Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,31
deli to get you Häagen-Dazs during extra innings—”
“Darling, you offered to do those things. Remember? You offered to help me out when I’m unwell. You said, ‘Whatever you need, I’m right around the corner.’ I would not have asked you otherwise.”
“I know, but—”
“Do you think I like being like this? Do you think I enjoy being old and crippled by pain and dependent on other people?” His head was pulsing more obviously now, as though it might explode.
“Fuck you,” said Alice.
For a while the only sound was the changing frequency of the static on the television screen as it flickered from dark to light and back again. Alice covered her face with her hands and left them there for a long moment, as if to be transported—or as if she were counting, giving one or both of them a chance to hide—but when at last she took them away again Ezra was still there, exactly as he’d been: legs crossed, eyes black with anguish, waiting. His face blurred through the glaze of her tears.
“What should I do with you, Mary-Alice? What would you like me to do? What would you do, if you were me?”
Alice covered her face again. “Treat me like shit,” she said into her hands.
When she got home, there was a letter from the Harvard Student Loan Office in her mailbox, thanking her for paying off her Federal Perkins debt in full.
The Red Sox won.
• • •
Without being asked, the bartender poured what remained of the bottle into Alice’s glass.
Alice moved the glass one inch to the side, then replaced her hand in her lap.
“Do you play chess?” the man beside her asked, in a British accent.
Alice turned to him. “I have a board.”
“Do you speak French?”
“No. Why?”
“There’s an expression chess players use to clarify that a piece is only being adjusted in its place, not yet moved to another square.”
“Oh really? What’s that?”
“J’adoube.”
Alice nodded and, looking up at the television, lifted her glass and this time drank from it.
• • •
“Hi,” she said, knocking on her boss’s door. “Here’s that—”
He slammed down the phone.
“Sorry,” said Alice, “I didn’t—”
“Fucking Blazer is staying with Hilly.”
Furiously he massaged his forehead with his fingers. Alice laid the file on his desk and left.
• • •
“The thing is,” she said to the British man, whose name was Julian, “they haven’t been in the World Series since 1986. And they haven’t won a World Series since 1918. And some people attribute this to the Curse of the Bambino: they think the Red Sox are being punished for selling Babe Ruth to New York.”
“To the Yankees.”
“Yes. Although these days there are also the Mets, but they didn’t exist until the sixties.” Alice took a sip. “Before that there were only eight teams to a league.”
• • •
Pujols took second on ball one inside.
When Renteria hit it back to Foulke, Foulke threw him out at first, and the dugout emptied onto the field, where the men ran to join a celebratory huddle, leaping onto one another’s backs and into one another’s arms and punching the air and pointing gratefully to the heavens. In the stands, camera flashes pop-pop-popped like muzzle fire. There was a brief satellite image of soldiers in Baghdad celebrating in their sand fatigues and then the picture cut back to the Bank of America Postgame Show and Bud Selig handed Manny Ramirez the MVP trophy. A reporter asked him how it felt.
“First, you know, it was a lot of negative stuff, you know, I was gonna get traded, but, you know, I keep my confidence on myself and I believe in me and I did it, you know, I’m just blessed, and, you know, I prove a lot of people wrong, you know, I knew I could do this and thanks God I did it.”
“Do you believe in curses, sir?”
“I don’t believe in curse. I think you make your own destination, and we did it, you know, we believe in each other. We went out there, we play relaxed, and we ground it out and we did it.”
Alice looked at her phone. The bartender bought them a round.
“Every man makes his own destination,” Alice said wryly, putting her phone back into her purse.
“He’s right,” said Julian, pulling her toward him for a kiss.
• • •
Shave and a haircut, two bits.
She stood in Alice’s doorway holding a bottle of wine, which was dusty and had no name except for a dense parade of Hebrew lettering, the old woman’s head wobbling faintly as