Catching Colleen

*

I grew up on the north side of Cincinnati so I was glad to end my career with the Reds. I had an apartment in a suburb on the east side, a side of town I did not grow up on, and that Sunday morn I rolled over around 9:30 and wondered if church was an option. I had a sister about seventy-five miles out of town, but I hadn't seen her in seven years and I wasn't sure I was ready to face her. She'd be at Mass out there anyway. I'd been without a family since Mom and Dad passed in a car wreck those seven years ago. Joan was my only immediate family in the area. My brother Trip was somewhere in Minnesota working for the Vikings in publicity or something. I'd never been to his home or even known the address. We'd all gone to Joan's after the funeral, my aunt and uncle and cousins and Trip and I. Trip is four years older than I. Joan is five.

I rolled on out of bed and thought the sun should be shining but it was a cloudy, cool day outside, as late September can be. Windy, with a tinge of cold like you get so you know winter is to follow. You could feel the wind through the windows of the old building. My apartment was in a brick box of a structure. It was the cheapest apartment I could find, in an old part of the township, four rooms and a bathroom. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. You read about how much ballplayers make, even journeymen players like I was, and I could have afforded a lot better. When I was with Carol we didn't have much money--me in back and forth to the minors, her working and going to school. I made the majors in her second year, and the next I got a huge bump but the marriage was on the rocks. I probably would have lived better if we'd stayed married.

I changed. Somehow the divorce humbled me. Living rich didn't mean anything. Instead I have a beat up car and a dump--but a clean dump--of an apartment that needs better furniture. Once Carol left, I kind of downsized my life. There was no alimony involved. She had a career to make. I just decided I didn't need much. NCIS came to mind. Everyone needs a code to live by, said Shannon, Gibbs's wife, so I made one up. You get to watch a lot of reruns when you're traveling for baseball. For me it became faith. I bet Harmon would laugh if he found out his show was a religious experience, or even a philosophical one.

So I put on slacks and a button down shirt and sport coat for the coolness, and I went out to my car. I pulled out of the lot and headed north and around Cincinnati. It took about an hour and a half before I found myself passing a Catholic church and pulled into the Omelet Shak next door.

For the first time in 19 years, I had breakfast and no job. I was used to eating alone in restaurants, drinking with temporary friends in bars and motel rooms, and first dates with someone's ex or another one's sister. Nothing ever came of them after Carol. She was my first girlfriend after high school. It lasted through my degree, but then fizzled as she was ready for more and I was just loyal. Fidelity was not the issue, as far as I knew. She was ahead of me in life, in outlook, I guess, and she didn't see me catching up anytime soon. There was love, but travel and busy-ness and phone calls and then tears and a hollow feeling. I played baseball for a living. I knew it was just a game, a kid's game, and somehow I made a living with it. Then we were over, we were no longer married and that led me to drink. I moderated it, but it's a vice of mine. No more Catholic, much. Now the ball was gone, too.

Omelet Shak has lots of eggs, thin steaks, pancakes, and coffee. Just coffee, not latte or Americano or drinks invented by monks. But the coffee was steady and hot and the aging waitress supplied it before the little cup was emptied, so I was happy.

"So whatcha doin', Hun?" she asked.

"Just heading out to see my sister in Sky Grey," I said, "Haven't seen her in years."

"Well, that's good then, you've found it. Hope you have a nice visit," she said as I handed over the money.

"Keep the change," I said.

"Thank you, Sir," she said.

"Welcome," I said, smiling and heading out. I got in my Ford and turned into the small town.

The last time I had been to Joan's I'd been three years divorced, and the somber occasion of burying Mom and Dad weighed on us. Joan and Arthur had the kids and we only saw each other at Christmas or Thanksgiving at Mom and Dad's, the old home, and sometimes Trip would show up with his wife of the moment. He'd had 4, or at least I stopped counting at 4. Seven years gone. You never get over losing loved ones.

So I pulled into Joan's driveway around 1 and there she was: short, dark haired, a little round from the three kids, but smiling and Joan. She was painting the wooden front porch. Arthur was sure to be around--it was Sunday, and that was still church and family day for them. True believers in the old things like marriage, Mass, baseball, and apple pie, they saw no need to change. Maybe that's why I liked baseball so much: it filled this niche for me. (Too much philosophizing--what would Harmon say?) But I liked Joan, I guess I loved her like the sister she was.

She looked at me as I got out of the old Ford. "Kowalsh!" she yelled. She always called me Kowalsh or Ko because of childhood custom, even though it used to be her last name. She put down the brush and came down the steps and over to me quickly, as if she wanted to see me. "I thought you might show up when I heard you were retiring." She put her arms around my neck (I'm a foot taller than she) and I hugged her too. Real family never ends, even with most of a decade apart, and very few phone calls. It was nice hugging.

"Where's Art?" I asked.

"Oh, he's taking Nicci to school. She came home for the weekend and he's running her back to Marietta. She saw your game last night, by the way," Joan said.

"She should have come down--but I don't think I'd have recognized her. College? I thought she was in fifth grade last time I saw her," I said shaking my head.

Laughing, Joan said, "Yeah, well she said you had a good game."

"And your other kids?"

"Gone for a while to friends' houses and things. They'll be back for supper, and you HAVE to stay for it!" she said, emphatically.

"Okay, okay..." I looked at her and I felt something I hadn't expected. "I missed you."

She nodded. "We're only here. 75 miles. And you had all winters long." Was she mad? No, not Joan. It was an explanation, an acknowledgment that families disperse. She had children and commitments and limits. Hardly any money. I had money, lots compared to them. I had lost Carol and never bothered to keep close to family. Mom and Dad held us together just enough that we knew we were not alone.

"We thought about coming to visit, you know," she went on, "but we could never find an address after Carol left. Where'd you move to?"

"A new place. East side. Apartment. It's nothing special." Really.

"I'll bet, with the kind of money ballplayers make," she laughed. Was she jealous? Hinting at hardship? I wondered. Constantly living on the brink of financial hardship wore on people--I'd seen it among some of the older guys in the minors, some of the umps there too. Marriages failed and addictions to alcohol and popular drugs cut into some, and so it went. I had not seen it in Joan nor in Art but it was years since we'd been together. Working hard and watching your brother play

We walked up to the house and Joan closed up the paint. "I'll pitch the brush--I hate cleaning them." We walked around to the garage and she put the paint up on a shelf. She tossed the brush in a can with a bunch of paper. She smelled of paint, and there was some on her pants and shirt. Not much.

"I need to clean up," she said. "Come on in the kitchen, you can make some coffee and I'll change." She held my hand and we went in the back door. Joan, constantly my big sis. I always felt like a kid around her, the good part about being a kid.

A half hour later we sat at her old plastic-topped kitchen table, sitting on the matching chairs.

"So, Sis, how are things?"

She looked around, a little smile, said, "We're doing okay. Nicci has a scholarship so she can go to Marietta. She's studying English, by the way. Reads a LOT."

"I hope I inspired her," I said, laughing. "Tell me it wasn't Trip," I added.

"Maybe, but she's hoping to write either novels or journalism or something. She's still feeling her way, I think," she said.

"You still teaching?"

"Of course. What else would I do? Science is my life. Art's an administrator at the community college, organizing the transportation department there. We do alright," she said, and I realized she felt like she had to make an excuse, as if she was a failure in my eyes.

"You know, Jo, I always thought you didn't buy into all that materialism. After Carol, I came to the conclusion we missed something you and Art had. I think she loved me but then it was empty, you know? I hope you and Art...know you're building something." I paused. She paused. It was just a pause.

"I think we are, Ko."

"I tried to change, Jo. Or at least I wanted to. Something was different after Carol. I knew something had to change. It got more serious, slowly."

She got up and poured us both more coffee. I like coffee.

"So how are the younger ones?" I asked.

"Maddy is 17 and a senior and is finally over Justin Bieber," she said smiling, and I groaned. "I actually think Bieber is in great decline, anyway.

"Penny is 13 and an eighth grader at my school," Jo said. "She's less boy crazy and a heck of a basketball player. Too bad she got my height."

"Can she shoot?"

"Straight as an arrow. Has some trouble with free throws though for some reason."

"Hm," I said. I'd been the opposite. I made a lot of free throws, when I could get someone to foul me. I liked basketball, but I was thick and fast but not faster than most. I'm maybe six feet tall, so inside was not my place. Baseball was my game, especially in high school. But I made almost all my free throws.

"What're you going to do?" Joan asked.

I said, "I'm not sure. No plans. Maybe I'll just loaf or something. Read some books."

"Styron isn't writing anymore," she said with a twinkle in her eye.

"Yeah, but I have some Hemingway to get through, and I never read James Jones's stuff with any care. And I like mysteries even though most of them don't mean much," I said. I was defending my right to develop my own path, I guess. My dander was up, and updander is almost anger. But there was not much sense in being angry with the only person who still loved me.

"Joan, I don't know..." I sipped some coffee. Her coffee was not very good, but I didn't have the heart to tell her. It doesn't mean anything, anyway. She had kids, a husband. 43 or so now, kids growing, college... We weren't kids. Conceptions go slowly. But I was the one who played a kids' game until I couldn't anymore.

"Why don't you go to Tahiti or something?" she said. "I know you have the dough. Why not?"

I thought for a minute, thought about baseball and hitting with men in scoring position, thought about being married and then divorced, about reading novels in lonely motels, about eating alone at Omelet Shak, about losing my church and all the things I'd been and read and done. My life was a jumble in my own mind.

"I don't need to go to Tahiti or Paris or Rome," I said. "I'm looking for meaning here." I looked at her, her dark eyes looking back, deeper than most I'd seen.

"That's an interesting way of putting it. Do you miss Carol?"

How do I answer that? Carol was not perfect but she was my one, I thought. I had no rose-colored glasses. She had acne scars and she was a little heavy and she colored her hair and never got it right. But she was Carol: honest, loving, warm, pretty. She'd never cry at a movie but she understood if I did. She held me at night for no reason because I needed to be held for no reason, until the hollow feeling came and wouldn't go away. She understood the game and my feeling for it and wanting to prolong childhood.

"Yeah, I think about her. I heard she's a lawyer now. You know, she didn't ask for any alimony or any money at all in the settlement," I said.

"You paid for law school?" I nodded, feeling pensive. "You'll never get over her," Joan said, "She was good. I don't mean you can't move on, but she was good and she loved you and you never get over goodness lost. And you never get over someone you really love." She shook her head and those eyes saw into me.

I looked at the table, ran my hand along the edge. "I think you only meet a few people in your life that you should consider marrying. Carol was mine so far, I think," I said, "I think God knows we can really love one or two people like that. I don't think I am done. But I'm after something."

"It's too soon," Jo said. "It's too soon after Carol and the divorce and the retirement and everything. Life is all concentrated for you right now. Maybe you need to get out of that competitive world and just kind of live." Hm. I'd heard that before. Crash Davis: she was Crash Davis. She was spouting philosophy from "Bull Durham." Maybe it was a family trait, getting our philosophy from tv or movies.

I looked at her a little puzzled.

"Not HER, I mean, not Carol, but think over the decisions you've made along the way." Sensibility is not a family trait. Jo got it all. I never read much of Austen but maybe it was in "Sense and Sensibility." I diverge.

My cup was empty. I fiddled with it, looked at it, wondered. I wondered what Carol was doing. Where she was. If only things had been different.

Catching Colleen Ch. 02 Pinch Hitting

"Uncle Serge," said Maddy as she saw me leaning by the coffee maker in the kitchen.

"Maddy?" I asked. Could this kid be Maddy? Wow. 17 and dark haired and perfect. Gorgeous. Maddy looked like a cheerleader or a model or something.

"What about me?" said the other kid, quieter, shyly. "You must be Penny!" I said, and I felt a delight I had not ever, at these two pretty girls looking at me and recognizing me. Penny was brown haired and maybe a little over five feet tall, 13? Her hair was shorter than Maddy's, just below her ears. She looked athletic.

"Hi, girls," I said, and I was happy they came over and hugged me in that superficial, adolescent I-have-to-hug-this-guy way. They looked like Joan, and Art was in there too. Looking at these two girls with my eyes, I felt envious. Art, who made 50,000 if he was lucky, and Joan who made less, had something I'd missed somewhere.

No, not SOMEthing: THE thing.

There was beaten up furniture in the living room, lived in and homey. Joan and Penny and Maddy were in chairs and I was on the couch. We had mugs of coffee or hot chocolate, and I could tell Jo was worried about Art getting home. He wasn't expected until after supper, but that doesn't matter when you have love and marriage and someone is driving far. The food was in the oven and the house smelled of ham and sweet potatoes. I had definitely missed something.

"So Uncle Serge, did you meet Joey Votto?" Maddy asked.

"Of course. He's a good guy, real quiet. Everyone gets along with him. Quiet," I said. She seemed to want to know more, and I had it to tell, but I didn't like talking about others on the team. You learned things, and you decided what kind of guy you'd be. "Boy, can he hit!" I said, "He can hit anything he sets his mind to. Probably the best all-around hitter I've seen."

"What about other guys?" Penny said.

I tried to look thoughtful for a pause. "I know Bruce and Tucker pretty well, but I don't like to talk about guys or gossip. I was married, and things were in the news and I know it hurt Carol. Not much, thank heaven (I was not a big star), but everything hurts when you're going through that. So I just decided that there were things that were ours and not anyone else's. Do you understand?"

Penny and Maddy looked at me, then each other, and then Penny said, "Yeah, but you're no fun at all, Uncle Serge!"

Joan laughed like she was afraid I'd be offended. I shook my head slightly, smilingly, I hoped. "Votto's got a great barbecue. And Bruce loves Coors beer. The Reds have a good clubhouse--everybody gets along more or less. You know who's a hoot? Buckwalter! He always pops up in the background of other guys' pictures." I shook my head and changed the subject.

"I hear you are a cheerleader--and you a basketball player?" I said looking first at Maddy and then Penny.

They were both nodding.

"Great! You know your grandma was a cheerleader in high school, and she played softball and ran track," I said. "You must get your coordination from her because your mother..." I shook my head sorrowfully.

Joan warned me, "Don't go there, Serge. Not wise at all!"

"Your mother was third chair in the flute section of the band," I pointed out. "She proves that we have the determination to persevere regardless of talent." I then acted thoughtful.

Penny said, "Mom always acted like she just liked music better."

Maddy added, "Grandma told us about cheerleading back in her time. She said sports were good but being part of things more than just yourself was the important thing. Even if you weren't the captain or star or lead drummer."

I smiled. "Exactly. Do you know how much my arm hurts all the time? I can barely lift it without warm up and BenGay and it still hurts. I saw lots of guys who dropped out because of the pain or not being good enough or just being let go. I only went to one all-star game and that was because the other guys were hurt--but really they didn't care." I sighed, meaningfully this time. "I played because it was fun. If it's not fun, do something else. Votto loves it, by the way. And your mom loved the band, and I liked listening to her play. It's all about the team and the effort."

Penny and I thought of something else. I saw it in her eyes. She said, "I have trouble with free throws."

I patted her shoulder. "Bothering you, huh? I know about slumps. Einstein said, Do not worry about your troubles with mathematics. I can assure you, mine are still greater. You'll get the free throws. Maybe I can help?" She smiled but looked skeptical.

Maddy looked a little left out, and Joan was just looking on. "So how goes cheerleading?" I said.

"Yeah, my third year on varsity!" she said proudly. Wow. Straight teeth, perhaps from recently removed braces. Dark blue eyes, and the family dark hair. Looker.

"I think I'd like to play in front of a kid who is so proud to be a cheerleader," I said. "You like cheering in football or basketball season better?"

She said, "As long as it's for the boys. They make us cheer for the girls teams sometimes. There just aren't many people there and it doesn't seem the same. Like we're just doing our duty."

"They need to see you are for them, too, I guess," I said.

Joan stood and moved, picking up our empty coffee cups and going to check the oven.

"Well, do you have a game soon or what?" I asked Penny, and she nodded.

"A practice game tomorrow at 4 against Mercy. It doesn't count and I don't even know if we have a ref, but we'll be doing our best," she said. There was something about Penny... I looked at Joan.

"I envy you, Jo," I said, quietly. She stood by the oven and turned. She heard it in my voice. That twinge, the crack, or whatever. She wore an apron and her hair was graying and she was that girl I'd hardly known until I was a major leaguer. She had a cracker box for a house, debts undoubtedly, and these two great kids. Nicci was probably a gem, too, a scholarship to Marietta and life before all of them. Joan had glistening eyes.

And I meant what I said. "Envy." I said it aloud and without context looking in her eyes and Joan knew. I think I stared at her. Maddy saw us looking funnily at each other. I could not see Penny out of the corner of my eye; but she saw it, too. They knew something. There are few secrets, ultimately, in a family that loves.