“I’m sure he’d want you to.”
“I don’t want to do anything dumb with it. I don’t want to drop any balls.”
“You won’t,” said Walter. He put his own hand inside for a moment. Then he took it out and handed it back. “He’d be proud of you, Sissy. I know he would.”
“I wish he’d come home,” said Sissy, the tears spilling onto her nose. She wiped them away and walked on to take one of the seats toward the rear. Irini could hear her in the back, sniffing loudly. Norma started the engine. The balloons hummed in the air above them. The bus had the stale, cramped smell of buses.
Walter turned and offered a stick of gum to Helen. He unwrapped one for himself, folded it into his cheek where it made a lump the size of a buckeye. “Just get in back of the ball when you field it. Think about blocking as well as catching. Think about your whole body, not just your glove. You remember that one thing and you’ll be great today.” The advice was accompanied by the doggish sounds of smacking and chewing.
Irini could see the side of Helen’s face, the rim of her ear sticking out from her hair, her cheek tensing as she chewed. They were all of them on edge. “Helen doesn’t need someone coaching her every minute,” Irini said.
“Except her coach,” Walter answered pleasantly. He snapped his gum. The bus passed beneath the limestone arch and out of the mill parking lot. The balloons rushed from one side to the other as the bus turned onto Mill Street.
Arlys leaned forward. “Walter. I’m so frightened. I don’t know that I can do this.”
“You’re the best player we have. We’re all depending on you,” said Walter.
“That’s the problem.”
Walter turned all the way around, hanging his arms over the back of the seat. “Think of it as another part in a play. You’re playing the role of a baseball player. No lines, you’ve got to get the part across physically. You’re athletic and self-confident. You’re Ty Cobb. That’s what I want you to convey to the stands. Grace and self-confidence.”
“Didn’t Ty Cobb kill his father?” said Fanny, from across the aisle.
“No. His mother killed his father.”
“Well, that’s a good thing to know, isn’t it? Arlys can use that for motivation.”
“I wouldn’t want to be Ty Cobb,” said Margo. “You be Babe Ruth, Arlys.”
“I don’t think that’s the style we want for the Sweethearts,” said Fanny. “What’s wrong with DiMaggio? Or Musial? He’s a dream. I’d walk to Hoboken for a bit of that.”
“Just be a baseball player,” said Walter. “A gifted, graceful, no-nerves, hitting all-out baseball player.”
“You can do that, Arlys,” said Irini. “That won’t even be a stretch.”
The shadow of the Magrit water tower passed quickly over them. Like a blessing. “You have from here to Yawkey to assume the role,” said Walter. “We’ll all be quiet and let you prepare it. Grace and self-confidence.”
“Oh, no.” Henry had risen to his feet at the back. Norma hit the brakes in response to his cry, making him stumble forward. The Sweethearts all turned in Henry’s direction. In the back window the water tower loomed like a giant jellyfish.
His eyes were as large as his ears. A copy of Women at Home was in his hand. “Who is responsible for this Chicken Mole Recipe?”
“That was me, Mr. Henry,” said Margo.
“It’s been sabotaged,” said Henry. “It has chocolate in the sauce.”
“No, no, that’s right,” said Margo. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“But it’s chicken with chocolate sauce. It has chocolate and Tabasco. That can’t taste good.”
“Mexicans like it.”
“Oh,” said Henry. He sat again, tense and erect, the magazine still open to the offending recipe. Norma hit the gas. Henry fell back. “Oh, good. Well, that’s our Maggie. Always the new and the daring. Always in the vanguard. Claire, perhaps you should fix this for us at Collins House one night. I’ve no objection to a little experimentation.”
They turned onto Country Road B. Norma took the turn sharply and a branch scraped the side of the bus. It unbalanced Cindy, who was edging her way down the aisle, so she grabbed the back of Walter’s seat with her hand while Norma corrected the turn. “Walter.” Her voice was intriguingly quiet. Irini leaned forward to hear her over the bus motor. “Walter, I have a visitor.”
Walter looked at her blankly. “In Magrit? In Yawkey?”
“My monthly visitor.”
Walter looked to Helen who wouldn’t look back.
“I’m falling off the roof, Walter,” said Cindy.
Walter turned to Arlys who didn’t seem to see him. Eventually he got to Irini. “Come on, Walter. You remember the films,” Irini said. “Think about it. She’s experiencing the monthly glory of womanhood.”
“I’m early. It must be nerves. I’ve been retaining water all week and this morning I’ve got cramps. I’ve got pimples.” This announcement was hardly necessary. “And look at these white slacks I have to wear. I don’t know if I can play.”
“We’re all on the same clock,” said Irini. “Every girl in the Kitchen. We could have told you ahead of time if you and Mr. Henry had consulted with us before you made up the schedule. It really should be worked around.”
“It didn’t occur to me,” said Walter. “We don’t have a bench. You all have to play.”,
“Then let it be on your head,” said Irini.
“It won’t actually hurt her to play, will it?” asked Walter. “We don’t have a bench.”
“I’m the only one that cramps,” said Cindy.
“It’s the white slacks that are really the problem. We should have been consulted about the uniform,” Margo said. “Ordinarily white would be fine, but it’s going to be hard to play when we’re worrying about the white slacks.”
“They were a silly choice anyway,” said Claire. She was seated next to Fanny. “Did anyone talk to Maggie about it first? Have you ever tried to get grass stains out of white fabric?”
“Oh, I think they’ll bleach out,” said Walter. It was so naive, such a boy thing to say. The girls all shared an exasperated moment.
“Are we there yet?” the younger Törngren brother asked.
"The amount of bleach you’re going to be using will destroy the cloth. They’ll be white, but they’ll be full of holes," Claire said to Walter. Her color was high, her tone patient, but sad. "Do you want to be buying new uniforms every month?"
“Have you ever done a laundry in your whole life?” Irini asked.
“White is not a slimming color,” Helen observed. “Why can’t the uniforms be navy? Navy goes with anything.”
“We’re not going to be accessorizing,” said Fanny.
“Walter.” It was Tracy May. She was looking exceptionally pretty, as if she had already spent a day in the sun. Everything about her was more vivid. Alone of all the Sweethearts, she seemed to know she would do well today. It was inspiring to see this level of confidence. It was awesome. It was idiotic.
She had followed Cindy down the aisle. “Mr. Henry wants to know, when he introduces us, does he do the pitcher first or last?” This was vintage Tracy, but particularly unconvincing, because anyone who turned around could see that Henry had fallen asleep in the back, his pen in his hand, his head bouncing gently on his books.
They were in a quilted countryside of green fields and red barns and round-tipped, bullet-shaped silos. The hills around Magrit were so moderate in slope, they imposed nothing on the engineer; all the roads were laid out on a rectangular grid. The road rose and fell sleepily; the balloons echoed the motion.
For several miles the bus was trapped behind a truck, which threw up a cloud of dirt, coating Margo and Arlys’s spotless windows. Finally Norma was able to gun past. A herd of Holsteins looked up at the noise.
“There’s still time to change the batting order,” Irini told Walter quietly. Every time she turned to look out the window, she caught a
peripheral glimpse of Helen’s face. Helen held her arms about her, so that they crossed each other and flattened her breasts.
“Cindy May is cramping,” Walter reminded Irini. Trust Walter to find a way to work menstrual cramps to his advantage. He looked to Helen again. “Just this once, just for this first game, I don’t even want you to swing at the ball. But I want you to smile. Can you look relaxed? Can you look as if you’re enjoying yourself? It’ll make all the difference.”
“Perhaps Sissy could lead off,” Irini suggested. She regretted it as soon as she said it. Although Sissy was a decent fielder, once you eliminated Helen, then Sissy was the obvious choice to bat ninth. Irini’s tone had been unimpeachably neutral; still it was too obvious a reference to Walter’s nocturnal activities, a subject on which Irini had vowed never to say a word.
“You’re not serious,” said Walter. He turned to look at her. His eyes were steady and he held her gaze longer than she could hold his. “Just let me do it, Irini,” he said. “Let me coach the team. Do you have a problem with that? Or with something else?”
“Walter,” said Fanny. “We’re not going right back after the game, are we? There will be some time to go out with the other team, discuss strategies and the like? Mr. Henry is not going to make us get right back on the bus? I mean, what’s the point of a chaperone if we just get right back on the bus?”
“Walter,” said Cindy. “Will there be bathroom facilities close at hand? Have you seen the field?”
“It’s at a public park.”
“Will the bathrooms be open? Did you call ahead and check?”
Irini leaned forward and spoke low so that only Walter would hear and maybe not even him. “Don’t get the idea that I’m jealous. Sissy Tarken is a friend of mine. You know what I owe her. I don’t like to see her hurt.”
Walter spun completely around. His face and his voice were astonished. “Irini! I hadn’t been back since Jimmy died. I went to express my sympathy. Jesus, Jimmy was a friend of mine.”
“Are we there yet?” the younger Törngren boy asked.
The bus took a perfectly perpendicular turn, leaning Irini into Arlys. She could see out the bus window down the road, all the fields and the tidy dairy farms laid out end to end, the furrows curving off, opening at the horizon like fans. “I’m just saying it might be a good strategy to move our strength to the end of the order,” she said hurriedly, with more volume. “Take them by surprise. I’m not trying to coach for you. I’m just throwing out suggestions. I’m just thinking we might be better off not playing everything so much by the book.”
“Really.” Walter’s voice was low. “I can’t believe you would think that of me. I don’t deserve that from you.”
“I think the pitcher should be introduced last,” said Tracy. “After a sort of pause.”
Irini put her hand on Walter’s shoulder and started to speak, but he shook her off. “If I think about this much, I’m going to be even more insulted. Just drop it.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” said Helen.
“I think we’re going to play a hell of a game.” The words came from Arlys’s seat, but the voice was too loud for Arlys’s voice, and Arlys never swore. They all turned together, turned as a team, to look at her. She had the face of a madonna, radiant and calm. “One hell of a game,” she said again.
No one wanted to put that serenity at risk. They were quiet all the rest of the way to Yawkey.
19
The crowds in Yawkey were somewhat smaller than Henry had hoped. The press had given the event a clean miss. The opposing team had to be patched together from kids who were playing ball in the park anyway, plus the two Törngren boys. The average age on the opposing team was eleven.
“Good thing I came along to chaperone,” said Fanny, “because I do not like the look of these guys.”
Without so much as a glance in Irini’s direction, Walter changed the batting order. “Cindy, you lead off,” he said. “Tracy, second. Helen, after Sissy. Helen, swing at anything in the zone. Nice level swing.”
For three innings, the Sweethearts led. Arlys was flawless. She teamed up with Cindy for two double plays; she picked a line drive out of the air with her ungloved hand. She came up to bat three times and three times she got on base. Twice she doubled. She brought no one home because the bases were empty. Irini, batting just ahead of her in the lineup, had already cleared them.
The opposing pitcher was a big, good-looking, redheaded boy of fourteen named Alex. He pitched faster than anyone Irini had ever faced, but the fast ball was all he had. Irini took a pitch to get her Peabody timed just right and then she knew exactly where the next ball would come. With the pitch coming so hard and her arms pumped up from kneading dough, she did more than connect. The ball soared out and away from her bat like a small, round bird. The first time it surprised her so much she forgot to run. Fortunately it was an automatic. She stood and watched the ball fly into left field, past the younger Törngren boy and into the duck pond. He insisted on trying to retrieve it. The game came to a complete halt while he made a great show of wading in up to his knees. But the ball was lost. Henry had to pitch out a new one.
The next time she came up they played her deep, but she hit it even farther, all the way to the street, where it rolled under a car. Kapow! she thought. Ka-boom! Both times she brought in Cindy and Norma. No one else on either team could hit it so far. Of course, Tracy’s pitching was much softer.
But the eleven-year-olds were hitting, too, and in the fourth inning, Tracy started to fade. Margo had made Tracy pitch it easy to her six-year-old brother. By the fourth inning Tracy was regretting this. She tried to put it past him, but he waited out the count and took his base on balls. It was ungentlemanly behavior and Tracy pointed this out by calling him a baby.
“I am not,” he said. “You’re a sap-head.” He began to cry, big, flat, grimy tears that stained his cheeks. When he raised his hands to his eyes, Tracy tried to throw him out. Cindy, who was taken by surprise and had serious scruples about the play anyway, missed the throw, so he made it to second while she was chasing the ball and dropping her glove. He stood with his foot firmly on the bag, rubbing at his eyes while his nose boiled and bubbled.
From this point on the game turned unfriendly. All the boys began waiting Tracy out, so she was pitching five or six pitches per batter, which tired her even more, and walking most of them. The boys had discovered Helen’s fielding and when they did swing, they were going for right. Irini played over and she dropped a perfectly routine fly, that even Helen might have caught if Irini hadn’t gotten in her way. The out would have ended the fifth. Instead Tracy walked in three more runs. They called it after six innings.
The final score was eleven-year-olds, 16, Sweethearts, 8. The opposing team took their balloons and went home, except for the pitcher, who hung around long enough to ask Arlys if she wanted to go for a malted. “He was too cute,” Cindy said. “I don’t care how old he was, Arlys, you should have gone.”
“Would Ty Cobb have gone?” Arlys asked.
“With a good-looking redhead?” said Fanny. “And how!”
Henry called the team together for a postgame pep talk. There was no dugout; they sat on the grass in right field, out by the duck pond. “I hope no one is blaming me,” Tracy said in a voice that would scour pots. “If anyone is they can just pitch themselves next time. I didn’t really have the fielding behind me, did I?”
“She’s just cranky because her aunt is about to visit,” Cindy reminded them.
“Am not, you little droon.”
“How nice,” said Henry absent-mindedly. “You must bring her to the house.”
“No one is blaming you, Tracy,” said Walter. “You did swell.”
All of Irini’s pregame anxieties let go of her at once. She had really enjoyed the game. She stretched out on the grass. The bright sun was making her pleasantly stupid. A big white cloud was puffing overhead, growing like a big loaf of bread in the sky. Her ar
m hurt in the nicest possible way. She bent it over her eyes, so it could bake awhile. All that she could see now was a small slice of blue. Periwinkle blue, like the crayon. Maggie had a recipe for periwinkle, but Irini tried when possible to avoid eating snails or bivalves. This was not so hard in Magrit.
“I blame myself,” Henry said, “for not moving faster on the ape. An ape would have made all the difference today.” His voice passed over her like water. A small ant walked among the iridescent hairs of her arm. The sun went suddenly out. Irini raised her arm.
Thomas Holcrow was standing by her head. Irini sat up. Holcrow was dressed more casually than usual, in a red sweater with a bomber jacket over it and his shoulders very prominent beneath. He was smoking a cigarette with a long, ashy tip. He gave Walter’s back a friendly tap. “Say, Walter. Excellent game,” he said.
He offered Walter a cigarette. “That third inning! That was a whizbanger. I thought you were going to pull it out there.” He inhaled and then blew. The smoke curled down into Irini’s own hair so that she could smell it. There was something intimate about it that she liked. Holcrow exhaled two gray streams out through his nose. It was 1947, just after a war in which cigarettes had been held to be so indispensable to morale that they were dispensed freely. Irini looked at that coiling nasal fog and thought it was sexy, thought it wrapped the occasion up movie-star style.
And then there was the jacket and the shoulders and her general sun-induced dreaminess. Once again she was ready to kiss someone. Once again there were no volunteers. “Perhaps I could give someone a ride home,” Holcrow said. “Arlys? Cindy? Irini?”
Walter sucked in air to light up. He coughed once and cleared his throat. “I want the whole team on the bus,” he said. “We have things to discuss while the game’s fresh in our minds.”
“I think Irini can go home however she likes.” Holcrow was considerably larger than Walter. He inhaled. It made him larger yet and the red tip of his cigarette brightened and yellowed in punctuation.
“She made some unfortunate fielding errors. They cost us.”