The Might Have Been

CHAPTER Seven





In the morning when he woke, she was snoring loudly, lying on her back, tangled in the top sheet, her right breast exposed, her left foot poking out from the bottom of the blanket. The light outside the window suggested it was perhaps six. He studied her. She was not an unattractive woman, despite the fact that she was a good deal older than he was. Her hair was disheveled and he could see now there were gray hairs among the red. On the underside of her bare breast was a dark mole the size of a pencil eraser. He gingerly pulled the sheet up so that it covered her and she startled but stayed asleep.

Moving slowly, as much because of his cast as from a desire not to wake her, he got out of bed and dressed without showering. He was leaving at seven-thirty. If she was still asleep, he would write a note saying she could stay until checkout time. He wondered what she would do. Could she face her family after the scene last night? Was forty-one old enough that maybe how your mother and sister regarded you didn’t matter?

He wondered what kind of life she had, where she lived. She had said something about Indiana, but that was where she lived when she was younger. He realized it had been two years or more since he’d slept with a woman he didn’t know well. When he was a younger ballplayer, and certain of his power, in life and over women, he often slept with girls whose names he didn’t know. They waited outside the ballparks, in the shadows away from the lamps that arced over the parking lots surrounding it, stepping into the light when the players began filing out of the locker room. He thought of them as a kind of sexual smorgasbord: tonight, maybe someone tall and thin; tomorrow, maybe a plump brunette. He never understood the attraction the women felt for him and his teammates, why baseball was such an aphrodisiac. At the level they were at when they rolled into Ottumwa, Zanesville, Parkersburg, they had no money to speak of. The boyfriends the girls forsook earned more fixing cars or running a separator at the dairy than Edward Everett and his teammates did; they were better prospects, more stable.

Last night, they had knocked his suitcase and clothing off the bed, scattering it on the floor. He eased himself up, hopped to a wooden chair pushed up against the desk and pulled it out. Awkwardly, he moved it until it was beside the bed, sat down, opened the suitcase and began picking up his clothing, folding it as neatly as he could, pressing it into the suitcase. What didn’t fit, he would leave behind. It didn’t matter anymore.

Someone knocked on the door. It was too early for the maid, wasn’t it? Maybe the manager had figured out who he was even though Frank had the wrong name.

He pushed himself from the chair and, bracing himself on the wall, hopped to the door. The knock came again, five muffled ticks against the wood. “Coming,” he said in a voice he hoped was loud enough that whoever it was could hear but that wouldn’t wake Estelle. He glanced at her just as he reached the door to see if she was still sleeping. She was, muttering something he couldn’t make out. “Coming,” he said again.

When he reached the door, he flicked the dead bolt and turned the knob, hopping backwards two or three steps to allow the door to swing inward.

It was Julie. She stood in the hall, holding a small overnight case and a makeup kit. “I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I called you so many times and you didn’t—and I swore I wouldn’t come, wouldn’t call anymore, but—”

“Ed?” Estelle said, her voice groggy. “Is someone …”

Julie peered into the room. Estelle was sitting up in bed, uncovered, both her breasts bare now. “Oh, my God,” Julie said, stumbling back as if someone had struck her.

“Is everything all right?” Estelle asked, gathering the top sheet, covering herself. Julie snatched up her cases and fled down the hall.

“Julie,” Edward Everett said. He hobbled after her, bracing his hand against the wall for support, regretting he hadn’t gone back into the room for his crutches. At one point, his hand slipped on the wall and he came down hard on his bad leg. The pain was excruciating and he nearly crumpled to the floor from it, his eyes filling with tears, but he kept his balance and continued after her.

She stood in the hall, waiting for an elevator, jabbing at the “down” button repeatedly, muttering “Come on, come on, come on.”

“Julie?” he said when he reached her.

“Don’t,” she said, not looking at him.

“I can explain,” he said, although he had no clear notion of what had gone on. He laid a hand on her shoulder and she whirled around, swinging her makeup case at him, catching him on his cast and this time he did fall, landing hard on his healthy knee, crying out, reaching for a small decorative table that sat across from the elevators, holding a house telephone and a stack of See Montreal Now! brochures. The table gave under his weight, one of its legs cracking, the telephone clanging as it hit the floor, the brochures scattering.

The “down” arrow lit and the signal dinged. Julie stepped toward the door, waiting for it to open.

“Julie,” he said, pushing himself to stand.

“Leave me alone.” The doors slid open. The elevator was crowded. A family of seven stood waiting, a mother, father and five young children, all holding suitcases. They squeezed together to allow Julie room to step onto the elevator. “I’m pregnant,” she said as the doors started to close. “I wasn’t going to tell you but—”

The doors closed, swallowing her words. Through the crack between them, he watched the light in the shaft change as the car descended. After a moment, he heard a muffled ding, signaling that the elevator was stopping at the floor below. He punched the “down” button, certain he would reach the lobby too late: she’d be gone by the time he got there. His knee throbbed and he could feel his pulse thrumming in his ears. That she could be pregnant had never occurred to him. She was on the pill, he was certain. Once while she was in Montreal, she’d taken the plastic disk of them out of her purse while they were in a restaurant, snapped it open, plucked one from its slot, popped it into her mouth and taken a swallow of water. “Baby-proofing,” she said, giving him a wink and then slipping them back into her purse, blushing, just as the waitress brought their plates of waffles and sausage.

The other elevator arrived and he staggered onto it. A bellhop with a luggage cart nudged it toward the back of the elevator and the only other passenger, a withered woman who supported herself with a cane topped by a silver lion’s head, inched her way deeper into the car as well. When the doors slid closed and the elevator began to fall, she wobbled and put a bony hand onto his elbow to steady herself, giving him a small smile of gratitude.

When he reached the lobby, he looked for Julie. A line of guests stood at the desk, keys and credit cards in hand. At the head of the queue, Estelle’s Frank leaned against the desk, holding his bill close to his face, squinting at it. Through the glass doors leading to the street, Edward Everett spotted Julie at the curb, beside a taxi, waiting while a tall man in a lime green leisure suit counted bills into the cabdriver’s hand. Edward Everett limped toward the doors, wincing with every step. He knew what he was doing might set his recovery back by weeks, but he was determined to catch her before the cab pulled away. Just as he reached the doors, the cabdriver took Julie’s luggage from her and laid it into the trunk as she got into the backseat.

“Julie,” he called, pushing against the revolving door, struggling to find the strength to move it. She glanced back at him, pulled the cab door closed and settled into the seat. He hobbled outside. Walking was even more difficult now, as he was able to do little more than take a step with his left foot and then drag his right, weighted by the cast, after it. “Julie,” he said again. Getting into the driver’s seat, the cabdriver glanced back at him. He saw himself through the man’s eyes: he must seem mad, unshaven, in jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, barefoot, his hair as wild as if he hadn’t combed it in weeks. “Wait a minute,” he said to the driver. The man looked uncertain and glanced at Julie; she didn’t move but he could hear her say, quietly, “Just go.” The driver gave Edward Everett a shrug and ducked his head, climbing into the car. Edward Everett had reached the cab by then. He bent, knocking on the window beside Julie. “Please,” he said to her.

The driver shifted the cab into gear and began to edge away from the curb, but Julie said, “Wait,” and he stopped. She rolled down her window.

“I’m—” he said, trying to figure out how to explain the crazy woman he had encountered, her sad, sad story and how he had felt sorry for her. It was nearly true—or was a kernel in a much more complicated truth. But she cut him off.

“I am going to say this and then I want you to never call me again.” She raised her hands, palms up as if she were pushing something away from herself. “I have been through hell ever since I found out. I wasn’t going to call. I wasn’t going to call. Then I called. And called. And you never called back. Not f*cking once. I was just going to decide on my own. End it? Keep it?

“My dad. I will never forget telling him. Waiting in our living room for him to come home, knowing what I had to tell him. I was his little girl and I was going to disappoint him.” She paused. Edward Everett realized the cab’s meter was running. Through the open window, he could hear it ticking off the fare. He glanced at it. Eighty-five cents, ninety-five. “He said you had a right to know before I—” She shrugged. “I was going to send you a letter but I thought, I had no idea when you would get it. My dad gave me plane fare. He—” She shook her head, fighting tears. “ ‘It’s okay,’ you were going to say. All the way here, that’s what I heard you say. ‘It will be okay.’ ” She shook her head. “I’m going to leave now and I don’t want you to call me or try to see me.”

“What are you—”

“Going to do?”

He nodded.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Can’t you at least tell me when—”

“No,” she said. “You don’t get to know. Not anymore.” She tapped the headrest of the seat in front of her and made a gesture to the driver: Go on.

“Wait,” Edward Everett said, but there was an opening in the flow of traffic and the cab pulled away from the curb.

He became aware that people had been watching: the family of seven, the woman with the lion’s-head cane, the attendant at the valet parking podium. He hobbled back toward the hotel, where a bellhop held the door for him, giving him a curt nod.

Upstairs, the door to his room was locked and he realized that he had left the key on the dresser. He knocked. “Estelle?” he called, but there was no answer. “Estelle,” he said louder, but she still didn’t answer. He hobbled to the hall where the elevators were. Someone had propped the broken table against the wall, where it leaned unsteadily on its three remaining legs. The courtesy phone sat on the floor beside it. He picked up the receiver and dialed “0” and asked the person who answered to please send someone up to his room. He’d locked himself out.

When the bellhop let him in and then left, he could see that Estelle was gone. She had made up the bed and his suitcase sat beside it, snapped closed, none of his clothing in evidence. On the table beside the bed, he found a piece of hotel stationery with the single word scrawled on it: “Sorry.”

He sat on the bed for a moment, trying to think what to do. When he got to the airport, he had intended to buy a ticket to fly on to Columbus. He thought: I should fly to Springfield instead, find Julie, tell her the entire story of sad sad sad Estelle. Bring her flowers. Every day. Court her. He remembered the afternoon they’d sat in the church when Julie had pushed him through the throngs just after the Olympics left town. She’d done so much for him, both when she came to Montreal and when they were seeing each other in Springfield. Once, as he was about to leave on a road trip, he’d told her that he hated the long bus rides and she’d brought him a gift at the ballpark just before the team shoved off. It was four-fifteen in the morning and he had been surprised to see her standing beside the team bus, holding a grocery sack. The rest of the team had chided him. “No broads on the bus,” someone said. “Are you going to share?” someone else said. Julie had blushed and handed him the bag. He gave her a quick kiss and didn’t open the bag until the bus was under way. In it, he found a paperback murder mystery, a box of snack crackers and a package of salted peanuts. Sitting in his hotel in Montreal, he realized he had forgotten to acknowledge the gift. And now she was pregnant. With his son or daughter. He picked up the phone, dialed the desk and asked for a bellhop to come to his room to help him with his bag.

When he stood to limp across the room to retrieve his crutches, his right leg went out from under him. He had used up whatever strength he had in it chasing after Julie. He sat on the floor until the bellhop knocked.

“You’ll need to unlock it,” he shouted, not sure the bellhop could hear him through the door. “You’ll have to—” But the bellhop had heard and opened the door.

“Can you …” Edward Everett said, nodding toward his crutches leaning in the corner near the door.

At the airport, when the taxi let him out, he asked a baggage checker at the curb for a wheelchair. He couldn’t go to Springfield like this, he knew. How could he? He couldn’t even get around on his own; he needed physical therapy. He took his ticket out of his breast pocket and consulted it. “Gate 22-B,” he said to the baggage checker.

He’d go home, get healthy. Spring training was nearly half a year off—time to heal, to learn to walk again, to run without pain, to get in shape. He would heal and then he would go to Springfield, find Julie—right after Christmas, he promised himself. Soon after the first of the year at the latest. She would be large with the baby then.

If she kept it, he realized. If she kept it.