Evvie Drake Starts Over Read online

  “I probably still wouldn’t read them,” she admitted. “There’s a new one at the house, by the way.”

  “I know,” he said. “Dean’s in it.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Wait. Baseball Dean is the head case?”

  Andy squinted at her. “He’s not a head case. He lost his arm. I mean, not his arm arm; he lost his pitching arm. He has both arms. And he’s not crazy.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Well, he was a very good pitcher, and then all of a sudden, he was a very bad pitcher. Other than that, no idea.”

  Just then, Diane Marsten stopped by the table. She ran the thrift store Esther’s Attic, which had been her mother’s before it was hers. Diane often ate at the Compass on Saturdays with her husband, sometimes in the unsanctioned company of her little dog, Ziggy, who didn’t seem to be around to thumb his tiny nose at the health code today. “Morning, you two.”

  “Hey, Diane,” Andy said. “How are things?”

  “Can’t complain.” This, Evvie knew from experience, was not true. Diane turned and put a hand on her shoulder. “Good to see you out and about.”

  Evvie shot a look at Andy, then screwed on her smile. “Thank you, Diane. It’s good to see you, too.” Diane provided a few updates about neighbors with ailments (politely vague to the point of futility, like “troubles with his system”) or personal issues (same, like “the business with the one daughter”), then went off to enjoy her French toast. “Honestly.” Evvie sighed.

  “She cares about you, Ev.”

  “I know. I know. But they all…hover. ‘Out and about,’ she says, like I had the flu. They act like all I’m doing is”—she switched to a hard whisper—“sitting at home grieving.”

  “She said it was good to see you.”

  Evvie shook her head. “It’s the sympathy. It’s all the pats on the arm, all the soft voices. That tree-planting thing at the clinic is in a couple of weeks, and it’s going to be even worse then. Everybody’s just going to sit there and watch me cry.”

  “You don’t have to cry. Everybody knows how much you loved him.”

  In fact, everybody didn’t know. Andy didn’t know.

  “I don’t get it,” Evvie said. “Nobody pities Tessa Vasco because her husband died and she’s not out partying all the time.”

  “Tessa Vasco is ninety-two.”

  “So?”

  “So you are not ninety-two. And unlike Tessa Vasco, you don’t need a walker or an oxygen tank to go to the grocery store.” He wiped his mouth. “And not to pile on, but I feel like I have to point out that Tessa does water aerobics.”

  “Why would you know that?”

  “Because my mom also does water aerobics. She’s only sixty-nine, though. Little less embarrassing for you.”

  Evvie put one hand up. “All right. It was a bad example.”

  “So can I get back to trying to sell you on a tenant?”

  She looked around the restaurant, then back at Andy. “Why does a professional athlete want to rent an apartment in my house? I thought they lived…I don’t know, on private islands or something.”

  “Dean lives in Manhattan. World’s least private island. He says he can’t get a cup of coffee without somebody taking his picture. He wants to get out of the city for a while, and I told him I thought up here, people would leave him alone. He’s not staying long enough to buy a place, but he’s staying too long for a hotel. I can’t put him up because I have the kids. I thought maybe he could have the apartment. That way, I’d know he wasn’t renting from somebody who was going to Snapchat him in the bathroom or sell his trash to TMZ. You’d get some money coming in, and maybe you’d be friends. Win-win. I told him maybe you’d take $800 a month.”

  It would take a big bite out of the bills. “$800 would be okay.”

  “So, yes?”

  She looked into her coffee cup, with its lazy hairline curl of cream still on top. “So, bring him by the house.” Evvie sensed a tiny puff of exasperation, and she tensed. “I’ve never met him, Andy. What do you expect me to say?”

  “You’ll like him,” Andy said. “I like him.”

  Evvie straightened her back. “You like a lot of people. Who knows what smelly college drinking buddies you would drag through my kitchen if I let you.”

  “I didn’t meet him drinking. I met him in Cub Scouts. He was in my wedding, Ev, you’ve seen the pictures. And if you remember, he’s the one who sent me and the girls to Disneyland after the divorce. He’s not going to steal your jewelry.”

  Evvie smiled. “I don’t own much jewelry.”

  “Well, he’s not going to steal your…cozy sweaters with holes in them, whatever.”

  She frowned. “Low blow. Look, like I said, bring him by and let me meet him. If it seems like a good fit, I’ll be glad to have the money.” She thought briefly about the overdue bills that were rubber-banded together in the kitchen drawer. That was what a year without a doctor’s income would do. She could put somebody in the apartment, leave the door closed, collect the rent, and she might not even notice he was there.

  Andy sighed. “Thank you. He needs…I don’t know, quiet. Plus, like I said, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if you had company.”

  “I have company,” she said. “I’m sitting here with company.”

  “Company other than me. And my kids. And your dad. You know”—he gestured at her with a fork full of eggs—“it’s not good to be alone too much. It’ll make you weird.” Andy’s sandy, wavy hair and narrow frame made him look like he was in an indie band, perpetually about to put on something plaid and pose for the cover of an album where he played a lot of washboard. But the dad in him ran deep, seven years in.

  “I’m fine. I’m not weird. If I get bored, I’ll get Tessa Vasco to take me to a Zumba class.” He looked dubious. “Andy, I’m fine. I’ll meet your friend.” Suddenly, Evvie narrowed her eyes at him. “This isn’t a setup, is it?”

  Andy laughed through a bite of his breakfast, swallowed, and washed everything down with coffee. “That’s what he said, too: ‘Is this a setup?’ ” She didn’t laugh. “It’s not a setup. After all, I think my mom still hopes I’m going to marry you, which definitely won’t happen if I set you up with former professional athletes.”

  “Oh, no,” Evvie said. “Would you tell her already?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “ ‘Tell her what.’ Tell her we earnestly tried to look meaningfully at each other. And that it was the least sexy thing that has happened between two humans, maybe ever.”

  “She wouldn’t believe me,” he said.

  “She would if she’d been there,” Evvie said.

  “Oh, when you cracked up laughing? That’s the truth.”

  “We both cracked up laughing.”

  “You laughed harder,” he said, accusing her with the points of his fork.

  “Okay, I’ll give you that.”

  DEAN SAT IN HIS TRUCK in Andy’s driveway. He’d left New York City more than eight hours earlier and had stopped only once. He took a deep breath. “Okay,” he muttered, as he made his way toward the house and rang the bell.

  The door opened and Andy grinned. “Hey, man.” They did the backslap-hug they’d been doing since they were about thirteen, and Andy extended a bottle of beer. “Come on in.”

  Andy’s house was a modest green rambler with a lot of wear on the siding. But inside on the living room floor, the girls’ plastic dollhouse was decidedly ornate, with three floors and an elevator on a pulley. Today, it looked like it had been knocked over and set right again, leaving an array of little plastic lamps and furniture on the carpet. A hula hoop leaned against the arm of the sofa, and the sounds of the TV and two girls giggling floated down the hall from behind a closed door. “Welcome to my party house,” Andy said as he gestured to an a
rmchair for Dean to sit. “I’m raging, as you can see.”

  Dean grinned. “How old are they now?”

  “Rose is seven and Lilly is five.” Andy pushed the hula hoop out of the way and sat on the sofa. “They’re in the playroom watching Ghostbusters for the fiftieth time, so I’m thinking they’ll be lady scientists for Halloween. I’m honestly pretty psyched.” He took a swallow from his own beer. “How was your trip?”

  Dean involuntarily twitched against the memory of his stiffening back. “Long, but it was good. It’s good to see a different place. And good to see you, too. I was trying to think—it’s been, what, three or four years?”

  “Yeah.” Andy thought for a minute. “It was right before Lori left, I think. When we came down for your party, your ESPN thing? That would be four years.”

  Dean cringed. “Yeah, that. It’s way too long.”

  “Well,” Andy said, “since then, Lori left. I still teach math. I’m still single. I recently became the faculty advisor to the yearbook, which I’m counting as coaching a sport. And now you’re pretty much up to date.” His eyes went to a picture of himself and his girls that was sitting on the end table. “It doesn’t seem to have been as much of a surprise to anybody else as it was to me that my marriage didn’t work out.”

  Dean picked up a stuffed panda off the floor, then put it back down. “I know I should’ve come up after she left. I meant to, and I didn’t get around to it. I was pretty busy being a big shot.”

  “Yeah.” Andy tipped his head to one side. “Pretty brutal, all that.”

  Dean laughed into the bottle in his mouth. He swallowed and wiped the corner of his lip with his thumb. “For me, too. Apparently, I’m a fucking disaster.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Oh, I know they do.”

  “How have you been doing?”

  Dean dropped his head back against the chair. “Not my best year.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I have gotten probably a hundred thousand letters and emails and goddamn tweets about it. Mostly from people who know for sure what it would take to fix me.”

  “Hard to believe they haven’t solved it yet.”

  Dean smiled. “I mean, did you know this might all be in my head? Did you know that when I went from being able to strike out guys who are going to wind up in the Hall of Fame to barely being able to hit a car with a fucking beanbag it made some people think I had a psychological problem?”

  “Psychological, huh?”

  “Yeah, the consensus is that it’s all right up here,” Dean said, tapping his temple. “Just need to concentrate. Focus. Get in touch with my inner Zulu warrior.”

  “You have to be kidding me. Nobody said Zulu warrior.”

  “Oh, hell yes, they did. They said inner Zulu warrior, they said inner Peyton Manning, somebody said inner fucking Hannibal Lecter, like I’d want to find that if I had it. They kept writing to me: ‘Did you try hypnotism?’ ‘Did you read Sun Tzu?’ ‘Did you try a therapist?’ Like I’m trying to fix my arm with a socket wrench and they’re going to save baseball in New York by telling me I need a therapist. Like I’m in the city where baristas write their shamans’ names on your fucking coffee cup, and it’s Margo from Greenpoint who’s going to come up with ‘Try a therapist.’ ‘Thanks, Margo, I never thought about trying a therapist. How would I have known to try a therapist?’ ”

  Andy nodded. “So you tried a therapist?”

  Dean reached over to rub his right shoulder. “Yeah, make your jokes. I went to eight sports psychologists and two psychiatrists.” He started counting off on his fingers. “I did acupuncture, acupressure, suction cups on my shoulder, and candles in my fucking ears—which, ask me about that sometime. I quit gluten, I quit sugar, I quit sex, I had extra sex, I ate no meat, just meat. I took creative movement classes, I was hypnotized a lot, and I learned how to meditate. That’s the one I still do, by the way.” He looked at Andy, who had his mouth twisted into a perplexed curve. “Where did I lose you? Extra sex?”

  “No, ‘creative movement classes.’ I think Rose did that.”

  “Oh, it’s some elegant shit. It was supposed to help me align my spine, move more naturally. I looked like one of those inflatable tube guys that blows around outside a car dealership. They kept saying I needed to have loose bones. Nobody on Twitter had diagnosed me with tight bones, so fuck the Internet, I guess, right?”

  Andy shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dean. I wanted to call you, find out how you were. But it’s a lot easier to call Greenpoint and check with Margo.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  Andy grinned. “So now that you’re up here, what do you want to do?”

  “Stay off the Internet,” Dean said. “Figure out what I’m going to do now that I’ve got a free, what, fifty years?”

  “Any ideas yet?”

  “Fuck if I know, man.” Dean stretched out his shoulder again. “I could coach, once I’m a little less famous for not knowing what I’m doing. There’s announcing, but I didn’t exactly make many friends in sports media. I’ve got money left, so I’ve got time to think about it. But I’ve been thinking about it for about a year, and I’ve gotten about as good at Overwatch as I’m going to get.”

  Andy tried not to smile when he said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it true about Dancing with the Stars?”

  “It’s true that they asked. Hey, don’t laugh. I was up for the dancing part. Did you see it when Emmitt Smith did it? Smooth as hell. But my sister-in-law watches every season, and she told me that if I did it, they were going to keep making me talk about how this was my only chance to redeem myself, and how they’d make me do a waltz while they played ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ on a cello or some shit, so I told ’em no. They went and got that skater who fell in the Olympics and bled all over the ice instead. One washout’s as good as another, apparently.”

  “You’re not a washout,” Andy said, putting his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “You’re a head case. It’s completely different.” They laughed, and Rose poked her head out of the playroom down the hall and hollered.

  “Dad, I can’t hear, you guys are so loud!”

  “Do you need an ear cleaning? Should I bring in the garden hose? Or I think the Dirt Devil is around here somewhere,” Andy called back to her. There was more giggling, and the door slammed shut. “Awful children,” Andy said, shaking his head. “So. I put sheets on the foldout bed in the basement. I figured you can stay here for now. Tomorrow, I’ll take you over to Evvie’s. She wants to say hi, make sure you’re not violent and you don’t have a musical instrument.”

  “Anything I should know?”

  “About Evvie? She’s the greatest. You’ll like her. She’s a lot of fun. She’s cute; she kind of looks like…your sister.”

  Dean frowned. “I don’t have a sister.”

  “I’m saying she looks like everyone’s sister. Like someone’s sister.”

  “Whose sister?”

  “Nobody’s. She’s an only child.”

  Dean shook his head. “You are not good at this.”

  Andy shrugged. “Brown hair. A lot of sweaters. Brown eyes…I think.”

  “Any other intel?”

  “Just get her name right. As she always says, ‘Evvie like Chevy, not Evie like Max Greevey.’ ”

  “Who the hell is Max Greevey?”

  “A cop on Law & Order. Evvie didn’t watch much TV when she was a kid, so she’s been catching up. She’s up to about 1998. She just started Dawson’s Creek.”

  “Wow, old school.”

  “But she’s great. She saved my life when I was first on my own with the girls. Do me a favor and don’t let her take care of you, because she’ll get completely carried away and you’ll wind up a much better person than you sh
ould be.”

  “Got it. And you said she’d take $800?”

  Andy nodded. “Between you and me, I think she could use the money. The husband didn’t have life insurance.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. I mean, whatever. You know what they say about ‘don’t speak ill of the dead or the guy your best friend married.’ ”

  “You two aren’t a thing? You’re not mooning about it?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re both single now.”

  Andy used his foot to nudge a little plastic lamp back toward the dollhouse. “Yeah, but when we met, we weren’t. And she was married until last fall. We tried to have some kind of a…moment in her doorway like six months ago. It seemed logical. I don’t know how to explain it, but it didn’t take. It was like trying to put a sex scene in the middle of one of those videos they play before your flight takes off, where they show you how to buckle a seatbelt. I think we know each other too well. Not that I’ve convinced my mom.”

  “Oh, Mama Kell. Did she lose it when you got divorced?”

  “She was worried that the girls might end up leaving with their mom. But when she found out they were mostly going to stay up here while Lori kinda did Lori for a while, I think she got that it was for the best.”

  Dean took a drink, then tipped his head back until it rested against the chair again. “How are things with Lori anyway?” he asked in a low voice.

  “They’re okay. We’re friends. Or at least friendly. She gets bored all the way up here, so she comes as far as Portland, I bring the girls down, she sees them. And she calls. She loves them.”

  “She just started over, huh?”

  Andy nodded. “I couldn’t have left without them, if it were me, but it’s her life. And as Evvie pointed out to me once, guys have done it forever. Nobody even blinks. And the kids like Charleston all right. They visit Lori’s family for a couple of days, they drink sweet tea until their teeth fall out, they come back saying ‘Y’all gonna eat that lawb-stah?’ ”

  “Always good to speak a second language.”

  “Right. Big picture, it could be much worse.”