Home Away Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  STRIKE ONE

  STRIKE TWO

  LOW AND AWAY

  STRIKE THREE

  STRIKE FOUR

  MEN ON BASE

  THE DEAL

  CELLO CONCERTO IN D

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  To Marv and Lucas

  PREFACE

  FATHER, SON

  HE CRUSHED THE WHATABURGER bag and gripped it tightly in his right hand. Ridges of calluses ran the length of his index finger, connecting through the web around the inside of his palm to a gnarled thumb covered with a blackened, concave nail. He squinted at his son through the smoke from his cigarette.

  “Your mom tells me you’re quite the ball player.”

  “I almost made the All-Star team,” the boy smiled.

  “Almost! What the hell good is almost?”

  The boy’s smile fell as quickly as sand through the cracks of the building’s old wooden steps. ‘Almost’ was pretty good for a kid who had spent the past five years in Alaska, but he knew better than to bring that up. The fact was, there weren’t a lot of baseball diamonds in Point Barrow. Sometimes guys used to clear off the snow from the parking lot behind the piping depot and shoot baskets, but for eight months out of the year baseball wasn’t an option. The kids in Texas got to play year around.

  “I’m not as good as some of these guys — ”

  “Horseshit,” his father said. “The only reason you’re not as good as those guys is you’re lazy.”

  They were sitting on the back steps of the apartment his mom had rented after they returned from Point Barrow. It was an old building with two dilapidated railroad flats — one up, one down — covered with chipped asbestos shingles streaked with rust from the clothesline reels. The concrete yard dead-ended at a plank fence facing a massive K-Mart parking lot across the alley. The flats didn’t look long for the world, which is probably why they were were so cheap. Whether they would fall of their own accord or be scraped by bulldozers to clear the way for more Texas sprawl was an open question. The boy had heard his parents arguing about why she’d rented such a godawful place. He had worked his ass off for five years at forty below, his father shouted, and deserved a little luxury. Luxury, she laughed — what the hell did he know about luxury! But this time, their arguments didn’t end with curses and door slamming and his father disappearing for days. One night he had heard his father talking about “The Program,” and his desire to take the money he’d made in Alaska and invest it in a liquor store and buy a house.

  “There’s always money in liquor,” he said. But he had one more job to do. Royal Dutch Shell had hand-picked a team of veterans to run some state-of-the-art platforms off the coast of Norway. When Mom complained, his dad shouted what the hell was he supposed to do — “I’ve got to go where the oil is and it ain’t in Texas any more.” It was the last big field. There wouldn’t be any more like this one, he said, and then he’d be home forever.

  The heavy bruise of an impending Gulf storm settled over K-Mart. His father arced the Whataburger bag across the yard, where it disappeared into the battered trash can with a soft thud. “Let’s play some catch.” Jason leaped up and grabbed his glove and a hardball from the shelf on the porch just inside the door. “You don’t have a glove,” he said. Jack Thibodeaux smiled and held up his right hand, as tough and discolored as a slab of leather.

  They slipped through a hole in the back fence and set up ninety feet apart in the nearly deserted K-Mart lot. Jason lobbed the ball softly at first, but the throws came back hard and unforgiving. They played without speaking, which was fine for the boy. When his father spoke to him it was usually a complaint or a command: You need a haircut. Pick up your clothes. Get ready for school. They rarely did anything together except eat or ride in cars across godforsaken landscapes — oil fields or expanses of tundra or prairies or swamps about to become oil fields. When his father worked, he worked. When he didn’t work, he slept or drank. But this was something different. There were no complaints, no instructions, no judgments — just the ball rocketing back and forth, and glimmers of surprised contentment passing between them when they caught each other’s eye.

  The sound of the ball in the boy’s glove made a sharp retort — against his father’s hand a slap, like a rolled up newspaper. He couldn’t believe his father was playing without a glove; he had been a superb ball player in his day but decided to chase the certainty of Louisiana oil … Texas oil … Alaskan oil rather than the dream of playing professional ball. “Doesn’t it hurt?” His father shook his head. “Throw harder!” he shouted. But the harder Jason threw, the harder it came back. They were at a level he had never played before, back and forth, back and forth in a charged relentless rhythm that Jason could have kept up forever. And then it began to rain. And as it did in Galveston during summer, it began as a deluge and quickly worked its way to a torrent. Wind-driven sheets of water swept across the parking lot, accompanied by fusillades of thunder.

  But the ball kept coming. Jason couldn’t believe it, he could barely see, water streamed over his eyes, his glove was soaked, his father was nothing but a slim shade ninety feet away in the downpour. He grinned, filled with a giddy and profound sense of connection with his father.

  Then,“Jack! Jason!” his mom cried from the back porch, breaking the reverie. A jagged streak of lightning scarred the sky. The air crackled with a sound like sheet metal ripping apart.

  “Lightning!” he shouted to his father. “We should go in!”

  “Why, you got a metal plate in your head?”

  His dad fired the ball through the rain and Jason speared it, laughing. He couldn’t remember feeling happier, playing his favorite sport and defying the gods back-to-back with his old man. It was like a dream, a promise fulfilled, some kind of payback for the fifteen years of wandering in the desert of his father’s life. Nothing had prepared him for this, just as nothing prepared him for what was to come.

  Jack Thibodeaux walked a few steps closer to his son. “I’m going away tomorrow,” he shouted. This was another monumental change. Every other time, he just left. Jason was always the last to know where or why or for how long, just that he was gone. But now it was different. His father cared about him. He was going to do one last job and come home and do it right.

  “Mom said you’re going to Norway!” he shouted back.

  His father whizzed a fastball to him, low and away. It hit the pavement and skittered past, all the way to the base of the building. Jason chased it down and when he turned to throw it back, his father was gone.

  STRIKE ONE

  Grass, horizons of shimmering green grass, its loamy perfume sweet in his nostrils. Lunge, snatch, throw … lunge, snatch, throw … the crack of Vuco’s fungo bat beats methodically as he fields grounder after grounder on the tightly clipped turf of Sunken Diamond. A sheen of sweat spreads across his back, then Vuco shouts, ‘You wanna throw?’ He steps on the mound and tosses a fastball to Barf Connolly and the radar gun shows Double Zero. He throws another pitch even harder but the gun shows Double Zero again. ‘Vuco!’ he calls but his coach just stands there. ‘That must have been a hundred!’ Then he looks behind the backstop where Rafe was playing with his Big Truck and he’s gone. He tries to run but his spikes snag the turf. ‘Barf, for Christsakes where is he?’ Sweat pours from his face, he can’t breathe, a hole opens in his stomach, he has no idea where his son is.

  He runs behind the concession stand, then down the asphalt path towards the stadium. A jumble of trees and tangled underbrush lines the path, places where Rafe could be lost. Then somehow he’s a mile down Campus Drive, running across the lawn toward their apartm
ent though Rafe could never have gotten this far, he wasn’t even two years old. He stares up at the apartment’s balcony then down the boulevard, trying to retrace every step, every clue, but his thoughts float out of reach.

  ‘Rafe!’ he shouts. ‘Rafe, where are you? ’

  JASON SHOT STRAIGHT UP FROM the sofa bed, scattering books, papers, pencils onto the floor. “Rafe!” he called, crossing the room with two giant strides into the nursery fashioned from the Murphy Bed closet. There he was, surrounded by Pooh and Noodles and Doggie and Fuff in the sky-blue crib Jason had painted with rising suns and phases of the moon, spread out on his back beneath the posters of Sandra Day O’Connor and Randy Johnson, his breath sliding in and out in the sweet reassuring sleep of innocence.

  “Jesus Christ!” Jason exhaled. He leaned over and hoisted Rafe into his strong arms. At two years old he was no heavier than a full bag of groceries. He carried Rafe into the kitchen and poured two glasses of milk — one in a regular glass, the other in a sippy cup festooned with transparent butterflies. Rafe continued sleeping against his neck but began to stir at the smell of the pear Jason was slicing.

  “Time to face the music, Buddy,” Jason said, switching the radio on to KSJO — All Rock, All the Time. “You gotta wake up or you’ll never get to sleep tonight. And tonight,” he said joyfully, waltzing with his son across the small kitchen, “your mommy’s finished with law school.” Rafe stared blankly as Jason strapped him into the old wooden high chair. “Dude,” Jason cooed. “Can you say freedom?”

  The backpack, the stroller, the pale blue plastic baby bag — Vicki could deal with these now. Tomorrow he was going back to baseball. Tomorrow ended the unprecedented — and some said unwise — leave of absence from Stanford’s baseball program to be a full-time dad. He would rejoin his quest for what he and everyone who knew him assumed would inevitably be his — a professional baseball career. And Rafe would go back to being just his kid, rather than a full-time job.

  Rafe stared at the pear slices on his tray, then picked one up in his chubby hand and flung it to the center of the floor. “Whoa, you gotta hit your cut-off man!” Jason cried. He knew Rafe was never hungry after waking, but he was anxious to accelerate the program. Vicki’s eighteen hour days, the endless cycle of studying and tests and papers — it was over today. He didn’t know what came next, but it couldn’t be any worse. Right from the start it had been ‘Vicki Vicki Vicki, Rafe Rafe Rafe.’ Finally, it was his turn.

  He hurried into the living room and found the foam rubber baseball under the sofabed. Rafe’s eyes rose with a smile when he saw the ball in his father’s hand.

  “Catch!” Rafe shouted.

  Jason laughed and softly tossed the ball. Rafe’s hands came together several beats after the ball bounced off his chest. Jason threw it again and again until Rafe managed to squeeze it against the high-chair tray. “Good! Now throw it to Daddy.” Happily, with a jerky flap of his arm, Rafe tossed the ball into his father’s waiting hands.

  “Yay!” Jason cried. “You’re gonna be a ballplayer, my little man.”

  After a dinner of ravioli and green beans, he sat Rafe on the living room floor with a pile of wooden blocks and his favorite stuffed animals. “Let’s build a zoo,” Jason said. He quickly formed a square enclosure and placed Pooh Bear in the center. Rafe recognized the game and began forming new enclosures for his stuffed animals. Jason popped open a metal cookie can holding thirty-forty small plastic cars and arranged them into a parking lot, then grabbed a copy of Sports Illustrated and read two articles before Rafe began impatiently mixing the blocks and cars together. Not that it made any difference. The living room was a mess, the morning newspaper still tangled with the sheets on the pull-out couch that transformed their living room into a bedroom. A plate of half-eaten raviolis, sneakers, socks, a kitchen towel, issues of Baseball Digest littered the floor.

  At nine o’clock Jason rolled over and squeezed Rafe’s belly. “Two minute warning, Buddy. Night-night time.” Rafe carefully set the animals on their sides. “Night night,” he sang. Jason carried Rafe into the bedroom, where he changed Rafe’s diaper and dressed him in his orange fire-retardant footsies.

  “What should we read tonight?”

  “The birdie book!”

  “All right!” It could have been a plumber’s manual, Jason wouldn’t care. It was over. He could feel the rock rolling away, freedom blowing into his life. The trips to the pediatrician, to Gymboree for clothes, the afternoons cramming on park benches while Rafe scampered up and down play structures, the meals prepared, baths drawn, diapers changed, loads of laundry washed … it was all over, today. Finis. Terminado. Done. That was Vicki’s job now. His job was to play baseball.

  He sat in the living room chair with Rafe warm and clean-smelling in his lap, leafing through the Encyclopedia of North American Birds for the umpteenth time. Ten minutes into it Jason saw the tell-tale wavering of Rafe’s eyelids, the softening of his mouth. He carried him to the balcony where they faced eastwards and began their nightly litany: “Good night Gramma,” they recited together. “Good night Grampa … good night Mommy.” And tonight, because it was there, “Good night moon.”

  Rafe had brought a carrot stick and pointed it to the sky. “Do stars eat carrots?”

  Jason smiled. “I don’t know, hold it up and see.” Rafe thrust the carrot towards the sky and waited, his dark eyes shining with anticipation. After a moment, he turned to his father with a wondering look.

  “Maybe they’re not hungry,” Jason offered. “They probably already ate.” Rafe studied his face, then pushed the carrot against Jason’s mouth. He grasped it with his teeth and began chewing. “Mmmm, daddies love carrots. That’s why daddies are strong.”

  He lay Rafe down in his crib and pulled the yellow cotton blanket up to his neck. “Good night, sweet boy. Have a great sleep.”

  Rafe stared at him placidly in the half light of the room.

  “Good night, Daddy,” he said, and closed his eyes.

  Rafe’s breathing was soft and steady by the time Jason reached the door. He left it open the width of his fist and hurried into the kitchen. The clock on the stove said 9:27. Vicki should have been home by nine, but what else was new? He looked at the cluttered table and realized that he should have bought some champagne or something to celebrate the end of law school, whatever good that would do. Their relationship sucked, there wasn’t anything they’d ever found to make it better, so why pretend?

  He cleared a space at the table and began reading from Analysis of Sociological Data for his midterm. At 10:30 he slammed his fist down. He’d never make it to work on time. It was his last night at the physical plant where he scrubbed, cleaned, painted, patched and monitored the machinery that cooled and heated half of Stanford’s sprawling campus, from eleven PM to seven AM — payment for extending his baseball scholarship another year. Gutfried Oderbach — Field Marshall Oderbach, they called him — would be all over him for being late, even if it was his last night.

  He pulled on a pair of frayed khakis and the sweatshirt he’d worn the past two nights. He was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when the front door opened.

  “Glad you could make it!” he called sarcastically. Vicki ignored him and tip-toed into Rafe’s room. She leaned over the railing and kissed him lightly on the lips. She smiled as Rafe’s eyes fluttered and the corners of his mouth lifted sweetly.

  Then Jason loomed over her shoulder. “You said you’d be home by nine.”

  She gazed tenderly on Rafe, his soft corn silk hair pressed against his temple. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling the blanket away from his chin. “Something came up.” She turned and hurried from the room. Jason reached over and yanked the blanket back up to Rafe’s chin, then followed Vicki into the kitchen.

  “What do you mean something came up? It’s over, right? This is the last day.”

  She took a blueberry yogurt from the refrigerator and sat tiredly at the kitchen table. She ran her hand through her long
, shimmering hair. “I really wish we could talk once without you yelling.”

  “I’m not yelling! I’m frustrated. I’ve been waiting for two hours … two years!”

  Vicki breathed deeply and closed her eyes. “It hasn’t been two years.” When she opened them he was leaning over the table, his head thrust towards her.

  “What is it now?”

  “I was trying to change my Bar Boards schedule. They put me in the afternoon class by mistake.”

  “Bar Boards? What are Bar Boards?

  “I told you — I’ve got two weeks of prep classes for the Boards. These last three years are down the drain if I don’t pass.”

  “No, you didn’t tell me.” He glared at her. “I’ve got practice tomorrow. You said you’d take Rafe.”

  “It’s just for tomorrow.”

  “Naw, Vicki, naw — this is your time now. You promised.”

  She shrugged. “It’s the best I could do.”

  The red numerals of the digital clock burned into his eyeballs — 10:49. “No, that’s not your best,” he said. “You gave your best to constitutional law. You gave your best to Professor Hairpiece. You give your best to everyone but me. I get crap.”

  “That’s because all you know is crap. You dish it out all the time.”

  The argument wasn’t new, only the circumstances. They both had waited for this moment since Rafe’s birth — the end of law school, the pursuit of some kind of normalcy in a marriage that had never really had any. It was that promise, that distant hope that had held them together for the past two years. Now, it was suddenly clear that that point could just as easily be an end as a beginning.

  He snatched her tub of yogurt and threw it as hard as he could. It exploded high above the stove, showering rays of pale blue cream across the wall and down the side of the refrigerator. “I’ve fuckin’ had it!” he shouted. “This marriage is over!”