Page 94 of 28 Summers
The living is good; the baseball not so much. Nantucket plays seven games and loses the first six. Link is brilliant behind the plate but abysmalatthe plate; he strikes out sixteen times. In the final game, however, his luck changes. He hits the ball at his first at bat and it goes sailing over the fence: home run! Mallory is so excited—and soshocked—that she starts to cry. Throughout the season, Mallory has pictured her parents up in the sky, sitting in some heavenly version of lawn chairs (like earthly lawn chairs, but comfortable), cheering Link on.
Did Kitty and Senior see that? Home run! Here in Cooperstown!
At Link’s second at bat, he hits another home run.What?Mallory blinks, confused, but yes, the ball cleared the fence and there goes Link, trotting around the bases, then jumping into the crowd of his assembled teammates at home plate.
His third time at bat, Nantucket is behind by two runs and the bases are loaded. Dewey, the father sitting next to Mallory, says, “What are the chances he does it again?”
“Zero,” Mallory says, though she hopes for something better than a strikeout. A single would, maybe, tie the game. The count gets to two and two, and Mallory imagines Senior up out of his heavenly lawn chair shouting, the way he used to at the Orioles games on TV. Then she hears the crack of the bat and the ball goes all the way over the deepest part of the fence and everyone on base scores and while the other parents are jumping up and down, creating cacophony on the metal bleachers, Mallory has her face in her hands. She’s sobbing because she isn’t sure what happens when people die but she is sure that her parents are here in Cooperstown somewhere—either that or she and Link are carrying Senior and Kitty around inside of them, because they made this happen. She knows they made this happen.
The next day, they drive home. Despite the triumph of the last game, the trip is melancholy. This baseball season was a sweet spot in their lives; Coach Charlie and the other parents have become a family. The games, although not all exciting, were addictive in their own way. Mallory can now tell a ball from a strike from any spot in the park as well as a curve ball from a slider. She has subsisted on hot dogs and peanuts in the shell; she has lived in cutoffs and a visor. Now that the season’s over, Mallory won’t deny it—she’s sad. Link might play next year or he might get a job instead. But even if Link does play, there’s no telling which other kids will return, and in any case, it won’t be the same. This season is something that can’t be repeated; it will just have to live on in everyone’s memories. The NantucketU14s in ’14.
It’s on this five-hour drive from Cooperstown to Hyannis that Link tells Mallory that he doesn’t want to go to Seattle the following week—or at all.
“But…” Mallory says. “Don’t you want to see the baby?”
Link pulls out his left earbud. His buddy Cam, the center fielder, is riding home with them, but he’s asleep in the back seat. “No,” Link says, softly but firmly. “I don’t.”
“Honey, she’s yoursisterand you’ve never even met her.”
“She’s too little to know any better,” Link says. “I don’t want to go.”
“But what about your dad and Anna?”
“Anna, ha,” Link says. “She doesn’t like me.”
“What are you talking about? Annalovesyou.” Only a few summers earlier Mallory had been certain she’d lost Link to Anna’s influence.
Link shrugs. “I liked summers when we were in Vermont. In Seattle, Dad is always at work, and the house is cold. Anna is either on her phone or on her laptop, and I spend way too much time playing video games. The only day we do stuff together is Sunday, and now there’s a baby, so, yeah…I’m not going.”
“You don’t have the power to decide that, bud, sorry.”
“Mom,” Link says. “Please don’t make me go. I haven’t had my summer yet. We haven’t sailed, we haven’t kayaked. I’ve barely been in theocean.”
“We all make choices,” Mallory says. “Your choice was to play baseball.”
“What if Dad says it’s okay if I don’t go?” Link asks. “Then can I stay home?”
Mallory isn’t sure how to answer. She has sensed the relationship between Link and Fray deteriorating for a while. Fray used to come to Nantucket all the time, every month. But since he moved to Seattle, he hasn’t come once. Not once! Mallory hasn’t called him on it because she knows he’s busy. He’s a wonderful provider for Link, and Mallory figured Fray and Link would reconnect over the month of August like they always did.
She can’t stop herself from thinking that if Link doesn’t go to Seattle, he will be on Nantucket over Labor Day weekend. Which is not okay. Mallory is sorry, but that isnot okay.
Is she going to condemn her only child to a month of misery in a house with a newborn just so she can continue her love affair?
Link needs to meet his baby sister, Cassiopeia. Baby Cassie. He needs to spend time with Fray. Link is thirteen years old; it’s a crucial time to have a male role model, afather.
Surely Fray will agree with this. Fray will never allow Link to skip a summer. Fray will sweeten the deal with Mariners tickets or a father-son camping trip in the San Juan Islands. Anna and the baby will stay home with the cadre of baby nurses. Mallory paints an irresistible picture in her mind: Fray will take his fifty-foot Grady-White over to Friday Harbor to use the luxe cabin of one of the Microsoft execs for a few days. They’ll fish for steel-headed trout; they’ll see killer whales. They’ll build campfires and talk about girls.
“If Dad says it’s okay for you to stay on Nantucket, I’m not going to argue,” Mallory says, and this placates Link. He puts his earbud back in.
But Fray will never okay it, Mallory thinks. She has nothing to worry about. Her time with Jake is safe.
Fray okays it.
“What?” Mallory says. She and Link are home now, home sweet home; it’s August on Nantucket, the weather is glorious, the water is cool but not cold, and Mallory swims enough to make up for her lost month. She goes to Bartlett’s Farm for corn, tomatoes, blueberry pie, broccoli slaw, a bouquet of peach lilies. Baseball has already become a distant memory.
“He said I don’t have to if I don’t want to,” Link says. “He thinks maybe Christmas will be better. We’re all going to Hawaii, I guess.”
Mallory says, “It’s my first Christmas without my parents, but yeah, Hawaii sounds great. Have fun.”
