The Sportswriter (52 page)

“Here’s our next millionaire, Mike,” someone cracks.

“You’re the experts,” I say. “I just got in from Altoona.” I wave to Eddie, then slip away down the row of cubicles to my own.

 
    My desk. My typewriter. My video console. My rolodex. My extra shirt hung on the modular wall. My phone with three lines. My tight window-view into the city’s darkness. My pictures: Paul and Clary under an umbrella and smiling during a Mets’ rain delay. X and Clary wearing Six Flags T-shirts, taken on our front steps six months before our divorce (X looks happy, progressive in spirit). Ralph on a birthday pony in our backyard looking bored. A taped-up glossy of Herb Wallagher in his Detroit helmet, beside another of Herb in a suit of clothes, in his wheelchair on the lawn in Walled Lake. He is smiling in the second, glasses cleaned, hair combed—beatific. In the first he is simply an athlete.

My plan of attack is to write on a legal pad the very first things that come into my head—sentences, phrases, a concept, a balancing word or detail. When I was writing seriously I used to sit for hours over a sentence—usually one I hadn’t written yet, and usually without the first idea of what I was trying to say. (That should’ve been a clue to me.) But the moment I started writing sports, I found out it really didn’t matter that much what the sentence looked like, or even if it made sense, since somebody else—Rhonda Matuzak, for instance—was going to have it the way she liked it before it went into print. I got into the habit of putting down whatever occurred to me, and before long the truth of most things turned out to be waiting just over the edge of worried thought, and eventually I could write with practically no editing at all. If I ever write another short story I’m going to use the same technique; the way I would if I were writing about an American hockey player who becomes a skid-row drunk, rehabilitates himself at AA, scores forty goals and wins the Stanley Cup as the captain and conscience of the Quebec Nordiques.

In the case of Herb Wallagher I write:
Possibilities Limited
.

I think for a moment, then, about the first trip I ever made to New York. It was 1967. The fall. Mindy Levinson and I drove all night from Ann Arbor in one of my fraternity brother’s cars so I could attend a law school interview at NYU. (There was a brief period when I got out of the Marines, when I wanted more than anything to be a lawyer and work for the FBI.) Mindy and I stayed—as man and wife—in the old Albert Pick on Lexington Avenue, rode the IRT to Greenwich Village, bought a brass wedding ring to make things look legal and spent the rest of our time in bed woogling around in each other’s businesses and watching sports on TV. Early the very next morning I took a taxi to Washington Square and attended my interview. I sat and talked amiably with a studious-looking fellow I’m now sure was only a senior work-study student, but who impressed me as a young and eccentric Constitutional genius. I didn’t know the answers to any of the questions he asked me, nor, in fact, had I ever even thought of anything like the questions he had in mind. Later that day Mindy and I checked out of the hotel, drove across the George Washington Bridge, down the Turnpike and back to Ann Arbor, with me feeling I’d done a better than fair job answering the questions that
should’ve
been important but weren’t even asked, and that I would end up editing the law review.

Naturally I wasn’t even admitted to NYU, nor to any other of the law schools I applied to. And today I can’t walk through Washington Square without thinking of that time with minor regret and longing. What might’ve happened, is what I usually think. How would life be different? And my feeling is, given the swarming, unforeseeable nature of the world, things could’ve turned out exactly as they have, give or take a couple of small matters: Divorce. Children. Changes in careers. Life in a town like Haddam. In this there is something consoling, though I don’t mind saying there is also something eerie.

I go back again to Herb and write:
Herb Wallagher doesn’t play ball anymore
.

I think, then, of the people I might possibly call at this hour. 10:45 P.M. I could call Providence again. Possibly X, though activities at her house made me think she is already on her way to the Poconos or elsewhere. I could call Mindy Levinson in New Hampshire. I could call Vicki at her parents’. I could call my mother-in-law in Mission Viejo, where it’s only a quarter till eight, with the sun barely behind Catalina on an Easter ocean. I could call Clarice Wallagher, since it’s possible she’s up late most nights, wondering what’s happened to her life. All of these people would talk to me, I know for a fact. But I am almost certain none of them would particularly want to.

I return to Herb once more;
The way Herb Wallagher sees it, real life’s staring at you everyday. It’s not something you need to go looking for
.

“Hi,” a voice with an almost nautical lilt to it says behind me.

I swivel around, and framed there in the aluminum rectangle is a face to save a drowning man. A big self-assured smile. A swag of honey hair with two plaited strips pulled back on each side in a complex private-school style. Skin the clarity of a tulip. Long fingers. Pale blond skim of hair on her arm, which at the moment she is rubbing lightly with her palm. Khaki culottes. A white cotton blouse concealing a pair of considerable grapefruits.

“Hi.” I smile back.

She rests a hip against the door frame. Below the culottes’ hems her legs are taut and shiny as a cavalry saddle. I don’t exactly know where to look, though the big smile says:
Look square at what you like, Jack. That’s what God made it for
. “You’re Frank Bascombe, aren’t you?” She’s still smiling as if she knows something, A secret.

“Yes. I am.” My face grows pleasantly warm.

Eyes twinkle and brows arch. A look of admiration with nothing shady necessarily implied—a punctilio taught in the best New England boarding schools and mastered in adulthood—the simple but provoking wish to make oneself completely understood. “I’m sorry to butt in. I’ve just wanted to meet you ever since I’ve been here.”

“Do you work here,” I ask disingenuously, since I know with absolute certainty that she works here. I saw her down a corridor a month ago—not to mention ten minutes ago at the Pigskin Preview—and have looked up her employment files to see if she had the right background for some research. She is an intern down from Dartmouth, a Melissa or a Kate. Though at the moment I can’t remember, since her kind of beauty is usually zealously overseen by some thick-necked Dartmouth Dan, with whom she is sharing an efficiency on the Upper East Side, taking their “term off” together to decide if a marriage is the wise decision at this point in time. I remember, however, her family is from Milton, Mass., her father a small-scale politician with a name I vaguely recognize as lustrous in Harvard athletics (he is a chum of some higher-up at the magazine). I can even picture him—small, chunky, shoulder-swinging, a scrappy in-fighter who got in Harvard on grades then lettered in two sports though no one in his family had ever made it out of the potato patch. A fellow I would usually like. And here is his sunny-faced daughter down to season her résumé with interesting extras for med school, or for when she enters local politics in Vermont/New Hampshire midway through her divorce from Dartmouth Dan. None of it is a bad idea.

But the sight of her in my doorway, healthy as a kayaker, Boston brogue, “experienced” already in ways you can only dream about, is a sight for mean eyes. Maybe Dartmouth Dan is off crewing dad’s 12-metre, or still up in Hanover cramming for the business boards. Maybe he doesn’t even find this big suavely beautiful girl “interesting” anymore (a decision he’ll regret), or finds her wrong for his career (which demands someone shorter or a little less bossy), or needing better family ties or French. These mistakes still happen. If they didn’t, how could any of us face a new day?

“I was just sitting in on the football meeting,” Melissa/Kate says. She leans back to glance down the corridor. Voices trail away toward elevators. Forecasting work is over. Her hair is cut bluntly toward her sweet little helical ears so she can flick it as she just did. “My name’s Catherine Flaherty,” she says. “I’m interning here this spring. From Dartmouth. I don’t want to intrude. You’re probably real busy.” A shy, secretive smile and another hair flick.

“I wasn’t having much luck staying busy, to tell you the truth.” I push back in my swivel chair and lace my hands behind my skull. “I don’t mind a little company.”

Another smile, the slightest bit permissive.
There’s something kinda neat about you
, it says,
but don’t get me wrong
. I give her my own firm, promise-not-to grin.

“I really just wanted to tell you I’ve read your stories in the magazine and really admire them a lot.”

“That’s kind of you, thanks.” I nod as harmless as old Uncle Gus. “I try to take the job here pretty seriously.”

“I’m
not
being kind.” Her eyes flash. She is a woman who can be both chatty and challenging. I’m sure she can turn on the irony, too, when the situation asks for it.

“No. I don’t believe you’d be kind for a minute. It’s just nice of you to say so, even if you’re not being nice.” I rest my jaw, right where Vicki has slugged it, in the soft palm of my hand.

“Fair ’nuff.” Her smile says I’m a pretty good guy after all. All is computed in smiles.

“How’s the old Pigskin going?” I say, with forced jauntiness.

“Well, it’s pretty exciting, I guess,” she says. “They finally just throw out their graphs and ratings and play their hunches. Then the yelling really starts. I liked it.”

“Well, we do try to factor in all the intangibles,” I say. “When I started here, I had a heck of a time figuring out why anybody was right, ever, or even how they knew anything.” I nod, pleased at what is, of course, a major truth of a lived life, though there’s no reason to think that this Catherine Flaherty hasn’t known it longer than I have. She is all of twenty, but has the sharp-eyed look of knowing more than I do about the very things I care most about—which is the fruit of a privileged life. “You thinking of taking a crack at this when school’s over?” I say, hoping to hear
Yep, you bet I am
. But she looks instantly pensive, as though she doesn’t want to disappoint me.

“Well, I took the Med-Cats already, and I spent all this time applying. I oughta hear any day now. But I wanted to try this, too. I always thought it’d be neat.” She starts another wide smile, but her eyes suddenly go serious as if I might take offense at the least glimmer of what’s fun. What she really wants is a piece of good strong advice, a vote in one direction or the other. “My brother played hockey at Bowdoin,” she says for no reason I can think of.

“Well,” I say happily and without one grain of sincerity, “you can’t go wrong with the medical profession.” I swivel back in mock spiritedness and tap my fingertips on the armrest. “Medicine’s a pretty damn good choice. You participate in people’s lives in a pretty useful way, which is important to me. Though my belief is you can do that as a sportswriter—pretty well, in fact.” My hurt knee gives off a bony throb, a throb almost surely engineered by my heart.

“What made you want to be a sportswriter?” Catherine Flaherty says. She’s not a girl to fritter. Her father has taught her a thing or two.

“Well. Somebody asked me at a time when I really didn’t have a single better idea, to tell you the truth. I’d just run out of goals. I was trying to write a novel at the time, and that wasn’t going like I wanted it to. I was happy to drop that and come on board. And I haven’t regretted it a minute.”

“Did you ever finish your novel?”

“Nope. I guess I could if I wanted to. The trouble seemed to me that unless I was Cheever or O’Hara, nobody was going to read what I wrote, even if I finished it, which I couldn’t guarantee. This way, though, I have a lot of readers and can still turn my attention to things that matter to me. This is, after I’d earned some respect.”

“Well, everything you write seems to have a purpose to show something important. I’m not sure I could do that. I may be too cynical,” Catherine says.

“If you’re worried about it, you probably aren’t. That’s what I’ve found. I worry about it all the time myself. A lot of guys in this business never think about it. And some of those are the mathematical guys. But my thinking is, you can learn how not to be cynical—if you’re interested enough. Somebody could teach you what the warning signs are. I could probably teach you myself in no time.” Knee throbbing, heart a-pounding: Let me be your teacher.

“What’s a typical warning sign?” She grins and flicks her honey hair in a this-oughta-be-good way.

“Well,
not
worrying about it is one. And you already do that. Another is catching yourself feeling sorry for somebody you’re writing about, since the next person you’re liable to feel sorry for is you, and then you’re in real trouble. If I ever find myself feeling like somebody’s life’s a tragedy, I’m pretty sure I’m making a big mistake, and I start over right away. And I don’t really think I’ve ever felt stumped or alienated doing things that way. Real writers feel alienated all the time. I’ve read where they’ve admitted it.”

“Do you think doctors feel alienated?” Catherine looks worried (as well she might). I can’t help thinking about Fincher and the dismal, jackass life he must lead. Though it could be worse.

“I don’t see how they can avoid some of it, really” is my answer. “They see an awful lot of misery and meanness. You could give medical school an honest try, and then if that doesn’t work out you can be pretty sure of a job writing sports. You could probably come right back here, in fact.”