out the right

wording, her cell phone rang and I knew she’d answer it. It

was impossible for her not to answer it. She was one of

those
people, the ones who lost part of their identity if they

didn’t have the damn thing within their grasp at all times,

who didn’t find it at all rude or annoying to be chattering

away in a restaurant or a library or a grocery store, who had

no grasp of the fact that the rest of the world was really

not all that interested in listening in on their side of the

conversation.

“We’ll continue this next week,” she informed me with

a wink as she put the contraption to her ear, grabbed Max’s

hand, and backed away from me. e certainty in her tone

unnerved me.

1

“You know, if you soak those in a mix of water and a

little dish washing liquid while you’re watching television

tonight, they’ll clean right up.” Grandma gestured to my

hands as I dropped spoonfuls of cookie batter onto her

cookie sheets.

“Really?” It sounded like a great solution for my

stained fingernails. e topsoil I’d been digging in the day

before left a bit of a shadow under the white of each one.

“You always did like to dig.” She shook her head, as if

in dismay, but her wry grin told me she’d found it amusing.

“Did I?”

“You were such a quiet kid,” she went on, as if once

she’d started talking about the past, she just had to keep

going. “I worried.”

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Georgia Beers

is was the first I’d heard of that. “Why?”

“It just seemed so unusual.”

I slid the cookie sheet into the oven, picked up my tea

and followed her to her small table.

“Children were supposed to be loud, screechy, running

around shouting at the top of their lungs with all the other

children.” She sipped her tea. “You didn’t do any of that.”

ese facts actually didn’t surprise me. I was a quiet,

fairly solitary adult; it wasn’t shocking that I would have

started out my life that way, too.

“So I did a little research,” she went on. “Your friendly,

local librarian pointed me in the right direction.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“You were an introverted child.”

I grinned, happy with the diagnosis. “And I am an

introverted adult.”

Grandma nodded. “I wasn’t the only person back then

who worried. Lots of parents who had quiet children did.”

“Was my mom like that, too? Quiet, I mean?”

e subject of my mother, Grandma’s only child,

wasn’t something we touched on frequently. In fact, we

rarely touched on it at all. Grandma almost never brought

her up and I was always too shy or embarrassed or worried

about causing anger to ask, so we went on with our lives

together as my mother took the shape of the elephant in

the room that we both knew was there, but that neither of

us was brave enough to talk about. I didn’t know much.

Samantha King had been a kind of wild child of the sixties

who (I suspected) rebelled against her rigid mother by

sneaking out, partying, and hanging with the wrong crowd

of people. She got pregnant at sixteen, had me, made a

half-hearted attempt to be a mother before leaving me

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Starting From Scratch

with her own mother and running away just before her

twentieth birthday. Not long after that, Grandpa King left

too, not having signed on to raise another child when he

was in his fifties. Or maybe he’d been simply waiting for an

excuse to leave his wife of more than twenty years, I don’t

know. I hadn’t seen either my mother or my grandfather

since then, and I carried a lot of guilt into my adulthood,

feeling responsible for Grandma losing half her family.

“No. No, your mother was not a quiet child,” Grandma

said and I was sure I caught the ghost of a wistful smile

play at her lips. “Quite the opposite. Just like her father.

Rambunctious. Full of piss and vinegar, as we used to say. I

had a hard time keeping up with her.”

“Oh.” I sipped from my own mug, unable to put a

finger on the reason I felt disappointed.

“No, you were more like me, I think.”

at lightened the mood for me and I felt myself sit

up a little straighter. “Really?”

“If I recall correctly, my mother used to tell me how

much of a loner I was, that if given the choice between a

party and a book, I’d choose the book every time.”

“We’re two peas in a pod, Grandma.”

e timer chimed and I jumped up, anxious to see

how our cherry chocolate drop cookies had turned out.

“Sinful,” I pronounced, helping myself to a second

cookie. “Mr. Davidson will be scratching at the door the

second the scent makes it into the hallway.”

“Oh, hush,” Grandma said, pushing playfully at my

arm. But again, her blush gave her away.