The Art of Fielding: A Novel (48 page)
She hoisted her bags and moved toward her dad. For the happiest and splittest of seconds Affenlight thought she planned to embrace him, but her hands were wrapped tightly around the straps of her bags, and in fact he was simply blocking her way. He shifted aside, leaving several inches of troubled air between them as his daughter ducked her beautiful port-colored head and slid past him and down the hallway and out of sight.
I
f you pretended not to know Coach Cox and you walked into his empty office, sat in the only visitor’s chair, and glanced around apprehensively, you’d never guess that he’d been coaching Westish Baseball for thirteen years. He might as well have moved in yesterday. The door was never locked. The walls were a plain industrial white, the metal schoolteacher’s desk a lackluster military green. The main signs of life were a taped-up baseball schedule and a wastebasket overflowing with pinched Diet Coke cans. A half-sized fridge, its top littered with fast-food napkins and mustard packets, completed the furniture. The narrow window didn’t overlook the lake.
The desk’s glass-topped surface held only a phone and a small framed photograph of Coach Cox’s two children. They were sitting in a kiddie pool full of raked-up leaves, the girl with her arm around the boy in that protective way of older siblings, mugging for the camera. Henry picked it up for a closer look. Both kids wore earth-toned autumn jackets and had messy midlength hair. The boy looked about four and the girl seven, but the picture had been there as long as Henry could remember, its inks had faded, and they were no doubt much older now—maybe older than he was. Strange how little Coach Cox talked about his family; strange how little you wound up knowing about the people around you. Henry thought maybe the daughter’s name was Kelly, but maybe her face just reminded him of some Kelly he’d gone to school with. Kelly and Peter, he thought aimlessly, replacing the photo on the desk in its original position, so that it faced Coach Cox’s chair and not his own. Peter and Kelly.
Coach Cox came into the room, took a Diet Coke from the fridge, and plunked down in his pleather desk chair. The hinges screeched; they were so loose his whole body tipped back like he was about to get some dentistry done.
“Coach Cox,” Henry said, “before you say anything, I want to apologize for what I did yesterday. I abandoned the team. It was a terrible thing to do. I’m really sorry.”
The Harpooners had won both of Sunday’s games against Coshwale, the first by the score of 2 to 1, the second, 15 to 0. The second game was halted after four innings in accordance with the UMSCAC’s mercy rule, which was how Owen and Schwartz made it back to campus so early. The Harpooners were conference champs for the first time in their 104-year history of playing baseball. The regional tournament was days away.
Coach Cox leaned back in his chair even more, so that he was almost lying down, and stroked his mustache. “You realize I’m going to have to suspend you, Skrim. I don’t especially want to, but there’s no way around it. Team rules. You missed two games, so two more should be a reasonable punishment. With luck we’ll win one of them. Consider it a chance to get your bearings.”
“Actually,” Henry said, “I was planning on something longer.”
Coach Cox frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… I’d like to resign from the team.”
Coach Cox’s frown deepened into something else. He rocked forward to a seated position, planted his feet on the ground, glared into Henry’s eyes. “I’d like to be twenty years old and have your kind of talent,” he said. “But we can’t always get what we want. Permission denied.”
“But Coach, you don’t understand. I’m quitting the team.”
“You’re not quitting anything. In fact, you’re unsuspended, effective immediately. Practice starts in fifteen minutes. Go get dressed.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Bull
shit
you can’t. And wear old clothes. I don’t care how fit you are. I’m going to run you until you puke.”
“Coach,” Henry said quietly, “I’m through.”
Something in his voice convinced Coach Cox he was serious. The older man resumed stroking his mustache and eventually said:
“Have you talked to Mike about this?”
For a split second Henry thought that Coach Cox had heard what had happened with Pella. His throat seized tight, even as he realized the question meant something else. What Coach Cox was driving at was that Schwartzy would never let him quit. “No,” he admitted. “I haven’t.”
“Well, let’s get his input on this.” Coach Cox tipped his head back and drained his Diet Coke decisively. “Come on.”
They walked out to the elevator together. Henry could have refused to go down to the locker room—could have pressed the first-floor button and walked through the VAC’s front doors and never come back. But something wouldn’t let him. Maybe he was too used to obeying Coach Cox’s commands, or maybe there was a part of him that wanted to go down there. Last night, Mike had just turned his back and walked down the stairs.
“Schwartzy,” barked Coach Cox. “Can we see you for a minute?”
Schwartz, who was sitting in front of his locker with a bag of ice on either thigh, glanced up somberly at the word
we,
took one earphone out of his ear. “What is it?”
The other Harpooners in the vicinity—Rick, Starblind, Boddington, Izzy, Phlox—stared into their own empty lockers, pretending they hadn’t noticed Henry come in. And they don’t know the half of it, Henry thought.
“Out in the hallway.” Coach Cox jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“I’m icing,” Schwartz said. “What is it?”
You could tell by his quick snort of breath that Coach Cox was about to start yelling, something he rarely did. Henry cut him off. “Here’s fine.” He steeled himself and took a step toward Schwartz. “I’m sorry about what happened, Mike. I let you down, I let everybody down. I made a mistake and I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry…” Technically he was apologizing for ditching the team yesterday, which was its own unpardonable sin, but of course it didn’t feel like that. “Coach Cox wanted me to let you know that I’ve decided to quit the team.”
Schwartz was staring dead into his locker, his hairy shoulders slumped, those huge bags of ice on his knees. He reached inside for a stick of deodorant, pulled off the cap with a suctioning
pop,
and lifted one arm above his head. “Izzy’s our shortstop,” he said. “You can’t even throw.”
“I know. That’s why I’m quitting.”
Schwartz switched to the other armpit. “That’s interesting,” he said. “I thought it was because you nailed my girlfriend.”
“I nail all your girlfriends!” Henry yelled. It made no sense, but he yelled it anyway, fists balled, feeling like he might fall on Schwartz and start swinging. “Who the fuck cares?!”
Schwartz, with infinite slowness, pulled a Westish Baseball T-shirt from his locker, poked his head through the hole, and unfurled it over his massive torso. “Maybe nobody,” he said, his eyes still fixed on his locker’s innards. “Rick, you care if Skrimshander nails my girlfriend?”
Rick, whose locker was adjacent to Schwartz’s, looked up cautiously, his pink face grim. “I guess not,” he said.
“Starblind, how about you?”
“Nope.”
“Izzy?”
Silence.
“Izzy?”
“No,
Abuelo.
”
Schwartz went around the room, name by name. Each guy murmured in turn that no, he didn’t care if Henry nailed Schwartz’s girlfriend. At least Owen wasn’t there. Henry didn’t know who to feel worst for, but he knew who to blame—himself.
“Well, that’s fine,” Schwartz said. “Let’s go practice.” He removed the Ziploc bags from his knees, dumped the ice onto the circular grated drain between the benches, and, as guys pressed against their lockers to avoid his bulk, rumbled creakily, bowleggedly, out of the locker room.
“This is great,” Coach Cox said, his voice growing from a mutter to a drill-sergeant shout. “This is goddamned out
standing.
Everybody to the football stadium
now!
You’re all gonna run till you
puke!
” He looked at Henry. “You coming?”
“No,” Henry said.
“You really want to do this, Skrim? You really want to goddamn do this?”
Henry nodded. “I do.”
A
ffenlight sat in the Audi, surreptitiously smoking a cigarette, looking out across quiet Main Street at the Bremens’ place, its expansive porch, its uneven cupolas, its manicured lawn sliding from green to gray in the thickening twilight. After Pella left he’d remembered that Professor Bremen was retiring from the Physics Department this spring; was moving to New Mexico to play golf, walk around in the desert with his wife, teach for kicks at an online university. Bremen was a few years younger than Affenlight, but he’d made a killing.
Sure enough, there it was on the lawn, a
FOR SALE
sign.
Pella had found a room for the remainder of the semester, with some Westish girls off campus. She’d left Affenlight a message to this effect, on the apartment’s voice mail when she knew he’d be in his office. There was a landline there, but she hoped he wouldn’t call it soon. She wanted some time alone.
Affenlight stubbed out his cigarette in the Audi’s ashtray, stared at the Bremens’ facade. It was a big white whale of a house, fit for a president, but there was something appealingly quirky about it as well, a kind of ad hoc austerity. Even when it seemed a foregone conclusion that he’d stay at Harvard forever, he’d never come anywhere near buying a place. Rented halves of Cambridge houses had always seemed permanence enough.
He’d intended only to drive by, to see whether there would indeed be a sign on the lawn, but now he found himself strolling up the front walk to the porch steps. The silhouette of Sandy Bremen, Tom’s wife, appeared behind the front door before he could ring the bell.
“Why, Guert,” she said. “Fancy meeting you here.” A large dog shot out of the small gap she’d made by beginning to open the door, reared up to paw at Affenlight’s chest. “I was just about to take Contango for a walk.” She grabbed the dog by the collar and yanked him backward. “Sorry. He’s awfully rambunctious today.”
“Quite all right.” Affenlight offered the dog his hand to sniff. He was a beautiful animal, old and noble, a sugar-furred husky with one blue eye.
“Tom’s out for a run,” Sandy said. “Is it something urgent?”
“No, no. Not urgent at all. You see, actually… I stopped by because I was curious about the house.”
“Ah-ha.” Sandy smiled in the slightly flirty but mostly proprietary way that the faculty wives, at least the more secure ones, liked to smile at Affenlight. She was a seal-sleek woman in a monochrome tracksuit and fresh white sneakers. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would have been like to spend a few decades with a woman like that—a woman who turned family life into a smooth-running corporate entity, whose genius was to take a sizable income and make it seem infinite, who knew how to convert money into pleasure and pleasantry. “You’re finally thinking of taking the plunge?”
Affenlight shrugged. “I saw the sign,” he said. “It made me a bit curious.”
“Well, come on in. I’ll give you the grand tour. Contango, buddy, I’m sorry—false alarm on that stroll of ours.” She shooed the dog through the door, planted a hand in the small of Affenlight’s back to do the same to him. “Is beer okay? I can’t join you because I’m halfway through a juice cleanse, faddish girl that I am, but I’m sure Tom will partake when he gets back. He’s been logging a lot of miles these days.”
Affenlight, clutching the sweaty neck of his Heineken, dutifully trailed Sandy throughout the first floor and then the second as she explicated the virtues of California Closets, natural light, their recently remodeled kitchen. The Bremens’ two children were both graduated from college and gone, their bedrooms converted into spruced-up, stripped-down pieds-à-terre for holiday and summertime visits. “Lucy’s wedding is in October,” Sandy said as they stood on the threshold of the more extravagantly pillowed of the two rooms. “Old time she is a flyin’.” She turned to lead Affenlight back down the stairs. “As you can see, the place is big but not
that
big. Three bedrooms, Tom’s office, one bath up, one down. It’s really a very functional house, because it’s so old—it’s more on the model of the farmhouse than the mansion. Not outlandish for one person.” She gave Affenlight that sly look again. “You
are
still living alone, aren’t you, Guert?”