“Catchable ball? Ringer, it’s just a dorky game I made up in five minutes with a bunch of chess pieces and a quarter.”
Two more hits; he’s three runs up at the top of the first. I’ve always sucked at games of chance. Always hated them for that reason. Razor must sense my enthusiasm waning. He amps up the commentary while sliding the pieces around (despite my pointing out they’re my pieces, since I’m on defense). Another drive deep center-left. Another floater behind first base. Another impact of first baseman and outfielder. I don’t know if he’s repeating himself because he thinks it’s funny or because he has a serious deficit in imagination. There’s a part of me that feels as if I should be deeply affronted on behalf of chess players everywhere.
By the third inning, I’m exhausted.
“Let’s pick it up again tonight,” I suggest. “Or tomorrow. Tomorrow would be better.”
“What? You don’t like it?”
“No. It’s fun. I’m just tired. Really tired.”
He shrugs like it doesn’t matter, which it does, or he wouldn’t shrug. He slips the quarter back into his pocket and packs up the box, muttering under his breath. I catch the word chess.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.” Cutting his eyes away.
“Something about chess.”
“Chess, chess, chess. Chess on the brain. Sorry chaseball has nothing on chess in the sheer thrill category.”
He shoves the box under his arm and stomps to the door. One last parting shot before he goes: “I thought maybe I’d cheer you up a little, that’s all. Thanks. We don’t have to play anymore.”
“Are you angry at me?”
“I gave chess a chance, didn’t I? You didn’t see me bitching.”
“You didn’t. And you did. A lot.”
“Just think about it.”
“Think about what?”
He shouts across the room: “Just think about it!”
He slams out the door. I’m out of breath, shaky, and can’t figure out why.
61
I’M READY WITH an apology when the door opens that night. The more I think about it with my feverish mind, the more I feel like the bully at the beach who kicks over some little kid’s sand castle.
“Hey, Razor, I’m—”
My mouth drops open. There’s a stranger holding the tray, a kid around twelve or thirteen.
“Where’s Razor?” I ask. Well, more like demand.
“I don’t know,” the kid squeaks. “They handed me the tray and said take it.”
“Take it,” I echo stupidly.
“Yeah. Take it. Take the tray.”
They pulled Razor off Ringer duty. Maybe chaseball’s against regs. Maybe Vosch got ticked, two kids acting like kids for a couple of hours. Despair is addictive, for the one watching it and the one experiencing it.
Or maybe Razor’s the ticked party here. Maybe he asked to be reassigned, took his chaseball and went home.
I don’t sleep well that night, if you can call it night under the constant sterile glow. My fever shoots up to a hundred and three as my immune system launches its final, desperate assault on the arrays. I can see the blurry green numbers on the monitor inching upward. I slip into a semi-delirious doze.
Bitch! Leave me. You know why they call it baseball, don’t you? It’s a deep drive into center field! I’m done. Take care of yourself.
The grungy silver turning in Razor’s fingers. It’s a deep drive. A deep drive. Lowering toward the board in slow motion, where the fielders come up, second base and shortstop go back, left goes right. Blooper on the first-base line! Fielder races up, baseman back, boom. Fielders up, infield back, cut to the right. First baseman back, right fielder up, boom. Up, back, cut. Back, up. Boom.
Over and over, let’s go to the instant replay, up, back, cut. Back, up.
Boom.
Now I’m wide-awake, staring at the ceiling. No. Can’t see it as well. Better with my eyes closed.
Center and left slash down. Left cuts across:
H
Right steps up. First base runs back:
I
Oh, come on. Ridiculous. You’re delusional.
When I got back to our camp that night with the vodka, I found my dead father curled into a fetal position, his face covered in blood where he had clawed at the bugs born inside his mind. Bitch, he called me before I left to find the poison that would save him. He called me another name, too, the name of the woman who left us when I was three. He thought I was my mother, which was ironic. From the time I was fourteen, I was more like his mother, feeding him, washing his clothes, taking care of the house, making sure he didn’t do something catastrophically stupid to himself. And every day I went to school in my perfectly pressed uniform and they called me Her Majesty Marika and said I thought I was better than everybody else because my father was a semi-famous artist, the reclusive genius type, when the truth was that most days my father didn’t know what planet he was on. By the time I got home from school, he’d be full-on delusional. And I let people on the outside hold their delusions, too. I let them think I thought I was better, the way I let Sullivan think she was right about me. I didn’t just foster the delusions. I lived them. Even after the world crashed around us, I clung to them. But after he died, I told myself no more. No more brave fronts or false hopes or pretending everything’s okay when nothing is. I thought I was being tough by pretending, calling it being optimistic, brave, keeping my head up or whatever bullshit seemed to fit the moment. That’s not tough. That’s the very definition of soft. I was ashamed of his disease and angry at him, but I was just as guilty. I played right into the lies right up to the end: When he called me my mother’s name, I didn’t correct him.