Curveball : The Year I Lost My Grip (9780545393119) (14 page)

Ah, December. The month of peace and candlelight. The month when all the good little children are lying snug in their beds, with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. The month when your best friend drags you to an unheated, godforsaken warehouse three times a week to practice for baseball tryouts.

Or maybe that last one just happens to me.

AJ's mom works for a lumber-distribution company, and every year since fifth grade or so, AJ and I have started our pitching/catching workouts in January in an empty corner of their massive storage facility right outside of town. This year, though, AJ was determined to start earlier than ever. He was obsessed with being in “
sick
he-man condition” in
time for the indoor February junior varsity tryouts, and apparently, running me halfway to death was only the first part of the equation.

Thus, despite the constant warnings of my mother (“Do you
want
your arm to just fall off completely?”) and my now-on-again girlfriend (“Do you
want
AJ to just punch you in the face and never talk to you again when he finds out the truth?”), I went with AJ. I kept meaning to tell him what was going on. But the moment had to be right, and the longer I waited, the harder it got. Plus, he really did need a practice catcher, and I wasn't hurting my bad arm just by warming him up. This might sound like an excuse, but the more time went on, the more I wanted AJ to make the team.

I wasn't totally stupid: I told him I wasn't ready to throw yet, so we brought a bucket of balls, and I just rolled each one off to the side after I caught it. Still, I could hardly believe that there I was, crouched down in catching position behind the home plate that AJ's dad had spray-painted onto the concrete floor back when he was still around. I was trying to field fast
balls, breaking pitches, and my best friend's random thoughts all at once.

“Dude,” he said, one morning between Christmas and New Year's, “was that a strike? By the way, thanks for the gift idea for Elena. When I gave it to her, she said, ‘Is perfect!' How did you know she would get all happy about a book of love poems in Russian?”

“Angelika. She's like the Online Shopping Queen. She even got me this beastly Derek Jeter jersey for Hanukkah, when I never said anything to her about him.”

Thwack! The next pitch exploded into my mitt, which really stings when it's only fifty freaking degrees in the room. “Uh, I gave her that idea,” AJ said. “So, were the last
two
pitches strikes?”

“The first one was. The last one missed the corner.”

Thwack! “How 'bout that one? And by the way, how do you expect to be ready in a month and a half if you won't even lob the ball back to me yet? Plus, do you think I need to update my style?”

“Um, strike, mind your own business, and why?”

Thwack! “Elena said I dress like a peasant.”

“A peasant? She said that?”

Thwack! “Well, yeah, but I think she meant it in a gentle and loving way. She doesn't have the biggest vocabulary, but we manage to communicate.” Thwack! “What are you laughing about? We
do
communicate.”

“I bet. Anyway, you could probably use a little fashion upgrade.”

“Oh, because you're so spiffy in your closetful of oversize sportswear?” Thwack!

I couldn't help noticing AJ had put a little something extra on that last pitch. “Hey, this isn't about me. You
asked
me what I thought. Anyway, just ask her to take you to the mall. Girls love taking their boyfriends shopping. It's well-known.” Heh-heh. It felt amazingly great to say that to
him
, for a change.

Thwack! “Maybe I'll try that,” he said. “By the way, have you told your parents about your grandfather yet?”

See, it does totally suck when your significant other and your best pal are friends with each other, because then they can tag-team you. I shook out my throbbing hand, and said, “Can we try some off-speed stuff for a while? You, uh, don't want to burn yourself out too early.”

“Good point. Just let me throw five more fastballs, all right? Now, about that grandfather thing. You know your parents are totally going to notice eventually, right?”

Thwack! “Yeah, but —”

“And what if your grandfather hurts himself in the meantime?”

Thwack! “Well, I made him promise to call me if —”

“Dude. Listen to yourself. It's not your job to be responsible for him all day. You're not
his
grandfather; he's
yours
. Trust me, secrets suck. You'd feel so much better if you let this one go.”

Thwack!
Wow
, I thought.
When did AJ suddenly start sounding logical?
“I'm working on it, all right?”

Thwack! “Like you're working on your throwing arm?”

Thwack! Without warning, AJ put everything he had into his last fastball. I barely got my glove up in time, and my hand felt like it was turning into hamburger meat. “What the hell was that?”

“Nothing. I'm just working out.
Somebody
has to be in shape for the season!”

“Don't worry about me,” I said. “I'm doing what I have to do. Now, are we done for the day? My hand is killing.”

He whipped his glove into the ball bucket and stormed off to his mother's office, where his little brothers were frolicking all over the copy machine. “Well,” I muttered into the vast emptiness of the warehouse floor, “
that
went well.”

 

I spent the whole stupid month worrying: What if my grandfather did fall or something? How was I supposed to tell AJ I could never play again without making him mad at me forever? And was Angelika tipping AJ off about stuff? Between all of that and getting ready for first-semester finals, I felt like I was in some kind of nightmarish, inescapable tunnel of
stress. Plus, Angelika and I had to finalize the yearbook layouts for all of the fall sports, and get as much done as we could for the winter ones. On the bright side, that meant we could squeeze in some time together between my visits to my grandfather, the workouts with AJ (which kept going even though AJ was being mighty touchy for a guy with a brand-new girlfriend), and the studying we both had to do.

There's nothing more romantic than working side by side with your partner by the warm, toasty glow of the computer monitor, judging, cutting, and pasting photos of other girls in skimpy uniforms. I mean, yes, we had to lay out all of the guys' sports, too. But guys at least wear some freaking clothing for most of their activities. And there isn't so much spandex involved. I was dying. And Angelika knew it.

The fun never stopped. If it wasn't the volleyball team, it was the gymnasts. Or the cheerleaders. The dance team. The cross-country girls in their ultra-short shorts. And Angelika kept asking, “So, do you think she looks pretty in this shot? Or how about this other girl? You don't think she's too, um,
sweaty, do you?” I swear, the biggest relief of my life came when it was time to pick the shots for the golf team — thank God for nice, long khaki pants, I always say.

Naturally, Angelika gave me the hardest time over the swim team. It seemed like every third picture featured Linnie Vaughn, who was always smiling seductively, always dripping wet, and always wearing the smallest suits of any competitive swimmer in history. Angelika scrolled through everything we had with Linnie in it, and then stood up. She stuck out her hip in a supermodel pose and said, “Make me look beautiful! Darling, I am a star!” Then she strutted around the tiny office, repeating it. “Make me look beautiful! Make me look beautiful!” Then she bent down next to my ear and whispered, “Do
I
look that beautiful, Pete?”

“Not even close,” I said. “She's just Linnie Vaughn. You're the most beautiful girl in the world!”

Apparently, that was the right answer.

Nobody is around to take these pictures: They exist only in the mind of one young man, who sees them projected, over nights stretching into weeks, on the insides of his eyelids.

The first captures the loneliness of a snowy evening stretch of road. There are storefronts all along the far side of the street, shuttered now in advance of the dark and the snow that has already begun to fall in thick, side-blown sheets. Of course, a photo can't show the wind, but you know it is there in the bend of the scraggly roadside trees, the way the flakes seem to form slanted lines in the glow of the streetlight.

The next shows the same street, hours later. Now, the snow blankets everything, and falls in waves that are, if anything, drifting harder than before. You can see the patterns quite clearly as they are stabbed through by twin beams from the headlights of an unseen, approaching vehicle.

Frame three is all SUV. Blurred by snow, dark, and speed, the truck still shows up clearly enough that one
can see its direction. If the painted lines on the road weren't buried, the car would be sliding across them at a slight angle. A fan of snow kicks up from behind one rear tire; the driver must have gunned the gas in an attempt to whipsaw his vehicle back in line.

That never works.

In frame four, the SUV is jammed up against what one assumes must be the curb. The driver, bathed in the glow of unseen red and blue lights, sits with his legs halfway out the door, staring straight into the lens without recognition.

I was hanging out at my house with Angelika when the call came. It was the first week in February, right after exams ended. We were playing around on the couch, the snow was falling thickly outside, and Mom and Dad had both already called to say they were stuck in horrible snowstorm traffic on the highway. It was the kind of situation that's perfectly set up to make a guy ignore the phone.

In fact, a confession: I did ignore the phone, at first. Until the answering machine clicked in, and I heard Grampa saying, “Pick up the phone! I don't know who I am!”

Even in the panicky disentanglement of limbs that followed, I was already thinking:
Oh, God. He didn't say, “I don't know
where
I am”; he said, “I don't know
who
I am.”
I lunged for the phone, and amid the horrible squeals of feedback from talking with the handset too close to the machine, I said, “Don't hang up, Grampa! I'm here!”

The connection was terrible. It sounded like my grandfather was talking in some kind of distant, underground train tunnel. “Is Joan there?” he asked. Joan is the name of my dead grandmother.

“No, Grampa. She's, uh, well — she's not around. This is Peter.”

“Who?”

“Your grandson. Peter!”

“Are you a helping person, Peter?”
A helping person?
I thought.
What the heck is a helping person?
There really ought to be a manual for these situations, but there isn't. Anyway, I made the lightning decision to be a helping person, whatever that was.

“Yes, Grampa, I am your helping person. Where are you?”

“I don't know. They moved the shoe store.”

Holy cow. He was out in the storm. “Grampa, are you driving?”

“Yes. How else would I get to the shoe store?”

“Grampa, listen to me. Can you please pull over? Right now?”

“I can't. I need snowshoes. I couldn't find my snowshoes, so I … I don't know where I am. But I need the shoes.”

Angelika could tell from my side of the convo that this was not a happy call. She squeezed my arm, and whispered, “Can I do something?”

I couldn't think. My grampa was out there in the dark, driving. “Listen to me,” I said. “Just pull over, OK? I promise we'll get you some shoes tomorrow. All right?”

“Thank you. But I can't stop. I don't have any shoes. My feet are cold!”

Goose bumps rose all over my body. He was barefoot? Well, this was rapidly crossing over from “Grampa being Grampa,” through “Please don't tell Mom,” to “MAYDAY! MAYDAY!” I covered the phone with my free hand, and mouthed, “Call 9-1-1!” to Angelika. She dove for her purse and started fishing through it for her cell.

“All right,” I said. “If you won't pull over, can you at least tell me where you are?”

“I'm not sure,” he replied. “Everything looks so … different. But I might be near the interstate.”

My heart skipped again. “Grampa, whatever you do, DON'T get on the highway, OK?”

“No highway,” he said. “Got it. But why in the world would I get on the highway, young man? It's not like they sell shoes there.”

“That's an excellent point, Gramp,” I said.

Meanwhile, Angelika had dialed the police, and I heard her say, “We don't know where he is, but he's very confused. And he must be freezing. I don't think he has any shoes on.”

“Oh, wait,” Grampa said. “I just passed a sign.”

I squeezed the handset so hard I thought it might crumble in my hand. “What did it say, Gramp? This is really important.”

“It said STOP!” he whined. “But I'm not there yet.”

“Gramp, I know you want to get some shoes, but can you slow down? Maybe if you can figure out what road you're on, I can help you figure out where the, uh, nice, warm shoes are.”

Angelika whispered, “Can you find out where he is? Hurry! They want to send out a car!”

“Slow down? Really?” he said. “OK, if you say so. Ooh, look! That sign said ‘bank.' I wonder if
I
go to that bank.”

“I don't know. Can you tell me the name of the bank?”

“It's not one I've heard of, Pete. Pete, right? Anyway, it's … whoa, I skidded a little bit there. I think it's snowing. What were you saying?”

I could feel myself starting to cry. “The bank, Gramp. Tell me the name of the bank.”

“It doesn't make sense. It's in some foreign language or something. Un-eye-vest? Uni-vest, maybe? What kind of name is
that
for a bank, anyway?”

“Univest?” I asked shakily. I knew where he was! “Grampa, is there a store with a big red picture of a target on your left?”

He didn't respond.

“Grampa, are you still there?”

“I'm having trouble controlling this thing. But yes, there's a big red target. Is that a shoe store? Because my feet are really —”

I dropped the house phone, grabbed Angelika's cell phone, and talked into it as fast as I could. When I thought back on it later, I realized I'd probably been shouting by that point. “He's in Quakertown, on Route 309. By the Target. In a gray Chevy. Please hurry!”

Angelika took back her cell, and I picked up our phone off the floor. Grampa was still babbling about shoes. I cut him off. “Grampa, are you cold all over?”

“Yes.”

“Are you wearing a jacket?”

“I'm wearing a nice, warm robe. But it's snowing in here, and I can't close the window.”

Well, that explained all the background noise. “What do you mean, you can't close the window?” I asked.

“There's no crank on it. I can't —”

“Grampa, listen. You need to pull over. Then we can work on getting the window shut. I can even help you turn up the heat in the car. Wouldn't that be good?” I felt like I was talking to a little kid. What was I going to do next, offer him a Fruit Roll-Up?

“Really? Are you sure I should? I still don't have shoes or anything.”

“Trust me.”

“What?”

“TRUST ME!”

“I can't hear you! There's a big noise here!” I heard it over my grandfather's voice, and even over the wind whistling through the open car window: a siren.

“PULL OVER!” I screamed.

“I — am — PULLING — OVER!” he screamed back. I looked at Angelika, who had clearly heard that outburst. I nodded in relief. She smiled, reached out, and squeezed my shoulder. But then, as the siren got louder, I heard a strange whistling and whooshing that sounded like an engine racing way too fast, followed by a long, long squeal of brakes and a surprisingly soft crunch.

“Grampa!” I yelped. “Grampa? Are you there? Are you OK?”

The wind sounds had stopped, but the siren was still wailing away, so I knew the phone was still working. I waited for what felt like minutes and minutes,
with my heart pounding, my head resting on my hand, Angelika standing there not knowing what to do. Was my grandfather unconscious? Or, God forbid, dead? Was a police officer going to pick up the phone and ask me whether I was the next of kin? I heard some rustling, and realized my grandfather must have dropped the phone, then picked it up. “Hello?” he said. “Guess what? I think I pulled over!”

That was when I started to sob.