The Tender Bar (16 page)

“Arizona.”

“Oh she must be so lonely without you.”

“Gosh I hope not.”

“Trust me. I’m a single mother. She’s miserable.”

“Really?”

“You don’t have any brothers or sisters, am I right?”

I shook my head.

“Oh she’s all alone out there! But she’s making the sacrifice, because she understands how much your cousins and your grandma and Uncle Charlie mean to you! Do you talk on the phone?”

“No.” I looked out at centerfield and felt a lump in my throat. “It’s too expensive, so we make cassette tapes and send them back and forth.”

“Oh! She must be so lonely!”

I will not worry about something that will not happen.

Uncle Charlie returned. “What did you do?” Joey D asked him.

“I did the Mets ten times,” Uncle Charlie said. “Kid sounded like he had a premonition.”

Joey looked at me with saucer eyes.

“What’s ten times mean?” I asked.

“Depends on the bookie,” Uncle Charlie said. “Sometimes a time is ten dollars, sometimes it’s a hundred. Follow?”

“Follow.”

Uncle Charlie looked at Tommy and asked if everything was “set.”

“All set,” Tommy said, standing, hitching up his pants. “On your feet, kid.”

I hopped off my seat.

“Don’t forget,” Uncle Charlie told Tommy. “His idol is Seaver.”

“Chas, like I said, Seaver can be kind of standoffish.”

“Tommy,” Uncle Charlie said.

“Chas,” Tommy said, frowning.

“Tommy.”

“Chas.”

“Tommy.”

“Chas!”

“It’s his idol, Tommy.”

“It’s my ass, Chas.”

“Just try.”

Tommy gave his most magnificent frown yet, then motioned for me to follow. We walked down a ramp, rode an elevator, passed through a gate, jogged down some stairs. A cop waved us through a metal door, and into a dark tunnel, like a sewer. Up ahead I saw a pinpoint of light, which grew larger as we walked forward. Tommy, his voice echoing, reminded me not to leave his side, no matter what. We stepped through a portal into glaring sunshine, and there, all around us, were the 1976 New York Mets. The blue of their uniforms was blinding. The orange in their caps was like fire. They weren’t real. They couldn’t be real. They were like the mechanical mannequin cowboys at Rawhide.

“Willie Mays,” Tommy said, nudging me. “Say hello to the Say Hey Kid.” He picked up a baseball lying in the grass and handed it to me. I stepped toward Mays and extended the ball. He signed it.

“You should see his Cadillac,” Tommy said as we walked away. “It’s hot pink. Real big shot.”

“Like Uncle Charlie?”

Tommy guffawed. “Yeah. Just like.”

He brought me to Bud Harrelson and John Matlack and Jerry Koosman, all standing together, leaning on bats as if they were Irish walking canes. I almost told Koosman about Uncle Charlie’s Rule, but Tommy turned me away just in time and introduced me to the Mets announcer, Bob Murphy, who wore a sports coat that looked like one of Grandma’s afghans. Murphy laughed with Tommy about a dive bar they had both visited. His familiar voice came out of the same box as my father’s, which gave me a confusing feeling of closeness to him.

Tommy led me to the dugout and told me to sit down, he’d be right back. I perched on the edge of the bench, beside some players. I said hello. The players didn’t answer. I said I was allowed to be there, because my uncle’s friend was in charge of security. The players said nothing. Tommy returned and sat beside me. I told him those players were mad at me. “Them?” he said. “They’re from Puerto Rico.
No habla inglés,
kid. Now listen. I looked everywhere. High and low. Someone saw Seaver shagging flies earlier, but he’s not around anymore. So we’re going to have to let that one go, okay? I’ll show you the Jets’ locker room, then bring you back.”

He walked me through a door in the corner of the dugout. We turned down a hall and into a locker room that smelled something like Dickens—menthol and hair tonic and Brut—and as I looked for Namath’s locker I felt Tommy grab my upper arm. I looked up. “Someone I’d like you to meet,” he said, jerking his head toward the door. I turned.

Seaver.

“What have you got there?” Seaver said.

“Baseball.”

He took it. Tommy pushed me closer to him. I watched the muscles twitch and bulge in Seaver’s big forearm, level with my eye, as he worked the pen across the ball. I stared at the number 41 on his chest, just above my head. When he handed me back the ball I tried to raise my eyes but couldn’t. “Thank you,” I mumbled to the ground.

He walked away, down the tunnel.

“I’m such an idiot,” I said to Tommy. “I didn’t even look at him.”

“What are you saying? You were extremely polite. A perfect gentleman. I was
very proud
to present you.”

I carried my ball like a bird’s egg back to our seats.

“So?” Uncle Charlie said.

“Mission accomplished,” Tommy said.

A look of enormous affection flew between them.

Joey D studied my baseball, taking care to hold it by the seams. I wanted to hug him for being so careful, unlike Pat, who spun it and patted it like a snowball. “Who the heck’s Jason Gorey?” she said, squinting at the signatures.

“That’s Jerry Grote. He’s Tom Seaver’s favorite catcher.”

“Who’s Wanda Marx?”

“That’s Willie Mays.”

“He’s still playing? I thought he retired.”

“He did. He’s a coach. He drives a pink Cadillac.”

“Is he Willie Mays or Mary Kay?”

The game started. The Mets were dreadful that day, and every time they did something wrong Uncle Charlie flagged down the beer man. He also kept close tabs on the scoreboard, checking all the games from around the country, none of which was going his way either. Pat grew tired of his tension and bored with the Mets. She said she was going to look at souvenirs for her son. When she’d been gone three innings Uncle Charlie went to find her. He came back alone. “Vanished,” he said dejectedly.

“She’ll come home when she’s hungry,” Tommy said.

“Or thirsty,” Joey D said.

Uncle Charlie was having a bad day, and I felt guilty, because it was already one of the best days of my life, and because it was I who had persuaded him to bet the Mets. To take his mind off his losses, and Pat’s disappearance, I peppered him with questions. This seemed to work. Cheerfully he explained to me the nuances of baseball—hit-and-runs, double switches, sacrifice bunts, how to calculate batting averages and ERAs. Also, he introduced me to the covert language of baseball. Instead of saying the bases are loaded, he instructed me to say, “The sacks are drunk.” Instead of extra innings he said “bonus cantos.” Pitchers were “twirlers,” runners were “ducks on the pond,” and catchers wore “the tools of ignorance.” At one point he commended my choice of idol. “Seaver’s a goddamned Rembrandt,” he said, and I was pleased with myself for catching the reference, thanks to
Minute Biographies.
“Grote asks for the ball on the outside corner—Seaver puts it there. Like a little dab of white paint. And Seaver’s got a sixty-foot paintbrush. Follow?”

“Follow.”

Even Rembrandt couldn’t save Uncle Charlie from the corner he’d painted himself into that day. When the Mets rallied, Uncle Charlie’s mood lifted briefly, but then the Phillies rallied, loading the bases. “Sacks are drunk,” I said, trying to cheer him up, to no avail. Philadelphia’s slugger, Greg “The Bull” Luzinski, sauntered to the plate, looking like Steve at a softball game, a man among boys.

“Goose,” Joey D said, “I don’t know how to tell you this but I feel a moon shot coming on.”

“Bite your goddamned tongue.”

Luzinski swatted a high-inside fastball toward left field. We jumped to our feet and watched the ball strike the distant stands with a resounding smack.

“I don’t live right,” Uncle Charlie said.

“I just had a feeling,” Joey D said, shrugging.

“Son of a bitch,” Uncle Charlie said to Joey D. “If it didn’t cost me so much timber, I’d celebrate your psychic powers. You must be prescient. You don’t mind if I say ‘prescient,’ do you?”

The Mets looked sharper in the nightcap. They took an early lead and Uncle Charlie perked up again. But again the Phillies rallied, taking the lead for good on a Mike Schmidt homer. Uncle Charlie chain-smoked and waved to the beer man and I imagined the piles of fifties and hundreds on his dresser growing smaller. After the second game ended we set off in search of Pat, whom we hadn’t seen in three hours. We found her on the mezzanine, drinking beer and laughing with a group of cops. Walking to the car she leaned against me, praising my manners, saying how proud my mother must be. I knew she hadn’t behaved well. At the start of the day I’d thought I was being promoted, but Pat was the one being promoted, and she hadn’t made the most of her opportunity. Still, I liked her, and wished I were doing a better job of supporting her. The problem was, she was heavier than she looked, and I was cradling my autographed baseball at the same time I was carrying her. Uncle Charlie took her from me. He slung her arm around his neck and led her to the car like a soldier guiding a wounded comrade to an aid station.

When we learned a short time later that Pat had cancer, the first thing I thought of was how tender and patient Uncle Charlie had been with her in that moment. I hadn’t appreciated how deeply Uncle Charlie cared about Pat—none of the men had—until she got sick. He moved into her house, fed her, bathed her, read to her, injected her with morphine, and when she died he sat in Grandpa’s kitchen, his body convulsing with sobs, as Grandma held and rocked him.

I went to the funeral with Grandma. I stood over Pat’s open casket, looking at her face, her cheeks scooped out by the cancer. Though there was no trace of her zany smile, I felt as if I could hear her voice, exhorting me to take care of my uncle. I turned from the casket and saw the men from Dickens gathered around Uncle Charlie, like jockeys and stable boys around a racehorse that’s come up lame. I told Pat that we could both relax. Uncle Charlie will turn to the bar, I said. He’ll hide there, as he did when he lost his hair. I told her that the men at Dickens would take good care of Uncle Charlie. I promised her that I could see it all. That I was prescient.

fourteen
| JEDD AND WINSTON

S
TEPPING OFF THE PLANE AT SKY HARBOR I SAW MY MOTHER
leaning against a pole, her face expectant. When she saw me her eyes filled with tears.

“How big you’ve gotten!” she cried. “How wide your shoulders are!”

She’d undergone some changes of her own. Her hair was different. More pouffy. She exuded energy, as if she’d had too much coffee. And she laughed—a lot. Making her laugh had always required some effort, but driving home she was giggling at everything I said, like McGraw.

“Something different about you,” I said.

“Well.” Her voice was quivering. “I have a new friend.”

His name was Winston, she said in a tone that spelled trouble. He was tall, he was handsome, he was sweet. And funny? Oh he was terribly funny. Like a comedian, she said. But shy, she added quickly.

“How did you meet?” I asked.

“At a Howard Johnson,” she said. “I was eating by myself at the counter and—”

“What were you eating?”

“An ice cream sundae and a cup of tea.”

“How can you drink hot tea in this heat?”

“That’s just it. The tea was cold. So I complained to the waitress, and she was very rude, and Winston, who was also eating at the counter, made a sympathetic face. Then he came over and we started talking and he walked me out to my car and asked if he could call me.”

“Doesn’t sound shy to me.”

Neither of us spoke for several miles.

“Are you in love?” I asked.

“No! I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What does
Winston
do?”

“He’s in sales. He sells tape. Industrial tape, packing tape, all kinds of tape.”

“Duct tape?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“Grandma will love him. He can redo her living room.”

I had mixed feelings about Winston. I liked seeing my mother happy, but I couldn’t help feeling I’d failed her. I was supposed to make her happy. I was supposed to make her laugh. Instead I’d gone to Manhasset and hung out with the men from the bar. And, though I could scarcely admit it to myself, I’d enjoyed being with a group of men I didn’t have to worry about or take care of. Now, as punishment for shirking my responsibility, for
relaxing,
some tape salesman from Howard Johnson had taken over my job.

More worrisome was the fact that my mother had found something to like about Arizona, which meant we were staying. I thought it was time to admit that Arizona hadn’t panned out. We were still struggling, still worrying about money, only now we didn’t have Grandma and the cousins to compensate. Then there was the heat. “How can it be this hot in September?” I asked, fanning myself with my plane ticket. “What happened to autumn? What happened to the seasons?”