Down here, she slept on the opposite side from the one she slept on upstairs. She kept a water glass beside the bed, and her spare phone charger was plugged in with the cord dangling over the corner of the table. On Dean’s side was a book about Lyndon Johnson that he’d been reading, with a receipt from a coffee shop holding his place. She had learned that he took a long time to fall asleep, but once he was out, it took a lot to rouse him. She’d learned that they had roughly equivalently murderous breath in the morning, so sometimes they’d wake up and pick a couple of mints out of a tin first thing, sometimes not. He slept in soft flannel pants unless it was hot, and then he slept in boxers. She liked it a little bit cooler at night than he did, so sometimes she stuck her bare feet out from under the covers, and sometimes he put on a long-sleeved shirt.
While she was lying on the bed, she noticed that on top of his dresser, Dean had set the trophy that he’d taken home when Calcasset High baseball came in second in the regional tournament. She got up and went over to look at it. Cheaply made with glue and plastic, with the etched plate stuck on crooked and the baseball player alarmingly loosely attached, it said, COACH, CALCASSET HIGH, SECOND PLACE. And right beside it was his World Series ring. Well, his first World Series ring. Right now, he was on his way to what some tickle in her mind told her was going to be another.
She lay down on the floor, staring at the ceiling. She could call Andy. But he hadn’t called her. If she called, what would she say? She couldn’t just say she was sorry, the way she had when she closed his fingers in the door of her car. Because as sorry as she felt, she couldn’t stop remembering You’re crazy, and even more, the way she eventually remembered he’d thrown it in her face that she’d tried to leave. Every time she had thought about calling, texting, maybe showing up at his door, she’d remembered him saying crazy, and she’d frozen.
Monica had texted her once, two days after the dinner: Are you OK? She had responded: Yes, OK. Thanks for checking. And she’d added a smiley face, which was almost as ridiculous as Monica herself claiming she was dragging Andy away because she had things to do in the morning. Evvie didn’t even know who the smile was for, or who might be convinced by it. It seemed like the thing to do. Or at least like a thing to do.
She hated to admit it, but it still meant everything to be able to close her eyes and picture the moment when Dean’s first pitch thunked into Marco’s mitt. She’d felt it in the crowd—their surprise, their relief. It meant hope, like it had meant hope for her. It was possible for things to get better when it felt like they couldn’t. It was possible for things that seemed doomed to be revived. This was why people kept rooting for the Red Sox and the Cubs until they finally won. It was why people who didn’t care about speed skating knew about Dan Jansen, who fell at the Calgary Olympics after he found out his sister had died. People rooted for him until he won a gold medal six years later, simply because they wanted to believe there was hope.
She could see Dean in her mind right now, and she could imagine what he’d be like later at what she imagined this meetup with coaches might look like. She knew how he’d pace at the hotel where they were putting him up, rubbing his shoulder. Would he think about her? Maybe. In case he did, she closed her eyes and focused as hard as she could on the words You can do it, you can do it. This was a thing she did not believe in at all, as she would admit if she were pressed. But the feel of it was wonderful—the feeling that she could package her feelings and put them to use, wrapping them up, and no, of course she didn’t believe in telepathy, but what was “best wishes” on a birthday card, after all, except the idea that your good thoughts might matter?