16
Ryan
Iwaited at the kitchen table while Lily sorted out and organized the gifts she wanted me to help her wrap. While she was gathering the gifts, Julia called and ended up talking on the phone with Lily. It didn’t matter to me. Whenever she was ready, I would be ready to jump in and help her.
“Are you in the on-deck circle?” Stanley asked as he walked into the kitchen.
I smiled at his baseball reference to being up next. I laughed and nodded.
“Yes. Julia called,” I explained.
“Well, while you’re waiting, come with me.”
Stanley had a gleam in his eye that made me think he had a task for me to help him with. I followed him down the hallway, and as we passed their bedroom, I could hear Lily talking on the phone. I glanced in and saw presents and bags of things spread out on the bed. In the hobby room, Stanley went to the bookshelf on the other side of the desk that stuck out from the wall. That side of the bookshelf was deeper than the side where my books were. Stanley gestured for me to sit down and then he pulled down one of the books and set it on the desk before he sat down. When he opened the cover, my eyes fell on the plastic twelve by twelve protective sleeves for baseball cards.
“Oh!” I said as soon as I saw the contents. I quickly looked back at the bookshelf to see that three shelves were occupied with books and binders this size. “Are those all full of cards?” I asked.
“Yes,” Stanley said proudly. “I’ve collected for nearly my entire life.”
“Damn, I bet you have some incredible cards.”
“I do. Lily couldn’t care less about the cards. In fact, she down right hates them.”
“She does?”
“Did you ever collect baseball cards, Ryan?”
“No. I would have loved to, but there just wasn’t money for me to get a pack of cards at a convenience store or anything like that.”
“Card collecting started to change in the ’80s. Card makers started mass producing them, which removed value from them almost as fast as they were made.”
“Yeah, I guess I never really knew about that.”
I had never given it thought, to be honest. I never collected cards. I had no money as a kid and even if I had some cards, they would have ended up as collateral damage during a fight with my brother.
“You were young in the ’80s so you wouldn’t have known any different.”
As Stanley turned the pages, I glanced at all the cards. These cards were so old that I didn’t even realize how cartoonish they looked when they first came out. Stanley came to a page that he had marked with a red tab and pulled out a card.
“This card,” he began.
“Are you showing him your Mickey Mouse cards?” Lily said as she walked into the hobby room and headed to the closet. She pulled out a few rolls of wrapping paper and rummaged around in the closet.
Stanley gave me a look and smiled.
“See? She hates them.” Stanley winked at me.
“Please tell him the story of how you ended up with the card. I’m sure he’s dying to know,” Lily said.
“This card fell into my hands on one of the best days of my life.”
“Better have been one of the best days of your life,” Lily mumbled with her back to us.
Stanley set the card down so I could see it better. I blinked a few times to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.
Holy fuck!
A 1952 Mickey Mantle card laid inches from my hand.
