Page 101 of Unwritten Rules
They don’t get crushed by the Spiders. Instead, it’s a nail-biter of a game, New York’s magic number in double digits, Cleveland playing like they have nothing to lose, their season over in all but name.
Zach goes out to the batter’s box when he’s up. The crowd is a vague blur of faces, an indistinct sea of noise, his parents and Aviva among many, somewhere in the low infield, with tickets they insisted on paying him back for.
Cleveland’s pitcher is a changeup specialist, and Zach resists the urge to swing at pitches that look deceptively hittable, instead trying to prolong his at-bat. He doesn’t offer at the first pitch, which comes in below the zone. The second arrives similarly; Zach waits for the umpire’s silence indicating a ball. And the third drops just a hair low, bringing the count to three balls, no strikes.
Another pitch. Zach lets this one go by him, a fastball right up the middle, one so perfectly gift-wrapped for a hit that he should have swung at it—and didn’t. One of the many times when he’s chosen to stay still, not punished for his indecision but not benefiting from it either.
He could go back to his loft after the game, eat cake and drink wine, then send his family back to Baltimore the same as they arrived, Eugenio kept distant from his life. He could promise him he’d get to it later, a date that always lives just over the horizon.
Sixty feet away on the mound, the pitcher throws. The ball releases from his hand, and Zach watches the arc and pattern of its movements as it nears its “commit point,” when he has to decide whether to swing or stay put. It’s a choice he’s made thousands of times, with incomplete information, before a curveball bends or a changeup tumbles. One guided by his experience and instincts but also the confidence that his decision will be the right one.
So Zach watches and considers and swings.
And hits a screaming line drive, one that tears past the Spiders centerfielder, hopping off the grass and bouncing up and into the stands for a ground-rule double.
He pulls into second base as slow as his catcher’s legs will carry him, stripping his batting gloves and shoving them into his back pocket. He asks the Spiders second baseman how his day is and if he’s liking New York.
“Liked it better before y’all were winning,” he says. Zach laughs at that, feeling lighter than he has in a long time, like he might float above the field if not for the grip of his spikes in the costly infield dirt.
After the game, there’s a text from his parents telling him they took the train back “for the experience.”
Aviva meets him by the clubhouse door and spends the ride to his loft relating things her husband says via text in a rapid chatter and wondering if she felt the baby kick in the fourth inning or if she ate too much dairy.
“Hey,” he says, “I’m nervous too.”
His hands shake on the elevator ride, as he fumbles getting out his keys. He tries the wrong key in the keyhole a few times before he locates the correct one. Inside, the boxes have been unpacked. His dishes are safe in their cupboards, his books orderly on their shelves, his parents at the dining room table. His mother has her feet up on one of the chairs, her scorebook in front of her, pen moving as she tallies.
“That was some nice hitting,” she says, when he bends to kiss her cheek. “You always did have a good batting eye. It’s good to see you hitting again.”
And he’s been ignoring his stats, the ones reporters keep asking him about—his splits before versus after the trade, batting average hovering closer to .300 since he came to New York—telling them that anyone would hit better if they went from Swordfish Park to Union Stadium.
“Must be the change of scenery.” He reaches for the stack of plates Aviva brings to the table, along with the cake and the wine.
It’s an almond cake, less dense than the kind they eat for Pesach, a bottle of wine that’s too sweet for Zach but that his parents drink. They’re almost done, Zach pressing the tines of his fork into the last mouthful of cake, when he says, “Mom, Dad, I need to tell you something.” And both his parents stop eating, glancing at each other.
“It’s not—” He trips over the wordserious. “I’m not injured or sick. I want you to know something, something about me.” He takes a breath, straightens where he’s sitting in his chair. “I want you to know who I am.”
His water glass is on the table, and he reaches for it, not to drink, just to give his hands something to do, the condensation sweating into his palm. “I know it wasn’t easy for you when I was growing up. Because of my hearing. And I guess I didn’t want to make things any harder. For you. For myself. Or to disappoint you.”
“Zacheyleh,” his mother says.
“Just, um, let me finish.” His throat is tight, and the words that came out standing by the ocean next to Morgan, on calls with Henry, feel stuck. He swallows to dislodge them. “I’m gay. I’m seeing someone. It’s serious. I love him.”
There’s a pause, a long enough one that Zach wants to get up, leave the room, escape his loft to where Eugenio is probably already asleep. To crawl into bed with him, under the shelter of his blankets, and lie there in the dark feeling him breathe.
“I worried about you,” his mother says, finally, “all those years you were alone.”
“I wasn’t. Or I was, then I wasn’t. It’s kind of complicated,” Zach says. “We’re together. Now.”
She stands, her chair legs stuttering on his rented floor, then comes to hug him, her arms around his shoulders. “I want you to know. That you could never—” her voice wavers “—disappoint me.” And she recites a shehecheyanu, low enough that it’s only meant for him, a prayer of thanks for preservation, for sustenance.
His eyes are wet. He reaches for a napkin to dry them, one of the cloth ones she bought when he said he didn’t have any. They stay like that for a minute, Aviva marshalling his dad into the kitchen, and Zach didn’t know he had a tea kettle until it whistles. They bring out mugs of tea, a box of sugar packets with them.
Zach shakes two packets together, emptying them into his mug, and stirring it with the handle of his fork.
“Your grandmother,” his mom says, reaching for the box, “she used to drink her tea with a sugar cube between her teeth like they did in the old country. She would say to me, ‘Kindele, you have to hold on to the sweetness in life.’” And she starts crying, enough that his father goes over, wrapping his arm around her.
“Zach, go see if you have any tissues,” he says.
