Any Minute (5 page)

Joe would look back at this months later, at his halfhearted attempt to watch the game while he lost hope in Sarah, as the moment he might have realized their lives were falling apart and he was helpless to do something about it. But he felt no strong hint of that now, only a vague relief that something up in the sky had come along to distract Mitchell from the absence of his mother.

“Look at that guy! There’s a man way up there, Dad.”

Joe shaded his eyes and peered into a setting sun so fierce that it made his head hurt. The glare blinded him.

Chicagoans reveled in the lore of their ancient green score-board, how it had never been hit by a batted ball (although Bill “Swish” Nicholson and Roberto Clemente came close a half-century ago), how it stood where Babe Ruth had once called his ’32 Series bleacher shot and slammed his longest homer ever, how every other team had succumbed to
progress
while the Cubs clung to tradition: their time-honored board with a man hiding inside, climbing from spot to spot on a labyrinth of catwalks and steps, posting numbers by hand.

“The scoreboard guy. He’s up there, Dad. See him? Right there.”

“Where?”

“There. Looking out through the hole in the eighth inning.”

Joe hated to admit it, but he’d never really given these scoreboard stories much thought; he’d never really seriously considered he would see the guy. He took for granted that the score would go up correctly and instantaneously, the way it went up on the computerized displays at every other stadium he’d ever visited. Flags snapped overhead. Ropes clanged against the pole in the breeze. Joe squinted, trying to see.

“He’s right there, Dad. See?”

“No,” Joe said. “I don’t.”

At that exact moment, uncanny how it all worked, really, one of the flags curled aloft, caught by an updraft off the lake. It streamed across the sunset, briefly casting Joe’s face in shadow. For one instant, Joe caught a view of the board.

“Mitchell, there’s nothing there.”

“There is. Right there.”

“Better let me have a look through your glasses then. Maybe I need them.”

Mitchell handed them to Joe, and Joe peered at a distance through the lenses.

“Nope. Nothing.”

Mitchell’s shoulders sagged with disappointment. And by the way he described the fellow, how he sat high overhead with his forearms crossed and his head inclined toward them, how his small amount of gray hair kept blowing across his scalp, Joe had to be impressed by the boy’s imagination. He was being confronted with so much disappointment right now about his own life that he found himself feeling slightly jealous of Mitchell’s childlike imagination.
Right now I would like to escape reality
, Joe thought.

“You think he lives up there?” Mitchell asked.

“Who?”

“That guy up there.” Then, “Oops, he knows I caught him,” he told his dad. “He went back inside.”

Joe figured it out; he’d heard how kids used imaginary characters to deal with stress. Mitchell must have invented this crazy game because of his mother’s absence. “I don’t know, son.” Best at this point to play along. “Of course he doesn’t live up there. He only sits up there during the games and keeps track of the teams and watches. He keeps score.”

“He keeps track of
all
the teams?”

“Yeah.”

“So if I see him and you don’t, maybe he’s like an angel. Maybe he’s helping God,” Mitchell said. “Because he sits up high and keeps track of everything. Maybe that’s why I’m the only one who can see him.”

“Yeah.” Joe had gotten somewhat distracted, looking for his wife in the crowd again. But he realized what he’d said and corrected himself. “No. Definitely
not
like an angel. Nothing to do with God. Because this is only a baseball game.”

“You think he can see clear to the lake from up there?”

“Who?”

“That man up there. Does a guy stay in the scoreboard at every ballpark or just here? Does he make the clock run up there too?” (Which Joe might have answered, “No, Mitchell. The clock runs on its own. Each second takes care of itself. He doesn’t do that part.” But this barrage of questions overwhelmed him, and he didn’t know where to start.)

“Does anybody ever see how he gets up there, Dad? Does he have a ladder? Does he have a trap door or something?”

“You want to stop asking so many questions?” Joe removed Mitchell’s hat and punched it inside out to make it a rally cap; it seemed the Cubs always needed rally caps. “You’re giving me a headache.”

Scores were being posted for every team playing that day. On the scoreboard, Joe noticed that the sign for the Marlins came in two pieces, Flori and da.
Somebody ought to make you take a class when you get to be a parent.
He had no idea what he ought to say. “And it isn’t heaven where he’s sitting, Mitchell. It’s just the scoreboard at Wrigley Field.”

A passing vendor came by, clanging his cooler lid. “Water. There’s
water
here!” which started people passing dollar bills along the row. The bottles dripped cold on Joe’s knees as he passed them back. “You want water?” he asked Mitchell, but his son shook his head, looking unusually serious.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

As soon as Joe settled into what was left of the game (he’d given up watching for Sarah any longer), Mitchell took off the paw. Joe looked down, surprised, when Mitchell grasped his hand.

“What is it, buddy? What’s wrong?”

“If that guy’s up there helping God,” the little boy said, “maybe he could help Mom show up for things too.”

Mitchell’s words sent up an instant alarm. “I don’t know, kiddo.” Because to Joe, it seemed like nothing could ever change Sarah. Because he hadn’t wanted Mitchell to sense how bad things had gotten between them. It exhausted Joe, having to pretend that all was well for Mitchell’s sake.

He needed to talk to Sarah, to give her some ultimatum, to make her understand how hopeless and overwhelmed he was beginning to feel. And if there was anything that made Joe more nervous than Mitchell asking all these questions, it was Mitchell asking all these questions about God.

Joe didn’t want to stand here with his son chitchatting about the spiritual well-being of the world. Joe had gotten dragged to church way too often back when he was a kid. He’d listened to all the same stories Mitchell listened to and, with that same simple logic, had believed them.

All that had changed now. Even though he and Sarah still attended services at their popular church in Lake Forest, Joe knew his adult convictions weren’t much to brag about. He had a hard time taking all this “relationship with God” stuff to heart. You grew up. You got hurt and disappointed and couldn’t figure things out. You forgot to ask for help or, when you did ask, you never got anything you asked for.

Somewhere along the way, you realized you were as lonely as one of those Great Lakes shipwrecks, rattling around inside yourself like old artifacts, rusting into oblivion.

Somewhere along the way, you figured out there weren’t guardian angels waiting around every corner anymore. After all, how could a person believe God was managing everything in the world and angels were watching over us when everything felt so painful and out of order?

The chant began behind them, and soon the whole crowd had taken it up. “
Let’s
go,
Cub-
bies!
Let’s
go,
Cub-
bies!” The lady behind him whooped it up, stabbing him in the shoulder with her unwieldy sign: It Could Happen.

“Do you mind making that
not
happen?” Joe said to her.

The announcer introduced the seventh-inning stretch, the fans stood and cheered, and someone handed the performer a microphone. Just as the organ began to play, Joe’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he had one last jolt of hope. A phone call! She’d come! Sarah had gotten to the ballpark and was trying to find them! But Joe flipped his Nokia open to find that it wasn’t a phone call at all, only a text message.

One short sentence. One horrible word.

Sorry.

That was all she said. Seven innings into the game, with the Cubs behind by three runs and the organ sounding its scales, with the singer in the press box counting down “a one, a two, and a
three
,” and her family finally knew that Sarah wasn’t going to make it to Wrigley Field after all.

“Take me out to the ba-a-all game.” Mitchell’s little voice rang out above the others, senselessly beautiful. Joe halfheartedly sang too while he thought about the drive home tonight. He and Mitchell would have to go by the babysitter’s and pick up Kate. The crowd continued to sing, “Buy me some peanuts and Craaacker Jack. I don’t care if I never get back,” while his thoughts trailed off into what he might say to Sarah later that night.

By the bottom of the eighth, the guy who’d wedged his way into Sarah’s seat stood and headed toward Waveland Avenue. “Excuse me,” he said as he forced his way out, and they felt like they could breathe for the first time in hours. “Excuse me,” as he blocked everyone’s view and stumbled over women’s purses and trodded on a fair number of toes.

“Hey, kid,” Joe said, nicking Mitchell’s chin with a crooked finger. “Don’t look so disappointed. The Cubs will win the next one, don’t you think?”

Silence.

And of course Joe knew this wasn’t about the game.

“Hey. Chin up. We’ll try this again with Mom some other time, okay?”

Mitchell climbed down and sat hard on his seat. He didn’t say it would be okay. He chewed his bottom lip instead. Joe could see he’d been at it long enough to make it raw. Joe would have to get him a ChapStick. He felt resentment well up in him that Sarah could hurt Mitchell like this and not seem to even realize she was doing it.

Peanut Guy yawned. “If it’s gonna happen,” he commented to all those crazy, hopeful people who had carried the signs, “it’s not gonna happen tonight.”

Mitchell uttered a sigh that came clear up from his toes.

Joe asked, “You ready to go?”

Mitchell nodded.

“Don’t forget your claw. That’ll be good for another game.”

Mitchell picked it up and, wordlessly, they trudged over empty nacho cartons and dented cups and crumpled hot-dog wrappers to get to the gate.

Wrigley Field had emptied fast. But even then, as the lights cast hard shadows along the empty seats and the batboys bagged the gear so they could drag it from the dugout to the locker room, as the janitors donned rubber gloves to pick up trash and someone started sweeping, even then, Joe couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them. He looked around, but no one seemed to be paying them any mind.

“Does that guy climb a ladder to get to the scoreboard?” Mitchell asked. “I looked, but I didn’t see a ladder.”

“Are you kidding me?” Joe asked, finally losing patience. “If you saw somebody up there at all, he isn’t anything special. I don’t see how he’d do God much good, Mitchell. He can’t even help the Cubs.”

But Mitchell wouldn’t be dissuaded. He kept insisting there was a man in the scoreboard. Joe wondered if Mitchell kept talking to keep himself from thinking about how much his mother had disappointed him. And they had a long way home, first the trip on the “L” and then a stop to pick up Kate after they got the car out of the commuter parking lot. Still, Mitchell went on and on about the guy. Even after they’d joined the throngs of downcast Cubs fans on Addison. Even after they’d climbed the steps to the train.

Chapter Four