drifting out into the rest of the house, onto the front porch, drawing Darby and The Kid to the table where she’d turn from the oven and present the finished dish with a little flourish, violá , a magic show performed nightly.
In the last year, Darby had only attempted dinner once or twice, failing miserably, ham-fisted, inexpert at that particular job. Now they sat in fast food parking lots, ordered takeout.
The Kid set his notebook on his lap, flipped back toward the front of the book, pages from the beginning of September, hand-drawn scorecards from the final month of the Dodgers’ disappointing season. Darby looked over The Kid’s shoulder at the grids, the tiny diamonds, the lists of hitters and pitchers in The Kid’s rushed capital letters. This was something he’d taught The Kid, almost a year ago now. This was how he had taught The Kid to communicate once it was clear that The Kid was no longer going to talk.
It hadn’t seemed like much at first, but he wasn’t really noticing much at the time. Molina had told him to take a couple of weeks off from work, and The Kid was out of school. An excused absence, bereavement leave. It was probably a couple of days before he really noticed that The Kid’s silence was something more than quiet sadness. That The Kid’s silence was a deliberate thing.
He’d thought it would go away on its own. He’d thought that The Kid would get tired of the effort, that one night he would pick The Kid up at the Crump’s after dinner and The Kid would start talking in the pickup on the ride home, chirping away, just like before. But days went by, then a week. The Kid went back to school and nothing changed. The fifth-grade teacher sent him to see the school therapist once a week, then twice a week, then three times a week, but nothing changed.
A month into it, Darby stopped at the drugstore on his way home from work and bought the first notebook, a standard-issue black and white composition book. That night he sat The Kid down in the living room and dug through Lucy’s boxes of videotapes, ballgames she’d recorded, something to watch in the off-season when she was in serious withdrawal. He found a home game from a couple of seasons before, Dodgers-Padres, and as the lineups were announced, Darby drew a grid across the first two pages of the notebook, drew tiny diamonds in the squares, filled in the batting order, the pitching matchup, just like Lucy had showed him years earlier on their second or third date, when she’d told him that she watched or listened to every game the Dodgers played, something she’d done since she was a girl, and that she taped the games when she couldn’t watch or listen live. She told Darby that she rarely went to the stadium to see a game, maybe once or twice a season, though she loved the atmosphere, the history of the place. She preferred watching or listening at home, without all the people, the noise, the distractions. It was hard to concentrate in the stands, she said. It was hard to really see the game when you were actually there. Then she had showed him the binders on the bedroom shelves of her apartment. Each binder was full of hole-punched scorecards, 162 a calendar year, plus postseason games if things had gone the team’s way. Each binder was labeled on its spine in black magic marker, one for every season since 1969.
They played the videotape and Darby showed The Kid the shorthand for the movement of the game, how to fill in the frames with base hits and ground outs, runs batted in, the advance of runners around the diamond toward home. He showed The Kid the numerical designations for each defensive position, the fly ball out to left field recorded as F7, the grounder to short tossed to second and thrown to first marked as a 6-4-3 double play.
The Kid took to it quickly. He appreciated the logic, the consideration required, the concentrated pace of the game. His mother’s son. They watched more tapes over the course of the
In the last year, Darby had only attempted dinner once or twice, failing miserably, ham-fisted, inexpert at that particular job. Now they sat in fast food parking lots, ordered takeout.
The Kid set his notebook on his lap, flipped back toward the front of the book, pages from the beginning of September, hand-drawn scorecards from the final month of the Dodgers’ disappointing season. Darby looked over The Kid’s shoulder at the grids, the tiny diamonds, the lists of hitters and pitchers in The Kid’s rushed capital letters. This was something he’d taught The Kid, almost a year ago now. This was how he had taught The Kid to communicate once it was clear that The Kid was no longer going to talk.
It hadn’t seemed like much at first, but he wasn’t really noticing much at the time. Molina had told him to take a couple of weeks off from work, and The Kid was out of school. An excused absence, bereavement leave. It was probably a couple of days before he really noticed that The Kid’s silence was something more than quiet sadness. That The Kid’s silence was a deliberate thing.
He’d thought it would go away on its own. He’d thought that The Kid would get tired of the effort, that one night he would pick The Kid up at the Crump’s after dinner and The Kid would start talking in the pickup on the ride home, chirping away, just like before. But days went by, then a week. The Kid went back to school and nothing changed. The fifth-grade teacher sent him to see the school therapist once a week, then twice a week, then three times a week, but nothing changed.
A month into it, Darby stopped at the drugstore on his way home from work and bought the first notebook, a standard-issue black and white composition book. That night he sat The Kid down in the living room and dug through Lucy’s boxes of videotapes, ballgames she’d recorded, something to watch in the off-season when she was in serious withdrawal. He found a home game from a couple of seasons before, Dodgers-Padres, and as the lineups were announced, Darby drew a grid across the first two pages of the notebook, drew tiny diamonds in the squares, filled in the batting order, the pitching matchup, just like Lucy had showed him years earlier on their second or third date, when she’d told him that she watched or listened to every game the Dodgers played, something she’d done since she was a girl, and that she taped the games when she couldn’t watch or listen live. She told Darby that she rarely went to the stadium to see a game, maybe once or twice a season, though she loved the atmosphere, the history of the place. She preferred watching or listening at home, without all the people, the noise, the distractions. It was hard to concentrate in the stands, she said. It was hard to really see the game when you were actually there. Then she had showed him the binders on the bedroom shelves of her apartment. Each binder was full of hole-punched scorecards, 162 a calendar year, plus postseason games if things had gone the team’s way. Each binder was labeled on its spine in black magic marker, one for every season since 1969.
They played the videotape and Darby showed The Kid the shorthand for the movement of the game, how to fill in the frames with base hits and ground outs, runs batted in, the advance of runners around the diamond toward home. He showed The Kid the numerical designations for each defensive position, the fly ball out to left field recorded as F7, the grounder to short tossed to second and thrown to first marked as a 6-4-3 double play.
The Kid took to it quickly. He appreciated the logic, the consideration required, the concentrated pace of the game. His mother’s son. They watched more tapes over the course of the
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