On the morning of Independence Day, Pat showed up on her doorstep to take her to the ball game against Philadelphia, the dregs of the National League. Adele’s father answered the knock, and from her bedroom on the second floor, she could hear the two men conversing in stiff exchange. Mr. Hopkins, an accountant for the city, was a small, formal man, not given to any display of emotion, but his voice, which had started out mild and pleasant, grew agitated by Pat’s booming replies to his queries. No, Pat was saying, no I have not. She quickly finished tying her corset and then threw on her dress to hurry to intervene. At the top of the stairs, she heard Pat’s anguished reply to her father’s insisting question. “… but I’ve not had a drop today, Mr. Hopkins, hand to God. It’s not even noon.”
Adele flew down the steps and inserted herself between the two rams. Flustered by any sign of disagreement, she did not even see her beau but focused immediately on mollifying her father.
“Papa dear, I had no idea you were home today. How nice.” She kissed the old man on his cheek and clung to his shoulder with one hand. He placed his hand over hers and returned her kiss. Then and only then did she face Pat Ahearn and notice, with a shudder, the thin vertical line that split his lip. The blood had dried into a dull red scab. She drew her fingers to her own mouth and could not find the words for a simple greeting. Neither man could muster a graceful exit to their disagreement, and they all might be standing there to this day, silent as a three-legged stool, had not the dog walked into the parlor, demanding, by the fierce circling propelling of her tail, to be acknowledged. Pat reached down and scratched behind the mutt’s floppy ears, cooing thatagirl, that’s a good girl. Adele stepped under her bonnet and using the glass window as a mirror, she tied the straps in a bow and kissed her father good-bye all in one motion, promising to be home in time for the celebratory supper and to hear the cannons and see the fireworks that evening as they had done every Fourth of July since she was a little girl.
A broad-faced man shows how his long crooked fingers allow him to hold in one hand four baseballs at once. Ed Phelps, catcher. Four young men, three right-handers and a left-hand thrower, wind up and pretend to hurl the pill right at us through the camera lens. When they finish their follow-through motions, three are smiling sheepishly: Deacon Phillippe, Sam Leever, Brickyard Kennedy, pitchers. Only the fourth, lefty Ed Doheny, remains dead serious. A strangeness in the eyes.
? ? ?
At the ballpark, she finally managed to ask him about the argument with her father.
“He accused me of showing up drunk to escort his daughter. I’m not drunk at all. Christy and I had a beer or two with our breakfast, but that’s all. Hardly a drop.”
“You should know that he’s got a stir about the Irish—”
“Who don’t?” Ahearn clenched his fists. “It’s always the micks this, the micks that.”
“Are you sure it was just a beer with breakfast?”
Pat flicked back the brim of his boater so that it made a halo around his face.
Squinting into the bright light, Adele watched the Pirates take the field and begin to toss around the baseballs. “He took the pledge is all. A temperance man.” She was nearly afraid to ask about Pat’s injury, but at last volunteered, “Did you hurt your lip?”
“Don’t be a mope,” he told her. “A gentlemen’s disagreement. But you should see the other fellow. This ain’t nothing.”
For the first three innings she sat, petulant, barely caring herself who won or lost. In the middle of the fourth, Pat leaned closer, held her chin in the crook of one finger. “C’mon, Adele, give us a kiss.” And for the first time: “Be a sweetheart. Don’tcha know that I love you?”
The house lights rose and we all blinked, adjusting our sight.
“Gag,” said Flo and mimed sticking her fingers down her throat.
“Revolting,” said Jane at the mirror, fixing the ends of her new hairdo. “Absolutely revolting.”
The old man stretched his long bare legs and crossed his arms. “Now, ladies, your bitterness is unbecoming. We all have faith in love, especially in our youth.”
I nodded my agreement, thinking the while of the girl surrounded by fireflies.
Abuzz with opinions, the women debated the merits of love, and the old man took advantage of their philosophizing to address me privately. “May I ask a personal question?” This he asks after spending who knows how long in my bathrobe, in my bathroom, and sharing as my coeval the sundry stories visited by the past upon my present. This he asks after saving my life no fewer than six times, and more to come, I fear. This he asks, though he does not realize, slender as it may be, that he is the reed upon which clings all hope that some sense and order may be restored. I thought and hoped that he might ask me about the girl and help me rescue her from my amnesiac fog. I gave him the okay.
He spoke in a serious manner that had a hint of sarcasm. “Where’d you get the money to afford a place like this? Surely not on your salary with the architects. At which, may I add, you’ve not designed and built more than an archway.”
Perhaps it was unintentional on his part, but the words stung. He may have detected the faint whiff of self-abnegation escaping from my body. I must have smelled of disappointment. Even the baby crinkled his nose, and the women briefly paused their discussions to note the aroma of failure and, now, mortification.