you a drink.” She went to the refrigerator and got him a bottle of beer.
“I threw it into the stands. I threw it two feet wide, I threw it a foot high, I threw it all over the fuckin’ place. That was Friday, so we tried it again on Saturday, and I hit the poor kid they had standing in the batter’s box. Clocked him right on the fuckin’ elbow. They’d brought a specialist—or another specialist, a new specialist—and I talked to him for quite a while yesterday. And by the afternoon, we’d all agreed that it was a nice chance to catch up, but that was about it.” He drank from the bottle and shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” she said.
He sighed like he was trying to blow out a candle with it. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I thought this was going to be different. It was like the shittiest practice any of us ever went to. I threw a couple that were not quite where I wanted them, and he was like, ‘Form looks good, looks good, stay loose.’ But I knew. I can tell.”
“What do you think happened?”
He looked down at the table. “The same thing that happened for two years before I came up here, which is I don’t have a fucking clue what happened.” He didn’t even say this unkindly. He said it as if he were telling her what happened, as if he were saying, Well, the flange needed tightening, and they were using the wrong washer. “The specialist asked me a lot of questions, had me do a bunch of exercises. I passed everything. They did a couple of MRIs, and other than the fact that my shoulder and my elbow both basically look like they got weedwacked from the inside out, there’s nothing wrong.”
“You don’t have the thing where your arm falls off?”
He smiled. “Not falls off. Comes apart in the middle.”
“That’s not a lot better.”
“Well, I don’t have that, no. But I don’t have anything. I’m still a fucking head case, so nothing’s changed. Apparently, a year is about how long it takes me to forget that I already tried everything, most things five or six times, and it’s time to stop fucking embarrassing myself.”
“Wait, you’re quitting?”
He looked up at her slowly. “Yes. It’s fully, totally over.”
“But I saw you pitch a month ago.”
“And a bunch of people watched me throw into the stands yesterday.”
The thump of the ball into the mitt. “You can’t quit.”
“Yes. I can quit. I am quitting. I am not pitching anymore.”
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I feel like I should have gone with you.”
He shook his head, his shoulders, all in a gesture of loose bafflement. “To do what?”
“I don’t know. To be there with you, I guess.”
“You didn’t miss a good time.”
“Not to have a good time. Just, do you remember when you asked me to be behind the plate at the Spring Dance? Do you remember that you said it helped that I was back there, even if you couldn’t see me? I feel like this is what happened, we didn’t follow the rules of what made it work, we didn’t do it the same way. It can still work, but we have to do it the same way—”
“Please stop,” he said, shaking his head. “Please stop, okay, Ev?”
“I’m trying to help.”
“I know you are, but you have to listen. You have to listen to me. I’m fucking tired, and I had a long weekend, and even though I know you’re trying to help, I’m telling you this is how it is.” He was a little sunburned, she noticed. He looked older.
“I just…I’m just surprised.”
“Evvie, I worked on this back in New York until I drove myself crazier than I already was. I did every goddamn thing they told me to do, everything. I don’t understand what you expected to happen. I don’t understand what I expected to happen.” He leaned against the counter. “I mean, did you think I was going to be able to pitch now because we’re sleeping together?”
Hearing this question was like biting down on a bad tooth, right to the nerve. “I didn’t think that.” Oh, but you did, you did, you did.
“It’s over,” he said. “I’m telling you it’s over. All this is over.” He took a drink, and then he shook his head. “I really fucking wish you hadn’t forced it.”