37
At the gas station, when his father went inside to pay, Connell’s mother whipped around to him in the backseat.
“I just want you to know,” she said, “how much this means to your father. I would have preferred to stay in a nice bed-and-breakfast by the mountains and look at the foliage. But your father wanted to do this for you. You remember that, and be grateful. Do you hear me?”
“Fine,” he said.
“And I have a bone to pick with you. What did you say to upset him before we left this morning? He said it was between the two of you, but I could tell he was bothered by it.”
“Nothing,” Connell said.
“I’m sure it wasn’t nothing.”
“He’s right. It is between us.”
“Don’t get testy with me,” his mother said. “You live under our roof. Don’t you forget that.”
He didn’t want to tell his mother what he’d said. It would confirm that he was just the sort of brat she’d been implying he was. He didn’t know why he’d said it; it had just come out. He and his father had been standing near the sink together. Connell was rinsing his dish before he put it in the dishwasher, and his father reached across him for a hand towel, and as he did so, Connell said, “You have bad breath.” His father looked at him quizzically, and Connell said it again, a little differently this time: “Your breath stinks.” His father put his hand up to his mouth to blow some air into his nose, and then he looked at him with a look that could have been hurt, confused, or grateful, Connell couldn’t tell which. “Thanks,” his father said, again inconclusively, and he left the room and headed to the bathroom. He didn’t come out for almost an hour. Connell heard him brushing his teeth endlessly in there, the tap running while he brushed, and then silence, and then the tap running again.
His mother’s mood brightened when they got to Cooperstown, which was full of nice little stores. They parked and walked to the Hall of Fame, a red brick structure that looked like a university building or a large post office. Outside, at his father’s request, his mother took a picture of the two of them in front of one of the rounded doors. Then she left to go shopping. They arranged to meet back in front in two hours.
Inside, Connell and his father walked past the parade of plaques. His father pointed out players he’d loved in his day—Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese. He complained that Gil Hodges, his favorite player, hadn’t been elected along with the others. He stopped at the plaques of players he’d admired for their personal characteristics who hadn’t been Dodgers: Lou Gehrig, Stan Musial, Roberto Clemente. It was cool to read the plaques and see how the writers of these brief biographies condensed players’ careers into a handful of statistics and a few pithy lines, but Connell would have liked it more when he was about twelve. He couldn’t get enough of this stuff then.
After a little while it felt like they’d seen a lot, and Connell was thinking about lunch and wondering whether his mother might have had a point about the foliage, which, boring as it was, at least wouldn’t have required him to spare his father’s feelings by pretending to be as interested in this stuff as his father wanted him to be. They were passing through a big room with glass cases on all sides and people crossing in every direction when his father stopped short.
“The next time we come here,” his father said, “they’ll be inducting you.”
Connell waited for an ironic chuckle, but it didn’t come. “Sure, Dad,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Okay.”
He was good enough to make his high school team, but he wasn’t going to get scouted; his father knew that as well as he did.
“I want you to listen to me,” his father said. “I’m going to talk to you seriously for a minute.”
A cute girl was standing with her parents and her little brother, looking at some old mitts in a case.
“Here?” Connell asked. “Does it have to be here?”
“I’ve noticed something in you that worries me,” his father said. “Maybe because it reminds me of me at your age. I made life harder for myself than it needed to be. I see you hardening yourself. That isn’t you. I see you closing your mind. You are open and beautiful.”
“All right, Dad,” he said, putting his hands up to stop him.
“Do you understand what I mean by that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I’m okay, Dad. I’m good. You don’t have to worry.”
“You are okay,” his father said. “You’re more than okay. You’re wonderful. I know that, believe me. But there’s something in you that is closing up.”
“Dad,” he said, “is this about me saying you had bad breath?”
His father laughed. “Listen. I’m going to ask you to do something you might find a little strange. Will you do it for me?”
“What is it?”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
“Is it going to be embarrassing?”
“Nobody but us will know about it.”
“All right.” Connell slapped his hands on his thighs in defeat. “Okay. Sure.”
“Life is going to give you things to be angry at. I don’t want you to be consumed by that anger or forget how much you’re capable of. So we’re going to do a little exercise right now.”
“Are you okay? I mean, is everything all right?”
“I’m fine,” his father said. “Are you ready?”
“Sure.” Now Connell was genuinely curious.
“What I want you to do now is to feel in your bones that the next time we are here, they will be inducting you.”
This was too much. “What does that even mean?” Connell asked as the cute girl passed him, meeting his gaze.
“Shh,” his father said. “Close your eyes.”
Connell closed them.
“I am telling you that we will be back here when they are inducting you. I want you to feel the reality of that for a moment.”
“Okay,” he said, relenting a bit. There was something sort of exciting in the way his father had said it. He sounded so sure. Connell wanted to believe his father could see the future or something.
“Feel it. Let yourself. You pitched for the Mets your whole career. You heard your name over the loudspeaker thousands of times. You heard the cheers. You heard the boos. You played on grass. You played on Astroturf. You killed your shoulder, you blew out your elbow, you mangled your knuckles, but it was worth it. You set aside seats at every home game. Your kids were in those seats. Your wife was. Now you’re looking at a plaque with your face on it. You’re thinking the portrait makes you look like someone else, but it’s you—those are your numbers, under your name.”
The way his father said it was like he’d been talking about more than baseball, more than the Hall of Fame. He meant it to mean whatever Connell wanted it to mean; he meant it to mean he believed in him.
And then, somehow, Connell did feel it: what it was like to have brought joy to people and done something extraordinary. He never let himself imagine outcomes like that. He didn’t want to open his eyes.
“I want you to really feel it,” his father said. “And I want you to remember that feeling, because it is as real as any experience you will have in your life. Will you remember?”
Connell nodded with his eyes closed.
“You have to use your imagination,” his father said.
Connell could feel his mind opening like a flower in bloom. If he wasn’t afraid to consider the impossible—that he would be a Major League ballplayer people would talk about for years—then in imagining it, he would not need to live it; he could have it, along with whatever else he wanted.
“Okay,” Connell said. He could hear people passing by. He didn’t peek, but he could see them going past, what they were wearing, the looks on their faces.
“Do you feel powerful?”
“Yes,” he said, and he did; he had stepped outside time.
“Are you angry right now?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No.”
“Do you know that I love you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Open your eyes,” his father said, but Connell waited a bit, because something told him they would never be back where they were. “Let’s go find your mother.”