The Girl Who Threw Butterflies (18 page)

Molly released this knuckleball and watched with something like curiosity. Right out of her hand, it felt good. It came in a little high and perfectly spinless. It seemed to be vibrating. Then it did what looked like a double dip and dropped into Lonnie's glove. The batter took a halfhearted swat at it, but he was way off, not even close.

Lonnie held the ball up to the umpire to show that he'd snared it. He took off his mask. He had a huge grin on his face.

The umpire raised his arm. The inning was over.

Molly had situated herself in the corner of the dugout, where she figured she ought to contemplate her generally
dismal performance alone. She'd thrown two wild pitches and let in the tying run. It was the sort of outing that caused big league pitchers to kick water coolers and pout. She was supposed to sit in solitude and meditate on her failure, consider its weight and color, what it looked like in Coach V's scorebook. She was supposed to stew about it for a while. In baseball, if you didn't hang your head after a failure, people thought you didn't care.

The thing was, even though she knew she was supposed to feel downhearted, Molly, truth be told, didn't really feel all that glum. For one thing, her teammates wouldn't leave her alone. It was hard to wallow in self-loathing when people kept talking to her. “That was some pitch, Williams,” Ben Malone told her. “That kid looked
paralyzed.”
Eli Krause walked past and turned her hat around. Everett Sheets handed her a cup of water he'd drawn for her from the cooler. “Don't worry about a shaky start,” he said. “You found your groove.” The parade of consolation and support reminded her a little of her dad's wake and funeral, that long endless line. Somehow, though, this was better. Somehow, these clichés really did cheer her up. They made her feel like one of the guys.

But the real reason she was feeling anything but glum was simple: the voice. As she was coming off the field after the third out, looking up into the stands as she jogged toward the dugout, it hit her. She realized whose voice it was. Someone whose face she was never going to find in the grandstand.

It must have been some kind of hallucination, brought on, probably, by stress. The sound of her father's voice
saying her name. But even if it was a mistake, some kind of biochemical brain event, she felt better. She heard what she heard, and she felt transformed, energized. She felt as if she'd been given some kind of injection—a shot of her dad. All of a sudden a couple of wild pitches didn't seem quite so tragic.

On the field, Desmond Davis had doubled to right field and then stolen third. He was the go-ahead run. Lloyd Coleman struck out, but with Mario Coppola at bat, Coach Morales signaled for the suicide squeeze play. Mario put down a perfect bunt, and Desmond thundered across the plate.

Molly whooped and hollered along with everyone else and stood with the mob of her teammates and pounded Desmond when he got to the dugout. Molly was happy for him and happy for the team. She also felt tremendously relieved. This was no longer the game she'd lost. She was off the hook.

“Williams on deck,” Coach V shouted over the top of their happy noise. “Vogel in the hole.” It hadn't occurred to Molly that she might be called upon to hit. She grabbed a helmet and found her favorite bat and stepped out of the dugout to loosen up.

Everett Sheets was at bat. He was digging himself in, kicking the dirt with his cleats, getting settled, slowing the game down in his own fashion.

Molly took a swing of the bat and on her follow-through sneaked a peek into the stands. It wasn't professional, but she couldn't help herself. What Molly saw tugged at her heart a little. All the moms and dads, shoulder to shoulder,
kids from school, little brothers and sisters scrunched together—Celia right in the middle of the crowd, her head bent over her lap in concentration, stitching like mad. Beyond the grandstands were a few solitary onlookers, keeping their distance. One was a pacing man, too nervous apparently to sit still, Everett Sheets's dad, probably—they had the same curly hair. There were even a couple of dogs, one chewing a tennis ball, another getting its belly scratched by a little girl. All together, the scene could have been a Norman Rockwell painting. It would be called
Loved Ones,
which was a corny phrase Molly had heard a million times and never really thought about one way or another. Now, for the first time, she didn't just understand it, she
felt
it.

The umpire called a strike on Everett, and while he re-turned to his excavations in the batter's box, Molly took an-other swing and stole another glance at the crowd.

This time she saw her. Standing off a few paces from the grandstand, all by herself, a solitary figure. Her mother. She must have come right from work. She must have cut out early, which she never did.

Her mom was wearing a navy skirt and jacket, a white blouse, heels. On her lapel there was a pin Molly had made for her years ago as a Mother's Day gift, glue and colored beads, homely but sincere. Back then Molly still believed her mother when she said homemade was best.

To see her here was almost as unlikely, almost as shocking, as it had been to hear her father's voice. Her mother at a baseball game! Another miracle.

When she saw Molly, she gave a wave. It was quick and shy, a mini wave. If you'd blinked, you might have missed it.

Molly wanted to acknowledge her, but she didn't want to be unprofessional about it. She touched the brim of her batting helmet, which seemed like a baseball thing to do. It was her own private baseball sign. It meant “Hi, Mom.” It meant “I'm glad you're here.”

Her mother seemed to get it. She raised her hand and touched the brim of her hat, which she wasn't wearing, so it was a kind of comical gesture—her hand in the air, touching nothing. But Molly understood. It was the thought that counted.

Everett, meanwhile, had grounded out for the third out. Molly returned to the dugout, took off her helmet, and watched her teammates grab their gloves and prepare to take the field for the bottom of the seventh, the last half inning.

“Molly?” It was Morales, standing behind her, watching her watch her teammates take the field.

“Coach?”

“Care to join them?” He was smiling, almost.

“On the mound?” Molly had just assumed that he'd seen enough, that she was done for the day.

“Yes, Molly,” he said. “The mound.” He pointed. “That bump? It's that big circle of dirt in the middle of the field.”

In the last inning Molly didn't hear the voice—she heard her teammates, and Coach Morales, calling out singsong encouragement; she heard Celia hollering and whistling from the stands; she could hear Lonnie humming from behind the plate; she just didn't hear
that
voice. But she didn't need to.

On the mound Molly felt like she was humming. She felt entirely at ease, somehow. She felt as if she were wearing her dad's old beat-up magic hat. As if no harm could come to her now.

The third-base coach was clapping his hands, trying to rally his team, sounding just a little bit desperate now, but Molly wasn't really tuned in to him. She was throwing to Lonnie's glove, playing catch, the same game of catch she'd started so many years ago. Her butterfly had once again become full of mischief. It performed a couple of tricks even Molly had never seen before, a couple of new dips and dives. It was like a kid showing off.
Look at me!
it seemed to be saying.
Look what I can do!

The first batter tapped a ball out in front of the plate, where Lonnie pounced on it and threw him out. The next batter was Mr. Mustache. He swung helplessly at three knucklers and sat down.

One more out and the game would be over. The next hitter sent a hard ground ball to Lloyd Coleman at shortstop, who fielded it cleanly and then promptly threw it about ten feet over Everett's head at first base.

The runner advanced to second base, and the ball was thrown back to Molly. She noticed that Lloyd had returned to his position at shortstop, but he didn't look right. His chest was heaving. She could hear him breathing in shrill, whistling gasps, like a teapot ready to boil.

Now, upset about making an error, he didn't look like a tough guy. He didn't look like a wannabe thug, he didn't look like the kid who'd so intimidated her. He was just a boy trying not to cry.

Molly did what a good teammate should do. She took a few steps toward Lloyd. Kneeled down and pretended to tie her shoe. Gave him time to compose himself. “Shake it off,” she said. “We'll get the next guy. No problem.”

Lloyd tugged at his cap. “Sorry,” he said. “My fault.”

“Forget about it,” Molly said. “It's nothing. NBD.”

“Right,” he said.

Molly stood up.
You made an error!
She felt like saying.
A bad throw. So what? It's a baseball game. A game. Who really cares? A bad throw? In the great scheme of things? A bad throw?
Of course she didn't say that. She understood that your own errors always feel tragic.

Molly took a couple more steps toward Lloyd, and he met her halfway. She held her glove over her mouth the way big league players did when they conferred on the field. Molly figured that they didn't want their opponents to read their lips, but the sight of two men talking through gloves, their faces covered with them, like jet pilots wearing oxygen masks, always amused her. It seemed like such a guy thing.

“My glove smells awful,” Molly said. “How ‘bout yours?”

Lloyd's face relaxed. He looked so relieved, so grateful. What had she given him, really? Not much. How hard was it? Not hard at all. It was easy.

Lloyd covered his face with his own glove then. “Terrible,” he said. Something like a laugh came out from behind the glove. “It smells terrible. Like mink oil and sweat.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Molly glimpsed the umpire coming out to get them moving. “I suppose I should pitch the ball,” she said.

“I suppose,” Lloyd said. He still had his glove over his
face, but Molly could see that his eyes were happy now. He was ready.

The next batter was a stout, serious-looking boy, biting his lip, squeezing the bat—his whole body was a clenched fist. Molly almost felt sorry for him. Almost. She struck him out on three pitches.

oan of Arc heard voices,” Celia said. “She was a saint.”

“So did Charles Manson,” Molly said. “He was a psycho.”

They were sitting together on Molly's front steps. It was getting dark. There were clouds rolling in, and it was starting to smell like rain.

“You think I'm crazy?” Molly asked. They'd been talking over the game and had covered almost every angle, rehashed just about every aspect, on and off the field, chopped it thoroughly to pieces—Molly's performance, her mother's surprising appearance, the fact that Lonnie looked good in his gear.

Molly had finally told Celia about what she'd heard.
The voice. She knew it was going to sound crazy when she explained it, and it did. But it was not the sort of thing she could keep to herself. Molly had to tell someone, and Celia was her someone.

“Yes,” Celia said.

“Yes?” Molly said. “Yes crazy?”

“Yes crazy,” Celia said. “Absolutely crazy.”

“You think so?” Molly said.

“But good crazy,” Celia said.

“Right,” Molly said. “Because I've always thought of in-sanity as a big plus.”

“You know what I mean,” Celia said. “You're not ordinary. You like to act that way, but you're not. You know how to pretend. You can pass. But you can't fool me. You have a gift. You've been touched. Whatever you want to call it. You have a magic pitch. That's a gift. And you heard your dad today. He was sending you a message. That's another gift.”

Molly thought of the word “gifted.” Sometimes teachers had called her that. Before Honors, she was in the program for the gifted and talented. Molly had always thought “gifted” was just another word for “smart,” but now she understood what it really meant. She said it out loud, “I'm gifted,” and Celia didn't laugh at her.

“You
are”
Celia said, so forcefully it was startling. “You
are
gifted.”

They sat together then for a while, neither of them saying anything. It was a good silence. Celia took her stitching project out of a bag and fiddled with that. Molly watched some bats flitting low in the sky, swooping and diving. She listened to the sounds on the street, a dog barking, which
she knew was Hank, the gray-faced boxer from down the block, the wind rustling the leaves of the trees overhead.

It was her street, her neighborhood, her life. She knew that someday in the future it would not be hers anymore. But she would remember it, she would treasure it, she would miss it. She would hold it in her heart. She knew that someday she would look back at this very moment and miss it. “Remember that night,” she could hear herself telling Celia years from now. “Remember how we sat on the steps….” She felt like crying. Never had life seemed more beautiful and more sad. Talk about crazy!

Molly heard something then, a rattling and clicking. She looked down the block. There was something coming down the street toward them, a shadow in motion. It was Lonnie on his old blue bike. He turned up the driveway, rode a few feet across the lawn, and dismounted on the fly, letting his bike drop on the grass.