“I have a baseball game next weekend. You could come and watch.” His voice is tiny and hopeful.
“I don’t know if I can do that, Mitchell,” I say. I squeeze my eyes shut. I want desperately to see him, but I’m not ready. He’s not ready. Nobody is ready. And the people in the small town where I know he’ll be playing ball are not ready to see me. They’d probably as soon spit on me as look at me.
“Why not?” he asks.
“When is it?”
He asks my mother something and she takes the phone back. “It’s next weekend. You should come.” Her voice is now coaxing and soft. “It’ll be okay,” she says. “I promise.”
“Mom, they don’t want me there,” I protest. I massage my forehead with my fingertips.
“Who cares what they want?” she says with a laugh. Then she gets quiet. “It’s what he wants that matters, and he wants you to come and watch his game. He’s playing first base.”
She tells me where the game will be, and it’s at the same athletic complex that I used to play at when I was a boy.
“No promises, but I’ll see if I can get there,” I say quietly, already planning in my head how I can blend in. Maybe if I stand behind the bleachers no one will notice I’m there. Who am I kidding? Everyone will know I’m there. All of them. All of Melanie’s old friends from high school will be there. People we knew from work will be there. And his other grandparents will be there. The whole fucking town will be there. “I’ll try,” I tell her.
“I’ll see you there,” she says, her voice harsh. “If you don’t show up, I’m bringing him to the lake and I’m dropping him off. You’re going to see him one way or the other.” She hisses the words at me, finally losing her patience with my prevaricating.
“Mom, I don’t have a place for him here. I’m living in a tent.”
“Ethan, your dad and I took care of you in a tent every weekend. You loved it, and he will too. He won’t even know you live there. He’ll just think you’re taking him on a fun outing.”
“I’m not ready, Mom…”
“Then get ready, son,” she says. “Because it’s happening whether you want it to or not.” Then she hangs up the phone.
I lie back and stare up at the fabric ceiling of my tent. My son just called me, I spoke to him for the first time in five years, and it wasn’t a shit-show. Instead, it was nice. And what if my mom’s right? What if the townspeople don’t really care anymore about what happened all those years ago? What if they’re over it?
What’s bad is that I’m not over it, and I’m not sure if I ever will be. But he’s my son and he wants to see me. And I’m desperate to see him, even if I know it will be hard.
When he was smaller, my mom used to send me pictures of him every week. I’d put them up on the wall with tape, and then replace them as she sent more, putting the older ones in an empty box one of the guards found for me. When Mitchell got old enough, he’d write short letters or draw a picture for me. So I know that my mom kept me alive for him. But where does that leave me now? Will I do more harm than good by stepping back into his life?
I stare at the fabric ceiling and run through the scenarios in my head of every way it could go at the ballgame. Not one of them involves me being allowed to peacefully attend. But my son wants me to be there. I just need to figure out how to make it happen.
I look over at my duck, who likes to sleep on a pile of blankets next to my head, and say to him, “Wilbur, I’m going to a ball game.”
Wilbur doesn’t reply, mainly because Wilbur is a duck, but his soulful gaze is an exact reflection of how I feel inside. He’s probably as confused as I am about what’s going to happen. He just doesn’t know how to show it.
5
Abigail
“It feels like rain,” my grandmother says from the other end of the phone line. “My bones have been aching all afternoon.”
I look up at the clear blue sky, which doesn’t have a single cloud in it. But, then again, I am an hour away from her. “It’s clear here.”
“It’s coming your way,” she warns. I hear the ice tinkle in her glass of sweet tea as she lifts it to her lips and takes a drink.
“That better be unsweetened,” I chide playfully. My grandmother would sooner die than drink unsweetened tea. And artificially sweetened tea is “from the devil,” as she puts it.
Instead of responding to my taunt, she says, “Take my word for it. A storm is heading your way. Have you seen anybody up there yet? Or is the place pretty much cleared out for the season?”
“Cleared out,” I reply, and I take a sip of my own sweet tea. I made a whole pot right when I got here, since Gran had left supplies in the cupboard if they were things that would last through the winter. “The place is like a ghost town.”
“Have you seen Erik anywhere?” she asks, and she has a lilting, teasing sound to her voice.
I scratch my knee and knock a bug off my leg. “Who?”
“Mr. Jacobson Senior. The older gentleman with the firm backside and deprecating sense of humor.”
“Eww. I can’t believe you’re talking about the man’s backside.” I chuckle.
“Well, I happen to have explicit knowledge of his front side, too,” she replies.
“Gran!” I yell on top of a laugh. “Stop!” But I’m laughing so hard that I have to hold my sides.
“Oh, it’s not what you think,” she says, but I can hear the laughter in her voice. “I stumbled upon him skinny-dipping with his wife one night, back when we were all younger. I just happened to get a glimpse of his package. It was pretty impressive, I’m not going to lie.”
“So you and he never…” I let the words hang there in the air.
“Oh, God, no. He’s just a friend.”
“Is he the one you called when I said I was coming up here?” As the sun sets, lightning bugs begin to flicker on and off in the distance.
“Yes.”
I catch a flyaway piece of my hair that starts to tickle my nose and tuck it behind my ear. “Did you tell him what happened?”
“I reckon that’s your business,” she says, and she lets out an indelicate sniff. “But he was pretty interested in hearing the story. Always was a nosy old coot.”
“You could have told him,” I say. “It’s not like people knowing will change anything.”
“So, you’re not going back?” she asks.
My gran and I have always been tight. She has been my confidante when I couldn’t talk about things with my mother. When I was old enough, she’d taken me to get started on birth control. She has stood by me through more shit than anyone. “There’s nothing to go back to.” I play with a stray thread on the frayed hem of my shorts. “He moved me out, moved her in, and they’re probably planning a nursery right now.”
“Still a shitty thing to do,” she mutters. “He could have told you it was over and let you decide when you wanted to go.”