Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

“We’re spoiling our dinner,” said Lyle.

“I guess I can’t stop you,” said Maggie. Then she put the pamphlet on STDs on the table and said, “I got this up at the prison, Will. You might want to take a look.”

“That’s really embarrassing, Mom.”

“You’re going to have to make a lot of decisions for yourself at some point, so you might as well have the facts.”

“Gosh, Mom. What’s going on?”

“You’re growing up, that’s all,” said Maggie.

“She just wants you to be prepared,” said Lyle. “In case she’s abducted by Martians or whisked off to Hollywood to star in a film.”

7.5 Will

When the weekend came, Lyle drove Will to Glorietta for the first game of the summer play-offs. If they won, they moved on to the next bracket. If they lost, they were out. The mayor was standing at the entrance to the ballpark, handing out campaign buttons that said CALL ME BUDDY even though his name was Robert Hutchinson and up until then, everybody had called him Hutch.

“I guess he wants the citizens of Red Bud to think of him as inseparable from the town,” said Will.

“It’s all about winning friends and influencing people,” Lyle said. “I read about it in a book.”

“When did you ever read a book?” asked Will.

“Jimmy gave it to me. It said you have to make people think that whatever you want them to do is actually their idea.”

“Hmmm,” said Will. “That sounds like something the teachers up at school would do.”

It seemed that the whole town had driven up for the game. Jimmy charged past, headed toward the stands with Lily De Luca in tow. “Pre-med!” Jimmy called out. “That’s pretty heady stuff!”

“That’s an example of your theory right there,” said Will, but Lyle only beamed and called back to Jimmy, “Tell me something I don’t know!”

Mr. Quick waved over the heads of his wife and baby, and Lucas Enright, who had owned the diner for as long as anybody could remember, wished Will and Lyle both luck as if Lyle were on the team too. By the time Will hurried off to find his teammates, he was seething with an unfamiliar rage. When Stucky Place slapped his shoulder and said, “Here comes our secret weapon,” it took him a few seconds to respond, and during the warm-up, it seemed to be pure chance that determined whether he caught the ball or dropped it. Only the sight of Tula sitting in the third row eating a candy bar calmed him. From that distance he couldn’t tell what kind it was, but he could imagine the crinkling sound of the paper as she pulled it back to take a bite and the soft wet sounds as she chewed and swallowed.

“Rayburn, get your head in the game!” called the coach.

Will mouthed, “Yes sir,” but all he could think about was Tula. He could almost taste the chocolate and feel the crunch of the peanuts and the pulling of the caramel when it stuck to her molars.

Ever since breaking his arm, Will had felt that something else in him had broken. Where he had once done things without thinking too much about them, his head was now bursting with all of the advice his coaches had given him over the years: keep your weight back and your head down, square your hips, stay inside the ball, choke up on two strikes, make sure to follow through. And now there were advice and expectations on the academic side of things as well.

“You’re trying too hard,” said the team captain just as the coach interrupted to say, “Try a little harder, Rayburn. Give it everything you’ve got.”

“Muscle memory,” said Stucky. “That’s the way to go.”

Will was thinking about Tula, but also about his life goals, which didn’t seem to fit him right, as if he had put on somebody else’s uniform. The test scores hadn’t helped. Now there were college applications to fill out and essays to write. Mr. Quick had agreed to help him over the summer, but when Will had shown him a draft of his overcoming challenges essay, the effort had been greeted with a frown. “It sounds like the soldier you met at the clinic is the one who is overcoming the challenges,” said Mr. Quick. “The essay is supposed to be about you.”

Mr. Quick, who had once insisted learning was the point, started to go on about commitment and excellence and the importance of grades. “If a thing is worth doing,” he said, “it’s worth doing well.” So now Will was adding a paragraph about his broken arm and baseball, but he worried it sounded like he was comparing his injury to a war wound and a baseball game to war. If only something significant had happened to him, but it hadn’t.

A ball whizzed past Will’s ear. He hadn’t even seen it, but he recovered enough to relay the ball home, where the runner was tagged out. That left a man on second. The next batter grounded to the shortstop, who pitched the ball to third. The ball made a soft thud in the pocket of Will’s glove, but just as he stepped back onto the base and reached out to tag the player who was hurtling toward him, his wrist went limp. The ball fell to the ground, and the umpire shouted, “Safe!”

“Libby, go in for Will,” called the coach.

Will’s ears burned as he walked off the field. He didn’t look at the stands where he knew his parents and Tula were sitting and worrying about him. He chewed a piece of Juicy Fruit gum and tried to empty his mind the way it used to be empty. He shrugged his shoulders and tried not to care the way he used to not care. He tried to feel like Derek Jeter coming back from a dislocated shoulder to help his team make it to the World Series. Of course, all of that was in the future for Jeter as he faced Martinez in the eighth inning with his team trailing the Red Sox 5–2, hoping against hope that his shoulder would hold up and not knowing he was about to hit a double that would start an epic rally because no one, not even Jeter, could know what the future would hold.

7.6 Maggie

Maggie planned to move the files on the last day of DC’s vacation. While Lyle and Will chattered over breakfast about Stucky Place’s lucky homer and the upcoming championship game, Maggie put on a blouse she had bought for the occasion. It consisted of a sheer shell and a lacy undergarment and was exactly the sort of thing Valerie might wear. Although the day was bound to get hot, she covered the blouse with the bulky birthday sweater and packed two double-thickness grocery bags with magazines and party snacks. “They’re for the team,” she said to Lyle as she loaded them into the back of the truck.

When they reached the prison parking lot and she went to take them out again, Lyle said, “Why don’t you just leave them in the truck. The game’s not until tomorrow.”

“No, no,” said Maggie, trying to think of a reason why this wouldn’t work. “Some of the cookies are for the prisoners, and I haven’t sorted out which is which.”

“Can’t you do that now? No sense having to carry everything home again on the bus.”

“No, no,” Maggie said again. “If I do that, I’ll be late.”

“Really, Maggie. It’ll save you…”

“I said no! I really can’t!” Maggie tried not to look as if she was struggling under the weight of the bags, and after a moment’s hesitation, she added, “You can’t say anything to anyone, Lyle, but I might not be working at the prison much longer. I’ve been offered a job in Phoenix, and I’m considering taking it.”

“Phoenix!” cried Lyle. “What would you go to Phoenix for?”

“There’s an attorney there who can help Tomás, but he needs an assistant. It would just be for a little while.”

“Are you in trouble?” asked Lyle. “Jimmy mentioned something that day at the lake, and MacBride said something too.”

“Lots of people are in trouble,” said Maggie. “That’s the entire point.”