"We cleaned houses together, Charley," she said.
Upon seeing the look on my face, she waved her fingers dismissively.
"How do you think I put you kids through college?"
BY MY SOPHOMORE YEAR, I'd packed on twelve pounds of muscle, and my hitting reflected it. My batting average among college players was in the top fifty in the nation. At my father's urging, I played in several tournaments which were showcases for professional scouts, older men who sat in the stands with notebooks and cigars. One day, one of hem approached us after a game.
"This your boy? " he asked my father.
My father nodded suspiciously. The man had thinning hair and a bulbous nose, and his undershirt was visible through his lightweight sweater.
"I'm with the St. Louis Cardinals organization. " "That right? " my father said.
I wanted to leap through my skin.
"We may have a spot at catcher, 'A' ball. " "That right? " my father said.
"We'll keep an eye on your boy, if he's interested. "
The man sniffed deeply, a wet, noisy sound. He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose.
"The thing is," my father said, "Pittsburgh has the inside track. They've been scouting him for a while.”
The man studied my father's jaw, which worked over the gum he' was chewing. "That right? " the man said.
OF COURSE, ALL this was news to me, and when the man departed, I hounded my father with questions. When did this happen? Was that guy for real? Was Pittsburgh really scouting me?
"What if they are? " he said. "It don't change what you gotta do, Chick.
You stay in those cages, work with your coaches, and be ready when the time comes. Let me take care of the rest. "
I nodded obediently. My mind was racing. "What about school? "
He scratched his chin. "What about it? "
I flashed on my mother's face, walking me through the library. I tried not to think about it.
"The St. Louis Caaardinals, " my father drawled, long and slow. He ground his shoe into the grass. Then he actually grinned. I felt so proud I got goose bumps. He asked if I wanted a beer and I said yeah, and we went and had one together, as men do.
"DAD CAME TO a game. "
I was on the pay phone in the dorm. Thi was well after my father's first visit, but it had taken me that long to find the courage to tell her.
"Oh, " my mother Anally said.
"By himself," I quickly added. For some reason, that seemed important. "Did you tell your sister?"
“No. “
Another long silence.
"Don't let anything affect your studying, Charley. " "I won't. "
"That's the most important thing. " "I know. "
"An education is everything, Charley. An education is how you'll make something of yourself. "
I kept waiting for more. I kept waiting for some horrible story about some horrible thing. I kept waiting the way all children of divorce wait, for evidence to tip my scales, a tilt in the floor that made me choose one side over the other. But my mother never spoke about the reason my father left. She never once took the bait Roberta and I dangled before her, looking for hate or bitterness. All she did was swallow. She swallowed the words, she swallowed the conversation. Whatever had happened between them, she swallowed that, too.
"Is it OK that me and Dad see each other? " "Dad and I," she corrected.
"Dad and I, " I said, exasperated. "Is it?” She exhaled.
"You're not a little boy anymore, Charley. " Why did I feel like one?
LOOKING BACK ON that now, there is so much I didn't know. I didn't know how she really took that news. I didn't know if it angered her or scared her. I certainly didn't know that while I was having beers with my father, the bills back home were being paid, in part, by my mother cleaning houses with a woman who once cleaned ours.
I watched the two of them now in the bedroom, Miss Thelma upright against the pillows, my mother working her makeup sponges and her eyeliner pencils.
"Why didn't you tell me? " I asked. "Tell you what? " my mother said.
"That you had to, you know, for money–? "
"Mop floors? Do laundry? " My mother chuckled. "I don't know. Maybe because of the way you're looking at me now. "
She sighed. "You were always proud, Charley. " "I was not! " I snapped.
She lifted her eyebrows then returned to Miss Thelma's face. Under her breath she mumbled, "If you say so. "
"Don't do that! " I said. "Do what? "
"If you say so. That. "
"I didn't say anything, Charley. " "Yes, you did! "
"Don't yell. "
"I wasn't proud! Just because I– "
My voice cracked. What was I doing? A half a day with my dead mother, and we were back to arguing?
"Ain't no shame in needing work, Chickadoo, " Miss Thelma said. "But the only work I knew was what I'd been doing. And your mom said,
'Well, what about that?' I said, 'Posey, you want to be somebody's cleaning woman?' And she said, 'Thelma, if you ain't above cleaning a house, why should / be?' Remember that, Posey? "
My mother inhaled. "I didn't say' ain't.' "
Miss Thelma howled with laughter. "Naw, naw, that's right, you didn't.
I'm sure of hat. You didn't say 'ain't.' "
They were both laughing now. My mother was trying to work under Miss Thelma's eyes.
"Hold still, " she said, but they kept on laughing.
"I THINK MOM should get married again," Roberta said. This was one time when I called home from college. "What are you talking about? "
"She's still pretty. But nobody stays pretty forever. She's not as thin as she used to be. "
"She doesn't want to get married. " "How do you know? "
"She doesn't need to get married, Roberta, OK? "
"If she doesn't get somebody soon, nobody is gonna want her. " "Stop it. "
"She wears a girdle now, Charley. I saw it. " "I don't care, Roberta!
God! "
"You think you're so cool because you go to college. " "Cut it out. "
"Did you ever hear that song 'Yummy, Yummy, Yummy'? I think it's so stupid. How come they play it all the time?"
"Is she talking to you about getting married? " "Maybe."
"Roberta, I'm not kidding. What did she say?"
"Nothing, OK? But who knows where the hell Dad is. And Mom shouldn't have to be by herself all the time. "
"Stop cursing," I said.
"I can say whatever I want, Charley. You're not my boss. "
She was fifteen. I was twenty. She had no idea about my father. I had seen him and talked to him. She wanted my mother happy. I wanted her to stay the same.
It had been nine years since that Saturday morning when my mother crushed the corn puffs in the palm of her hand. Nine years since we'd all been a family.
In college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word "divorce"
came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant "divide.
" In truth, it comes from "divertere," which means "to divert. "
I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else.
Chick Makes His Choice
THERE ARE TWO DAYS AT COLLEGE that I'll share with you here because they were the high and the low points of that experience. The high came in my second year, sometime during the fall semester.
Baseball hadn't started up, so I actually had time to hang out on campus. On a Thursday night after midterm exams, one of the fraternities had a big party. It was crowded and dark. Music blasted.
Black lights made the posters on the walls–and everyone at the partyseem phosphorescent. We laughed loudly and toasted each other with plastic cups of beer.
At some point, a guy with long stringy hair jumped on a chair and began lipsynching to the music and playing air guitar–it was a song by the Jefferson Airplane–and it quickly became a contest. We went flipping through the milk crates of albums to find a "performance"
song.
Well, I don't know who owned these albums, but I spotted an unlikely one and I yelled to my buddies, "Hey! Wait! Look at this! " It was the Bobby Darin album my mother used to play when we were kids. He wore a white tuxedo on the cover, his hair embarrassingly short and neat.
"I know this one! " I said. "I know all the words!” "Get out," one buddy said.
"Put it on! " another said. "Look at that dufus! "
We commandeered the turntable, lined up the needle to the groove of
"This Could Be the Start of Something Big," and when the music began, everybody froze, because this clearly wasn't rock and roll.
Suddenly I was out there with my two pals. They looked at each other, embarrassed, and pointed at me as they shook their hips. But I was feeling loose and I figured, who cares? So as the trumpets and clarinets boomed over the speakers, I mouthed the words that I knew by heart.
"You're walkin' along the street, or you're at a party Or else you're alone and then you suddenly dig, You're lookin* in someone's eyes, you suddenly realize That this could be the start of something big. "
I was snapping my fingers like the crooners from The Steve Allen Show, and suddenly everyone was laughing and hollering, "Yeah! Go, cat! " I got more and
more ridiculous. I guess no one could believe I knew all the words to such a hokey record.
Anyhow, by the time it was done, I got a big ovation and my friends tackled me around the waist, and we pushed into one another, laughing and calling each other names.
I met Catherine that night. This is what makes it high point. She had watched my "performance" with a few of her girlfriends. I caught sight of her and I shivered even as I was flapping my arms and lip-synching. She wore a sleeveless pink cotton blouse, hip-hugger jeans and strawberry-colored lip gloss, and she playfully snapped her fingers as I sang Bobby Darin. To this day, I don't know if she would have given me a second look had I not been making such an utter fool of myself.
"Where did you learn that song?" she said, stepping up as I drew a beer from the keg.
" Uh... my mom," I answered.
I felt like an idiot. Who begins a conversation with "my mom? " But she seemed to like the idea and, well, we went from there.
The next day I got my grades and they were good, two A's, two B's. I called my mother at the beauty parlor and she came to the phone. I told her the results and I told her about Catherine and the Bobby Darin song and she seemed so happy that I had called her in the middle of the day. Over the rumble of hair dryers she yelled, "Charley, I'm so proud of you! "
That was the high point.
I dropped out of college one year later. That was the low point.
I DROPPED OUT to play minor league baseball at my father's suggestion and to my mother's everlasting disappointment. I had been offered a spot in the Pittsburg Pirates' organization, to play winter ball and hopefully make their minor league roster. My father felt this was the right time. "You can't get any better playing against college kids,"
he said.
When I first mentioned the idea to my mother, she screamed,
"Absolutely not! " It didn't matter that baseball would pay me. It didn't matter that the scouts thought I had potential–maybe enough to make it to the major leagues. "Absolutely not! " were her words.
And I absolutely ignored her.
I went to the registrar's office, told them I was leaving, packed up a duffel bag, and split. Many guys my age were being sent to Vietnam.
But by whatever twist of luck or fate, I had drawn a low number in the draft lottery. My father, a veteran, seemed relieved at that fact. "You don't need the trouble you get into during a war," he said.
Instead, I marched to his cadence, and I followed his command: I joined a minor league club in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and my student days were over. What can I say about that? Was I seduced by baseball or my father's approval? Both, I suppose. It felt natural, like I was back on the trail of breadcrumbs I had followed as a schoolboy–before things flopped over, before my life as a mama's boy had begun.
I remember calling her from the motel phone in San Juan. I had flown there straight from college, the first time I'd ever been on an airplane.
I didn't want to stop at home because I knew she would make a scene.
"A collect call from your son, " the operator said with a Spanish accent.
When my mother realized where I was, that the deal was done, she seemed stunned. Her voice was flat. She asked what kind of clothes I had. What was I doing for food? She seemed to be reading from a list of required questions.
"Is it safe, the place you're staying?" she said. "Safe? I guess. "
"Who else do you know there? "
"Nobody. But there's guys on the team. I have a roommate. He's from Indiana, or Iowa, someplace. "
"Mm-hmm. " Then silence.
"Mom, I can always go back to school. "
This time the silence was longer. She said only one more thing before we hung up:
"Going back to something is harder than you think. "
I don't suppose I could have broken my mother's heart any more if I tried.
The Work You Have to Do
MlSS THELMA CLOSED HER EYES and leaned her head back. My mother resumed her makeup process. She dabbed the sponge around her former partner's face, and I watched with mixed emotions. I always thought it was so important what came after your name. Chick Benetto, professional baseball player, not Chick Benetto, salesman.