I wondered, growing up, why she put up with him, why she didn’t just leave and take me with her like I sometimes wished she would.
Instead, she tried to make things good. She got me Cici for my eighth birthday. She helped me limit the sports so that I wasn’t enrolled in everything. She pushed for me to come home from ASU after my shoulder surgery.
Now, here she is, chatting with Daisy like old pals, eating carrot muffins together. I pull out my phone and order a bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel and a mixed fruit bowl through Grubhub from Mannino’s on 62nd and Fifth Avenue, with detailed instructions regarding delivery location, all the way down to my mother’s outfit so the food finds its way to her. I add a $20 tip to the bill.
The first game starts. It’s slow and boring, until Dom hits a two-run homer in the third inning and I follow that up with a triple to deep right. Daisy bunts (not on purpose) and I make it home, even though she gets tagged out at first. Then, Courtney strikes out and the inning ends, and literally nothing else happens until the seventh inning, when I catch a grounder and throw it to Richie at first, and he throws it to Gordon at second for an attempt at a double play.
The ball bounces off his cleat, right into his junk.
Gordy yells out in pain and falls to the ground, sweat (or possibly tears) running through his eye black.
My mother watches from the sideline, munching on her fruit.
The ump calls time out and Dad jogs over to Gordy from the outfield. “You good, son?”
He holds one hand up, indicating that he needs a sec. The other hand clutches his balls.
The rest of the team (myself included) surround him, buzzing with injury energy. I feel bad because it sucks to get hurt, but it’s killing me not to laugh. He’s being so dramatic about it, whining and moaning like a baby on the ground.
Dad tries to get him up, but Gordy is legitimately sobbing.
“Well, if he ever had a shot with any of the girls on this team, that’s gone to shit now,” Dom whispers to me.
“Good news,” I whisper back. “He never had a shot.”
Dom laughs under his breath.
Suddenly, my mother is out on the field. “John? Colin?” I hear her call. I see her shimmying across the field in her oversized sun hat. I walk over to her. “Should I call an ambulance, honey?” she asks me, cell phone in hand.
“Gordon? My mom wants to know if you want her to call 9-1-1 for your busted nut?” I holler.
“I think you should, Linda,” my dad says. “This isn’t right. Usually when you take a shot to the sack, it hurts, but the pain goes away shortly after.”
Mom nods, takes a few steps away, and makes the call.
The ambulance comes in minutes. Paramedics check his vitals and carefully move him onto a stretcher.
“What happened to him?” I hear my dad ask the driver.
“Looks like he stabbed himself in the testicle with a pencil,” the driver says.
“Apencil?” I say. “Why the hell did he have a pencil in his pocket?”
“I waskeepingthebook!” Gordy screams from the stretcher. Then he makes a sound like an animal who’s been hit by a car. It’s deafening. EMS gets him into the ambulance, leaving the back doors open. “Anybody going with him?” the one guy asks.
“Jack!” he wails. “You gotta come, Jack!”
“It’ll leave us short,” my dad says to me, trying to stifle the panic in his voice.
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s not a big deal. I can bring Mom home. You should go with him.”
“Colin,” he says under his breath, “we would have toforfeitthe game.”
“So what?” I ask. But I know John Yarmouth.Forfeitis not in his vocabulary.
He glares at me. “Richie—go grab me the roster, quick. And a pen.”
Richie runs across the field and pulls the roster off the bench. He returns it to my dad with a pen. My dad scribbles a name on it and hands the roster to me. “You handle this, Colin. I’m counting on you.” He walks toward the ambulance. “I’m coming with you, don’t worry,” I hear him tell Gordy.
