Evvie Drake Starts Over(83)

Evvie sat up and scratched the dog’s ears. Her face was hot and sticky, she was entirely out of breath, and she owed nothing to anyone.





DEAN STOOD IN HIS PARENTS’ study and stared at his Little League trophies, some framed articles about his career—the good parts—and a variety of Marlins and Yankees swag. It was March, and he wasn’t getting ready for a season, and it still made his shoulder itch. He’d figured the visit would do him good.

“I’m about to put dinner on the table,” his mom said, putting her arm around his waist.

He draped his around her shoulders. “You guys don’t have to keep all this stuff, you know.”

“You don’t think we should at least hang on to your bobblehead?” She reached out and touched it, and it nodded enthusiastically.

“Man, I thought that was cool when they made that,” he said, smiling. “My own bobblehead. Might have been the pinnacle of my career.”

“Not the SVU cameo?” she asked. “You did meet Ice-T.”

“I did,” he said, and then he put his fingers on his own little image to still it. “Okay, you can keep that. But you could probably lose a lot of the rest of this stuff.”

“Are you kidding? I still come in here to try on the big foam hand with the ‘we’re number one’ finger. I wear it during fights with your dad.”

   “You do not.”

“I could.”

“You know, there’s not a lot to be proud of anymore, Mom.”

She knocked his hip with hers. “Of course we’re proud. You were always going to stop playing at some point. You were always going to get old, if nothing else. You’ve got some gray in your hair, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“Your dad put on your jersey every time you pitched. We were in the car one time when you struck out the side and he honked the horn until I thought he was going to get a ticket.”

Dean looked at the Daily News headline that called him a hero. “I was a pretty good pitcher,” he said to his mother.

“You were a great pitcher. You remember that?” She pointed to a picture cut out of The New York Times where they’d caught him in midair after a World Series win. He had leapt a couple of feet with his legs splayed like a hurdler’s, his mouth open in a holler, his fists over his head. The photo had been on T-shirts and magazine covers, and he’d seen two different pictures of people who’d had it tattooed on their arms. “You still did that,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I did. It’s just…I’m the only one, you know? I’m the only one who knows I did every…everything I could think of, everything they told me to do. I’m going to spend the rest of my life hearing from people who think I didn’t care enough.”

Angie slowly rubbed his back. “Dean, people don’t like…fragility. It makes them nervous. They’re scared thinking things just happen. They think there’s always something you can do to keep monsters from getting under the bed. Do you know what I mean?”

“You’re saying judgmental bastards feel invincible.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t say it was going to make you feel better. But what should make you feel better is that you get to keep every good day you had playing.” She put her hand on his elbow. “And whether you ever pick up another baseball as long as you live, we’re not going to be any less proud of you than we were when they took that picture.” She looked at her watch. “Now, I’m going to serve dinner in about five minutes. Don’t make me come back and drag you out.”

   “I’ll be there,” he said, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek. “Thank you, Mom.”



* * *



—

At the table, Stuart got right to the point. “You hear anything from Evvie these days?”

Angie shook her head. “Stuart, I thought we were going to work up to that. Is this working up to it?”

Stuart shrugged. “I’m up to it.”

Dean spooned potatoes onto his plate. “I get a text from her here and there. But not really. That…ended.”

“Well, that’s dumb.”

“Stuart,” Angie said again. “Maybe take it easy?”

“You don’t think it’s dumb?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Dean buttered a piece of bread. “Well, Dad, the head case stuff, she couldn’t get used to. She pushed and pushed and pushed for me to try to get back into pitching, and when it didn’t work out, she pretty much invited me to leave.”

“I didn’t realize she cared that much about baseball,” Angie said.

“Yeah, I gotta say that doesn’t sound right,” Stuart agreed.

“Believe me, she was pretty relentless,” Dean told them. “It was like you guys with All-Star Camp all over again.”

Angie and Stuart looked at each other. “Now, wait a minute,” Angie said. “Tell me how you think you got to All-Star Camp.”

“You guys badgered me until I agreed to go.”

Dean’s mother gave this contemptuous “Ha!” and his father, simultaneously, said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”