it.” Then he’d step out of the car and dash inside the house. It must have happened seven or eight times before one day Mr. McCumber stopped him.
“Hold on a second,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
Cogan looked at him, a little petrified.
“Have you considered college at all? Did you have one in mind?”
Cogan said, no, not exactly. He liked Northwestern a lot. It was good academically and a Big Ten school, which was good for sports. He’d considered going there, but it depended on what money he could get—on whether, really, he could get a scholarship, because, frankly, his father couldn’t afford to send him to a private school. His brother had gone to a state university.
Mr. McCumber nodded.
“You and Melissa have become good friends, haven’t you?”
Cogan didn’t know how to respond. He wasn’t sure what Mr. McCumber was trying to get at. Did he think he had the hots for his daughter?
“I guess we have,” he answered timidly. “We have similar interests.”
“She thinks very highly of you. She says you’re a good ball player and quite the student. Near the top of your class.”
“She’s been very nice to me. You and Mrs. McCumber, too.”
“You know, I tried to send her away to school last year,” Mr. McCumber went on, seeming to ignore his response. “But she didn’t want to go. She’s very close to her mother, and she didn’t want to leave her friends here.”
There was a short silence. Cogan still didn’t know what he was driving at.
“I thought with your mother having passed away, and your father—I understand he isn’t around that much. I thought you might be interested in going away to school. To a boarding school.”
“I don’t know. I don’t really know anything about boarding schools.”
“Well, I think you’d be a good candidate for a scholarship. I could sponsor you—I could put in a word at my alma mater, the school I went to in Massachusetts. I give them a nice contribution each year. We could put in an application. Would you like to do that?”
Cogan shrugged. “Sure.”
Mr. McCumber smiled. “OK, then,” he said, becoming more himself. “We’ll get to work on it. Good man.”
They shook on it.
He didn’t think much about Mr. McCumber’s offer until Melissa, a week later, showed up at his baseball practice to angrily and tearfully condemn her father.
“He says we’re getting too involved,” she said. “That’s why he wants to send you away.”
Cogan looked at her, dumbfounded.
“What do you mean, involved?” he asked. “We’re friends.”
“He doesn’t want us to go out.”
“But we’re not going out. We’re just friends.”
“Sure. But you know, Teddy—you know how close we’ve gotten. And you know—I think you do—that I like you more than as a friend.”
Cogan, standing there behind the backstop on that sunny day suddenly realized he was at the center of some larger drama that was taking place completely in his absence. He’d assumed he was such a tiny part of the McCumber family’s life. Another weekend visitor. Another of Melissa’s many friends. And here he’d somehow become elevated to this exalted status, having to be sent away. Sent away—it seemed far too serious. Sure, she may have liked him. That didn’t shock him. There had always been hints of that, though less than she was trying to make him believe now. But to have to be sent away because of it seemed awfully drastic, especially since her parents seemed to like him. He couldn’t understand that. How could they want to send him away after they’d always welcomed him into their home and said nothing but good things about him?
“I don’t get it,” he said. “I thought your parents liked me.”
“They do,” she said.
“So what do they care whether we’re friends or involved or whatever?”
Melissa fell silent.
“What do they care?” he pressed her.
She couldn’t look him in the eye when she told him.
“You’re Jewish, Teddy,” she said. “And they don’t want me dating Jewish boys.”
“But we’re not dating.”
She fell silent again. Then, after a moment, she said: “They don’t even want me to have feelings for Jewish boys.”
“Well, stop them, for Christ’s sake.”
“I can’t.”
Later, when he got home, he told his father about the incident. He told him about Mr. McCumber’s offer and how it was some strange ruse to keep him from seeing his daughter, whom he didn’t want to see anymore anyway.
His father took in all his bewilderment without saying a word. Then, after, a moment, he said: “You know, they sent your great uncle Adam to