Mark Costello - Big If

“Uniform is foolishness,” Mildred Williams commented. “What’d you pay for that?”

Gretchen said, “Too much.”

“You spoil him.”

“Do I spoil or neglect him, Mother? Please make up your mind.”

Tevon dragged the bat bag from the garage (also Oriole, also grossly over-priced), dumped it in the backseat, and got in. They started for the church, driving through the quiet streets of suburban Maryland.

Gretchen wasn’t clear on the name of the town she lived in. She said it was Seat Pleasant when people asked. She thought it probably was, though others on the street called it Capitol Highlands, which made a little sense. They were on the heights, northeast of the District, and from the pocket park near Gretchen’s house you could look across the smoky riverbottom ghettoes to the tourist part of Washington. Others called the town Cap Heights, but this was confusing (Capitol Heights was a town, but not this town) and probably also wrong. By whatever name, it was the poor end of the ’burbs, the first town past the District going out East Capitol. Gretchen figured they were in some kind of quasi-independent borough of Seat Pleasant, and she figured that this was because her end of town was largely black, cops and postal supervisors, and it suited everyone, both sets of politicians, white and black, to have a line of some kind down the Prince Georges Highway. Hope Road ran east from the P.G. into Seat Pleasant proper, which was getting somewhat black these days, more your upscale buppie types, government attorneys and congressional staffers from safe seats in Chicago. The whites were slowly drifting to the Beltway farther out, except for the liberal Jews, who had just built that jazzy synagogue, looks like a spacecraft with a lawn. In the summer, someone had spray-painted a swastika on the synagogue. They caught the man, ran his name in the newspaper — it was something plain, Smith or Jones or Williams. The town was edgy until the paper ran his picture as a public service. Gretchen, like everyone, was relieved to see that he was cracker white, not black. She could almost feel the place relax the day the picture ran.

She took P.G. to the lights and went up Hope Road. Tev was looking out his window at the fast food joints and gas station minimarts. Gretchen wondered what he thought of this, his world — the safe world she had made for him.

“Where you going?” asked her mother.

Only then did Gretchen remember the bishop and the sister and the money he embezzled and the move to the carpet warehouse in the District.

She turned around, started back. “Why didn’t you say something, Mother?”

“I did. I said, ‘Where you going?’”

“But you waited until I was almost there.”

“Don’t bark at me, baby,” Mildred Williams said. “I’m not the one that’s all screwed up.”

They wouldn’t let Tevon wear his spikesat the amusement center because the indoor surfaces were rubberized, so they went to Foot Locker in the next mall down, where Gretchen bought her son a new pair of pumpable high-tops and three sports energy bars so that he would have the energy to inflate his shoes.

Back at the amusement center, she fed a bill to the token machine and they dragged the bat bag to the bleachers. There were sixteen batting cages in the place. Four were softball only, two were out of order. The rest were being used, dads and sons, white and black. Tevon ate the energy bars as they waited for a cage. Gretchen had a pretzel from the concession stand, the big kind with the mustard and the road salt.

Tevon stretched his hamstrings like the pros and then it was his turn. He stepped into the cage. She dropped a token in the slot. His face looked puny in the helmet and it made her sad, the way he wore his uniform not to a game, but to a cage of hanging nets, one boy in a row of boys, up against these blind machines. Tevon found his stance. A red light at the other end turned green, a pitch was shoveled up. He swung and missed. Gretchen heard the big thump in the pads.

She clapped for him. “Here we go now, Tevon, keep that bathead flat.”

Another pitch. He cut and missed.

The slick detective, Tevon’s father in L.A., had played junior college shortstop and once had a try-out with the Padres, so he said. They were looking for the next Ozzie Smith, big range and the sweet release, so he said. Watching Tevon in the cage, it was hard to see the father in the son. Tevon was big and slow, as she was. He was often lost in soccer games, way off on the left flank when the ball was being kicked around the goal, and yet he was so serious this morning. He swung at the last ball, stepped back to stretch some more, bending at the waist, the bat across his shoulders like a yoke. He took some practice swings. He was sweating, loose. He was happy, focused on his swing.

Her pager sounded, the oscillating chirp. Tevon tightened up.

“It’s nothing,” she said quickly. She bought another twenty balls and walked behind the bleachers. The message was a number in the Threat Assessment Center.

“Gretchen, hey,” said Debbie Escobedo-Waas. “We’re sorry to bother you.”

Gretchen thought, who’s we ? She didn’t like the conversation so far.

Debbie said, “You’re going out tonight — New Hampshire, I’m afraid. I’m wondering, we’re wondering, could you shoot up to the campus on your way to Andrews? I’m here with the Director and Boone Saxon. We’d like to have a word with you before the jumping-off.”

They set a time and Gretchen walked back to the cage. Tevon was finished with his twenty balls. She dropped a token in the slot and bought him twenty more.

She said, “I’m sorry, Tev, I have to go. This afternoon, not now. We’ve got lots of time.”

A pitch was shoveled up. Tevon didn’t swing. It thumped into the pads.

“Don’t be angry, son. We’ve got lots of time.”

Tevon said, “My father’s name is Carlton Imbry.”

Considering everything — the pain the name had caused, and how foolish she had felt when she realized that she wasn’t even smart enough to know whether someone loved her, and the other things she’d felt, the years of pointless feeling, and the sacrifices she had made to raise the boy alone — considering all of this, Gretchen, standing by the cage, was relatively steady, or so it probably seemed to the dads in the other cages.

She said, “Who told you that?”

Tevon didn’t swing or drop his stance. The bat was cocked, his elbow out. His eyes were on the green light and the pitches flashing past. “There’s a database on the Web,” he said. “Enter name and query-field, it pulls up public records in that name.”

“But who told you the name?”

“I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for me.”

Boom of pads. Gretchen whispered, “No.”

“You told me I was born in Maryland. I wasn’t born in Maryland. I found my birth certificate, L.A. County. It said Carlton Imbry under father. I always thought my father was a bum, and that’s why you protected me and never said his name. But I found him on Nexis. He’s not a bum. He’s a homicide detective, worked on all the famous cases in L.A. He’s the one who solved the O.J. murder — he found the dog hair in the lint screen of the dryer, which matched the dog that wasn’t barking. Would’ve blown the case wide open, if the lab techs hadn’t bungled it. So I got his number, left a message. I said, ‘I am your son.’ I left a few messages and he finally called me back — he’s been swamped lately. We’ve been talking ever since. He says I can live with him if I promise not to cramp his style.”

The last pitch hit the pads. The cage was quiet.

Gretchen said, “You will never live with him. Listen to me, Tev, I know the man, okay? He’ll hurt you, just like he hurt me.”