Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,40

a school with a great art program? And you could major in graphic design, or in art, and you could play baseball on the side.

It’s the first suggestion anyone has made to me that sounds remotely appealing. But I only say, Maybe.

There are several reasons I do not want to go to college. One is that I am afraid that if I don’t go running after something with my whole heart that it will disappear as a way of punishing me. Another is that I sincerely do not think I will be good at college. And last there is my mother. I hate her but I want to help her. I want to make money doing something I love and I want to make lots of it and I can’t make money in college. I want to make money so that I can hold it over her head and order her to stop pretending to be so sick. Order her to stop drinking. I want to buy her a huge clean house like the Harpers’ or the Cohens’. I want her to invite Dr. Greene to her huge clean house and tell him Look what I have. Look at the things I have and the son I have. I want to buy her puppies to take care of and I want her to maybe meet a new husband. And maybe meet friends. I want to not have to worry about her all of the time. I want to get her a very good doctor. And I want to be close to her. Geographically. I have to stay close to home. There is no way I could go to any of the colleges that have recruited me because the farthest away is in California and the closest is two hours away. Two hours away is too many. My mother would not survive. I know that she wouldn’t. I know that if I weren’t there to come in and take the bottle out of her hands and pat her head and cut her hair and soothe her and tell her No, don’t do a handstand, No, don’t build a fire in the fireplace, No, you drink too much to do any of these things—that she would, when she got lonely enough she would, when she knew there would be no one checking in on her she would. She would kill herself. Slowly or suddenly she would kill herself.

Now I know that if I played professionally I would also be away, but it would not be so permanent. I’d go down to Florida for training, but I would not be there for four years. Or even for one year. I’d be able to tell her I was checking on her. I’d be able to go back and forth. And I would make money for us, very soon if I was lucky. Most important of all: I could bring her with me. Wherever I was she could come.

I can’t tell Ms. Warren this so I tell her instead that I’ll think about what she’s suggesting. I say, Thank you, I’ll consider it. Using my best adult voice. She is handing me things, brochure after brochure. She has found an art school that would be perfect for me. In Rochester. What doesn’t she understand.

Or, she says. There’s always community college too. Could you go to community college while you’re playing professional baseball?

I can tell by the way she says professional baseball that she doesn’t believe I can do it and furthermore she knows nothing about it.

I guess I could, I say.

I think her goal is to keep PLHS’s statistics as pristine as they can be. I think her task is to make every single student go to college because then PLHS can say that every single student goes to college. On their goddamn website.

As I’m getting up to leave she says my name.

Yep? I say.

I want you to know that I care about your future, she says.

I know, I say.

—Everyone cares about your future.

Again I have a vision of her as a high school student. We wouldn’t have been friends.

• • •

After school, inside the locker room, the boys are getting ready. The walls are painted green and gold: Giants colors. It is warmly damp and it smells like chlorine even though we have no pool. There is something like a church about it. Mostly it is quiet. I love it in here and I always have. In movies they show locker rooms as rowdy