Page 82 of The Fall Classic

Lucas

Yeah, well that’s love, bro.

Logan

I’m not in love. We’ve only been talking for a couple of weeks.

All day.

Every day.

Lucas

That’s my boy.

Logan

I really like her. The timing just sucks. Why did this have to happen when I’m finally getting called up?

Lucas

We’ve got about six weeks left in the season, including the World Series. Then you’ll have the entire offseason to go back to Mullet Ridge and figure out what you guys have. Dad and Mom made it work. They made the template for all of us.

Logan

You’re right. Thanks, bro. Say hey to Scottie for me.

Lucas

You can say hi to her on Thursday night when you get here.

The thought of Thursday should make me more excited than it does. Both times I was called up earlier in the season, I was certain it was temporary. This time, I’m almost certain it isn’t.

This is everything my mom wanted for me, for my family. She loved baseball, and she especially loved watching us play. Dad being an ump meant that Mom wasn’t only the one signing us up for tournament leagues and taking us to every game all over the state. It also meant she was the one playing catch with us, running drills with us in the backyard, teaching us mechanics. She played softball in high school and was a natural athlete, so she taught herself how to pitch in order to teach us. And even after she was diagnosed, she found a way to be part of every part of the game she could. She learned how to watch tape and study opponents, and she taught us from the couch, then from a wheelchair, and then from her bed.

Baseball isn’t just her legacy.

It’s her gift.

It’s given us something to follow, cheer for, talk about; something to connect over, no matter how angsty our teen years got or how much dad’s long absences sucked. And it’s kept us united and striving toward something ever since she passed.

She would be so happy for me.

But she’d be happy I’ve found Georgie, too. I’m not so focused on living out her dreams that I can’t understand how expansive that dream was. If she found out I wanted something more or something else entirely, she’d want that for me with as much passion as she ever wanted baseball.

I put my phone away and look around the apartment and then, because my eyes can’t find a place to land, I look out the window to where Georgie has a perfect view of the outdoor lending library she created.

It’s classic Georgie to create something designed solely to bring others happiness and community. Every smile she flashes scatters sunshine into the darkest corners. Does she know this about herself?

Yes, her apartment’s a mess, but it’s not the mess of someone living in squalor. I’m not sure it’s even the mess of someone living in memories.

After Mom passed, my natural tendency to hold on too tight ratcheted up to a scary level, and my dad intervened before it got ugly.

I was crying over a bag of her scarves that he was donating. I was clutching them to my face, like they still retained her smell, which they certainly didn’t. And she didn’t have a typical mom smell, anyway. She’d been sick for so long and we’d had to keep her surroundings sterile, so the only smell in the room was the medicinal tang of the cleaner the home health aides used and the faint ozone from the air purifier that was constantly running in the corner.

“They’re not her, son,” he told me when I was crying over the scarves. “She didn’t even like most of these.”

I couldn’t let go of the bag.