The Home Plate Theory

Cole

2008

My mother is standing at the edge of the backyard.

The grass is too tall. It brushes against my knees even though someone cut it yesterday, or last week, or maybe three summers ago. I cannot tell. Dreams are stupid like that. They keep the parts they want and throw out everything useful.

She is wearing the blue sweater.

The one with the little white buttons. The one she used to pull over her hands when she got cold. Her hair is down around her shoulders, and the sun is behind her, turning the edges of her into gold.

“Cole,” she says.

I try to go to her.

I know I am trying because my chest hurts with it. I know my legs are moving because the grass bends around me. But she does not get closer. She stays at the edge of the yard, one hand lifted toward me, palm open, fingers reaching.

“Mom,” I say, but my voice comes out broken.

Thin.

Little.

She smiles at me.

Not happy.

Sorry.

I start running then. I run hard enough that my breath tears in my throat, hard enough that the backyard stretches longer and longer in front of me, the fence pulling away, the trees bending dark over her shoulders.

Her hand is still there.

Almost close.

Almost.

The ringing starts before I can touch her.

It cuts straight through the yard. Through the grass. Through her face.

My eyes snap open.

For one second, I do not know where I am. I only know I am not with her.

Then my room comes back around me in ugly pieces. The blinds glowing with morning. My clothes on the floor. Empty water bottles beside the desk. The sour taste in my mouth. My phone buzzing and ringing against the nightstand like it wants to shake itself apart.

I grab it without looking.

“What?”

“I got an alert from the backyard camera,” Marcus says.

Marcus.

Of course it is Marcus.

I roll onto my back, squinting at the sunlight filtering through the blinds.

I am alone again.

I have been alone in this house for almost a year now.

That means I can cut school, and today I was planning on it.

It is quarter to six, which means Marcus is awake on the other side of the world.

Maybe he has coffee. Maybe he has scotch. Depends on whether he is in Dubai or somewhere between there and the Maldives. With Marcus, morning and night are mostly the same thing anyway.

Either way, he is finally listening to voicemails someone left the day before, back when he decided not to answer.

He has been managing some huge resort project over there for almost a year.

I stopped calling him years ago.

There is no point.

If there is an emergency, there are more reliable people.

The police.

The fire department.

The paramedics.

All of them are more dependable than my father.

“Congratulations,” I mutter.

“Cole.”

“What?”

“You were out there with the machine.”

“So?”

“At three in the morning.”

“I wanted to practice.”

“Why weren’t you in bed?”

I laugh once, because I cannot help it.

“Wow. You suddenly give a shit?”

Marcus goes quiet.

Then his voice drops into that cold, controlled tone he uses when he wants to sound like a parent but mostly sounds like a disappointed lawyer.

“I have talked to you about that language ad nauseam.”

“Yeah, well, maybe try being here when you talk.”

“That is not fair.”

“Why?” I say. “You’re never here. You don’t get to parent me through a security alert.”

He exhales through his nose.

I can picture him over there. Some hotel suite in Dubai, probably. Blackout curtains. A view he paid too much for. Phone pressed to his ear, jaw tight, one hand around a mug or a glass, trying to decide how much fatherhood he has time for before his next meeting.

“I got a call from the school too,” he says. “You didn’t show up twice last week.”

“I overslept.”

“Cole.”

“What?”

“You need to go to school, all right? You need to do that.”

“I go when there’s a reason.”

“You’re failing chemistry. They’re saying you might not graduate unless you pull your grade up.”

“Then I don’t graduate.”

He sighs.

I hate that sound. It is the noise he makes when he wants me to feel bad for making him act like a father.

“I can come home,” he says. “I’m in Dubai, but I can be home in two days. We’re closing on a hotel.”

A hotel.

Of course.

Marcus buys places for strangers to sleep, but he has not slept under the same roof as his own son in almost a year.

I look toward the window.

The backyard is bright now. Regular. No tall grass. No gold light. No blue sweater. Just the machine sitting where I left it, half-covered by the shadow of the cage fence.

“Don’t bother.”

I hang up on him.

The phone starts ringing again, but I do not answer. I let it ring. I let it go to voicemail. Then it rings again. Voicemail. Again.

Eventually, Marcus gets tired of being ignored.

It finally stops.

Good.

Great.

One less thing to deal with today.

If I do not want to be marked tardy, I need to be in homeroom by eight.

It is only a little past six.

For a minute, I sit there on the edge of the bed with my phone dead and black in my hand. My room is warm from the morning sun, but my chest still feels cold where the dream left me.

I press my fingers against my eyes until I see white.

Then I get up.

I shower. I stand under the hot water until my skin goes pink and my eyes stop feeling swollen from sleep. I brush my teeth, spit hard into the sink, and stare at myself in the mirror like I might look different today.

I do not.

Same face. Same dark circles. Same hair falling over my forehead, no matter how much I push it back. Same stupid expression like I am angry at the whole world and tired of pretending I am not.

I dress like Westhaven expects me to dress.

Mostly.

Khakis. White button-down. Navy-and-gold tie. Loafers. The blazer is where I left it, folded over the back of my desk chair, because Westhaven has a lot of rules about presentation and I have a lot of feelings about being told what to do before seven in the morning.

My shirt is wrinkled because I forgot to hang it up. My tie is loose because I cannot stand anything tight around my throat this early. I look like every other Westhaven boy from a distance, which is probably the point of the uniform.

Up close, I still look like me.

My baseball duffle sits open on the floor.

I throw in my practice pants, undershirt, cleats, batting gloves, and my Dodgers warm-up jacket. The Matt Kemp jersey I told Marcus I wanted for Christmas last year is still folded on top of the laundry basket, because I cannot wear it to school unless I feel like listening to Dean Willeker talk about standards.

Marcus gave me his credit card and said, “Buy whatever you want.”

So I did.

I bought the jersey. I bought a few pairs of baseball pants even though I did not need that many. I bought a Dodgers bomber jacket. I bought sneakers.

Then I bought a thick gold chain that cost a few thousand dollars because I wanted it for Mom’s cross.

The old chain was too thin.

It looked like it could snap if I breathed wrong, and I could not stand the thought of losing the last thing of hers that still touched me.

I bought the chain last, then waited for him to text me about the charge.

He never did.

Or maybe he noticed and decided it was easier not to ask. That is kind of his thing. He lets the money answer for him, then acts confused when I do not feel loved.

I lift the cross from the hook on my dresser and clasp it around my neck.

The gold is cold against my chest.

For a second, I press my fingers around it.

Then I tuck it under my shirt, grab my backpack and duffle from the floor, and go downstairs.

Zoot Suit mee-rows at me the second I step into the kitchen.

He winds himself around my leg while I split an English muffin and shove it into the toaster, his tail flicking against my khakis like I have personally failed him.

“The feeder goes off in an hour,” I tell him.

“Mee-row.”

“Yeah, I heard you.”

“Row.”

I open the cabinet and take down the peanut butter.

Zoot Suit sits directly on my foot and stares up at me with his big yellow eyes, like starvation is imminent. Like he does not have an automatic feeder, a water fountain, three beds, and a heated window perch Marcus ordered after watching one video about elderly cats getting joint pain.

He is not elderly.

He is just dramatic.

Marcus brought him home five years ago, before I started high school. He said the house felt too quiet.

It did.

But I was used to that.

He wasn’t.

He said he wanted to spend more time at home, and I was young, so I believed him.

Then he left all the time anyway, so now the cat is mostly mine.

Zoot Suit is a tuxedo cat and a royal pain in my ass, but I like having him around. Mostly because he loves me and because all he really wants from me is food, which makes him honest.

I give him a fish treat from the jar by the coffee maker.

He takes it like he has been waiting years for justice.

“Pathetic,” I tell him, scratching behind his ears.

He purrs immediately, loud and stupid, leaning his whole face into my hand.

I pull his catnip toy out from under one of the barstools and toss it across the kitchen. He launches after it, skidding on the tile, all four paws going in different directions before he catches himself and attacks the little felt mouse like it owes him money.

I watch him for a second.

Then the toaster pops.

By the time I smear peanut butter over the muffin and grab a paper towel, Zoot Suit has dragged the mouse halfway under the dining room table.

I probably will not see him again this morning.

That is fine.

At least one of us knows how to enjoy staying home.

I eat standing at the counter because sitting down feels like admitting I have time. The kitchen is too clean, except for my plate from last night still in the sink and the empty Gatorade bottle I left beside it.

Mrs. Alvarez will deal with it later when she comes in. She always does. Then she will move something of mine to a place I would never put it, and I will snap at her for touching my stuff.

After that, she will get quiet in that way adults get when they want you to know you have crossed a line but do not want to argue with you.

By dinner, Marcus will call from Dubai and say, “Mrs. Alvarez tells me you were rude to her again.”

Again.

Like he knows what happens in this house.

Like he knows anything.

I take another bite of the muffin.

The peanut butter sticks to the roof of my mouth.

Outside, the machine is still in the yard.

It looks worse in daylight. Bigger. Stupider. The metal frame is wet with dew, and the netting hangs crooked because one of the stakes came loose around three in the morning, right before the backyard camera apparently decided to tattle on me.

I should put it away before school.

I do not.

Instead, I stand there with my breakfast in my hand and stare at it through the glass.

Last night, under the floodlights, it felt like something. Every ball cracking off the bat sounded clean. Simple. Like if I swung hard enough, I could hit my way out of this house. Out of chemistry. Out of voicemails and attendance calls and Marcus saying, I can come home, like home is a place he still knows how to reach.

In the morning, it is just a pitching machine in the grass.

A machine.

A yard.

A boy in a wrinkled Westhaven shirt who might not graduate.

My phone buzzes again on the counter.

I look down.

Marcus.

I let it ring.

Zoot Suit darts out from under the dining room table, catnip mouse clenched in his teeth, then freezes at the sound. His ears go flat.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Same.”

The call goes to voicemail.

I finish the muffin, wipe my fingers on the paper towel, and grab my backpack.

I should go to school.

I should pull my chemistry grade up. I should care about the attendance office and homeroom and Marcus’s tired voice and some motion alert he can see from another continent. I should be the kind of person people can call and fix with one concerned conversation.

I am not.

I do not go because Marcus told me to.

I do not go because I care about chemistry.

I go because Mom’s cross is heavy against my chest, and the house is too quiet, and if I stay here, I will end up back in the yard with the machine again, swinging until my hands split.

So I take my keys from the bowl by the door.

Behind me, Zoot Suit mee-rows once from the kitchen.

“I’m leaving,” I call back.

He does not care.

He has food coming in an hour.

I open the front door, step into the bright morning, and pull it shut behind me.

From the outside, the house looks like it belongs to someone with their life put together.

That is the joke.

It is one of those architectural marvel houses people slow down to look at from the road, if they can see past the gate and the hedges and the stupidly perfect line of olive trees. Big, but not mansion-big in the tacky way. Sophisticated-big. Sharp edges. Flat roofs. Black steel beams. Smooth white stone. So much glass that half the walls look like they forgot how to be walls.

At night, when every light is on, the whole place glows from the inside like a museum exhibit.

In the morning, it just looks exposed.

The front door is taller than it needs to be and made of dark wood Marcus probably had shipped from a country with a name he likes saying on conference calls. The walkway cuts straight through the landscaping, all concrete slabs and black river stones and plants that never flower. Everything is clean. Everything is expensive. Everything is arranged like someone might come by with a camera crew.

No one does.

It is just me here most of the time.

Me, Zoot Suit, Mrs. Alvarez on the days she comes in, and all this glass.

I lock the door behind me and look back once.

From the outside, the house looks like the kind of place where people have dinner parties and charity events and wives with smooth hair who know which fork to use. It looks like a place with a family inside.

That is the trick.

Marcus buys buildings for a living.

He knows how to make empty rooms look valuable.

Then I turn away from the glass house, walk down the concrete steps, and head for the black Porsche Marcus bought me instead of coming home.