Chapter 5

It felt good being home again and knowing that we'd have ten days in town before the final road trip of the regular season. We were still in first place in the AL East, and although we'd face ten games in nine days on the road to end the season against our division rivals, we figured to do well at home first. We had three Central Division patsies coming like sacrificial lambs to Camden Yards during the coming week and a half.

I woke up early Monday after a good night's sleep in my own bed. I was due at the Terry house for lunch at one p.m. This time, I wouldn't be bearing gifts for Nolan. I figured it wasn't good for the boy to be showered with presents on every occasion.

Well -- except I had managed to locate a Donruss baseball card featuring none other than Todd Dushay, intrepid infielder. It was a full-frontal close-up of the upper half of said Todd Dushay. The photo demonstrated (as so many of them did) that most grown men looked faintly ridiculous wearing a baseball cap.

My "lifetime" major league stats appeared on the back of the card -- limited to my two September call-ups by the Orioles and, earlier, by my former employers. The bulk of my major league career -- which is to say, the current year -- wasn't on the card, which no doubt had been printed sometime around spring training.

Contemplating that pitiful baseball card almost brought on another of my bouts of self-pity, but I headed it off with thoughts of Other People's Problems.

Used to be, I'd bring to mind vague pictures of starving children in South America -- borrowed, probably, from some late-night television Adopt-a-Waif commercial. Didn't need those images anymore these days.

Now I'd think about Nolan. And his family. They were all well-dressed and hadn't missed any meals, and from all appearances, Nolan was getting the best medical care available in the U.S. of A. None of that mattered. This cheerful bunch of third-generation Irish-Americans was my current poster family for hard times.

Nothing like the contemplation of other peoples' misery to put your own petty troubles into perspective.

Nobody seemed to be feeling sorry for himself when I got to the Terry house at 12:45 p.m. I thought Nolan looked exceptionally perky and energetic when he greeted me at the door. He made a big fuss about the (laminated) baseball card, and there wasn't so much as a hint that the kid had expected something more impressive in the way of a gift.

A well-brought-up youngster, ol' Baldy, here.

I got another beer from Terry. This one a dark-brown brew with some Irish-sounding name. It came in an ugly brown bottle and was a brand I'd never heard of.

Wasn't bad, though.

"Food's almost ready," Patrick Terry told me, leading me into the living room. There was a football game playing on the television screen.

"It's Virginia Tech," Patrick said. "Recorded from Saturday. They're playing Notre Dame. Would you believe I watched it because I'm an ACC fan? Never have understood all this fuss about the Fighting Irish."

"You watched it Saturday? You must be a fan, to watch the game again so soon," I said.

"Just teaching the boy a little about the game," he said. "Kid's got to know a little something about football."

"America's pastime," I said. "Baseball's been dethroned."

"Maybe so," Patrick said, "maybe so ... But baseball's still got them of us that have always loved it the best ... I'm one. So was Nolan's dad. He taught the boy early about the game -- and it took, I'll tell you."

"Look at that!" I said, pointing to the screen. "A naked reverse!"

"Why did you call it that?" Nolan wanted to know. "Who was naked?"

"You didn't miss anything," I told him, laughing. "It just means the ball carrier didn't follow his blockers, see?" I rewound the recorded game a short distance and showed Nolan the play again.

"See how all the blockers pull out and go to the right, and the halfback takes the handoff, and heads left? The blockers are decoys. They call it 'naked' because the runner has to do it all on his own."

"How come he doesn't get smashed?" Nolan asked.

"Oh, he does -- sometimes," Patrick said. "But if the play fools the other side, the tacklers follow the blockers and the runner can go a long ways."

"He ... could ... go ... all ... the ... waaaay!" I intoned, imitating ESPN's Chris Berman.

"Did any football players ever get cancer?" Nolan wanted to know.

"Oh, yeah!" I told him, wishing I could bring up a name and some details. "It happens to lots of guys -- athletes. All kinds of people. There've been guys just like Jon Lester in football, too ... Guys who had cancer, and were able to beat it!"

"That's pretty neat," Nolan said. " ... But I think I like baseball more."

"Hard to beat baseball," I agreed, secretly pleased at Nolan's comment.

We had a pleasant lunch. It was just sandwiches and cold potato salad. Nobody was trying to impress me. But the conversation was lively and the no-name beer, very dark when I poured my second bottle into a glass at the dinner table, was excellent.

Afterwards, Nolan once again was taken upstairs for a nap. I was offered a third beer and declined. The recorded football game was off now, and Patrick and I had the quiet living room to ourselves for the moment.

"If you was to ask her out, she'd say yes," Patrick said.

"Maureen?"

"No. My wife, Leona. She's taken a shine to you. Says I'm too old and too fat, and she wants to try some young stuff ... Yes, Maureen."

"What'd you do, talk to her about it?"

"What if I did?" he said. "She's my own daughter. I can talk to her about anything, just about. We're a modern family. You know she come to me -- me and her mother -- when she decided she was going to sleep with her boyfriend, back in high school?"

"She told you she was going to sleep with her boyfriend?"

"That's what I said ... She was a junior. Seventeen, or close to it anyway. She comes to us one evening after supper, and she says, 'Mom, me and Phillip, we've decided we want to do it.'"

"'Do it.' ... She said they wanted to 'do it?'"

"Word-for-word," Patrick said. "'We've decided we want to do it.'"

"She thought you ought to know."

"She knew we wouldn't go insane on the spot," he said. "She knew we were practical people. And it was winter, and, y'know, they couldn't do it in the woods, or out in a car. She was sayin' she wanted to have sex with her young man, in her own bedroom, and without nobody raising hell about it, after."

"And you said it was okay."

"Well, what would you have done, you was her parent? Anyhow, girl didn't ask, so much as just told us how it was gonna be, you know? Says the two of them, they'd decided. It was up to us, accommodate ourselves to the notion."

"So you told her all about pregnancy risks and sexually transmitted diseases and all that happy stuff, right?"

"Well, we'd done all that, long before."

"What about condoms? You being a Catholic family and all?"

"The Priest don't get a whole lot to say about how we do things," Patrick said. "We show up in the church, now and again. Wouldn't exactly say we was a good Catholic family."

"This boy, was it Nolan's father?"

Patrick laughed. "Not hardly. He was just her first love, y'know? It happens. I wonder how many times, the one goes first is the one ends up marrying the girl? Not too often, I expect."

"Well, I think that's pretty great. That she could talk to you like that. Not sneak around."

"Point is, we kept that up," he said. "So while you were out in Florida and Chicago, we talked, Maureen and me."

"About me."

"Not so much about you, directly. About how she felt. About having a man in her life again, someday."

"But she had to figure you were trying to talk about me."

"I wasn't sneaky about it," he said. "I asked her finally what she thought about you, whether she'd like to start up with you."

"Start up with me? What does that mean? I mean, what'd you think she'd think you meant?"

"It ain't a code word or anything. I was just asking her whether she thought you were a likely sort of young man. Whether she could see herself, having dinner with you some night, maybe seeing a movie."

"And she said... ?"

"She sounded like you -- talking about it. Like what you'd said to me yourself ... She said it felt wrong, thinking about dating a man -- with Nolan so bad sick and all."

"Well, there you are," I said. "That's the kind of vibe I get from her, too. I knew I was right about that."

"That's not all she said, though," Patrick added. "She said it felt wrong, and it made her feel kind of guilty, but that she wished she could do it -- go out with you and have dinner and talk about other stuff -- not about Nolan. She said it made her feel bad thinking things like that, but there it was; it was how she felt."

I didn't say anything for a long time, but my mind was racing. I wanted to act on this information -- right away. But we had nine consecutive days of ballgames beginning Tuesday. All of them were night games except Sunday's. Not conducive to the start of any kind of new relationship. Maureen wasn't the sort to hang around the ballpark, waiting for the game to end three-plus hours hence.

Not with a small sick child at home.

How was I going to advance the ball on such a relationship? Probably, the best thing would be to just wait. Wait for the season to end. Wait for what I hoped would be several more weeks of post-season action, right through October, to and through the World Series. That's where we were heading. No use pretending it wasn't going to happen.

But I was exhilarated anyway. At least I knew that if I were to ask Maureen out on a date, she wasn't going to come over all disappointed in me for thinking evil thoughts. Her father was telling me that she felt the way I felt -- reluctant to take the first step, but essentially receptive to their being a first step.

I was the guy. It was up to me to be The Guy and make the first move.

Maybe it wasn't so terrible that all my nights were spoken for. Maybe the way to get to know Maureen O'Conner better was to take her out on innocent little two-bit excursions in broad daylight.

Take her out to Starbucks.

An afternoon matinee at the neighborhood Cineplex.

Cruising the nearest shopping mall.

That would be the ticket: Two-to-three hour excursions into the nearby world at large. Short dates that didn't put any strain on her conscience because she was leaving her son with grandma. Venues that didn't suggest we'd shortly wind up half-looped on booze and renting a motel room somewhere.

Sure, it was possible to have sex in the daytime. But it wasn't mandatory.

I spent the entire afternoon with the family. After a couple of hours, Nolan awoke from his nap, and we played Parcheesi on the kitchen table. Then we played chess. Nolan wasn't a prodigy, but all I knew about chess was the basic moves of the pieces, and he beat me in about fifteen minutes. I didn't throw the game. Didn't have to.

I was offered a chance to stay for dinner and I took them up on it. Afterward, Nolan said goodnight, and this time it was Patrick and Leona who took the boy upstairs. I told the two of them I'd be leaving soon, possibly before they came back downstairs, and said my goodnights.

Maureen and I adjourned to the front porch swing where she let me put the thing in motion since her feet barely reached the porch surface.

"I was wondering if you'd like to take little breaks some days in the afternoon," I said. "We're playing every night except Sunday, until we leave town again. It's too late, generally, after the games to see you then. But I have days free. If you wanted, we could go out, y'know, just do little things -- you could run errands, maybe. Or we could have coffee somewhere."

"Just to get out of the house, you mean?"

"Yeah. That's all. Just a couple hours' break from the routine. Your mom wouldn't mind, would she?"

"She'd be pleased. She's always after me to go out and do something," Maureen said.

"It wouldn't have to be anything elaborate," I said. "It couldn't be, really. I mean, I gotta report to the ballpark pretty early."

"Quit trying to sell me on the idea," Maureen said. "I'm sold."

We started right away. The next day, Tuesday, I was there for lunch again, we messed around with Nolan for a little while after, and then while he was taking his regular nap, Maureen and I drove to a Starbucks about two miles away.

We spent more than an hour there, just talking. I took her home, and that was it.

I gave it a rest on Wednesday, but Thursday I came by again. Same basic routine. At my suggestion, we went back to my apartment and used the pool. Maureen said she enjoyed swimming and didn't get too many opportunities to use a pool.

Ours would be open for the rest of September, anyway.

After our swim, we dressed in my apartment, but nothing funny happened. I took her back home well before time for me to report to the park for that night's final game with Kansas City.

Saturday afternoon, after decorously skipping another day on Friday, I came by and took all three of them -- Maureen, Leona and Nolan -- to the local shopping mall. We had ice cream at Baskin-Robbins and saw a movie about penguins at the Cineplex. Nolan fell asleep in the theater, and we left early to take him home.

Sunday's close-out game with the Twins was an afternoon game, and when I asked Maureen if she wanted to attend and maybe bring Nolan along, she declined.

"But I could meet with you, after," she said.

"I don't want to show up for dinner at your folks' house still-another time," I said. "How about I took all of you out for dinner somewhere?"

"How about we keep it simple?" she said. "How about if I just met you back at your apartment, after the game."

"Then we could go out to dinner from there? Just the two of us?" I said.

"Whatever," Maureen said. "You got a key I could borrow in case I beat you there?"

I got a rare start on Sunday based on the fact that our second baseman, Gomer Fitzroy, had a lifetime one-for-eighteen going against the Twins' starting pitcher.

I'd only faced the guy -- their ace -- twice in recent history, but the record showed that I had a hit in two trips. I figured my chances of going oh-for-sixteen against the guy, starting now, were pretty close to as good as Gomer's, but if Paul Warren wanted to play the percentages, well, that's why he got paid the big bucks.

I put out of my mind the fact that Maureen had proposed meeting me at my apartment when, in reality, there were any number of other scenarios she could have suggested that would have gotten us to a restaurant for a post-game dinner with equal alacrity.