Chapter 3
I
sat in the parking lot at
Walking to my Topology class, I felt sick to my stomach. I turned on my heels and went to the art gallery
to look at Marlo's paintings. It was a sunny, unseasonably warm, mid-February
day, and the gallery was deserted. Under
the watchful eye of a bored museum guard, I searched the pictures for signatures.
At the far end of the gallery, I came upon two drawings, signed at the
bottom in flourishing strokes, M. Phillipe.
They were 24 by 30-inch canvases, done in light blue and brown pastels.
One was of a horse with a young woman riding on its enormous back.
Horse and rider were moving towards the lower, left corner of the canvas,
as if trying to escape by jumping the frame.
The other was of a young woman standing next to a large pony. Her arms were around its neck, and her cheek
was resting against the pony’s cheek. The
pony and girl looked out boldly at the viewer. The figures were realistic but the surroundings
fantastic: in the first drawing there were castles, knights in armor and dragons
floating in the air behind the riding girl, and in the second, the girl and
the pony stood in a field that grew out of a large white cloud.
Through the door, I saw her, waiting for the elevator.
I called out her name and waved. She looked bewildered, as if she didn’t
recognize me. Her expression said, “I’m
going to class.”
The
elevator door opened as I walked towards her.
I said, “I skipped my class. They’re bombing
Her eyes grew large and her body moved as if to enter the empty elevator
but her feet didn’t move and the elevator door shut in front of us. She was carrying a large folder that was stuffed
with unruly, brown drawing paper that flowed over the edges.
“The horses and the young woman are beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
We stood looking at each other. I
said, “Your eyes are blue.”
Her eyebrows knit themselves together, and she drew her face near to
mine. “Yours are green and brown and ... there’s some
blue too.” She stepped back and closed
her eyes. After thinking for a moment
she said, with her eyes still closed, “They
are flecked with tiny spots of gold, green, brown and blue, and spattered around
the center like a kaleidoscope.” She pronounced each syllable of the word ‘kaleidoscope’,
distinctly, and her voice was very high and musical, like the voice of a little
girl.
I said, “I’ve never been able
to figure out what color they are.”
She said, looking up at the top of my head.
“And you’re about six foot three.”
“Six two and a half.”
The elevator came down from the second floor again and the door opened.
I said, “Why don’t you skip your
class and have coffee with me? We could
go outside and sit on the lawn.”
She looked down at her tennis shoes.
“Anne won’t mind. We’re all friends.”
She wiggled her toes in her shoes, I thought, as if they were prisoners. She seemed guileless and innocent and I was
happy to be with her.
I said, “Well then, I won’t tell
her.”
“You have to tell her.”
“I was just joking.” My eyes felt
tired. I remembered Jesus Christ and
Mary and the noises. “I’ve only got about
an hour. You’d better make your decision.
Baseball practice starts in an hour.
The coach will throw me off the team if I miss another practice.”
“Anne said you play baseball.” A
tentative, playful smile trembled the corners of her mouth. “Anne hates baseball. She thinks you’re wasting your time.”
“My grandfather used to say that too.
She won’t even come to a game, let alone a practice.”
“I like to watch baseball games,” she said.
Her little-girl voice lowered slightly, expressing seriousness, “Especially
if I know the player.”
“Do you know any of the players?”
She shrugged her shoulders. Her
face and neck colored slightly. “No. I mean I would like to see you practice because I know you.”
“And I would like you to see
me practice because I know you.”
We laughed.
We sat under a large tree in a place with a view of the South Bay Area. Off to the right, we could see the baseball
field below us.
I asked, “How long have you known
Anne?”
“We met in art class. In the 10th
grade.”
“That’s a long time.”
“It’s not so long.”
I said, “She’s very intelligent.”
“She’s the smartest person I’ve ever known.
She won a National Merit Scholarship.”
“I was a finalist, but I didn’t win.”
“Anne says you’re a genius.”
I shifted on the grass and a sharp rock sunk into my thigh. I yelped and grabbed the rock and threw it,
hard, at the trunk of a nearby tree. It
struck the trunk, dead center, made a cracking sound and dropped onto the grass.
“She wants to think I’m a genius. When
I won the Fields Medal the newspapers jumped on the story. It was a few years after the Russians sent up
Sputnik and there was a national craze for producing more scientists and engineers.
They made me one of their designated geniuses.”
“Why can’t you do geometry?”
“What?”
“Anne said you can’t do geometry.”
I looked out into the sea of houses below us.
I snorted, “Anne!”
She
looked at me with serious, quizzical eyes.
“Why can’t I do geometry! Well, for one thing, I was so bored with the
class I couldn’t find the energy to study. I
tried, but the book fell out of my hands.” I smiled into her scintillating blue eyes.
“Have you ever tried to study geometry?”
“No.”
“She says she loves me, but she thinks I’m a
liar.” I laughed.
She looked puzzled.
“Can
you believe that she made me show her the Fields Medal. She’d never heard of it and when she found out
it’s the Nobel Prize of mathematics, she didn’t believe I won it. I refused to show her and then she wouldn’t
speak to me so I broke down and brought it for her to see. After that she began calling me a genius.
But she's confused.”
She looked into my eyes with exaggerated trust and I knew that she wasn’t
completely guileless.
“I get the feeling that she’s afraid I might be playing an elaborate
hoax on her.”
Her eyes blinked rapidly.
I felt self-conscious. Most people
are quickly bored with mathematics, but her bright, pretty face encouraged me.
“Number Theory was my grandfather’s passion, so naturally he taught me
that. And Complex and Real Analysis are the foundation
of Number Theory so I learned the Cauchy Closed Path theorem when I was only
11 and Measure Theory too.” Her eyes
blazed with incomprehension. I smiled.
“Anyway, by the time I was 14, I was studying Riemanian
Differential Geometry and that lead to the theorem that won the Fields Medal.”
She placed a tiny flower in her hair, just over her ear. It looked like a miniature daisy. “The only reason I’ve got almost all A’s in
math at
“Anne helped me with my math and science classes in high school.” She reached behind her back and found another
miniature daisy. She put it close to
her nose and then she looked into my eyes. “She
helped me through a difficult period in High School.”
There was a silence and I was suddenly aware of her extraordinary beauty:
her thick blonde hair, her flawless complexion and her perfectly formed body. I wondered why she didn’t have a boyfriend and
why she hadn’t affected the usual condescending smile when I talked about mathematics.
I was curious about her.
I
asked, “How did she help you?”
She looked at the white flower with its tiny yellow center. “Well, I matured really late. I didn’t start filling out and growing until
I was almost 17. Before that, I was a
scrawny kid that nobody paid much attention to.
Then, suddenly, all the boys started chasing me. Anne and her two brothers protected me.”
“You didn’t want a boyfriend?”
She looked up quickly and then back at the flower.
“Not like them. They were just
after sex. I guess I’m really shy with
guys I like. I run away and I don’t know
why.” She looked into my face as if
she were studying it for some detail that might cause her to run away.
I said, “When I was little, my
grandfather devised games to teach me how to calculate in my head.”
Her
body leaned towards mine.
I said, “Give me two large numbers
and I will multiply them together”
She smiled. “43 and 33.”
“Give me two really big ones.”
“How will I know if you get the right answer?”
“You
can figure it out when you get home.”
She
lay on the green grass, on her back and drew her knees up and looked at the
sky. After a silence, she said, “Three zillion nine hundred and forty seven
million seven hundred and seven times...” and she rolled over and pulled two
large hunks of grass. She put them up
to her nose and held them there, forming a large green mustache. Talking through the grass, she said, with a
German accent, “You arrre
a genioos. Zat I
“2 und 2 iss 5,” I said, and looked towards
the baseball field. “Und I can hit a
bazeball two touzand tree hunnert fife feet.”
“Can I vatch you practice de baze
ball today?”
My accent was suddenly Italian, “You aina gonna tell Anne?”
She threw the grass into the air, and it floated down onto her shirt
and hair.
I balanced myself on my hands, and began
to do a handstand. My body rose into
the air, but I stopped myself, suddenly, and fell over to one side.
“Whoops. I’m not supposed to do acrobatics when I’m pitching.”
I rolled over onto my back and scooted to her side.
I looked up into her face. Her
elbow was on the grass and her head rested on her hand.
“Why?” She asked without returning my gaze. She had picked another of the tiny flowers and
pulled out a tiny white petal.
“It tires out the muscles and ruins my control.”
She dropped the tiny petal and picked another one. I lay back and looked up at a lone, white cloud
moving very slowly across the sky.
“See that cloud?” I asked. She looked up. “That’s me.
Just floating along. Don’t know
where I’m going. Just swimming along
in the sky. Where should I go?” I closed my eyes.
Her tiny voice said, “I don’t
know, but you’re awful cute all alone up there.”
“I feel so lonely.”
I opened my eyes and she was propped up on one elbow again, looking down
at me and smiling. I thought of Anne
and the expression on my face must have changed because she looked away and
her smile disappeared.
“I guess I’d better go to practice,” I said looking over my shoulder
towards the field.
Her
hand moved slightly, as if it wanted to prevent me from moving. Her head dropped causing her thick blonde hair
to fall over her face. She shook her
head and her hair moved back and forth against her shoulders. She tried, unsuccessfully, to sweep the loose
strands back from her forehead. She said,
“I don’t want to hurt Anne.”
I sat up, and put my arm around her shoulder.
Her eyes closed and she tilted her face towards mine. Our lips met, and we kissed, curiously at first,
but suddenly the bottom dropped out and we fell onto the grass.
She was the first to break away. She
turned her beautiful face away from mine and said,
“I feel guilty.”
I said, “Anne is a friend but
I don’t love her, and she knows it.”
Her voice was silky and caressing, “She’s
my best friend.”
“Just tell her you like baseball very much, and you wanted to see me
practice. That’s all.”
“Anne loves you. I can tell by
the way she talks about you.” A lone
tear escaped from her eye, rolled down her cheek and dropped onto her thick
blond hair.
“Please don’t cry. ”
She took a Kleenex from a little package in her purse and blew her nose. I put my hand on her hair and said, gently,
“I’ve got to go.”
“I know.”
I placed my hands on her shoulders, very lightly, for balance, and jumped
up. I reached down and she took my hands
and in one motion pulled herself up into my arms like a dancer. I felt her warm breasts against me and I didn’t
want to let her go. I took her hand and
we walked towards the gym.
She asked, “Why aren’t you going
to the baseball field?”
“I’m going to the gym. I have
to change into my practice uniform, remember?”
She giggled.
I stopped under the shade of a large tree and turned to face her. I took both of her hands into mine and looked
into her eyes. “Promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“You’re beautiful.”
“What?”
“Promise me you won’t run. No matter what.” She dropped her eyes. “I like you.
We’ll work it out.”
She was silent, staring at her wriggling toes.
I remembered that she was only 19. I
said, softly, “Let me have your telephone
number.”
She reached into her purse for a pen and paper.
She said, “All I have is Kleenex.”
“Tell me zee nummer und I vill
remember it.”
She laughed and said the number out loud.
I wrote my telephone number on the back of her hand, between her thumb
and index finger, and when I had finished, she blotted the ink with Kleenex.
I asked, “Will I see you up at
the field?”
“Yes.”
I
turned and jogged towards the gym.
She sat in the top row in the third base bleachers.
A handful of scouts, relatives, friends and girlfriends were scattered
in the bleachers, on either baseline. I
was warming up my arm with McClenden, the starting
catcher, when I saw her. I waved my glove.
She raised her arm high in the air and wiggled her hand.
“Man!” McClenden said, straightening
his bright orange and black shin guard. “Where’d you find her?”
I wound up and threw a knuckleball that bounced in front of him onto
the grass. He went down on both knees
and scooped it up on the short hop.
“Your knuckleball didn’t move at all,” he said and threw the ball back
harder than usual, expressing disgruntlement at having to exert himself. He threw his hat to the ground and with a sharp
movement of his head, flicked a strand of blond hair from his forehead.
I wound up and threw another knuckleball that skidded onto the grass
about two feet in front of him. I didn’t
blame him for turning his head from the ball and attempting to catch it blindly. He wasn’t wearing his chest guard or facemask,
and the grass was uneven and full of clumps and rocks. The ball skipped over his glove and hopped towards
the bleachers where Marlo was sitting. He trotted after it good-naturedly, letting
it roll until it reached the fence. When
he reached the ball, he leaned over slowly, picked it up and rubbed the dirt
off it. He looked up at Marlo. Her shoulders
were hunched over, and she was staring at him intently. He nodded, almost imperceptibly, and she moved
her hand in a little wave. He turned,
raised his knee like a pitcher and threw a line drive at me. I raised my glove over my head, leaning slightly
to the right, and the ball entered my glove with a loud crack. My eyes watered from the impact of the ball
against the palm of my hand, but he was too far away to see. He turned back to the bleachers and looked up
at Marlo who waved more vigorously, and smiled.
As he trotted back towards me, he bellowed,
“Give up on the knuckleball,
He whistled and made an hourglass motion with his catcher’s glove and
free hand, in front of his body so she couldn’t see.
I put my glove to my face and growled,
“Keep your fucking hand motions off my girlfriend, McClenden.” I dropped the glove and looked at her. She waved enthusiastically and I waved back.
I wound up and threw a fast ball. The ball made a loud crack against his glove.
“91 miles an hour,” he said, and fired the ball back from the crouch
position.
“Yeah sure. More like 85 with
the wind at my back,” I said, and made a motion with my glove, indicating that
I was going to throw a curve. I wound
and threw an overhand curve that cut the outside of the imaginary plate, about
waist high.
“Nice.” He shouted and held his thumb up. “That’s all you need gramps. A curve ball and a fast ball.” At 22, I was the second oldest player on the
team. They called us “gramps” and “the
old man,” respectively.
“Stay away from the knuckleball and fast women,” he added philosophically,
firing the ball back almost as fast as I had thrown the curve.
Marlo waved again and I raised my glove and smiled.
McClenden said, “Let
me know when you’re finished with her
I raised my glove to cover my face and mumbled,
“Fuck you, McClenden.” The previous season, he had set me up with Barbara
Smith, a baseball-player-obsessed 19-year-old who had fucked most of the team.
The way a player got rid of her was to dump her on another player.
I didn’t hang out with the players so I didn’t know her, and so I didn’t
know how to get rid of her. Finally,
a football player took her off my hands and they had razzed me about her ever
since.
“I’m gonna throw a butterfly.”
“Oh God. I’m so scared. I hope it doesn’t move very much.” He wagged his legs back and forth from a crouch
position as if they were shaking from fear. He made an antic face and placed the fingers
of his right hand over his eyes, pretending that he was afraid to look at me.
I wound up and threw a perfect floating knuckle ball that jerked up just
before it reached him, glanced off the top of his glove and hit him on the forehead. When the ball hit, it made a loud crack, and
he rolled over on his back, out cold.
I yelled, “Oh shit!” The whole team came running. I was the first one to reach him. He lay on his back, motionless. I leaned over him, and saw little pebbles and
dirt stamped into the seam mark on his forehead. I shook him gently by the shoulders, but couldn’t
bring him too. He was breathing well,
and his face had an angelic look on it, as if he were sleeping. I felt two hands on my shoulders. The coach pulled me away and knelt down in front
of him.
The coach yelled, over his shoulder,
“What in the fuck did you do to him, Bradford?”
As I was explaining what happened, McClenden
began coming to. His hand reached up
and rubbed the spot on his forehead.
The coach asked him, “What’s your
name?”
“Huh.”
He repeated in a soft but persistent voice,
“Tell me what your name is.”
McClenden looked up at me, crouched behind the coach like
an umpire getting ready to make a call. He
said, in a faint but audible voice, “Maybe
you should throw the knuckleball more often,
The coach heaved an audible sigh of relief.
McClenden tried to get up but the coach put his hand on his
chest and pushed him back down. The trainer
was running towards us with a stretcher and a black bag.
I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder.
I turned around. It was Marlo.
“Is he all right?”
“He’s all right.”
The coach yelled, “Everyone back
to what you were doing. He’s all right.”
I put my arm around her waist. She
was shaking, slightly.
“Hey baby. It’s OK.”
She gave a little nervous laugh.
“I thought you killed him,” she said.
“No. Things like that happen every now and then.
No big deal. Really.”
Someone yelled. “Hey, Jo DiMaggio! Get Marilyn off the field. I can’t concentrate.” There were whistles and laughter.
I yelled, “Shut up, you Goddammed animals.” We
walked off the field, hand in hand.
She said, “I guess I’d better
go home.”
“You’ll come to another practice?”
“Of course.”
We walked to the parking lot and my cleats rattled on the concrete.
Standing there alone among the parked cars, I said,
“Don’t worry about it. It happens
all the time. I’ve been playing baseball
for a long time, and I’ve never seen anyone permanently injured. Really.” My
cleats made me an inch taller and she seemed smaller than 5’ 10’’
“OK”
I bent down to kiss her cheek. She
guided my lips to hers and we kissed. The
passion was there again but she broke away, turned and ran. I called after her but she didn’t stop.