My father is home from work early, the second time this week, and that’s not a good sign. It could mean he and his boss are fighting again, and he’s left in a huff. My mother is concerned that he will lose his job, but his response is the guy’s an asshole and it’s insulting to have to put up with his crap. Besides, the only reason the guy’s in a supervisory position is his family is politically connected.
It’s unlikely my father will ever be designated ‘employee of the month’ the way he bad mouths the Registry of Motor Vehicles where he’s employed. Everyone, he says, is an appointee of one kind or another. My mother reminds him that it was a friend of his father that got him the job, and that leads to an argument that often continues behind the thin wall that separates our bedrooms.
I have been practicing scales for about an hour getting ready for my piano lesson, but my attention is diverted by noises in the kitchen. The refrigerator door slams shut, a beer can hisses, a chair is scraped along the tile floor, and then a long exhalation of breath that sounds more like a cry for mercy than relief.
I wish that my mother would walk in so that I don’t have to deal with him, but she won’t be home from work for two or three hours. I keep at my exercises: up one side of the B flat scale and down the other; I sense the presence in the kitchen moving in my direction. My father makes no pretense of being fond of hearing me play. I’m wasting my time and his money, he is quick to say, but it is my mother’s paycheck that provides for the piano lessons.
He is framed in the doorway, his shirttails hanging, his tie askew, a beer can clutched in his hand like some promise of redemption. I acknowledge his presence with a nod -- keep playing, apprehensive of what may occur next. He takes a long swig of beer, belches defiantly, providing a guttural counterpoint to the music.
“Hey Chopin, take a break,’ he says, “come outside and throw a few.”
I don’t want to play catch with him, he’s way out of my league and he uses these sessions to humiliate me, displaying to everyone what a sorry offspring he has. I follow him like a dutiful pup into the backyard. He flips me a catcher’s mitt, takes a fielder’s glove and heads out to a spot he has staked out as the pitcher’s mound. I take a position sixty feet, six inches away, behind a home plate he has fitted into the turf.
According to the scrapbooks in his closet, my father was a pitcher of considerable promise whose peregrinations through the minor league system of organized baseball took him to towns with curious prairie names in a part of the country that is as strange to me as Nepal and Tibet. A sore shoulder ended his career before he could advance to the big leagues. He has never recovered from the disappointment, and remains a bitter, rudderless man who failed to fulfill his calling.
He follows the sport incessantly: rarely misses a game on TV; his eyes peruse box-scores in the morning paper with the concentration of someone studying climate changes and weather patterns. He should have stayed in the game somehow even on the periphery. He is woefully out of his element pushing papers at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
We warm up slowly to loosen up. I can see that he is coming alive with every throw. Years of muscle training emerge in the motion of his delivery, almost liquid in its ease. It’s in the legs, he’s told me; if it’s only in your arm, you’re on a fast track to no-wheresville.
The ball zooms into my mitt in a hurtful splat as ball slams into leather. The pace quickens, the velocity increases. He is spewing anger, releasing frustration – the heartache and disappointment is temporarily eased as his awakened body embraces its elusive destiny. He’s throwing strikes, his curveball is snapping downward wickedly. I’m concerned that his zeal will hurt me -- my hand feels double its normal size.
He stops abruptly. Is my mother home, glaring angrily at us? No, he is clutching his shoulder, contorted in pain. Tears stream down his face in remembrance of times past.
I am relieved to stop, but I sense his pain and feel my own. “Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, “that’s it for today.”
“The ball was really hopping,” I say.
“For a couple of minutes there, I felt great,” he says. “I had good motion, good execution – like the time in Pocatello when I struck out nine guys in a row. The manager put his arm around me and said: “Kid, you’re on your way to the bigs.”
My father says: “I never even made it to Pawtucket.”
