The Art of Fielding

Genevieve beamed, ran a hand breezily over her scalp. “Tell my producer. I thought he was going to fire me. But I’m black and I’ve been there forever.”

  “Indeed,” Affenlight said.

  Owen’s good eye popped open. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “Outside. Listen.”

  Affenlight leaned forward. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Probably the wind,” Genevieve said, but then it came again, a patter that rattled the windowpane, like a handful of tossed pebbles. Affenlight went to the window and peered down into the dark quad. Unable to make out whoever or whatever was below, he pushed open the hinged windows and, half a moment later, staggered backward, spilling champagne as his hand shot up to clutch his jaw. A round object, more rock than pebble, dropped to the study’s floor. “Who’s there?” he yelled.

  “Hi, President Affenlight. It’s Mike Schwartz. I was, uh, aiming for the weather vane.”

  Affenlight rubbed his jaw. “You missed.”

  The gray form three stories below—he was standing in what, tomorrow morning, would be the shadow of the Melville statue—lifted his arms in a cruciform gesture of apology. “I guess I’m a little tired. We played two games today.”

  “Both wins, I hope.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well done. You gentlemen are doing us proud this year.” As Affenlight stepped back from the window, he tested the small lump that was forming at his jawline. “Good night, Michael.”

  “Uh, President Affenlight?”

  “What is it?”

  “I was wondering whether I could speak to Pella.”

  Affenlight looked at Pella, who nodded her assent. Aha, thought Affenlight. “Should I lower her down in a bucket,” he said to the window, “or would you prefer to come upstairs?”

  “I’d be happy to come up, sir.”

  “Make it snappy,” Affenlight growled, his tone a kind of half-serious homage to the surliness of fathers toward their daughters’ suitors. “The champagne’s getting warm.”

  MIKE SCHWARTZ ENTERED THE ROOM muttering apologies, wearing a penitent frown between his beard and his baseball cap. He stopped short when he saw Owen. “Buddha. You’re out of the hospital.”

  “I am,” Owen agreed. “Mike, this is my mother. Genevieve, this is Mike Schwartz, the moral conscience of Westish.”

  Genevieve rose from the couch to shake Mike’s hand, legs flashing below her navy skirt. “Now I just need to meet the famous Henry,” she declared. “And my trip will be complete.”

  Affenlight, who’d gone to the kitchen, returned with tumblers and bottles on a tray. “Invite Henry over,” he said. “I thought we might try some scotch, in honor of Owen’s news.”

  “Yes, call him!” Genevieve said. “I’ve been talking to Henry on the phone for years, he’s practically my second son, and yet I’ve never met him. It’s really atrocious.”

  Mike shook his head. “He’s probably asleep already. The Skrimmer had a rough day.”

  Owen asked what happened, and Mike delved into the story at greater length than Pella cared to follow—a bad throw, another bad throw, and so on.

  “Poor Henry,” Genevieve said. “Sounds like he could use a drink.”

  It was good scotch, meant for sipping, but Pella poured herself an extra belt and burrowed down into the couch. Mike, Owen, Genevieve—it seemed like everyone she met wanted to talk about Henry. On her way out of the dining hall she’d seen a copy of the weekend Westish Bugler lying on an unbussed table. “Henry Goes for 52,” read the block-lettered headline, and beneath it ran a half-page photo of a guy on a field, throwing a ball. His hat was pulled down to his eyes and he looked like any guy on any field, throwing any ball.

  When a lull came in the conversation, she touched Mike’s elbow and flashed her comeliest come-hither look. Although technically it was more of a let’s-go-thither look. He had certainly earned some romance points by tossing pebbles at her window, even if the toss turned out to be an athlete’s forceful throw, the pebble a rock, the window her dad’s face. He’d tried, in his courtly but awkward, bearlike way—he’d been thinking about her. And he had those eyes, those lovely amber eyes…

  Those eyes met hers with a total lack of comprehension. “What?” he said, halting the conversation and turning everyone’s heads toward them.

  “Maybe we should get going.”

  Mike looked at her dumbly. “Why?”

  “You know… we were going to watch that movie? That movie you wanted to watch?”

  “Are you serious?” he said. “And pass up a chance to sample the presidential scotch collection? I’ve been waiting years for this.”

  “Oh, please stay!” Genevieve chimed in. “I’m leaving in the morning.”

  That settled it. Affenlight, pleased by Mike’s mention of his scotch collection, brought out three more bottles. They tested each in turn, murmuring, Ooh, peaty… ahh, smoky! as they made small noises of pleasure. They toasted Genevieve’s visit, Pella’s arrival, Owen’s Trowell, Henry in his absence. Mike, looking happier than Pella had yet seen him, roamed the room, browsing the endless shelves, until he found The Book itself—the oversize, hand-set, Arion Press Moby-Dick that her dad had bought for a thousand dollars in 1985 and was now worth thirty times more, not that you could assign a value to such a dear and beautiful thing… Soon Mike and Owen and Genevieve were gathered around, admiring The Book, listening raptly as Affenlight launched into the tale of Melville’s trip to the Midwest, his own discovery of the misplaced and tattered lecture, and the subsequent story of how the Melville statue and the name Harpooners came to be.

  Pella stayed put on the couch. She had a complicated attitude toward her dad’s performances. Deep down she loved to listen to him and thought he should have been a truly famous man—president of Harvard, at least, or a small but influential post-Soviet country. But the way he cranked up the charm at certain moments and then basked in the adulation of his audience annoyed her. She knew this was precisely a professor’s job—to build a repertoire of lectures, refine them over time, and perform them as charismatically as possible. To never seem sick of your own voice, for the sake of others. And yet. You could take the same class only so many times.

  When the lecture ended Mike wrapped a big paw around Pella’s hand, smiled at her gently. Her annoyance faded as she glimpsed Westish College through his eyes. To her it was a run-down, too-rustic safety school to which her father had banished himself; to Mike it was everything, his home and family, the place into which he’d poured every bit of himself, and which, as soon as the semester ended, planned to boot him out forever. He’d been trying to find a new home, a law school that would take him in, but it hadn’t panned out. If home was where your heart was, then Westish was Mike’s home. If home was where they had to take you in no matter what, then it was hers. She squeezed his hand.

  AFTER ONE MORE SCOTCH, the evening passed its fulcrum. Mike fell asleep in his chair, his bowling-ball shoulders heaving politely, one bearded cheek squashed against an open palm. Affenlight caught Pella gazing at his sleeping form. She’d never gone for jocks—they were too straitlaced, too prone to follow orders—but Affenlight sensed that this one stood a pretty good chance. David had left three messages on Affenlight’s cell in the past two hours.

  Genevieve’s shoulder was pressed against his own, but her attention had been diverted to Pella; the two of them were looking at Schwartz and whispering girlishly. Affenlight excused himself to carry glasses to the kitchen. He picked up a dishtowel and brushed some crumbs off the countertop. He flipped on the light above the sink. He flipped it off again. He was loitering, and he didn’t know why, or at least could pretend he didn’t know why, until Owen walked into the room and leaned against the crumbless counter.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Please.”

  “Genevieve seems rather smitten with you.”

  Affenlight feigned a smile. “As an erstwhile English professor, I should pro
bably point out that that isn’t a question.”

  “I’ll be more direct. You’re not intending to sleep with my mother, are you?”

  Through the archway, not five yards away from where Affenlight was standing, Genevieve’s slim dark legs projected from the couch, her top foot bobbing gently as she dangled her sandal between two toes. “No,” Affenlight said. “I’m not.”

  “Good.”

  Owen looked at Affenlight intently, and Affenlight felt—well, Affenlight felt like an idiot. What would happen next? He slung his dishtowel over his shoulder, he pulled it down and wound it around his hand like a boxer’s wrap. Not since the night he found out that Pella’s mother had died, his daughter’s visit suddenly transformed from a novelty, a running departmental joke, into a permanent way of life, had Affenlight felt so overwhelmingly helpless.

  “You’re leaving,” he said, meaning not for the evening but for Japan. “Soon.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll miss you.”

  Owen smiled. “Who’s we?”

  Affenlight didn’t answer. He was a little taller than Owen, but the way they leaned against the counter made their eyes exactly level.

  “You might have to endure me awhile longer,” Owen said. “Dr. Sobel asked me to teach playwriting to the summer-school kids.”

  Three extra months—it wasn’t the forever Affenlight longed for, but it was something. He nodded, showing part but not all of his relief at this. “Beautiful summers here.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Fishing. Some very good fishing.”

  Owen smiled. “Sounds barbaric.”

  “We could go sometime,” Affenlight ventured. “On a Saturday morning.”

  Owen smiled again. “As long as we don’t kill any fish.” His socked toes brushed against Affenlight’s cordovan loafer. “Or any worms, of course.”

  The moonlight made a little patch on the battered linoleum, which Affenlight had always meant to replace and which now seemed awfully embarrassing. What would happen next? Owen leaned toward him, one eyebrow lifted in an expression of benign irony, his eyes near blind like a prophet’s. Closer and closer still, taking care to avert the sore, swollen side of his face. The moon slipped behind clouds, and the pall over the linoleum became uniform. Affenlight’s heart galloped and seized. The phone in his pocket buzzed again. The kiss landed tenderly, toward the corner of his mouth.

  28

  Sunday morning, quietest time of the Westish week. The dining hall didn’t serve breakfast. The chapel held no early service. The VAC didn’t open until eleven, the library until noon.

  Spring was coming for real, and the chirps of robins and sparrows curled toward the upper reaches of the football stadium. From high above came the nasal honks of gulls. One word kept bobbing to the surface of Henry’s mind. He spat it out on the broad stone steps. It came back again, insidious, bright as a neon sign. Motherfucker. He spat it out and back it came. When he hit the top he knuckle-popped the sign, number 17, dodged along the stone bowl’s rim to the next row of steps, triple-timed it down. The south end goalpost’s paint looked dull and chipped. Goalposts need paint, motherfucker.

  He was running as hard as he could, vest cinched tight, sprinting to the top and chop-stepping down, saving nothing. He thought of engines running hot, burning the oil spilled on their blocks. When his vision blurred and sweat stung his eyes, he thought of the salt as wrongness, impurity, error—spill it onto the concrete and watch it evaporate. Offer it up, motherfucker.

  He wanted to chase down the holy vacancy that marked his best workouts, to sense his body as a hollow drum. Wanted to let the cool gray-blue of the lake and the green-brown-gray of the campus enter and open his lungs. But he was too agitated, too pissed off. He finished the stadium, his second, and started back the other way. Stair-pounding pain shot up through his anklebones to his shins. He quickened his pace.

  He finished his third stadium with a halfhearted war whoop and turned to survey what he’d done. He hadn’t quieted his mind, but at least he’d reduced his legs to quivering, twitching, thoughtless things. The sun lifted high above the lake. A pair of circling birds swooped toward unseen prey and, finding nothing, braked their heels against the water. The dew lay heavy on the football field’s scattered patches of living grass, green welts amid the rutted mud. There against the far goalpost leaned Schwartz, sipping coffee from one of two steaming paper cups he held. He wore WAD sweatpants, shower thongs, a flannel workshirt whose untucked tail flapped in the wind. Henry collected his scattered clothing and hopped the short stone wall that separated the stands from the field.

  “You’re crazy, you know that?” Schwartz held out a paper cup. “It’s supposed to be your day off.”

  Henry’s nostrils sucked in the wonderful chemical sweetness of powdered hot cocoa, but he couldn’t catch his breath well enough to take a sip. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Me either.”

  They walked across the practice fields toward the VAC, the sun warm against their necks, Schwartz’s flip-flops slurping noisily through the mud. From the VAC they collected their gloves, a bat, a bucket of balls, and a broomstick. They headed out to the baseball diamond.

  First base was held in place by a metal post that fit into a long, square-edged hole in the ground; Henry pulled out the base, tossed it aside, and wedged the broomstick into the hole. It tilted a few degrees off the vertical. He slapped it with his hand to check its steadiness, drained the sweet dregs of his cocoa, and jogged out to shortstop.

  “How’s the wing?” Schwartz yelled. The wind was whipping off the water; it was hard to hear.

  Henry worked his shoulder in its socket, gave Schwartz a thumbs-up.

  “Take it easy,” Schwartz called. “Last thing we need is a dead wing.”

  “What?”

  “Easy!”

  Schwartz held up a ball. Henry nodded, dropped into his crouch. The first ball shot up high on his backhand side, snapped sharply into his glove. After a long night of thinking, it felt good to be out here doing. He planted his back foot, brought the broomstick into his sights, whipped his arm. The ball cut through the crosswind and struck the broomstick solidly.

  There were fifty balls in the bucket. Seventeen hit the broomstick. The others described a tight arc around it, like the knives of a circus performer around the assistant’s sequined body. “Feeling better?” Schwartz asked as they gathered their stuff and headed for the dining hall.

  “Not bad.” Henry nodded. “Not bad at all.”

  TUESDAY, MUSKINGUM. The sky was a madhouse of riotous cross-blown clouds, the low ones wispy and torn-cotton white, the high ones gray with sullen underbellies shading to ominous black. Nobody in the stands but scouts and dutiful girlfriends. The Muskingum players wore long-sleeved shirts beneath their powder-blue jerseys. The Harpooners’ arms were bare. Schwartz insisted on it: a psychological advantage could be gained by pretending to be impervious to the weather. By pretending to be impervious, you became so.

  Henry checked his teammates to make sure they were shaded correctly, waved Ajay a step to the left. “Sal Sal Sal,” he chanted. “Salvador Dalí Dolly Parton Pardon my French.” Infield chatter wasn’t exactly cool at the college level, but Henry couldn’t help himself. He pounded his fist into the tender pit of his glove. “Dot your is, cross your ts, spread a little cheese. Spread a little Muenster, spread a little Swiss.”

  Sal cranked into his awkward staccato windup. Henry dropped into his shallow crouch. Hit it to me, he prayed. Hit it to me. Redemption time. The pitch was a forkball right where Schwartzy wanted it, low and outside. Henry broke from his crouch even before bat met ball with a tinny reverberant ding. At the last second the ball skidded off a lump tucked in the grass. He shifted his glove and fielded it cleanly—no such thing as a bad hop if you were prepared.

  He clapped his right hand over the captive ball, spun it to find the seams. He cocked his arm, locked his eyes on Rick’s glove. His arm was moving forward, there wasn’
t time to think, but he was thinking anyway, trying to decide whether to speed up his arm or slow it down. He could feel himself calibrating and recalibrating, adjusting and readjusting his aim, like an army sniper hopped up on foreign drugs.

  As soon as the ball left his hand he knew he’d messed up. Rick O’Shea tried to scoop it out of the dirt, but it hit the heel of his glove and skittered away. Henry turned his back to the infield, looked up at the roiling clouds, mouthed his new favorite word: Motherfucker.

  Schwartzy called time and trudged out to the mound, beckoned to Henry. “You okay?” he asked, his catcher’s mask tipped back on his head, eye black already smearing down into his beard.

  “Fine,” Henry said curtly.

  “You sure? Wing’s not sore or—”

  “Wing’s fine. I’m fine. Let’s just play, okay?”

  “Okay,” Schwartz said. “Nobody out. Let’s get ’em.”

  Now Henry had another error to atone for. Hit it to me, he thought fiercely. Hit me the ball. “Sal-Sal-Salamander,” he chanted, pounding his glove in disgust. “Drop that forkbomb. Let me and Ajay turn a little two-step.”

  Sal threw another forkball, a good one. The batter cracked a sharp shot to Henry’s left. He snagged it and twisted toward Ajay, who was breaking toward the second-base bag. The distance called for a casual sidearm fling—he’d done it ten thousand times. But now he paused, double-clutched. He’d thrown the last one too soft, better put a little mustard on it—no, no, not too hard, too hard would be bad too. He clutched again. Now the runner was closing in, and Henry had no choice but to throw it hard, really hard, too hard for Ajay to handle from thirty feet away; it handcuffed him, glanced off the heel of his glove and into short right field.

  After the inning Henry sought out Ajay to apologize.

  “Forget it.” Ajay smiled. “How many times have I done that to you?”

  Rick O’Shea clapped Henry on both shoulders. “Don’t sweat it, Skrim. Happens to the worst of us.”

  “Bats bats bats!” somebody yelled, drumming on the wooden rear wall of the dugout.