Like Grownups Do (2 page)

Two perps, down. At the sound of gunfire the main part of the unit broke down the front door. Every member of the totally unprepared drug team surrendered without resistance.

The squad leader and four other members of the team approached the casualties, who lay face down at the bottom of an extension ladder. The leader halted the group after he spotted a red, rectangular box in the hand of one of the bodies. He called over the three member bomb squad. They pulled on protective gear and crept in behind riot shields.

Two of the bomb squad members stood casually before the third man stood up, holding a box of Marlboro cigarettes.

Two thirteen year old boys—one a resident of this home and one a resident of the home next door, were sneaking out.

To smoke.

Two

J
oshua Babelton dropped his equipment bag next to the bags of two of his fellow University of Massachusetts baseball hopefuls. Joshua was beginning his sophomore year and was attempting to “walk-on” to the team for the second year in a row. He had little chance last year—the team being loaded with a surprising number of quality scholarship players. The success of the Boston Red Sox after so many years of coming up short seemed to have spilled over into the recruiting for the sport within the state.

Joshua loved baseball and had played from Little League through High School—playing well, but not well enough to be considered for scholarships. He was not going to live or die based on making the team but he thought,

I’m going to school here anyway, so why not?

It was the first week of October and the team was getting in as many outdoor workouts as possible before winter drove everyone inside. The practice facilities were filled with star athletes and the fresh batch of high profile recruits, as well as the rest of the obvious starters. This left freshmen and walk-ons clawing for opportunities to be noticed or get work in. Joshua and a few of his friends discovered a way to get in a little extra batting practice.

The UMass girls’ softball team was also taking advantage of the last days of good weather. Their practice facilities were nearby and the team had a few pitching prospects who were also looking to get in some extra “live” work.

Two primary concessions had to be made by the young men that wanted to bat against these girls. You had to use a designated softball bat, which were larger and heavier. And you had to leave your ego in the on-deck circle because these sessions eventually drew a crowd—both male and female, and some of these girls could make a big athletic man look like a clumsy little boy. This included the skinny girl that was throwing right now.

Joshua stepped into the on-deck position and prepared for his turn at bat the same way he had for years—find the pitcher’s rhythm and match it. Look for signs of the pitcher “tipping” pitches, perhaps taking an extra half-second to secure a particular grip. His preparations were not working today.

The pitcher had long, curly, brown hair with honey-colored highlights pulled back in a ponytail and cinched up with a large maroon bow. She had a striking jawline with classic cheekbones and a cute little upturned nose—and something more devastating than a perfect change-up.

Dimples.

Joshua had been a sucker for dimples long before adolescence arrived to tell him why. His first crush dated back to kindergarten. He could not remember the little girl’s name. In fact, all he could remember was long, curly, brown hair. And dimples.

Jesus. This is ball, remember? You want to pay attention, maybe?

Joshua looked on as the pitcher exchanged words with one of her infielders while she kicked at the dirt in front of the pitching rubber. The dimples were activated. Joshua continued to stand, in spite of the fact that his bones had melted.

He jerked slightly, becoming suddenly conscious of the fact that he was staring. He looked around a little. Convinced that had not been busted; he made a couple of stretches and bent over to grab a handful of dirt.

He was reaching for the ground when the shouting grabbed his attention. He raised his head to see his teammate, a scholarship freshman, bent like a pretzel across home plate.

The kid had taken the first pitch— an outside curve ball. The next one started off looking nice and fat before it made a completely ridiculous turn toward his nose. The middle of his swing turned into a move of self-preservation. The pitcher ran to the plate, but the kid was only suffering from a severely bruised ego. He hit a couple of long balls after that, pitches that Joshua was sure the girl had grooved for him. The kid never came back to the softball field.

The pitcher was a local— a freshman on scholarship. The team had done well in the last few years and had two experienced senior pitchers, probably leaving this talented young girl on the bench for at least a year.

That’s a shame
, Joshua thought.
She has some serious stuff
.

Joshua dug into the batters box, mouthing the same silent prayer that he always said on this field.

Please let me not make an ass of myself
.
Amen
.

He made contact on two of the first eight pitches. The first was a weak grounder that would have been an easy out for any shortstop. He waved weakly at two ferocious curve balls and bailed out on two wicked rise-balls. He finally laced a solid drive against the left field wall, prompting an appreciative salute from the pitcher along with a campy, overblown reaction from the onlookers. Joshua swayed his hips waiting for the next pitch. He read the spin on another curve ball and lunged out across the plate. The solid feel of the aluminum bat told him that he had made solid contact, but before he could break a smile he saw the ball on a collision course with the pitcher’s face. It happened so fast that the girl was on the ground before Joshua’s eyes could tell his brain what had just happened.

Joshua dropped the bat, streaking toward the girl. He slid to his knees in front of her. She lay on her side with her gloved hand over her face.

“Jesus!” Joshua screamed. He knew the girl’s name but he couldn’t remember it.

“Ma'am. Are you all right?”

Jill Englemann slowly pulled her glove away from her face. She was giggling.

“Jesus Ma'am?” she said.

“That is how I choose to be addressed from here until eternity.”

She slowly turned her glove around, holding a softball.

“That’s going to leave a mark.”

Jill looked at Joshua, who continued to stare at her.

“I think I’m ready to get up now,” she said.

“Oh,” Joshua said.

“Sure. Sorry.”

He extended both of his hands to her.

Joshua helped her up a little awkwardly, not knowing where to put his hands. They faced each other, closely. Joshua held onto Jill’s elbows. Her glove was against his chest.

“You have a very pretty swing,” Jill said, as she smiled up at him. ”But you know what, Babe Ruth?”

“What?” Joshua asked.

“You’re out.”

Joshua laughed.

He looked into the girl’s beautiful dancing eyes and he knew in that moment that he was looking at his wife, because sometimes things happened like that for the Babe.

Not George Herman “Babe” Ruth.

Joshua “Babe” Babelton.

The inevitable nickname found him on the first day of first grade. That day he became the third generation “Babe” in his family.

It was at a policeman's picnic when he was five years old that he first heard his father called “Babe” by some of his fellow officers. It turned out that it had been his father’s nickname for most of his life—however, his wife, Joshua’s mother, detested the name and refused to use it. Her fear of also being referred to as “Babe” led her to forbid the use of the name in her presence.

Joshua’s first grade teacher gave voice to the nickname at the eight fifteen roll call on Joshua’s first day of elementary school, no doubt thinking that she was remarkably clever. Joshua really didn’t mind, for now he had a brand new bond to share with his father. This was all good for a six-year-old living in St. Louis, Missouri.

An eleven year old named Babe living in Boston, Massachusetts was an entirely different matter.

Boston, a city rich in its baseball history and love of the game, was buried under nearly one hundred years of futility— a futility that was almost as famous as the team itself, known and joked about throughout the country. And to make matters as bad as they could be, the Red Sox faithful was forced to watch the rival New York Yankees victimize the Boston team year in and year out on their own path to fame, fortune, and glory. Each and every year further cemented the Boston failures—failure that was so entrenched that it was spoken of like a form of insanity. Season after season came and went without hope of success. Yankee fans delighted in their gloating and many made signs to carry to the ball park to remind the Boston fans that they would fail. And fail again. And again.

Because of The Curse. The Curse of the Bambino. The curse of “The Babe”. The trade of Babe Ruth from Boston to New York was looked upon as the beginning, middle and eternal continuation of Boston’s Baseball Demise.

It would be a few years before it was good to be a Babe in Boston.

Within a week of the softball incident, Babe and Jill were inseparable.

Jill’s mother had passed away prematurely only five years prior. Jack Englemann, Jill’s father, hit it off with Babe immediately. They discovered early on that they were the two biggest fans of the movie “Heaven Can Wait” in the entire western world. They quoted lines from the movie in each other’s company until Jill insisted that they had a rare, joint mental illness.

Jack had a daughter named Jill. Babe found this to be hilarious, but he never said so. Helen Englemann chose the name for her daughter and was fairly insistent about it, according to Jack. Perhaps Helen somehow knew that the bond between Jack and Jill would need to be particularly strong. Helen died after a long battle with an auto-immune disorder that baffled the local medical community for years. Jill was fifteen.

Jill shared her mother’s love of vintage clothes, which she not only kept, but altered and wore on a regular basis. She never looked out of fashion but instead looked like a classic movie star who had simply stepped off of the screen of a downtown theater—from one generation, into another. Babe noticed that when Jack saw Jill dressed this way, his reaction was bitter-sweet.

Two years passed quickly. Babe and Jill were engaged and very much in love, despite the fact that the running joke between them was that Babe was marrying her to get Jack. They dreamed, and they laughed, and they talked about buying a home and having three or four kids. After some good-natured debate, Jill promised Babe that he could name his first son after Joe Pendleton, Warren Beatty’s character in Heaven Can Wait. His price would be that he didn’t get to name any of the others.

“Okay, okay,” Babe said.

“Let me have a little Joe Pendleton and you can name the rest of them after vegetables if you want to.”

There was a lot of laughter and no tears.

Until the world fell apart.

It began with the fatigue—followed by the nausea, the loss of concentration, and the loss of motor skills. Jill Englemann’s body was at war with itself. She was incredibly strong and stubborn, and tried with all her might to fight off the nameless assault—the invisible demon that was not satisfied with stripping the life of Helen Englemann. It wanted her daughter as well.

Jill quit the softball team midway through her junior year. She was too weak to contribute, and the thought of taking a roster spot from another girl made her miserable.

Jill’s symptoms came and went. The planned date of her wedding approached and the small ceremony went on as scheduled. For months, Jill watched the bond of optimism grow between Babe and her father until she was unwilling to do anything to threaten it. The tears that she shed during her wedding came from a place that she would never share with anyone.

She was constantly bombarded with feelings of guilt, though being guilty of nothing.

Jill took an extra year to graduate with a degree in elementary education. Her roller coaster of symptoms became more pronounced—the peaks never achieving the previous height, the valleys dipping ever lower. The young couple seldom spoke about the future. The subject of children was never brought up again. The rare times that they made love, during those times when Jill’s health was at a peak, they were very careful about birth control.

Babe and Jack spent hours together in doctors’ offices and hospital waiting rooms. Babe knew, without it ever being said, that this was the same path Jack had already been down with his wife—the huddled whispers of doctors. The glances at the two men that said what no one would ever voice.

We don’t know what this is, or what to do about it.

Endless attempts at encouragement and comfort meant little, yet had to be voiced.