Читать книгу Home, Away - Jeff Gillenkirk - Страница 6

STRIKE ONE

Grass, horizons of shimmering green grass, its loamy perfume sweet in his nostrils. Lunge, snatch, throw … lunge, snatch, throw … the crack of Vuco’s fungo bat beats methodically as he fields grounder after grounder on the tightly clipped turf of Sunken Diamond. A sheen of sweat spreads across his back, then Vuco shouts, ‘You wanna throw?’ He steps on the mound and tosses a fastball to Barf Connolly and the radar gun shows Double Zero. He throws another pitch even harder but the gun shows Double Zero again. ‘Vuco!’ he calls but his coach just stands there. ‘That must have been a hundred!’ Then he looks behind the backstop where Rafe was playing with his Big Truck and he’s gone. He tries to run but his spikes snag the turf. ‘Barf, for Christsakes where is he?’ Sweat pours from his face, he can’t breathe, a hole opens in his stomach, he has no idea where his son is.

He runs behind the concession stand, then down the asphalt path towards the stadium. A jumble of trees and tangled underbrush lines the path, places where Rafe could be lost. Then somehow he’s a mile down Campus Drive, running across the lawn toward their apartment though Rafe could never have gotten this far, he wasn’t even two years old. He stares up at the apartment’s balcony then down the boulevard, trying to retrace every step, every clue, but his thoughts float out of reach.

‘Rafe!’ he shouts. ‘Rafe, where are you? ’

JASON SHOT STRAIGHT UP FROM the sofa bed, scattering books, papers, pencils onto the floor. “Rafe!” he called, crossing the room with two giant strides into the nursery fashioned from the Murphy Bed closet. There he was, surrounded by Pooh and Noodles and Doggie and Fuff in the sky-blue crib Jason had painted with rising suns and phases of the moon, spread out on his back beneath the posters of Sandra Day O’Connor and Randy Johnson, his breath sliding in and out in the sweet reassuring sleep of innocence.

“Jesus Christ!” Jason exhaled. He leaned over and hoisted Rafe into his strong arms. At two years old he was no heavier than a full bag of groceries. He carried Rafe into the kitchen and poured two glasses of milk — one in a regular glass, the other in a sippy cup festooned with transparent butterflies. Rafe continued sleeping against his neck but began to stir at the smell of the pear Jason was slicing.

“Time to face the music, Buddy,” Jason said, switching the radio on to KSJO — All Rock, All the Time. “You gotta wake up or you’ll never get to sleep tonight. And tonight,” he said joyfully, waltzing with his son across the small kitchen, “your mommy’s finished with law school.” Rafe stared blankly as Jason strapped him into the old wooden high chair. “Dude,” Jason cooed. “Can you say freedom?”

The backpack, the stroller, the pale blue plastic baby bag — Vicki could deal with these now. Tomorrow he was going back to baseball. Tomorrow ended the unprecedented — and some said unwise — leave of absence from Stanford’s baseball program to be a full-time dad. He would rejoin his quest for what he and everyone who knew him assumed would inevitably be his — a professional baseball career. And Rafe would go back to being just his kid, rather than a full-time job.

Rafe stared at the pear slices on his tray, then picked one up in his chubby hand and flung it to the center of the floor. “Whoa, you gotta hit your cut-off man!” Jason cried. He knew Rafe was never hungry after waking, but he was anxious to accelerate the program. Vicki’s eighteen hour days, the endless cycle of studying and tests and papers — it was over today. He didn’t know what came next, but it couldn’t be any worse. Right from the start it had been ‘Vicki Vicki Vicki, Rafe Rafe Rafe.’ Finally, it was his turn.

He hurried into the living room and found the foam rubber baseball under the sofabed. Rafe’s eyes rose with a smile when he saw the ball in his father’s hand.

“Catch!” Rafe shouted.

Jason laughed and softly tossed the ball. Rafe’s hands came together several beats after the ball bounced off his chest. Jason threw it again and again until Rafe managed to squeeze it against the high-chair tray. “Good! Now throw it to Daddy.” Happily, with a jerky flap of his arm, Rafe tossed the ball into his father’s waiting hands.

“Yay!” Jason cried. “You’re gonna be a ballplayer, my little man.”

After a dinner of ravioli and green beans, he sat Rafe on the living room floor with a pile of wooden blocks and his favorite stuffed animals. “Let’s build a zoo,” Jason said. He quickly formed a square enclosure and placed Pooh Bear in the center. Rafe recognized the game and began forming new enclosures for his stuffed animals. Jason popped open a metal cookie can holding thirty-forty small plastic cars and arranged them into a parking lot, then grabbed a copy of Sports Illustrated and read two articles before Rafe began impatiently mixing the blocks and cars together. Not that it made any difference. The living room was a mess, the morning newspaper still tangled with the sheets on the pull-out couch that transformed their living room into a bedroom. A plate of half-eaten raviolis, sneakers, socks, a kitchen towel, issues of Baseball Digest littered the floor.

At nine o’clock Jason rolled over and squeezed Rafe’s belly. “Two minute warning, Buddy. Night-night time.” Rafe carefully set the animals on their sides. “Night night,” he sang. Jason carried Rafe into the bedroom, where he changed Rafe’s diaper and dressed him in his orange fire-retardant footsies.

“What should we read tonight?”

“The birdie book!”

“All right!” It could have been a plumber’s manual, Jason wouldn’t care. It was over. He could feel the rock rolling away, freedom blowing into his life. The trips to the pediatrician, to Gymboree for clothes, the afternoons cramming on park benches while Rafe scampered up and down play structures, the meals prepared, baths drawn, diapers changed, loads of laundry washed … it was all over, today. Finis. Terminado. Done. That was Vicki’s job now. His job was to play baseball.

He sat in the living room chair with Rafe warm and clean-smelling in his lap, leafing through the Encyclopedia of North American Birds for the umpteenth time. Ten minutes into it Jason saw the tell-tale wavering of Rafe’s eyelids, the softening of his mouth. He carried him to the balcony where they faced eastwards and began their nightly litany: “Good night Gramma,” they recited together. “Good night Grampa … good night Mommy.” And tonight, because it was there, “Good night moon.”

Rafe had brought a carrot stick and pointed it to the sky. “Do stars eat carrots?”

Jason smiled. “I don’t know, hold it up and see.” Rafe thrust the carrot towards the sky and waited, his dark eyes shining with anticipation. After a moment, he turned to his father with a wondering look.

“Maybe they’re not hungry,” Jason offered. “They probably already ate.” Rafe studied his face, then pushed the carrot against Jason’s mouth. He grasped it with his teeth and began chewing. “Mmmm, daddies love carrots. That’s why daddies are strong.”

He lay Rafe down in his crib and pulled the yellow cotton blanket up to his neck. “Good night, sweet boy. Have a great sleep.”

Rafe stared at him placidly in the half light of the room.

“Good night, Daddy,” he said, and closed his eyes.

Rafe’s breathing was soft and steady by the time Jason reached the door. He left it open the width of his fist and hurried into the kitchen. The clock on the stove said 9:27. Vicki should have been home by nine, but what else was new? He looked at the cluttered table and realized that he should have bought some champagne or something to celebrate the end of law school, whatever good that would do. Their relationship sucked, there wasn’t anything they’d ever found to make it better, so why pretend?

He cleared a space at the table and began reading from Analysis of Sociological Data for his midterm. At 10:30 he slammed his fist down. He’d never make it to work on time. It was his last night at the physical plant where he scrubbed, cleaned, painted, patched and monitored the machinery that cooled and heated half of Stanford’s sprawling campus, from eleven PM to seven AM — payment for extending his baseball scholarship another year. Gutfried Oderbach — Field Marshall Oderbach, they called him — would be all over him for being late, even if it was his last night.

He pulled on a pair of frayed khakis and the sweatshirt he’d worn the past two nights. He was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when the front door opened.

“Glad you could make it!” he called sarcastically. Vicki ignored him and tip-toed into Rafe’s room. She leaned over the railing and kissed him lightly on the lips. She smiled as Rafe’s eyes fluttered and the corners of his mouth lifted sweetly.

Then Jason loomed over her shoulder. “You said you’d be home by nine.”

She gazed tenderly on Rafe, his soft corn silk hair pressed against his temple. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling the blanket away from his chin. “Something came up.” She turned and hurried from the room. Jason reached over and yanked the blanket back up to Rafe’s chin, then followed Vicki into the kitchen.

“What do you mean something came up? It’s over, right? This is the last day.”

She took a blueberry yogurt from the refrigerator and sat tiredly at the kitchen table. She ran her hand through her long, shimmering hair. “I really wish we could talk once without you yelling.”

“I’m not yelling! I’m frustrated. I’ve been waiting for two hours … two years!”

Vicki breathed deeply and closed her eyes. “It hasn’t been two years.” When she opened them he was leaning over the table, his head thrust towards her.

“What is it now?”

“I was trying to change my Bar Boards schedule. They put me in the afternoon class by mistake.”

“Bar Boards? What are Bar Boards?

“I told you — I’ve got two weeks of prep classes for the Boards. These last three years are down the drain if I don’t pass.”

“No, you didn’t tell me.” He glared at her. “I’ve got practice tomorrow. You said you’d take Rafe.”

“It’s just for tomorrow.”

“Naw, Vicki, naw — this is your time now. You promised.”

She shrugged. “It’s the best I could do.”

The red numerals of the digital clock burned into his eyeballs — 10:49. “No, that’s not your best,” he said. “You gave your best to constitutional law. You gave your best to Professor Hairpiece. You give your best to everyone but me. I get crap.”

“That’s because all you know is crap. You dish it out all the time.”

The argument wasn’t new, only the circumstances. They both had waited for this moment since Rafe’s birth — the end of law school, the pursuit of some kind of normalcy in a marriage that had never really had any. It was that promise, that distant hope that had held them together for the past two years. Now, it was suddenly clear that that point could just as easily be an end as a beginning.

He snatched her tub of yogurt and threw it as hard as he could. It exploded high above the stove, showering rays of pale blue cream across the wall and down the side of the refrigerator. “I’ve fuckin’ had it!” he shouted. “This marriage is over!”

Vicki scrambled from her seat and backpedaled towards the door. “Then get out! Get out — nobody wants you here!”

He stepped towards her. Their altercations had never been physical; the sound, the spray, the audacity of the exploding yogurt shocked them both.

“Stay away from me!” Vicki cried.

“I wouldn’t touch you if you paid me!”

Vicki’s foot hit a pool of yogurt and she slid hard against the wall, banging her shoulder. “You asshole!” she screamed. Jason stood over her, uncertain what to do.

“Get away from me!” Vicki screamed louder. “You hear me? GET AWAY FROM ME!”

Rafe was crying now. The day Jason had dreamed about for more than a year somehow had turned into a nightmare. He grabbed his Stanford jacket from the living room chair and fled down the front stairs two at a time, striking out on a run across the dark lawn towards East Campus Drive. The sound of Rafe’s crying chased him like a siren.

THE STANFORD DAILY

CARDINAL FATE HINGES ON DAD’S RETURN STANFORD ACE HITS 1,000 (DIAPERS) IN OFF-SEASON

When “JT” Thibodeaux takes the field today in the opening practice of the Cardinal’s baseball season, for the first time in a year he won’t be playing with a Nerf ball. A two-time high school All-American recruited out of Henry Beaumont High in Galveston, Texas (where he was known as “Heat”), JT elected to take a leave of absence to raise his one-year-old son while his wife completed Stanford Law.

“I’m ready to play,” Thibodeaux told the Daily on the West Campus playground, where we caught up with him on the swings with his fledgling Cardinal, Raphael. “I wouldn’t trade this year with my boy for anything,” JT said, though he is looking forward to trading in his diaper bag for a duffel bag.

Thibodeaux was an overpowering 16-1 as a junior in the Cardinal’s near-trip to the College World Series two seasons ago. With the birth of his son to second year Stanford Law student Victoria Repetto, Thibodeaux red-shirted his final year of eligibility in order to take primary responsibility for raising him.

“I can always pitch,” the hard-throwing 6’4” left-hander said. “But I won’t ever have the opportunity again to raise my son. It’s just something I decided to do. I think it worked out great for both of us.”

A Sociology major in the School of the Humanities, Thibodeaux managed to earn three credits towards his degree on his year off. Working with department staff, he turned his fathering experience into a year-long sociology tutorial, recording his son’s developmental progress. Thibodeaux estimates that he read nearly forty books on child-rearing — in addition to “changing a thousand diapers.”

Thibodeaux’s coaches and teammates are happy to see their ace return. “JT has always done things his way,” one teammate said. “I don’t care what he does off the field. I just want to go to the World Series.”

THE MORNING session was hell. The new conditioning coach, Brad Sievert, started them with a half hour of calisthenics, then running drills and wind sprints from line to line before shagging flies. Pitchers and catchers took fielding drills with the equipment manager, Donnie Burt — or “Toast,” so named because two seasons ago one of the dryers caught fire and burned the team’s uniform pants — rolling simulated bunts onto the infield grass. At eleven o’clock the pitchers practiced covering the bag on balls hit to first.

Jason worked as hard as he’d ever worked in his life. His legs ached. His t-shirt was soaked. His thighs screamed from sprinting from the mound to first base. He loved it. Men being, trying to be, pretending to be the fastest, the most powerful, the most prolific players in a game that Americans had played for as long as most Americans could remember. He was embarrassed for ever giving it up. But that was the past. He could forget the year he had taken off. He could forget his blow-up with Vicki, the sound of Rafe crying, the yogurt sprayed across the wall and floor of the kitchen. Here, inside the sanctuary of Stanford’s legendary stadium, it was all baseball, only baseball, a wholly self-contained and self-referential world.

Lunch was catered, with mounded platters of pasta, risotto, baked chicken breasts, buttered green beans and biscuits with honey, all passed up and down the table. Jason sat with the other seniors — Jeremy Asher, his battery mate since freshman year; Barf Connolly, the baby-faced infielder from San Diego with the social mores of John Belushi; Damon Lister, the stuck-up world government major from Perth, Australia, who played center field like a roadrunner; John Corliss, scion of Corliss Software; Artemio “Artie” Garza, the son of a real Texas Ranger from San Antonio and premier base stealer on the team; wide-body first baseman Brent Seligman. Jason had searched his teammates’ faces for any sign of disapproval and found none. But neither did he discern any interest in what he had done the past year. The chatter was generic. It was an emotion-free zone.

“Hey Selly, you eating clean up or hitting it?”

“What this needs is a good white wine.”

“Whine, whine, whine … Pass the honey, will you?”

Jason slid the jar to Garza. “You know if a kid under two eats honey, he can have a seizure and die?” Nobody said a word. “Scarlet fever, bee stings, choking on a peanut — there’s a million things can kill a kid.”

“Nobody ever does that, do they?” Corliss said skeptically. “The honey thing.”

“Naw, naw, people know,” Jason replied. He beat the table with his open palms. “It gets passed down from generation to generation, like drumbeats.”

The sound of forks scraping, large mandibles chewing, chairs squeaking. “So how’s marriage?” Seligman asked with a sardonic drawl.

Jason nodded as if he’d never heard the question in his life. He hated to acknowledge defeat. It was an awful marriage, but he was hardly willing to admit that. “Having a kid is awesome,” he replied enthusiastically. “They’re kinda like Mini-me’s: they do whatever you do, but they do their own shit too.” A large plate of green beans made its way around the table. Jason heaped some onto his plate, then began filling the plate beside his. “But one thing Rafe loves to do, I don’t know where he gets it — he loves to sing in his bed in the mornings. He wakes up and just starts singing whatever comes into his head — ”

A strong hand seized his forearm. “I don’t like green beans,” Lister said in his imperious Australian accent.

“Sorry, mate,” Jason smiled. “Rafe loves them. He calls ‘em ‘bean beans.’”

Lister swept the beans off his plate with a fork. “I’m not your fuckin kid.” Corliss laughed with a single, sharp bark. Jason blushed and passed the platter along. Rafe’s image came to him, running toward him in his comical, top-heavy toddle. He saw his sparkling eyes, his tiny mouth calling out “Da-Da!” He was surprised by how much he missed him — and how little his teammates cared.

AFTER LUNCH came more running, more calisthenics, more stretches, loosening muscles that had tightened during the break. Jason lay on his back, his legs twisted to the right, his left shoulder straining to reach the ground when Vucovich’s shadow crossed his face. He looked up and saw his own reflection in Vuco’s Robocop shades. Bill Vucovich was a ramrod straight, square-jawed, thirty-three-year-old former second baseman for the Anaheim Angels who had torn an anterior cruciate ligament at twenty-seven and never returned to play. As a former Stanford Cardinal, coaching at his alma mater was the closest he could get to recreating his dreams of stardom. The will to play still burned in his taut body. It was a will that made him impatient with players who didn’t give 100% or more.

“You been throwing?” Vuco asked.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s see what you got.”

Jason stood on the mound with the new ball in his hand, the leather as familiar as his own skin. He looked over and saw head coach Milt Baptiste talking with an assistant, his hands thrust in the back pockets of his uniform, shoulders rounded, abdomen thrust forward looking as if he had been born in a baseball uniform. A hundred fans lounged in the stadium seats, die-hards of the senior set or parents of prospects there to give their offspring some moral support.

Jeremy Asher squatted behind the plate and offered his mitt as a target. “Show ‘em how it’s done, JT.”

Jason rocked into motion, his right knee rising against his belt, his long left arm sweeping from three-quarters above his shoulder toward the plate. The echo came milliseconds after the ball slammed into the pocket of Asher’s mitt, like a sonic boom. Heads turned — Lister, Seligman, Connolly, the new guys who only had heard stories about the flame thrower from Texas who gave it up to raise a kid. Jason nodded to himself. The thrill of being able to do something that only a van full of guys could do was deeply satisfying. This was his world. This was his ticket to the Show.

The coaches lined up along the first baseline and watched their big lefthander throw fifteen, eighteen, twenty pitches. They never used the radar gun this early in the season, but it was clear he was throwing heat. Jason felt good — for himself, for the team, for Vuco. Vuco had gone out on a limb to keep him in the program. He never knew what he had said exactly, but Baptiste had finally agreed to red-shirt him rather than release him. Red-shirting was something teams did all the time — but at the team’s instigation, not the player’s. Guys were held back for injuries, for academic reasons, because they had another player at your position who they wanted to play ahead of you. But raising babies? No one had ever seen that before, at least on the men’s side of Stanford sports. It was a first that Baptiste hadn’t wanted to earn for his esteemed program, but he had to. He could hardly teach personal responsibility while forcing a young man to abandon his child for baseball — or vice versa. And then, there was the 98-miles-per-hour fastball.

Jason started his motion but stopped when he saw Vuco walking towards the mound. “I thought the kid was covered.”

“What do you mean?”

Vuco gestured towards the dugout. There was Rafe with his babysitter, Carmen, dressed in the tiny Stanford uniform Vicki’s father had bought for him, the number 1½ stitched below little letters spelling out “Thibodeaux.” He could see Rafe’s wide brown eyes, his fair hair fringed at the bottom of his cap.

“It’s just for today,” Jason tried to explain. “Vicki had a conflict.”

Vucovich rubbed his eyes beneath his shades, then reached for the ball. Jason handed it over and trudged past Baptiste without looking. Rafe’s eyes danced happily as his father drew near. “Da-Da!” Carmen looked at him apologetically. “Vicki can’t come until 4 o’clock,” she explained. “I have to go to my other job.”

Jason shoveled Rafe with his Rugrats backpack into his arms, snatched the stroller from Carmen and hauled them down the right field line towards the clubhouse. He could feel forty pairs of eyes burning into his back as Rafe played with the bill of his hat. Goddamn Vicki, he steamed. Fifteen months caring for Rafe and she still wouldn’t pull her weight. This was his career, not some Sunday pick-up game.

He set Rafe down and looked at the clock on the clubhouse wall — 2:40. Twenty minutes to nap time. If he could get him down he could get back to the workout before Vicki showed. Rafe, however, ran straight for the free weights laying on the floor. Jason grabbed his right arm and snatched him back.

“Nap time, Buddy.”

Rafe tried to squirm away. “Jugo! Jugo!” he shouted, using the Spanish word for juice that Carmen taught him. He was excited, the clubhouse was something new.

“Come on, Rafey — it’s time to take your nap!”

Rafe’s small face collapsed. “I-want-some-jugo,” he cried, tears streaming down his now-reddened cheeks.

“Oh for Christsakes.” He pulled Rafe into the clubhouse and opened the huge refrigerator stocked with juice and soda. Rafe grabbed a Pepsi from the bottom shelf but Jason yanked it away. Before Rafe could even think of crying again, Jason opened a bottle of Orangina and filled Rafe’s sippy cup and shoved it into his hand. He carried him to the big leather couch where they could see through the open glass doors as Eric Freeholder spanked grounders to the infielders and Baptiste skied fly balls to the outfielders and Vucovich huddled with the pitchers and catchers down the left field line. As Jason watched, Rafe pulled a pile of magazines off the slate coffee table. Jason heard them hit the hardwood floor with a thud, and turned to see Rafe spraying the magazines with orange soda from his sippy cup.

He caught Rafe’s arm and shook him. “That’s a NO-NO!” he shouted. “NO-NO!” The toddler’s face contorted and a pitiful wail escaped his mouth. A wave of guilt swept over Jason, then utter frustration. He should have lined up another babysitter, but he never thought Vicki would actually leave him in the lurch. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

He pulled a tissue from the bag and wiped the streams running from Rafe’s nostrils. “I’m sorry, Buddy,” he said. But Rafe was inconsolable. The blare of his crying burrowed into Jason’s brain like a dentist’s drill. He jumped up and slid the clubhouse door shut. He wanted heads turning at the thud of his fastballs, not his son’s tantrums.

He took a deep breath and looked closely at his agitated boy. Of course — he’d forgotten to ask Carmen when he’d been changed last, when he’d eaten, when he’d slept. He pulled Rafe to him and peeked inside his pull-ups — dry as a bone. He found a box of Saltines in the cupboard and pulled out a stack, set Rafe on his lap, wiped off his tears and held out a cracker. “No!” Rafe pouted, but Jason could see his face soften. Soon Rafe was chewing the cracker, the twinkle in his eye beginning to reappear. Jason squeezed his son’s hand and watched the world beyond the sliding glass doors play out in silence, like a diorama of vintage Americana: Young Men Playing Baseball.

Jason leaned back and Rafe snuggled into the crook of his arm, his head against his chest. Jason began to sing, softly. “Rock-a-bye baby in the tree tops …” He stroked Rafe’s chest across the letters of his little Stanford jersey. Rafe picked at the sleeve of his daddy’s shirt. Outside, Vuco pitched and Corliss pounded a line drive that streaked past the clubhouse window like a comet. “When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.”

After a few minutes, Jason looked down and Rafe was asleep.

WHEN PRACTICE was over he strapped Rafe into his stroller, tucked his blue flannel blanket snugly around him and wheeled him outside into the shade of the clubhouse wall. He hurried across the field and caught Vucovich as he was about to step into the dugout.

“How about some infield practice?” He knew Vuco could never turn down a guy who wanted to do more, even one who had pissed him off as much as he had.

“Where’s the kid?”

Jason pointed across the field. “He’s asleep. We do this all the time.”

Vuco grabbed his fungo bat and a couple of balls. Jason stood on the manicured grass between the mound and shortstop and Vuco hit hard groundballs to his right, to his left and straight at him, over and over again. Left right left right, his legs burned but he pushed himself, he wanted to show Vuco that he was serious about the season. Then suddenly the sound of Vuco’s bat, the smell of the grass, the slant of the winter sun produced a powerful déjà vu. He looked sharply towards the bullpen — Rafe was there, wrapped snugly in his stroller. Every few chances he glanced over, making sure Rafe was still there. Lunge, snatch, throw … lunge, snatch, throw …

Then one time he looked and Vicki was there.

He waved to her just as a ball shot sharply past his knee. “Pay attention!” Vuco shouted. “OK!” Jason said as he watched Vicki pull the blanket tightly up to Rafe’s neck and wheel him away without looking back.

HE SLEPT on the couch in his old fraternity that night. He didn’t want to see Vicki and have to apologize for throwing the yogurt. Besides, he had meant what he’d said. He was sick to death of their marriage. All he wanted to do was play ball.

The next day was more like winter, a strong wind pushing a procession of dark clouds off the Pacific. But enclosed in the magic land of Sunken Diamond, Jason ran, stretched, sprinted and threw with a passion that inspired everyone. He was determined to wipe out the catastrophe of Day One, to erase the image of him as a Dad and replace it with one of the flame thrower who would lead them to Omaha.

He stayed late again, working on his pick-off move. He was alone, undressing in the locker room when Vucovich appeared in the doorway holding a Coke. A pale ring traced the outline of his shades around his eyes, accentuating the intensity of their blueness. “I probably don’t have to say anything, but I’m going to,” Vuco said.

“Let me guess: Baptiste thinks I should go out for water polo.”

“That thing with your kid isn’t going to be the highlight of his year.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“It can’t happen again.”

Jason peeled off his socks. He wanted to say ‘fuck Baptiste’ but he couldn’t. Vuco had discovered him but Baptiste controlled his fate. They had driven down together from Houston and watched the kid called Heat pitch for the Gulf Coast American Legion. Fast ball and curve, that’s all he needed to blow his way through line-ups like a Gulf hurricane. Baptiste had clocked him at 95 and gone to check the radar gun with the Texas Highway Patrol. Most high schoolers didn’t throw 95 miles per hour. They had pegged him as a strong, uncomplicated kid ready for molding into a world class pitcher. Vucovich, at least, still believed that.

“You looked good out there today,” Vuco said. Jason nodded in agreement. “Milt, Freebie — they know you’re the real thing,” Vuco went on. “But you’re the only one who can make it happen. Prospects don’t make it, JT — players do. You’ve got to work as hard for this as you’ve worked for anything in your life.”

“I know that.”

Vucovich tapped his chest. “Heart.”

“You don’t think I’ve got heart after what I’ve been through?” Jason pointed with his chin. “I got heart as sure as you got that caterpillar on your lip.”

Vuco touched his new moustache. “My wife says I look like Brad Pitt.”

“Brad Pitt doesn’t have a moustache.”

A loud knock sounded on the clubhouse door. It had started to rain and beyond the streaked glass stood a heavy-set man in a rain slicker and motorcycle helmet, holding a manila envelope. Vucovich slid open the door. “UPS for Jason Thibodeaux,” the man said in an upbeat voice. Jason signed for the package, the guy handed him the envelope and hurried away. It was from the law firm where Vicki had clerked the summer they were married: Caulkins, Cleary, Wineglas & Huff, 74 State Street, Philadelphia, Pa. “Jason Mark Thibodeaux,” it was addressed, “c/o Stanford University Varsity Baseball Team.” He stared at the envelope, then at the man pushing through the stadium gate. “United Process Servers,” the receipt said.

Vuco sat down and resumed talking. “I’ve seen guys come through with half your talent try twice as hard …” Jason tore open the envelope and extracted a thick sheaf of papers. He read the top form but it took him a moment to grasp it. The only legal documents he had ever seen were his mother’s death certificate and Stanford’s scholarship forms. And, of course, his marriage certificate. He stared at the words as Vucovich’s voice receded.

PETITION FOR DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE:

In the County of Santa Clara, California

Petitioner: Victoria Maria Repetto

Respondent: Jason Mark Thibodeaux

Children: 1. Raphael Jason Thibodeaux

Custody Status Requested: Primary Legal and Physical Custody to Petitioner

Six or seven pages of eye-challenging mumbo-jumbo followed. He felt a surge of giddiness and relief — then rage. Who was she to call it off? But he had said it himself — the marriage sucked. What had Vicki called it? “A sleepover that grew into a tragedy.” They’d had great sex at first, but once Vicki was five months pregnant even that went away. They argued about everything and had almost nothing in common — except Rafe.

Jason’s heart fell as he realized she was going to take him.

“Baseball,” Vucovich was saying with a quiet reverence, “has to be your lover. It has to be your mother, your father, your brother, your best friend … ” He turned and looked meaningfully at the man he considered his protégé. “It has to be your wife.”

Jason walked blindly past him, slid open the glass doors and stepped outside. The rain pelted his chest; he still had on only his baseball pants but it didn’t matter — he had to get home. He hadn’t seen Rafe for two days. He wanted to fix some dinner and play with his trucks and read him a story and put him to bed. He saw the phony UPS man disappear around the corner on his motorcycle. He began to run with half a mind to catch him and beat the crap out of him. Though what he really wanted to do was take his motorcycle so he could get home before Vicki took off with his son.

HE TOUCHED the wall where a line of faint blue paint had rubbed off Rafe’s crib. The little room was as dark and cold as a tomb. The only thing Vicki had left was the poster of Randy Johnson, who looked as ugly and intimidating as she always complained he did.

He slumped to the floor, back to the wall, his hair, shoulders and chest soaked from the rain. He couldn’t believe this was happening now, on the eve of his season. He just wanted to play ball. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom something winked at him from the corner — the soft cotton baseball he used to play catch with Rafe. He imagined Rafe toddling towards him, holding the ball out and tossing it gleefully at his face.

Jesus, he thought, how did it ever come to this? The only reason they’d decided to get married was Rafe, and now he was gone. It was right here, lying on the floor searching for the best location for Rafe’s crib, where Vicki lifted her blouse and put his hand on her stomach. He could feel the beat of Rafe’s tiny kicks. He’d kissed her bulging womb, feeling so surprised and hopeful.

He began to cry, remembering the time he was eight-years-old and asleep in Port Sulphur and the moving van came and started packing everything for the move to Point Barrow. No one had warned him that he’d have to leave behind every friend he ever had and move from the gelid air at the bottom of America to the ice box at the top. His father had been in Point Barrow for five months already — on temporary assignment, his mother said. In the middle of the school year — in the middle of winter — they boarded a bus in New Orleans for the four day trip to Seattle, and five years of exile in Alaska. But no matter how bad he felt about any of that, nothing compared with this feeling of losing his son.

Goddammit, Jason thought, why hadn’t he left first? The whole affair should have lasted one night, two at the most. He’d found her standing alone on the porch outside his fraternity house the night of their year-end party. She was so improbably beautiful that he felt emboldened by the fact he had nothing to lose. She was clearly older than him, slim, sexy, reserved, with long dark hair and olive skin and intense black eyes. She wore a black mini-skirt and high heels, a white sleeveless blouse and gold charm bracelet filled with miniature replicas of the Elgin Marbles. She looked as if she had stepped from a European movie.

“Jason Thibodeaux,” he’d introduced himself gallantly. “A member of this august fraternity, and candidate for a degree in the Sociology of Humanity.” He drew her hand to his lips and kissed it.

“Victoria Repetto,” she replied warily. “Second year law.”

They danced in a room that literally shook with the vibrations from a DJ’s repertoire, beneath a dented National Park Service sign that warned, “ELK RUTTING SEASON. AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR. DO NOT APPROACH.” He had a surprising gracefulness that was incongruous with his size. She watched wonderingly as people touched or squeezed him as they walked by, as if he were some kind of talisman. “Heat,” they called him. He clearly had something that people wanted.

When they finished dancing, Jason grabbed a bottle of champagne and two glasses from the bar and led her back to the porch. They sat in the tiny love seat and shared the outlines of their lives. She was the second of five children — and only daughter — in a big Italian family across the Bay in Fremont. “It was like living in a house of Roman centurions,” she said with distaste. “Four guys — five, counting my father — all God’s gift to the world.”

“You obviously held your own,” he remarked. “You got in Stanford Law.”

“It was either that or stay home and iron shirts. My father helped my brothers through college, but not me. In my family, girls were for having babies.”

He wasn’t really listening, though he wished he had. Her anger at her family would figure prominently in theirs — as prominently as the barrenness and isolation of his family life had. He watched her thin, lipsticked lips, her earrings dancing in the Christmas lights strung along the porch railings. Everything seemed pointed towards fulfilling that perfect college moment — gratuitous sex on the cusp of summer vacation.

He described the little town he was from — Port Sulphur, Louisiana, on the Gulf south of New Orleans. His father was in the oil business when he’d died eight years before. Jason told her about trying to be “the man of the house,” but never coming close to touching his mother’s depression. She’d died during his sophomore year, leaving him alone in the world. He’d come to Stanford to get the best education he could, and make a better life for himself than what his parents ever had.

“Why do they call you ‘Heat’?” Vicki asked.

“My fastball.” He could tell she didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. “I’m here on a baseball scholarship.”

“You’re a jock?”

“Actually, we don’t wear jocks anymore.” He held his hands as if pressing the sides of a melon. “They have these sports briefs that hold everything together.”

She laughed, and he poured her more champagne. Later, they went to his room and made love. After that night, she insisted she’d been drunk. When finals were over he asked her out to a Tom Petty concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater, but they were more courteous than courtly and did not sleep together a second time. It was three weeks before they spoke again, when she called with the news. She had left to clerk for a federal judge in Philadelphia,

“Hey!” he said, surprised. He turned down the sound of the Giants game on his television. “How’s life in Philly?”

“I’m at my parents’ house,” she said. “There’s been a change in plans.”

“What’s going on?” he asked, only half-listening as he watched the game.

“I’m pregnant.”

He turned the game off. “I thought you couldn’t get pregnant.” That’s what she had told him, why they didn’t use protection — that she had scarring in her tubes from an untreated case of chlamydia that surgery may or may not correct some day.

“Obviously the doctor was wrong.”

The next day he drove to her family’s ranch house in a suburban cul-de-sac. He’d brought the number for Planned Parenthood, though she’d made it clear on the phone that she was going to have the baby. As soon as she opened the door, he knew what was going to happen. She wore a pair of radiant white shorts and a wine-red blouse with the top two buttons unfastened. Her dark eyes looked at him with a mixture of sorrow, defiance and expectation.

He handed her a large bouquet of mixed flowers with a price sticker still on the wrapper. “You look really nice,” he said, kissing her on the lips.

They went for a drive, ending up in a tree-shaded parking lot at Lake Del Valle State Recreation Area. They sat for awhile with their own thoughts, watching a Vietnamese family — mother, father, little girl — fish from a freshly painted pier.

Vicki finally spoke. “My father says I have to get married.”

“To who?” Jason asked.

She laughed. “To you — but I know that won’t happen.”

He watched the Vietnamese father grab the handle of a fishing rod while his daughter excitedly reeled in the line and the mother leaned forward with a net. In a moment a small fish broke the surface and the little girl screamed with delight as the fish flopped in the net. Jason wished he had somebody to tell him what to do. But even if his parents were alive, what could they have offered? Every decision his family had made seemed completely off-the-cuff: go to Point Barrow, to Galveston, to Norway. Nobody discussed anything — least of all with him. Now here was somebody who needed him, who was going to have his child.

“We can do it,” he said. “We can do whatever we want.”

“We don’t even know each other.”

“I know that you’re beautiful,” he said. “I know you’re smart, you’re sexy, you’re a great dancer.” Right there, right then, he’d decided he loved her and that anything was possible. And why not? She was beautiful — and smart, and sexy. He didn’t stop to think at that point that what he really loved was the idea of having a child. He’d never had a brother or a sister, and as often as they’d moved, he’d hardly had any friends. Fate was offering something real here: a choice to stay with this beautiful woman and have a son (he was convinced it was a son), or to leave — like his dad had done. And for him, that wasn’t an option. He had vowed that he would never do what his dad had done to him.

She looked at Jason, studying his face as if for the first time. “I don’t want to make a mistake on something this big.”

“Me neither.”

“I need to know we can do it right.”

He leaned over and kissed her tenderly on the lips, laying his hand on the smooth bare skin of her inner thigh. Then he walked around to the passenger side of the car and opened her door. Kneeling on the asphalt, he took Vicki’s hand. “Victoria Repetto,” he said with the same gallantry he had shown the night they had met. “Will you marry me?”

She closed her eyes and gripped his hand tightly. It took her several moments to answer, and when she did, tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes still closed.

JASON ROSE, slammed the door of Rafe’s room and hurried through the apartment. She had taken everything of hers: clothes, vanity, the small card table they shared as a computer table, towels, linens, plates, silverware, pots, posters from the wall. The thoroughness of it was vintage Vicki, but somehow he had never seen it coming.

He found the phone beneath a pile of papers beside the bed. He wanted to call the friends she might have fled to but didn’t have the numbers. He thought of calling his own friends, but based on what he’d seen at practice, who’d give a damn? He never felt so alone in his life. Even in Alaska, in the darkest days of winter, he’d had his mother — and the hope, if not the reality, of his father coming home.

He opened the refrigerator and was shocked to see Rafe’s food still there. Three jars of half-eaten organic vegetables; a quart of soy milk; a package of Zwieback crackers; a plastic container with tiny pieces of pot roast he had left for Rafe’s dinner the day before; a six pack of Juicy Juice; an unopened can of mandarin orange slices. Rafe loved orange food — squash, apricots, yams, cantaloupe. Jason had called the pediatrician, concerned that he was eating too much of one kind of food, but she said it was fine. She suggested that he cook real vegetables and see how he liked them. Rafe not only liked them, he loved them: zucchini, broccoli, green beans. He was what moms at the park called a “good eater.” In the Stanford clubhouse, they’d call him an animal.

He closed the refrigerator. It was completely dark now but he was afraid to turn on the lights. As long as it was dark, he couldn’t see what was missing. The neighbors’ voices leaked through the wall, frighteningly clear. Jesus, had they been able to hear all their arguments as easily as this?

The buzzer rang. He lunged across the room and slammed the intercom. “Vicki?”

“It’s me, Vuco.”

Jason leaned against the wall and gathered himself, then pressed the button again. “I’m sorry about walking out. She took off with my kid — ”

“Buzz me in, for Christsakes!”

Vuco carried a six pack of Red Tail Ale and a Round Table pizza. He set them on the kitchen table and peered through the darkness.

“She take the light bulbs?”

Jason flicked on the kitchen light and stood self-consciously by the door, still wearing only his baseball pants. “Vuco, I know you think — ”

Vucovich tossed the papers Jason had left in the clubhouse onto the table. “Get dressed, will you?”

When Jason returned he found a bottle of Red Tail ale and a slice of pizza waiting. “My mama always said when you get a shock, you should sit down and eat,” Vuco said. He clinked his beer against Jason’s. They ate in silence, two large men at a small table that once held a family. “Do you know where she went?” Vuco finally asked.

Jason shook his head. “She took everything. It’s like they were never here.”

“Makes it easier to move on.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She gets the kid, you get to play baseball.”

“Jesus, Vuco, she took my fucking kid — you were there!”

“You gonna try and get her back?”

“Get her back? I just want my kid.”

“Get a lawyer,” Vuco said.

Jason looked at him oddly. Having to hire a lawyer seemed strange, after helping his wife become one. “I think we can work it out.”

Vuco gestured around the stripped apartment. “Doesn’t look like somebody who wants to work things out.”

Jason noticed that Vicki had missed the bookshelf wedged beside the refrigerator, full of the parenting books he had collected over the past two years. He took a sip of the beer. “I’m not going to let her do this, Vuco. She can’t just take him like that.” He studied his coach’s face but there was nothing to read. Should he tell Vuco how much he liked caring for Rafe? How good it felt to watch his son screw the lid off a jar, pound a plastic peg into his Playskool board, catch and throw a ball, burrow to sleep in the warm folds of his bed? His boy was becoming who he was because of him. He hadn’t done what a lot of people expected him to do — run away. How could he ever run away from his own son?

He drank some more and with each sip felt more in control. “Have you ever watched a kid for a whole day — just watched him?” Vucovich shook his head as if he’d been asked if he’d ever eaten a frog or worn a dress. “Whatsa, whatsa, whatsa?” Jason jabbed with his finger. “What’s a fork? What’s a napkin? What’s that oil on your pizza? Everything — everything — is brand new, like the Earth was created a minute ago.” Vucovich watched him, speechless. “Everything’s so innocent,” Jason continued. “How the fuck do we go from that … to this?” He gestured around the stripped apartment.

“What’s your point?” Vuco asked.

“This is my son! Like we were somebody’s son. I mean, what are fathers for? My dad wasn’t there for me — ”

“Christ, man, none of our dads were there,” Vucovich bellowed. “I’m not there for my kids! That’s what mothers are for!”

Jason shook his head. That night in Galveston playing catch with his dad came back as clear as a movie on a screen. He wished he had said more to him. Maybe, ‘I’m going to miss you,’ or ‘I hope it’s not long.’ Or — but that was ridiculous, no one in his family would ever say such a thing — ‘I love you.’

His father had left the next morning at dawn in a company van to Houston, where he caught a flight to New York and on to Oslo. He went to work on an oil platform in the middle of the Barents Sea and started to send checks home the size of which they had never seen before. After seventeen years in the field, he finally had worked his way up to foreman. He had the privilege of sleeping in a bigger bed and eating at a smaller table and getting time off on shore. And if he brought in his quota, there would be enough money to buy the liquor store he wanted and make another start and spend that time with his kid, like he promised. But he died first, along with twenty-nine other men, in a spectacular blaze that lit up the Arctic sky for days. For a long time Jason had blamed himself. If his father had had any idea of how much he wanted him to stay, he never would have gone. All that Jack Thibodeaux left behind, besides the money he sent home and death benefit checks from the oil company, was his unspoken promise to be a better father.

Vucovich wiped his hands on his napkin and stood. “Practice at nine-thirty tomorrow,” he said. “I’d suggest you be there on time — and alone.” Jason nodded. He was vaguely aware of how this looked from the outside, but that’s not where he was. It had seemed like the right thing to do, taking the year off. But now it was all gone — his kid, his wife, the respect of his manager. He stood helplessly at the door.

“Get some sleep,” Vuco said. Then he, too, was gone.

JASON RANG the doorbell and watched anxiously for signs of life. He wasn’t sure what he would say if Vicki answered, then suddenly the front door of her family’s home opened and there was Rafe, trying to squirm out of the arms of Vicki’s mom.

“Dada!”

Jason smiled, but when he saw the look of fear on Anna Rapetto’s face he flushed with shame. Despite the rocky beginnings of their relationship when Vicki’s mother struggled to accept the man who got her daughter pregnant, they had become friends, allies. He liked Anna’s natural affection and common sense. She had taught him everything she could about raising a child and had fielded dozens of phone calls from him at all hours of the day and night about Rafe. Several times she had driven across the Bay to help him in person when Vicki was preoccupied with school and Rafe wouldn’t eat or sleep. They had become partners in a very real sense, but after the separation and whatever Vicki had said about him, they had clearly become something else.

“I just want to see my son,” he said quietly.

She half-turned from him, shielding Rafe. “I’m sorry it’s turned out like this, Jason.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I don’t know what to think. I thought I knew you, then Vicki tells me these horrible things.”

“There are two sides to every story, Anna, you know that. Your daughter’s not the easiest person to get along with.”

Anna smiled ruefully. “I’ll have to call her and tell her that you’re here.”

“Go ahead. I’ve been trying to call her for a week.”

Anna disappeared into the house and returned with a cordless phone. She leaned toward Jason and Rafe slid eagerly into his father’s arms.

“Oh God, I missed you!” Jason cried. He inhaled the aroma of his son like a drug. Rafe squirmed and grabbed his father’s hair for balance, but Jason didn’t complain. He hugged Rafe as he listened to Anna’s phone conversation.

“Jason’s here, he wants to see Rafe — ”

“Don’t let him take him!” he heard Vicki shout. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes!”

A HALF hour later she burst through the front door, her eyes sweeping the room. Jason rose from his seat at the formal dining room table.

“Where’s Rafe?” she asked.

“With your mom. She took him on an errand so we can work things out.”

“There’s nothing to work out. Please leave.”

“I’m not leaving without Rafe. You can’t just take him like that.”

She faced him across the table. “What are you going to do — hit me?”

“I never hit you. I’ve never hit anybody.”

“You threw things at me! You pushed me!”

“We had an argument. I threw something at the wall. That’s no excuse to kidnap our child. You kidnapped him, Vicki!”

“I saved him! You’re a violent man. I’m not going to subject my son — ”

“He’s our son!”

Vicki swept her hand through her long dark hair, her signal of maximum impatience. Then she slowly slipped into a chair; Jason sat down across from her. “Look, you said it yourself — this marriage sucks. We make a clean break, we never have to deal with each other again. No more arguments, no more bickering, no more disappointments — for either one of us. We could pretend we never even met, if that works for you.”

Jason stared at her warily. “That’s fine with me,” he said. “But what do we do about Rafe?”

“It’s best that he stays with me. He needs his mother.”

“And his father.”

“You don’t want him to see us fighting all the time. Nobody wants that.”

“I checked some books out,” Jason said. “We need to work out joint custody.”

Vicki shook her head. “That’s not going to happen.”

“He belongs to both of us.”

“Jason, you did what you did and I appreciate that. But this is a full-time job. I mean, it’s not a job — it’s a commitment, day-in, day-out for the next eighteen years of your life. You’re not going to be able to do that — ”

“He’s my son,” Jason said firmly. “I’m not leaving without him.”

Vicki’s eyes widened, more with desperation now than anger. “You can get married again and have as many kids as you want. Rafe’s all I got.”

Jason laughed incredulously. “Are you crazy? I can’t just go out and get a child like a new shirt or something!”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “You’ll find somebody — so will I someday. And all of this will just be a bad memory.”

“It already is.”

They faced each other in familiar opposition, their faces hardened. “Please go, Jason. Just leave us alone.”

“Screw you,” he seethed. “I raised him. I took care of him while you finished school.”

“You didn’t even know how to change a diaper. My mother did all the work.”

“You’re so full of shit. You just used me!”

“I don’t have to take this.” She stood and strode into the kitchen. He was beside her instantly. They had reached that precise moment in a marriage when their dislike for each other became so thorough, so absolute that the desire — let alone the possibility — of ever working cooperatively on any problem seemed to vanish forever. Any restraint that each had employed in the past to avoid disaster was now swept aside.

“Give me my child back.” He was almost a head taller than her, and Vicki was not a small woman. She eyed the bank of carving knives beneath the cabinet. “You’re threatening me. Get away from me.”

“I’ll go when you give me my child back.”

“Tell it to the judge.”

He stepped closer and grabbed her arm. There was only winning or losing and he refused to consider the latter. “Give me my child back!”

“Let go of me,” Vicki shouted, struggling to pull away. “Get out of my house!”

He dropped her arm and strode across the living room, yanking open the front door. Far across the bay, the last glow of twilight outlined Mount Montara. “I’ll pick up Rafe tomorrow afternoon.”

“He won’t be here.” Vicki slammed the door and locked it.

CONFIRMATION THAT he needed an attorney came in the form of a four page restraining order from Superior Court. He could no longer see Rafe except in a supervised setting. He read it over several times, disbelieving his eyes. The little boy he had powdered, diapered and fed, walked, talked and sung to, carried on his back, bounced on his knee, bathed, bottled and burped now had to be shielded from him as if he were some kind of molester.

He found a lawyer through Graham Nielsen, the Pulitzer Prizewinning head of the sociology department who had gone through a legendary divorce (it seemed everyone Jason consulted on campus had gone through a divorce, legendary or otherwise) with Chilean poet Rosario Lindors. “He’s like a Navy Seal,” Nielsen described the attorney. “He works in darkness, does the job you ask him to do, and doesn’t leave a trace.”

But rather than some kind of cold-blooded demolition expert, Robert Marks was a reasonable, soft-spoken man, tall, athletic, with dark brown eyes and a neatly trimmed beard. His office was in a modern suite across from the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose. A plaque on his wall identified him as a twenty-year veteran in the innocuously titled field of Family Law.

Marks listened attentively as Jason related the details of his marriage, how he had left Stanford’s baseball program for a year to care for their son while his wife completed law school, and the predictable chain of discord leading to the fight at Vicki’s house.

“I was frustrated,” Jason said ruefully. “But I never hit her. She took my son, Mr. Marks. I haven’t seen him in more than a week.”

“There doesn’t have to be physical violence to trigger a restraining order,” Marks explained neutrally. “The law says any spouse can ask for a restraining order for a ‘reasonable apprehension of bodily injury to herself or the child.’ You made a mistake going there.”

“Yeah, well, she made a mistake taking my son.”

Marks studied him for a moment. “Did you and Vicki love each other?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“It helps me anticipate the level of rancor. Some of my worst cases are when people were intensely in love — or at least one of them was.”

Jason shook his head. “We couldn’t stand each other.” He stopped, clearly pained. On the baseball field, he knew how to win; his marriage, however, had been a disaster. “We got married because of Rafe,” Jason added.

“You’re not the first couple that’s tried that and failed.”

“I don’t care about them. I just want to see my son.”

“You’ll have to undergo psychological testing first, and at least one interview with a court evaluator,” Marks explained. “You’ll also have to attend an anger management class if the court orders one. You’ll have to prove that you’re not abusive before you can see your child unsupervised.”

“Prove I’m not abusive? But I’m not abusive!”

“The court doesn’t know that. The burden is on you to demonstrate that you’re a loving, kind, considerate father.”

Jason couldn’t believe the irony. Here he was, the son of a man who never had time for his child, being forbidden to see his. All he could see was the small bundle of his son waving bye-bye from his mother-in-law’s car six days ago.

“She kidnaps Rafe and I’m the bad guy.”

“I know it’s hard. But the majority of these cases are eventually resolved with normal visitation rights for the father. You’ll get to see him two weekends a month — ”

“I’m his father, Mr. Marks. I want joint custody. I’ve read about that. I deserve that.”

Marks smiled patiently. “Let’s work on getting the restraining order lifted first.”

THE OPENING game of the PAC-10 Conference found the Oregon Ducks visiting Sunken Diamond, and Jason Thibodeaux pitching for the Stanford Cardinal. He took a 2-2 tie into the top of the seventh, and after his warmups, stepped off the back of the mound and looked around. The barbecues were damped, the concession stands closed, nearly everyone’s eyes were on him, number 47. Baptiste had taken the pitchers aside one night and shown films of matadors at work. “Look at their focus, the concentration, the control. He never, ever — ever — takes his eyes off the bull. He directs the bull, like you direct the batter. In, out, up, down, changing speeds, deliveries, looks …”

Jason stepped back on the mound as the batter settled into the box, and the battle began anew. His cleats gripped the dirt, his fingers squeezed the seams of the leather-bound ball. Ash called for a slider, outside corner — and a slider, outside corner is what he got. Strike one. He loved this feeling, just as the matador must love the feel of a 400 pound bull passing beneath his cape. He was in control. He could hold chaos at bay for as long as he held his cape — the ball — in his hand.

He struck out two men in the seventh inning and got the third to hit a soft liner to Corliss in right. Then everything changed. Baptiste removed him for a reliever, and Jason sat on the bench eyeing the clock. Today was the first day he was going to see Rafe in a month — twenty-nine days, to be exact — his first visit with a licensed chaperone in a court-appointed facility. The game wore on past the ninth inning, until Jason didn’t care who broke the tie. Just minutes after Seligman slid home with the winning run in the bottom of the twelfth, Jason took off running straight across campus, still in his uniform. The Palo Alto Family Center was in a large government structure just off campus on Page Mill Road. Sweat streamed down his face as he pushed through the front doors. His appointment was at five and it was already 5:30. He searched the directory for Room 117, then hurried frantically down one, then another corridor before taking a stairway to the right floor.

It was 5:35 when he found the room. A heavy-set woman with a blue denim dress sat behind a reception desk staring at a computer. “I’m here to see my son,” he announced, leaning anxiously over the desk. “I’m Jason Thibodeaux — Raphael Thibodeaux’s father.”

“Just a moment please,” the woman said, still staring at the screen. Jason leaned over the desk. “I haven’t seen my boy in a month. This is my only chance — ”

“Have a seat, please.”

She brought him three pages of forms to fill out. It was 5:50 before she led him down a corridor to a large, linoleum-floored playroom at the rear of an office suite. Rafe sat alone on the floor beside a small plastic slide, dressed in a white t-shirt and red cotton overalls. A young man in a blue security uniform sat at a desk just inside the door.

“Rafey!” Jason called out. When he reached him he saw the tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Mommy,” Rafe cried. “I want mommy!”

Jason’s heart sank. Rafe appeared to not even recognize him. He sobbed and sobbed, crying for his mother. Jason crouched and brushed the tears from Rafe’s cheeks, then hoisted him into his arms. Rafe’s voice wailed in his ear, his body trembling. “Rafey Rafey Rafey,” he cooed. “It’s OK, Daddy’s here. Do you want to go down the slide? C’mon, let’s go down the slide!”

Jason set him at the top of the plastic slide and Rafe just sat there, gripping the handles at the top. “Mommy,” he wailed. “Mommy mommy mommy.” Jason picked him up again and carried him to the couch. Rafe’s crying pierced his heart. Maybe Vicki was right — Rafe needed his mother more than anything. What the hell did he know — he was a baseball player. But then it flashed on him, what was he thinking — it was dinner time! Rafe was probably famished.

“Poor little Buddy,” he said, stroking Rafe’s back. Then, to the guard, “Is there someplace to eat in the building?”

“Cafeteria on the third floor. But they’re closed.”

“Vending machines?” The man shook his head. “Soda, juice, candy?” The man shook his head again.

Rafe stopped crying, intrigued by the litany of treats. Jason bounced him once or twice in his arms. “How about we get some ice cream?” Rafe’s eyes brightened. “Ice-ceam!” he squealed. Jason laughed and spun him around. It was ten after six. There had to be something in one of the nearby malls that would let them get back by seven.

He headed for the door, holding Rafe in the crook of his arm. The guard stood and positioned himself in front of the door.

“You can’t take the child out.”

“We’re just going for ice cream!” He glowered at the guard, who watched him warily. Jason was a good three inches taller, and in his baseball uniform seemed even larger. There didn’t appear to be any gun involved. He imagined a Randall P. McMurphy bust out, bowling over the guard and carrying his child to freedom. As if reading his mind, the guard leaned over and pushed a button on his phone.

“Aw, c’mon,” Jason groaned. “The little guy’s hungry, that’s all.”

The guard continued watching him. “Ice ceam!” Rafe shouted. He grabbed his father’s nose. Jason carried him back towards the play area. “Ice ceam!”

“I’m sorry, Buddy, no ice ceam today.” He slumped onto a low wooden bench and set Rafe on his lap. “Ice ceam, ice ceam,” Rafe cried. Jason reached into a trunk full of toys and picked out a purple Nerf ball and began tossing it up and down. “Play catch?” he said. “C’mon, let’s play catch!”

“I want ice ceam!” Rafe wailed. Jason tossed the ball a few more times in front of Rafe’s eyes. The guard was on the phone, talking to someone in a low, furtive voice. It was probably dark outside, though there was no way of telling in the windowless room. Somewhere, families were gathering around tables and sharing meals, conversations, dreams. Somewhere there was love, affection, trust.

Rafe squirmed away from him and stood up. He pointed to the door, his mouth working with hopeful anticipation. “Ice ceam!”

Jason could see two more people through the wire mesh window — the woman from the front desk, and another uniformed guard. He shook his head, as embarrassed as he was frustrated. Four hours ago when they announced his name, he’d received the ovation of 3,000 people who believed he was the reincarnation of Sandy Koufax. Now, he couldn’t even take his own son out for ice cream.

Rafe began crying again. It was so simple — a piece of fruit, a pretzel, a juice box would have made all the difference. He would never forgive Vicki for this. He would never forgive her for taking away his son.

He squeezed the Nerf ball into a tiny wad and tossed it at Rafe. It sprang open and popped against his face, startling him. He began to cry so hard he had trouble catching his breath. Jason held him close and looked over the top of his head to the clock — 6:25. Thirty-five minutes to go. It would be another week before he saw Rafe again. Same time, same place.

THEY WERE gathered at a large conference table in a glass-walled room overlooking the parking lot of the Santa Clara County Courthouse, waiting as Judge Finbarr O’Halloran read, clearly for the first time, from a thick stack of materials. O’Halloran was a tall, heavy-set man with wavy white hair and a droll, irritated manner developed from decades of having the power to control significant portions of other people’s lives. Jason sat directly across from him, stuffed uncomfortably into a blue wool suit, white shirt and tie. Beside him sat his attorney, Robert Marks; beside him the Court Evaluator, Bonnie Ripston, in a cherry red pant suit. Vicki sat across from her in a plum-colored Italian suit and white silk blouse, a stack of folders and law texts in front of her. Behind her, seated alone in a row of chairs against the wall, was her mother.

Silence reigned. Then, “How old is the child now?” O’Halloran asked no one in particular, startling everyone. “Two-and-a-half,” Vicki replied. The judge flipped through the contents of a blue folder, then began reading from other reports — one from the court-appointed mediator, another from the evaluator, along with depositions from Jason’s teammates and Vicki’s classmates, from Rafe’s pediatrician and baby sitters, and transcripts and recommendations from Stanford Law School attesting to Vicki’s character. Jason felt he’d done everything he could to strengthen his claim to joint custody. He’d hired the best lawyer he could find, spending well over half his inheritance on his fees, and as painful as the supervised visits were, he’d managed to make the best of them.

But as the session wore on, he feared it wasn’t enough. Marks had warned him that joint custody was a long-shot, but he’d never understood the ramifications of that until now. In baseball, being a long-shot meant you just had to try harder, train longer, pray that your team jelled at the right point — and even then there was no guarantee. The week before, he’d been passed over in the baseball draft. Having missed his junior year, when most top-rated players were selected and sometimes seduced from their last year of schooling, scouts had waited to see how he developed and lost interest when Stanford failed to make the Regionals. Baptiste hadn’t helped. He’d developed enough topnotch ballplayers to have scouts trust him when he said he had a live one. But all he would say about Jason was, “What you see is what you get.” The skinny was, the kid most people had considered a sure thing had become a “head case” — someone with the physical infrastructure but not the emotional and psychological tools to make the most of it. Not to be taken as one of the 1,498 young men selected in the draft was crushing.

O’Halloran finished reading and looked at Jason and Vicki over the bridge of his reading glasses. “Why can’t two intelligent people like yourselves work this out?”

Vicki’s voice was calm, rehearsed. “The issue is finding a parenting plan that works for the best interests of my son, Raphael. The record is clear that Mr. Thibodeaux is incapable of providing a sustained and sensitive level of care for a child of this age. It’s clearly in the best interests of the child for the court to award primary custody — ”

“Your Honor,” Robert Marks interrupted. “There are numerous reports before you that attest to the fact that Mr. Thibodeaux is a loving, competent caretaker — ”

O’Halloran held up his hand. “Your client has been slapped with a restraining order and his psychological evaluation raises serious questions about his relationship with authority. Why should I award custody of a two-and-a-half year old boy to such a man?”

Jason looked at the judge and felt a rising sense of dread. He was in some kind of nightmare — trapped in the legal system, in a full-fledged fight with a lawyer. He was going to lose his son.

He leaned forward. “I’m not sure how to say this,” he began, his voice tight and nervous. “My father wasn’t there for me when I was a kid, and I always wondered why. I used to think, he’s not around because he doesn’t like me … he doesn’t love me.” Marks set a hand on Jason’s forearm, whether in restraint or consolation it was hard to tell. Jason went on. “I felt that no matter what happened in my life, I would never hurt my son like that, but that’s exactly what’s happening. I can’t even see him except two hours in a childcare center, with people staring at me like I’m some kind of child molester. Every day he’s growing, changing, discovering things and I want to be there — ”

“Thank you!” O’Halloran said with brusque sarcasm. He leafed through several other folders, his brows knotting as he tried to get his mind around something that eluded him. “Have you ever struck your son?” he asked Jason in a matter-of-fact voice.

“No sir,” he answered firmly. “And I never will.”

Robert Marks rose. “Your Honor, we have here a man who has been willing to make extraordinary sacrifices to fulfill his responsibilities as a father. This kind of behavior needs to be rewarded. We’re only asking for joint custody, the presumption under the law — ”

Vicki rose from her chair. “Your honor, if I may address the court — ”

“You may not,” O’Halloran said. He closed the last of the folders and rose abruptly. “The decision of this court will be rendered within twenty-one days.”

THE CALL came eight days later. ‘Robert Marks’ the phone displayed. He didn’t want to pick up. Marks had warned him that the best he could expect was ‘visitation rights’ — every other weekend, every other Wednesday, and two weeks in the summer.

“I never had a chance, did I?” he said, before Marks could speak.

“Like I said, it was a longshot.”

“Can I appeal?”

“You could,” the lawyer replied. “But I wouldn’t take your money.”

Jason hadn’t felt so helpless since he’d heard about his father’s death on the oil platform. That seemed so ferocious in its details, it had to be an act of God. This felt more like something from hell. For a moment he understood the stories he read in newspapers about parents who took their children hostages, or used guns, machetes, knives or their bare hands to lay waste to those who denied them access to their own children.

He called Vuco. “I lost my court case.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry.”

“I just got some really good news,” Vuco said.

“About what?”

“The Reds want me to manage their team in Billings, Montana — the Mustangs, Single A. Their GM’s a Stanford guy.”

“That’s great, Vuco,” Jason said, trying to sound enthused.

“Yeah, it is,” he said. “Why don’t you come with me?”

“Come and do what?”

“Pitch, you asshole. But you’ve got to work your ass off or I swear to God you’ll be Exhibit A of what a tough son-of-a-bitch Bill Vucovich is.”

With the choices slim or nothing on the home front, he took nothing and left for Montana the next day. He shoved the few things he had of Rafe’s into a garbage bag — his small plastic tricycle, stuffed animals, picture books, water colors, a miniature golf set and some plastic trucks — and set them by the curb. The only things he took to remind him of Rafe were some photographs.

His whole life he had looked forward to playing professional ball, but when it finally happened, he couldn’t enjoy it. He spent the entire summer missing his son — his smell, his feel, his laugh, his walk, the sound of his voice when he said “Daddy,” the way Rafe followed him around the apartment as he put away laundry or got dinner ready. No matter what town he was in — Idaho Falls or Great Falls, Butte or Helena — when he passed playgrounds with their mazes of ladders and slides he imagined Rafe scampering to the top of a jungle gym or arcing into the sky on a swing. At night, lying awake in swayback beds in the cheap cowboy hotels where the Mustangs stayed on the road, he imagined hearing his son’s soft even breathing, or the muffled percussion of his feet across the bedroom floor. He wavered between shame and anger with himself for giving up on Rafe, the same way his father had given up on him.

Then after the Mustangs’ last game, he knew what he had to do. As Marks had told the court, his son needed him, and he needed his son. Vicki was working in San Francisco for Morrison & Foerster, one of the city’s largest and most prestigious law firms, as an associate in their Trademark and Patents Division. He reached her on the phone at her office.

“Hi, I’m back in Palo Alto. I want to see Rafe.”

She snorted with disbelief. “The court said every other weekend, not every three months. This is exactly what I was talking about, Jason — ”

“My schedule says I get Rafe Friday at five o’clock. Tomorrow’s Friday.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Vicki said. “You can’t just walk out and walk back into his life.”

“Sure I can. I just did.”

THOSE FIRST weeks back were some of the longest and loneliest in his life. Vuco was gone. He didn’t want to look up any of the old coaches and players and admit he was losing another round to his ex-wife. He went to movies, worked out, watched baseball in the boarding house on California Street where he stayed. One morning he picked up a copy of Bay Area Parent from a sidewalk box to look for fathers’ support groups. He thumbed through it a half-dozen times and found two-and-a-half pages of listings for mothers’ groups — and not one listing, not one phone number, for fathers.

The only relationship he could count on was with his lawyer, at $275 an hour. They filed a motion claiming obstruction on Vicki’s part, countering her claim of abandonment with a notification that Jason’s custody schedule was made obsolete by his obligations as a professional baseball player. They requested a new schedule consistent with the rhythms of the season — every other weekend and every Tuesday-Thursday during the off-season, and vacation time in the winter rather than summer. The new request meant more responses and countermotions from Vicki — and more delays.

It took seven weeks and another $4,700 in legal fees before he could get the court to order Vicki to abide by the original custody schedule. It was mid-November before he saw Rafe — the first time since July. They arranged for Vicki’s mother — “Gramma Anna” — to bring him to West Campus Playground at Stanford, where they had played during his year off from baseball. Rafe exploded from the back seat of Anna’s Cadillac.

“Dada!” he cried, running as fast as he could towards him. He looked gigantic, nearly 3½ now and more like a miniature version of Jason than ever. Rafe buried his face in his father’s chest, circled his neck with his arms and squeezed. It was Jason, not Rafe, who broke down and cried. Rafe stared at him, alarmed.

“Don’t cry, Daddy,” he said with his small, sweet voice.

“It’s OK, Rafey. Sometimes people cry because they’re happy.” He turned to Anna. “Thanks,” he smiled. His right to see Rafe didn’t begin until 5:00 PM, but Anna had agreed to bring him over early so they could have some extra time — and she could have some time off.

“Have a wonderful time,” Anna said. “Call if you need anything.” She handed over a bag of cookies she had saved from lunch, and tucked a perfumed handkerchief of her own into the pocket of Rafe’s overalls. “So long, Rafey,” she said, kissing her grandson loudly on the cheek. “Have fun with your daddy.”

They stayed at the park until twilight. He chased Rafe up and down the ladders and slides, amazed by how agile he was. And strong. His shoulders were thick and already defined — a slugger’s shoulders. He could see a lot of Vicki, too — her luminous eyes and hair, her gracefulness and self-assurance. Everything, he hoped, except her stubbornness and hatred of him.

Afterwards they stopped at a Chinese restaurant where they ordered Rafe’s favorite dish — Chow Fun, tasty rice noodles smothered in black bean sauce and mixed with chicken and beef and shrimp and broccoli. When they finished they went to the Stanford Mall for some shirts and shoes and a cool Gymboree jacket with a rocket ship for a zipper grip. Then to Macy’s for the rest — underwear, socks, bathing suit, a bright orange cotton blanket Rafe picked out, and three stuffed animals who would sleep at Daddy’s even when Rafe wasn’t there. And a camera. Jason started taking photos right away. Rafe with his new shoes. Rafe with his new animal friends. Rafe in his new jacket, posing with the pretty sales clerk who helped him choose the right size.

As they left Macy’s, Rafe spied a display of lawn furniture outside the store and went straight for the glider. He climbed on and started to rock. “C’mon, Daddy, take a ride,” he called, throwing his shoulders again and again against the plastic cushion. Jason climbed on beside him and they rocked back and forth with delighted smiles on their faces. Jason reached down and covered Rafe’s hand with his.

“It’s really good to see you.” Rafe rocked harder, then suddenly squirmed from the seat. “I want to go home,” he said, heading for the doors. Jason smiled as he followed Rafe out. He loved the way he said “home.”

During the long legal delay he had found an apartment and furnished it for the two of them. It was a large two bedroom on Junipero Serra in a California-style courtyard complex with two-story buildings separated by a faux stream and bridges. It was expensive, but he could afford it. He’d already signed a contract to play next year in the Reds’ system. Despite his depression, he’d had some success with the Mustangs. Vuco pitched him out of the bullpen at first, limiting him to games they were either far ahead in or too far out. He was happy with his progress, although the team thought he could do better with a 98-mile-per-hour fastball. But then, teams always thought you could do better, especially at contract time.

He pushed open the door to the apartment. There was a broad open living room with wall-to-wall beige carpeting. The furniture was classic Abbey rents — full sofa with a stiff, blue-patterned cover, matching easy chairs, maple coffee table and end tables, TV/VCR, a round dining room table, and a hanging light fixture with obligatory decorative chain connecting it to the ceiling.

“Wanna see your new room?” He swept Rafe up and carried him across the living room. The door to his room was open and Jason gazed in proudly. He had painted it himself — pale yellow with light blue trim — and hung three Japanese kites he’d bought in an Asian strip mall outside Menlo Park. Each bedpost was carved with the likeness of an animal — a fox, an alligator, an egret, a giraffe — and the bed was covered with a Stanford quilt. There was a half-filled bookshelf, a chest of drawers waiting for Rafe’s new clothes, a small writing table and chair with decals of leaping dolphins, and a large wooden box half-filled with new toys he’d spent several afternoons gathering.

Rafe bee-lined for the bed. “Daddy’s team!” he shouted, rolling himself up in the comforter. For the first time since the whole mess began nearly a year ago, Jason felt relaxed. No chaperones, no lawyers, no ex-wife. Just him and his boy, in his own home ... their home.

“C’mon Buddy,” he said. “Let’s get you ready for bed.”

In the bathroom, Rafe took great care in brushing his teeth, pushing the brush up and down his teeth many times. “Mommy says I have to brush my teeth for free minutes,” Rafe said earnestly. Jason nodded, not certain what to say. “Can I say goodnight to Mommy?” Rafe asked when he was finished.

Jason’s heart fell. “She’s not here, Buddy. You’re at Daddy’s now.” He supposed he could have dialed her number and let him say goodnight; but how many times had she done that for him? None. Not once.

He leaned over and hugged Rafe tightly. “You’ll see Mommy tomorrow night,” he said brightly. “Come on, let’s go read a story.”

The next morning he took Rafe to the pool, a small aquamarine rectangle behind their building, and everything seemed fine. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!” Jason shouted, jumping feet first into the pool. Rafe laughed, running anxiously in place, waiting for his dad to break the surface. Then, “Rotten egg!” Rafe shouted and ran off the edge into the water. Jason waited for him to surface and when he didn’t, reached down and pulled him up sputtering and coughing and laughing all at once.

“Hey,” he said. “We have to teach you how to swim.”

“OK, Daddy.”

The rest of that weekend was like a dream, the nondescript Palo Alto apartment magically transformed into a true home by the addition of his son. Saturday evening Jason grilled hamburgers and steamed frozen vegetables and they ate on the balcony overlooking the man-made stream. After dinner, Rafe discovered the Indian Village of wooden figures and cloth wigwams Jason had bought at Nature’s Way. Rafe carefully arranged the Indians around a campfire, along with wooden horses and two plastic rocket ships from a Lego set. While he played, Jason read Stolen Seasons, a hilarious and heartening book that Vuco had recommended about life in the minor leagues. He was immersed in the story of Steve Dalkowsky, a legendary lefty whose fastballs tore through screens behind home plate and who once struck out sixteen batters and walked sixteen in the same game, when he heard Rafe speak up.

“What’s that, buddy?”

“Indians don’t wear underwear,” Rafe announced.

Jason smiled and set the book down. “What do they wear?”

“Skin deer.”

He pressed his lips to keep from laughing. “Deer skin?” Jason asked gently.

“Yeah, deer skin.” Rafe held up the figure of a brave carrying the carcass of a deer over his shoulder. “Why do Indians hunt with bows and arrows?”

“That’s how they got their food.”

“Is that where you get hamburgers?”

Jason shook his head. “I bought those at the store.”

As with any dream, however, it had to end. The next day at 3 PM, forty-eight hours after Raphael had exploded from the back seat of his grandmother’s car, they returned to the same playground to say goodbye. When the Cadillac glided to a stop against the curb, Jason picked up Rafe and hugged him fiercely. Legally, he couldn’t see him until a week from Wednesday, and then just for the night. “You be a good boy,” he said. “Daddy’s going to be right here waiting for you.”

“Do you want a cookie, Daddy?” Rafe held out a small baggie with half a dozen chocolate-covered graham crackers that he’d brought to share with Gramma Anna.

“No thanks, Buddy,” Jason said. “Save those for Grandma.”

Then, in a ritual that would be repeated too many times over the coming years, he watched his little boy leaving in the back seat of someone else’s car.