Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

In the front yard Vicki displays for me the most excellent way to hit a croquet ball, the between-the-straddled-legs address, which lets her give her ball a good straight ride that makes her whoop with pleasure. I am a side-approacher by nature, having played some golf at Lonesome Pines and when I first married X. I also enjoy hitting the stupid striper with one hand, though I give up touch every time. Vicki gives me dark and disreputable looks when I hit, then even more aggressively straddles her green ball and hikes her skirt above her knees to get the straightest pendulum swing. She’s half around the course before I’m through a wicket, though I’m a tinge dreamy now, my mind not truly on our game.

The Detroit weather has arrived finally, though it is not the same storm. All the anger has gone out of it, and it consents to being just a gusty, plucky breeze with a few sprinklings of icy rain — a mild suburban shower at best, though the light has passed from Sunday amber to late afternoon aquamarine. In fact it’s wonderful to be out of doors and away from the house, even though we play under the eyes of crucified Jesus. I have no idea where Vicki’s father is. Is this interpretable as a dark sign, a gesture of unwelcome? Should I be asking what I’m doing here? I was, after all, invited, though I feel in an unavoidable way as alone as a nomad.

“You havin fun?” Vicki says. She has managed to nest her green stripe close enough to my yellow ball to give it a good clacking whack under her stockinged foot, scooting it through the grass and into the flowerbed where it is lost among the snapdragons against the house.

“I was doing pretty good.”

“Gogetchanotherball. Get a red one — they’re lucky.” She stands like a woodsman, with her mallet on her shoulder. She has but two wickets remaining, and pretends to want me to catch up.

“I resign,” I say and smile.

“Say what?”

“That’s what you say in chess. I’m not a match for you, not even a patch on your jeans.”

“Chest nothin, you’re the one wanted to play, and now you’re the one quittin. Go on and get a ball.”

“No I won’t. I’m no good at games, not since I was little.”

“People bet on this game in Texas. It’s taken very serious.”

“That’s why I’m no good at it.”

I take a seat on the damp porch step beside her red shoes and admire the green-tinted light and the lovely curving street. This snaky peninsula is the work of some enterprising developer who’s carted it in with trucks and reclaimed it from a swamp. And it has not been a bad idea. You could just as easily be in Hyannis Port if you closed your eyes, which for a moment I do.

Vicki goes back to hitting her green stripe, but carelessly now, using my method to show she isn’t serious. “When I was a lil girl I saw Alice in Wonderland , Cade and me. You know?” She looks up to see if I’m listening. “In the part where they played croquet with ostriches’ heads, or whatever those pink birds are, I cried bloody murder, ’cause I thought it killed ’em. I hated to see anything get hurt even then. That’s why I’m a nurse.”

“Flamingos,” I say and smile down at her.

“Is that what they were? Well, I know I cried about ’em.” Whack-crack. Her green makes a hard driving run toward the striped stake, then twirls by on the left. “There you go, that’s your fault. Shoota-mile.” She stands thrown-hipped in the breeze. I watch her with terrible desire. “You don’t play games, but you write about ’em all the time. That’s backwards.”

“I like it that way.”

“How’d you like ole Cade. Idn’t he great?”

“He’s a good fellow.”

“If he’d let me dress him he’d be a whole lot better, I’ll tell you that. Cade needs him a little girlfriend. He’s got being a policeman on the brain.” She comes over and sits on the step below mine, hugs her knees and tucks her skirt up under her. Her hair is sweet-smelling. While she was gone she has put on a good deal of Chanel No. 5.

I wish we could not talk about Cade now, but I have nothing much to substitute for him. Vicki has no interest in the upcoming NFL draft, or the early lead the Tigers have opened up in the East, or who might be ahead in the Knicks game, so I’m content to sit on the porch like a lazy freeholder, breathe in the salt air and look upwards at the daylight moon. In its own way this is quite inspiring.

“So how do you like it out here?” Vicki looks at me up over her shoulder, then back at the house across the street — another split-level, but with an oriental façade, its cornices tweaked, and painted China red.

“It’s great.”

“You don’t fit in at all, you know that.”

“I’m here to see you. I’m not trying to fit in.”

“I guess,” she says, and hugs her knees hard.

“Where’s your dad? I sort of have the feeling he’s ducking me.”

“No way for that, José.”

“I could get lost in a hurry, you know, if being here is one bit of trouble.”

“Right, you’re a heap of trouble. Breakin things and spillin food and roughin up poor ole Cade. Maybe you had better leave.”

She turns and gives me a different look, a look you’d give a man trying to recite the Lord’s Prayer in pig Latin. “Just don’t be dumb,” she says. “That man dudn’t duck nobody. He’s in the basement with his hobby. He probably dudn’t even know you’re here.” She glares into the moiling sky. “If anybody’s trouble it’s ole you-know-who in there. But I can’t talk about that. It’s his poison, let him drink it.”

“Just like you’re mine.” I scoot down a step so I can hug her shoulders around tight. No one up or down Arctic Spruce could care less, a far different place from prudent Michigan. The feeling out here is we can hug and smooch on the steps till our arms fall off and it’ll be just fine with folks.

Her shoulders rise and settle inside my bear’s hug. “I’m not so sweet,” she says.

“Don’t tell me any bad news now,”

She furrows her brow. “Well, look.”

“It’s okay. I give you my word; whatever it is, later’s good enough.” I breathe in washed sweetness from her warm hair.

“Well, I do have something to tell you.”

“I just don’t want to spoil this afternoon.”

“Maybe it won’t.”

“Do I really have to hear it?”

“I think you should, yes.” She sighs. “You know that clam-handed old sawbones you were talkin’ to at the airport the other day? The one I came up and killed with a look?”

“I don’t want to know about you and Fincher,” I say. “It would count as a terrible part of my day. I command you never to tell me.” I stare at the swarming green sky. A small Cessna mutters across our airspace, seeking, I’m sure, a safe landing in Manahawkin or Ship Bottom, ahead of the storm. It does not seem a bit like Easter now, only another day without safeguards. Though the more normal the April day the better for me. Holidays can hold too many disappointments that I then have to accommodate.

“Look. I hadn’t been with that ole character.”

“Okay. That’s good to hear.”

“It’s your ex . She’s slippin off with him. The only reason I know is that I’ve seen her pick him up at the ER entrance three or four times. She’s got the light brown Citation, right?”

“What?”

“Well,” Vicki says. “If it hadn’t been he kissed her, I would’ve thought it was just innocent. But it idn’t innocent. That’s why I acted so peculiar at the airport. I figured ya’ll was about to fight.”

“Maybe it was somebody else,” I say. “There’s a lot of brown cars. G.M. made millions of them. They’re wonderful cars.”