The Summer That Melted Everything(81)

Empty gloves always said it was, but then the ball would come sailing their way. They’d catch it. Say to themselves, Of course we don’t need him.

Dad tried to find out from Grand why he was no longer on the team.

“I just don’t wanna play anymore, Dad.” He shrugged. “Is that okay?”

“I thought you liked baseball. I liked watching you play, but if you don’t want to anymore, well, sure that’s okay.”

And then Dad hugged him and Grand sighed in his arms. “Thanks, Dad.”

The team stretched the baseball diamond far that summer, and the things said there went to gossip in town.

“Have you heard about Grand Bliss?” they whispered.

“I can’t believe it. He doesn’t talk like them. Doesn’t walk like one of them. How can he be?”

“But he is. I heard he kissed another boy. You just never know who is or isn’t anymore. I mean, look at Rock Hudson. There’s always rumors about him. I remember watchin’ him in the old films. I never would have guessed he wanted anything more than a good woman. You just never know what a man wants. No, you just never know who a man is.”

Dad was never caught in the circles of gossip. Mom could sometimes be, but only because of Fedelia, who brought that type of news into the house during her visits. Though in regards to Grand, she brought none of it up. Instead she would sit across from Mom and say Grand is a very special boy.

“Hmm-mmm,” Mom would say, not knowing what moved in the deep.

“I’m scared for him, though, Stella.”

Mom would make a noise, something like a chuckle. “Don’t be silly, Auntie, he’s a strong boy.”

Fedelia would rub her hands together. “I know.”

Ever since that night Sal cut her hair, Fedelia no longer spoke profanity. Her tone was calm. Like thawed-out honey. Her anger had been cut out with the ribbons and was swept up and dumped into the trash. She stood taller. Walked less clumsy. She’d even lost weight and was planning a cruise for the following spring. She would say Scranton’s name only to say, “He was my husband. He left me. That is that. I am over it, and I wish him the best.”

Unlike the bags she wore before, her clothes clung now, no longer afraid to touch her and her self coming back.

Maybe it was the hard journey to her own identity that made her feel for Grand so deeply. The boy struggling with his own, and she knowing exactly what it feels like to live under the weight of the world.

“I hear Grand is interested in journalism now.” Fedelia crossed her slimmed-down legs while she patted a handkerchief above her lip to get the sweat. Her makeup more subtle than before, more becoming, just like that short crop of white hair.

“Yes, it seems that way.” Mom chuckled. “Must’ve been all those reporters comin’ here. He must’ve found that quite interestin’.”

Grand didn’t want to become a journalist. I knew that much about him. He was just trying to build the connection between him and Ryker, the first man he ever met who was like him. It’s hard not to fall in love with the only blanket in winter.

And love, Grand did.

In his mind, he was making sure he was becoming someone who could be loved back. A notepad for a notepad. A pen for a pen. A journalist for a journalist. The boy flitting around town, interviewing about this and that. Notes that would become articles later on the typewriter in his room. He even did an article on Dresden.

And so she is gone, and we cannot put that out of mind, but we can thrill at the joy of knowing we have loved her and that the warmth we go to, shall be her.

Grand’s other articles were of fewer stars. He covered everything from activities of the local chamber of commerce to the farmer studying drought-resistant vegetation. He wrote about craft exhibitions, quilt bazaars, and the marijuana growing in a cornfield.

About the movie theater renovations, bigger screens, plusher seats. About the local fan drive and the mayor’s continued effort to keep the town cool. Boring things he was unable to make interesting, so he’d crumple them into a ball. Gripping this ball like the old ones he used to. Winding up, a slow pitch to the wastebasket. That was his baseball those days.

I went to the wastebasket, unrolled the balls, and found so many ways Sal was being blamed. Grand quoted a man as saying if Sal touches your mailbox, you’ll get nothing but bad news.

“I’ve taken to freshly paintin’ my own mailbox every couple of hours,” the man said, “that way if he does touch my mailbox, I’ll know it ’cause wet paint always saves things.”

A woman claimed she’d seen Sal in the middle of the train tracks.

“He was shinin’ a small penlight on a ball of foil. A couple hours later, I turned the radio on and heard about that terrible train crash in the next town. So many folks died, and all ’cause the conductor said he was blinded by a bright, white light.”

No need in saying there wasn’t even a train crash. I crumpled the articles back up as I’d found then. When I turned, Grand was there, standing in the doorway.

He didn’t say anything as he walked past me to lay his notepad and pen by the typewriter. I knew something was wrong by the way he rubbed his head, as if there were a drum there, pounding until it’d won.

He looked out the window and I would be reminded of him doing just that years later when I read a line in a book that spoke of water slipping out a crack in the bottom of a jug.