If You Knew Then What I Know Now Read online

  They keep thinking I must be good at something, we just haven’t found the right game. It seems unbelievable that a boy wouldn’t like sports. My problem with sports is you generally have to be outside to play them—especially baseball—and being outside is often too hot and also makes me sneeze. If I have to be outside, there are plenty of things I’d rather do that don’t involve chasing after balls. Like lying on blankets spread in the shade with a picnic packed for one, pretending to read Little Women. He interrupts me when I’m in the yard like this, tossing me my glove, asking if I want to throw the ball around. Sometimes I wonder why he tries so hard or why, at those moments, he always thinks we need to practice.

  We’re in the back yard, practicing. The sun is hanging in exactly the wrong place so it shines in my eyes. This is our regimen: throwing the ball back and forth, fielding the ball and hitting pitches—but first, we warm up. As agreed by yesterday’s handshake, I’m supposed to make certain I throw the ball hard and fast and also precisely, because even in the back yard, I should imagine I’m playing in a real game, and I’m throwing to get a hitter out. This is trying. I’m pretty good at it when I want to be. After what feels like ten thousand rounds, he says, “All right,” and starts throwing the ball straight up as if it’s a pop fly. I have to run around, search the sky and try to catch it. With the orange sun stuck in its spot though, I see the ball go up and then it’s burned out in the light, falling to the grass. I start to complain but he gives me a look—flat lips and frozen eyes—to remind me of the no-complaining clause. I miss another one and stand there for a few seconds, trying hard not to look like a kid who wants to run away from home.

  “Let’s try something else for a while!” I make my voice sound excited.

  He says okay and it’s time for grounders, which are worse than pop flies. For these, he throws the ball sharp and quick so it bounces toward me. I hate these because you never know when the ball is going to bump off the ground to punch you in the face. Every time it comes at me, I think about my dad’s dead thumb and can’t help but squeeze my eyes shut and blindly stretch out my glove, hoping the ball decides to bounce in.

  “Don’t be a pansy,” he says. “You look like you’re afraid of the ball.”

  I am afraid of the ball.

  In our routine, practice ends with hitting. If my mom’s not busy, she squats behind our home plate to be catcher. This was her position when she was younger, so she actually has the metal mask and the special fat glove. Her old last name is still written across her glove in tall black letters, even though now she has the same name as everybody else in the house. If she’s busy, he just throws the ball over the plate, and if I miss, I have to get it myself and throw it back.

  This first practice after the agreement, she’s busy. I miss four in a row and then he throws another, I swing, miss again, and drop my bat. I stomp around in the grass by the fence. The ball keeps rolling underneath it. I get down on my belly, squeeze my arm under the fence, but the ball’s not close enough. So I get back up, crouch on my knees, and sigh. “Hustle,” he says. I’m up, running to the gate next to the house, running back down on the other side of the fence, then grabbing the ball, throwing it to him, running back through the gate, making sure it’s latched, and hurrying to the plate and my bat and getting ready to swing. The sun rolls down the sky to stare from right behind my dad’s head; he glows as he winds up and throws. The ball blurs past.

  In our house, besides my parents and the little brother who’s always barging into my room, there’s a dog we call Victor, a name that makes me think of an old man. He is brown and white and his face actually looks like an old man’s with distant eyes, whiskers and snaggleteeth. Before my dad got married to my mom and before we—my brother and me—came around, he lived alone with Victor. Now Victor has to stay in the basement most of the time because he doesn’t enjoy the way Garrett and I play with him—dressing him up in our mother’s old nightgowns, whipping his tail for him side to side. He growls and shows us his teeth until we back away.

  The only one of us the dog likes is my dad. They play fetch in the yard sometimes. He needs a little coaxing to return the ball, but will keep chasing after it for hours. When my dad and the dog are playing in the yard like that, or if my dad is working out there, pushing his wheelbarrow around or cutting into the ground with his spade, and Vic is out there too, nosing the grass, I think about what our house was like before Garrett and I were born. I’ve seen the pictures of my parents’ wedding, with their smooth, white faces and weird hairdos. Like the terrible thumb story and others they could tell, I want to know about their young lives. How did they know they wanted to be a mom and dad and how did we all come to live in this house—them, my brother, the dog, me?

  One thing I do know about my dad is he’s a pretty serious guy. Also, he loves silence. When the Cardinals are playing, he listens intently to the games, reminding us to be quiet if we walk by singing songs. Besides baseball, and taking me to the library any time I ask—even on consecutive days when I read too fast—my dad and I don’t do much together because, other than books, we don’t like the same things. He doesn’t listen to records and dance in the basement or make potholders or watch Mama’s Family. I don’t like to mow or push around the wheelbarrow. And I know he’s trying desperately to find something for us to share, which is why he tries to get me to play sports. My dad believes in practice, the idea that if you work at something you’re not necessarily very good at, if you keep throwing balls and catching them, you will get better. I will enjoy the game as much as he does, I just have to try.

  We’re in the backyard, practicing. It’s a hot afternoon, he’s just returned home from school. I have spent the whole day inside, watching soap operas with my mom and rearranging the stuffed animals on my bookshelves. The heat is miserable, made worse because he’s making me wear my bright white uniform pants, even though they are really only for games. Victor is out here with us, snout in the grass, but he must be somewhere on the other side of our yard, because I can’t see him.

  “Are we almost done?” I ask. Sweatdrops creep down my neck and under my shirt collar like red ants.

  This is what he’s talking about when he says I’m supposed to be “good” about practicing. We’re working on grounders. One ball after another has skimmed my hesitant glove and hammered past me. I miss yet another one and sigh, letting my head hang back, my mouth flung open because I’ve had it. My arms are lifted, stay there one second, then fall down, hands hitting my sides.

  “Come on,” he says.

  Before I can help it: “I’m sick of this.”

  “Ryan,” he warns, “we had a deal.”

  “I don’t even want a TV anymore,” I say, toeing the ball in the grass.

  “You say that now. Just try.”

  “I do. I hate baseball.”

  The ball is still on the ground, in front of my feet. Facing me, he plants his hands on his hips, and we stare at each other like cowboys in a duel. He’s wearing his old coaching shorts, the ones that used to be white, but now are gray. All over them are tiny specks and smears of color from all the things he’s painted. The maroon dots are from the stairwell to the basement. Brown is the color of our house. Green is for the bridge we made together to stretch over the creek out back; we sunk the boards from one mud bank to the other, not knowing about the big storm that would wash it out that night. Not a single green-painted board was left the next morning. He’s also wearing his old sneakers. They are so big I can stand in them and walk if I clench my toes and scoot the shoes along the ground without lifting my feet up; one day, he says, my feet will fill them, but at the moment that idea seems as impossible as multiplication tables.

  “Come on,” he says. “Pick up the ball.”

  “Why do we have to practice here if I have to still go to practice too?” The team has been practicing a few weeks now. Our first game is tomorrow. The ball just sits there, grass sticking up all around it. It could be a plastic Easter egg full o
f candy just waiting for me to find it.

  “Ryan,” he says, “I don’t want to hear it. Pick up the ball.” If I know what’s good for me, I’ll stop testing him.

  I’ve been working on this trick. My coach’s son—our team’s pitcher—does this at practice. I lean down just a little and scoop with my straight arm and try to grab the ball with the glove quickly without bending all the way over. If my glove stays open in a cupped shape, I can get underneath it and just fling it to him in one swift motion. It’s a new trick though and instead of the ball flying straight to him, it just rolls across the grass, about ten steps away from his sneakers and all the way over to the right. I stand still to see what will happen next.

  He stomps forward, picks up the ball and turns. It shoots out across our yard, high up like he hit a home run even though he only threw it. It flies up and then drops into the wooded part of our yard, the part with the creek where the bridge is supposed to be and the sewer drainpipe with its weird smell. “Go get it,” he says, pointing, and then he walks to the house.

  Suddenly everything is easier. Practice is over. I might be in trouble, but somehow I don’t care. Once I find the ball, I can go back in, out of this heat. I trudge down the slope of the yard where the grass ends and the ground becomes covered in packed-down leaves and mud. Tall, skinny trees rise up and shelter the whole area so it’s quiet, except for the sound of my shoes. Victor digs at something in the dirt, and he looks up at me coming down into what he considers his territory. “Hi,” I say, and wave so he knows I’m not a stranger he needs to devour. I’m just one of the kids who ruined everything, who came along and made him have to live in the basement and now I’ve even disrupted his silent investigation of a leaf pile. My ball is shoved in the crook of two tree roots. I dig it out and leave Victor to his sniffing.

  I hike back to the house, heading for the garage. Crowds cheer from our driveway, so there must be a Cardinals game tonight. My dad likes sitting outside on nights when a game is on. He’s in his lawn chair, the same one he brings to my games so he can sit by himself in right field, near me, because I’m the right fielder. The radio blares on the concrete, an orange extension cord snaked out of our open garage. He’s facing the street, waving a hand to neighbors who walk by. The radio announcer tells us what the pitcher is doing, how many strikes he throws, and how many balls. The voice is so loud my dad can’t hear me walk behind him to put the ball with the rest of my baseball stuff. He’s drinking iced tea; there’s a dark wet ring on the cement next to his chair where he’s fitting the bottom of his glass in the same spot every time. Silently, I lay the ball down into the bowl of my glove, folding the leather over it, closing it up inside like a secret. He still can’t hear me as I stand behind him watching him listen. The Cardinals are losing and one of them is batting with two strikes, but then he hits it and the announcer is excited, telling us that the ball flies over the head of the shortstop to a hole in the outfield. The batter makes it to second, it’s a double, there’s a chance now to even the score. My dad sits up in his chair, his hands tensed, bunched into fists.

  I know I should walk up to him. I know I should sit beside him on the cement and listen to his game. I should try harder when he practices with me, and I should not give up so easily. I almost want to tap his shoulder and tell him I’m sorry, but he doesn’t like to be bothered when a game is on, so I tiptoe off, out of the garage, as the crowd chants their hero’s name.

  As much as I hate playing baseball, especially with the other kids all bigger and better than me, the season passes quickly. I daydream through most of the games anyway. When the other team is at bat, I stand in right field, far off from most of the drama. My dad sits out there too in his lawn chair, the only spectator not sitting with the clapping parents behind home plate. He sits close by so he can remind me that the ball is coming. While the other kids lean in and taunt the batter, I find animals and funny faces in the clouds and examine the clover under my feet looking for one with four magic leaves. When our team is up, we sit on the bench in batting order. My spot is all the way down, third from last.

  Between games, my dad and I still practice at home even though the team practices at the park a couple of times a week. The skill I’ve developed most during these sessions with Dad is the ability to daydream during practice as well. I haven’t gotten any better at playing baseball, but the routine is so reliable that I can think and think and think about more interesting things and still catch and throw balls.

  One afternoon near the end of the season, with only four games left on our schedule, Dad and I are throwing the ball around in the front yard near the curb and I miss one; it rolls into the street and falls in the sewer. He’s a little mad because we don’t have that many balls, and that was a new one. I’m a little excited because now we can’t practice. He stands over the mouth of the sewer, hands on his hips again, gazing into the opening like he’ll actually see the ball in there even though it’s too dark. I’ve got my glove off and I’m skipping to the house, nearly dancing I’m so happy. “Grab the flashlight,” he says, and marches across the grass to the back yard.

  Anything that goes down the sewer in the front of our house comes out of the big drainpipe over the creek behind our house. When it’s raining, water gushes out like a spigot twisted all the way open. When I get down there with the flashlight, he’s standing at the bottom of the hill, balancing his big body on some flat rocks. He’s tall enough to peer into the opening of the pipe. I hand him the flashlight and start to run up the hill, but he calls my name.

  “Eight feet at the most,” he says. Pointing the beam of the flashlight into the pipe, he sees the ball about six feet in. I slide down and stand beside him, not tall enough to see inside the pipe or see the ball, or see through the shimmering webs full of annoyed spiders squinting out at him. He wants me to crawl in there.

  Because he suggests it like it’s no big deal, I have to act that way too, and just do it, without being a pansy or making yuck sounds. This is also trying—trying to help out, to be a good sport, to be a man about this. I climb up on him and he hoists me, his hands around my middle, lifting and pushing me headfirst into the pipe. It’s dark and cool inside, and there’s a small puddle of water trapped between each of the corrugated metal humps, and even though it’s a little wider than my shoulders, I still have to scrunch myself up to move through. The smell inside is something like mud and something like spoiled milk, so I’m breathing only through my mouth and pushing myself forward with the rubber toe edge of my sneakers, my knees bumping along the metal. His face is behind me, looking in and shining the flashlight. “See it?” he asks. His voice sounds tiny and far away. The ball is right in front of me with dark stuff smeared on it. My reaching arm moves through a net of spider webs and feels like I’m pulling on an invisible sleeve. I stretch out and my fingers slide off the slick side of the ball. Then I push myself in one more inch so I’ve got it, my palm pressing down on the ball’s smooth skin and neat stitches like I’ll never let it go. It’s so black I can’t see anything except the ball squeezed in my hand. But as much as it stinks and it’s cold on my belly where my T-shirt is soaked and I want to slap the spiders dropping down their strings above my white legs, as much as I want to be a pansy, inside this drainpipe it’s also somehow safe. I’ve found the place where I have control of the ball, where it can’t humiliate me, where I am finally better at something than he is. No catching and throwing and no grounders. He knows I hate crawling around like this, but I know if I lie quietly enough and pretend I’m doing something brave, maybe we won’t have to play this game anymore.

  “You got it yet? You see it?” My dad’s yellow light wiggles over me. My arm is curled back; I cover the ball with my body.

  “Almost,” I tell him.

  The last game of the season. I’ve somehow persevered and made it to the end. And even if our team wins today’s game, we still can’t make the play-offs. “So then why do we have to play?” I asked my dad, and he told me to p
ut my bat and glove in the car. In the last inning, I’m the second batter—the last time I’ll ever bat in a game. I know if this were a library book or a movie, if someone was telling this as a story, this would be the swing when I hit a home run, tie the score and take us into extra innings, my teammates leaping from the bench and my dad feeling huge and proud.

  It’s not a library book though. It’s me, so I’m standing at home plate and the count is one ball and two strikes. The pitcher is this tall kid with such a suntanned face, he looks dirty. The catcher behind me has sweaty arms, little balls of water spread all over his skin. Dust rolls in waves across the field like my mom snapping clean sheets across my bed. The foam cushions inside the batting helmet are soaked, the cold sponges pressing on my ears.

  The pitcher stands still, then explodes into movement, leg bending up and arm going over like he’s just come apart. His hand opens and the ball comes out and my eyes try to follow it, but it’s spinning so fast the red stitches are blurred. It flies and comes at me as I’m thinking about practice with my dad, how I have to hit this or go fetch it on the other side of our back yard fence. The ball drops in the air, falling and still flying, dropping and shooting above the ground by my front foot. It can’t be a strike, it’s too low, but it’s fast and I don’t know how close it is and I can’t move quickly enough to get out of its way. The ball smacks me right against the round knob of my ankle joint, pushing my feet out from under me. I fall, my hands in the dust, the ball rolling, my aluminum bat thumping down—the handle knocking home plate with a metal pinging that vibrates in the stiff air.