But he began, “Bless me, Father. My last confession was eight years ago,” and then paused to see if the priest would blanch, would say, yes, any hope he had of absolution had expired. But the priest merely nodded, and Edward Everett began telling him of his life, beginning with the lies he had told his mother about going to confession; about the times he had gone to Communion although he was not in a state of grace; about how he had slept with so many women whose names he could no longer remember, had taken amphetamines to wake himself up for a game after long and uncomfortable bus rides, had not kept the Sabbath—the sins tumbling out in no particular order, as if he were some sort of spiritual bag of marbles that had gotten torn and the aggies and cat’s eyes were bouncing madly around the room; he had been envious of teammates who had been called up before him, had once slept with a teammate’s girlfriend after the teammate had been promoted ahead of him, from single-A to double-A. He had done it, he knew even at the time, while the girl undressed in the dark room, less for the sex and more for the anger he felt at being passed over. She, of course, had done it out of her own anger, knowing her boyfriend would not come back for her. But still it was a violation: one did not sleep with a teammate’s girlfriend.
When Edward Everett finished his litany, he realized he was weeping quietly, and the priest was handing him a tissue from the box on the bedside table. As he wiped his cheeks, and said his Act of Contrition, the priest traced the sign of the cross through the air and told him to say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys as his penance before giving him the final admonishment: “Go and sin no more.”
Not long after the priest left, what turned out to be the last Mass of the day let out across the street, and the chatter of the faithful floated through his window. He imagined them going home to mow lawns or off to restaurants for pleasant Sunday brunches. He thought, I am one of them again, a good and true Catholic, and fell asleep.
When he woke, it was evening and a soft rain fell. Cars shushed by in the wet street and in a breeze the limbs of the maple outside his window shook, showering the screen with spatters. He felt a kind of gratitude. Perhaps this was why he hurt his leg, so that he could find grace again, he thought. He would miss the rest of the season, the doctor had told him. In six weeks, in September, he could begin physical therapy. If he worked at conditioning over the winter—running, regular stints in the batting cage at his old high school, playing catch in the gym—he could be ready for spring training in February. Maybe the injury would turn out to be a blessing: he would show up in Florida in the best shape of his life.
Maybe the Cardinals would keep him on the big league roster. He had shown them something in the three weeks he had been there; he had hustled in warm-ups, had raced after fly balls when he patrolled the outfield during batting practice. While other players had been nonchalant about it, had caught the ball if it came within a few paces of where they stood, joking with one another, he set out after balls as if it were crucial that he catch them, leaping and sprawling out on the turf. “They don’t do highlight films of BP, kid,” one had said to him, but it didn’t dissuade him and when he came back into the dugout, to drop his glove and grab his bat when it was his turn to take his cuts, he looked at the manager out of the corner of his eye, to see if he would say something to him: I like your hustle, but he never gave him a sign. In his first game, when they asked him to sacrifice, he’d done it, and when they had put him into the lineup, he had responded then as well: four hits in four times to the plate, a cycle.
Except, he thought, it hadn’t counted. It would go into the books as nothing, or would never go into the books at all.