The Girl Who Threw Butterflies (2 page)

But her most vivid memory of the season was from late in their last game. They were in the field. There was a girl in left field moving in some odd rhythm. It was Lucinda Baxter. First one foot came forward, then the other. She was leaning forward intently, her arms swinging rhythmically at her sides. Finally, Molly realized what was going on: The left fielder was tap-dancing! Molly was at third, working her gum, thinking about guarding the line late in the game, and her teammate was practicing a dance routine.

She didn't really dislike softball; she just wasn't all that interested. There was something second-class about it, for sure: people said “girls’ softball,” but nobody said “men's base-ball.” The roundhouse windup, the kneepads, the cheers and chants from the bench, like playground jump-rope songs. It seemed, well, a little girlish, fine if that was the sort of thing you went in for. But it didn't have much to do with the game she and her dad watched—the distances and pro-portions were off, the uniforms and dress not quite right, everything a few degrees off. It was like baseball translated into some foreign language.

Molly almost felt bad about it, her preference for base-ball, as if she might be guilty of being insufficiently committed to the idea of girl power, Mia Hamm, gender
equality, and all that. Which had nothing to do with it. She just happened to like baseball better, that's all.

But to her mother, baseball, softball—it was all the same, a senselessly complicated game with balls and bats.

“It would be good for you,” her mother said. “Fresh air, exercise, time with your friends, all that.”

Her mother wanted Molly involved in after-school activities so Molly would be accounted for until after the workday was done. Her mother wanted her constantly busy, active, achieving. Maybe she believed that if Molly's schedule was sufficiently jammed, there would be no time to be sad.

So then, this is where it started: Molly said out loud what she was thinking. Normally, she'd keep it to herself. She'd arrange her face appropriately, say the right nice things, and find some subversive way to do what she wanted. She might “forget” the day of softball tryouts, say, discover a sudden pressing need for extra after-school help in math that particular day. She knew very well how to get her way, quietly. She could be a good-girl guerrilla.

But not this time. It wasn't a decision, really; it was some kind of accident. Like dropping something, like trip-ping. Her lips betrayed her.

“It would be good for
you,”
Molly told her mother.

Now, suddenly, Molly had her mother's undivided attention. She looked up from her catalog. Now she was all ears. “What?” she said. “What did you say?”

“What works for you—that's what we're talking about, aren't we?” Molly said. Her voice didn't sound nice.
“Your
schedule, what makes
you
happy. It doesn't matter what
I
want.”

“I see,” her mother said. This was mother-composed, mother-above-it-all, businesslike mother. During the day, she did things on the telephone, in meetings, at the computer. She worked for a bank but never touched money. She solved problems for customers, except that her customers weren't real people, not the folks you see lined up waiting for the next available teller. They were corporate clients, never an old lady with a social security check to cash, not a kid with a pile of first-communion or graduation checks. They were businesses in other states, more people in offices who did things on the telephone, in meetings, at the computer. Now she was going to solve Molly.

“Are you concerned about your schoolwork, too much homework?”

“No.”

“Is it the competition? Are you worried about making the team? Do you not like the coaches?”

“You haven't got a clue, Mom,” Molly said.

“So give me a clue. Tell me why you don't want to play,” she said. “Explain it to me.”

“I don't want to,” Molly said. “Because I don't want to.” Her mother looked pained. “What am I supposed to do—make you a spread sheet, put my reasons in a PowerPoint presentation? If I made you a pie chart, would you leave me alone?”

“You played last year and you loved it,” her mother said.

“How would you know?” Molly was cooked now, she knew that. She'd passed the point of no return. “Did you come to any of my games? Do you even know what position I played?”

It didn't get any better after that. Molly said some things
she knew she would regret but, feeling inflamed, in the altered state of anger, she said them anyway. Her mother lost her executive cool pretty quickly after that. She used the word “ungrateful” and the phrase “the thanks I get.” This signaled that the discussion was over; there would be no more back-and-forth. What would follow was a monologue and then, most likely, tears.

Her mother looked angry and tired, her body tight with tension. She looked like she needed to spend some time in one of those massage chairs she'd been studying in the catalog, a lot of time. Molly felt sorry for her. She had a tough job and a not-so-nice daughter, and on top of that, now she was a single parent. It wasn't what she'd signed up for either. But Molly felt sorry for herself, too.

Molly stood up. Enough. Later, they would make up, apologize, agree to forget all about it, promise to do better next time. Molly knew what to say to make it happen. But not now. She didn't feel up to it. Now she just wanted to be alone.

n the garage Molly found the baseball gear stowed under the lawn sprinkler and garden hose in a big plastic trunk. She lifted the top—it was a little like a treasure chest—and there were baseballs, softballs, three bats, batting gloves, a rubber home plate and a set of bases, her glove, and her dad's. Now, for the first time, his glove seemed like something from the distant past, an earlier era, another life. It looked sad and lifeless.

It was a big floppy piece of worn leather, a Wilson A2000 model, the best ever, he used to say, which had been, believe it or not, a wedding present from Molly's mother. Her dad told the story again and again. Molly never minded;
she liked to hear it again and again. She liked thinking about her parents as young and romantic. They met in an English class at a college in Wisconsin; they fell in love and got married right after graduation. He gave her a fancy watch, and she, knowing that he was crazy about baseball, a hardcore fan since he was a little kid, gave him a glove. Molly could imagine the exchange: her dad with his little jewel box, her mother with a big box, their mutual delight. He'd never had a nice glove, and she wanted him to have the best. It was huge. It didn't catch balls; it swallowed them whole. It was a big leather Venus flytrap.

Molly felt afraid to touch it. It didn't seem like one of his possessions—it seemed like him.

She grabbed her own beat-up glove and slipped it on. Now, when her whole life didn't seem to fit right—like a new pair of shoes that pinched, everything too tight or too loose, a blister forming—now her well-worn baseball glove was a small comfort. Over the years it had been molded to the shape of her hand. It was as soft and familiar and accepting as a teddy bear. It was one thing that fit perfectly.

She'd had her own first tiny glove when she was a toddler. At some point her father must have taught her a pitcher's windup. She'd seen her little self perform it on a family video. Out in the front yard, their shutters a dark blue then, which she couldn't remember, on a bright summer afternoon that she couldn't recall either, there she was, wearing pigtails and a Cubs cap and a T-shirt, toeing an imaginary rubber, pumping her arms, rocking and pivoting and then miming a big overhand pitch toward the camera. Even at that age she didn't really throw like a girl. She had excellent mechanics.

Molly knew that other girls had tea parties with their dads. She played catch with hers. It wasn't weird, it wasn't cool, it was just what they did together. She never thought much about it one way or another. She took it for granted.

They used to go into the backyard and throw the ball back and forth. It was like one never-ending game, with breaks. They played catch when Molly was in elementary school, they played catch the summer before her dad's accident. As the years passed, they stood a little farther apart, and Molly threw the ball harder, but it was the same game.

Molly loved the rhythm of it, throw and catch, throw and catch, the gentle pop of the ball in her dad's glove, a little puff of dust. It was comforting, calming, almost hypnotic, like meditation maybe. If she wanted to tell her dad some-thing, she liked to tell him while they were throwing the ball back and forth. Good news, bad news, some scrap of a story from her day. It came out, unfolded itself naturally while each of them would throw and catch, throw and catch. Much of the time, though, they were silent. They were connected and content, the ball passed back and forth between them, and there was no need to speak.

Molly used to like to pitch to her dad. She polished her toddler's windup summer after summer in the backyard. She'd pitch entire imaginary games. He'd announce the batter and call out balls and strikes. It was a goofy, meaningless game, but Molly enjoyed it.

It required attention, for one thing. She needed to focus on her dad's big glove, her target, imagine the ball going right where she directed it. It was hard work that felt good. Throwing in the backyard to her dad on a hot summer day was the one time she wasn't embarrassed about sweating.
Some big league pitchers grunted when they threw hard, and sometimes so did Molly. And there was some drama in their games, too—a 3-2 pitch with the bases loaded in a tied game. But just for fun, with nothing really at stake. None of those hollering, overexcited, red-faced parents and coaches. Afterward, win or lose, it didn't matter, they'd sit on the deck and drink pop.

Her dad flashed her signals. One finger meant fastball. Two fingers was a curveball, which Molly couldn't really throw and her dad wouldn't permit at her age—”you'll hurt your arm”—so she just pretended. Three fingers was a changeup, an unexpected slow one. Four fingers was a special pitch, their secret weapon. The knuckleball.

Molly grabbed a scuffed baseball from the bottom of the trunk, tossed it into her glove, and walked out into the backyard. It was dark now, a few scrappy clouds being blown across a silvery quarter moon. Her mother had flipped on the back floodlight, a small gesture of reconciliation maybe.

Molly could see her mother in the kitchen, still sitting at the table, hunched over the mail. The image of her reminded Molly of the paintings of Edward Hopper, one of the American artists she and her classmates were supposed to be learning to appreciate. If it were a painting, something in a gallery, it would be entitled
Tense Woman Reading.
A study in isolation. Molly didn't really want to add to her mother's anxiety or raise her blood pressure; she didn't want to be another gray hair. It gave her no pleasure to complicate her mother's life. She was willing to be a go-along when she could. But the prospect of another season of soft-ball, of having to watch Lu Baxter tap-dance her way through another inning—she couldn't take it.

Next door, she could see the Rybaks sitting around their dining room table, Mr. and Mrs., little Caitlin in her booster seat, Kyle dressed in his white karate outfit. Technically, they were in a suburb, but only three blocks outside the city limits, it didn't feel like a suburb. There were trees and side-walks and some old people. There were no cul-de-sacs; the garages weren't attached. The houses were close together. Molly had a clear view of the Rybaks’ dinner.

It wasn't nice, but Molly was jealous of their perfect little family unit. There seemed to be three or four big serving dishes on their table, and Molly wondered what was inside them. She was tired of takeout.

Molly walked over to her spot, where she stood when she played catch with her dad. The lawn was scraggly still and brown, but at night, under the lights, it looked fine. She looked across the yard to where her dad used to position himself. She tried to imagine him there, putting down a sign.

Once Molly had asked him, “Do you think a girl could ever play in the big leagues?”

She was still pretty little. She'd only recently figured out that of all the players they watched on television, not one was a girl. Her dad paused and thought about it. Even when she was small, he never talked down to her, he didn't offer up the chirpy, cheerful lies most parents handed out to their kids like Kleenex (“Of course you can, honey! You can do anything you want to!”). If she asked him a question, he answered it, for better or worse.

“Well,” he said. He tugged at his ear and thought about it. “I don't think she could be a position player. Not a power hitter. Muscle mass and all that—sorry.”

Then his eyes lit up. Molly could practically see the
lightbulb above his head. “But sure,” he said. “A girl could play in the big leagues. A smart girl. It's possible. It's definitely possible. A pitcher. She'd have to have some serious junk. A trick pitch.”

“Like?” she asked.

“Like a knuckleball,” he said. “The old butterfly ball.”

To throw a knuckler, you gripped it with your fingertips, your nails really, kept your wrist stiff, and let go of it as gently as possible. If you did it right, the ball didn't spin at all. You could see the laces, practically count them. It really fluttered—like a butterfly.