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There’s norealwinner in an intrasquad game, buttechnicallymy half of the team wins, even with Perez’s first stubborn at bat and a few pitchers who still need to work on their command. In the clubhouse we slap high fives, laugh and joke around with each other and the coaching staff, with one notable exception. I haven’t seen Sutton since around the middle of the eighth inning when she headed into the complexand never came back out to the field. I shower and change into street clothes before heading home.
Under normal circumstances, I would text Sutton to make sure she’s okay. There wouldn’t be anything awkward or weird about me texting her. But circumstances with Sutton and me haven’t been normal in a while. At least not since last fall. That’s when everything shifted between us. But maybe a sense of normalcy, or whatever that used to mean for us, is what we need.
Missed you after the game.I send her a quick text, hoping that she responds and doesn’t just ignore me.
I drop my phone into the cupholder and make the short drive to the grocery store, on the hunt for something that I can make for dinner, and maybe even share with Sutton, doing my best to avoid foods that she can’t eat. If she’s dealing with a migraine, as I suspect she is, she’s probably not up to cooking, and I can’t say I blame her. It took Sutton a while to figure out what foods she needs to avoid, several long years of keeping food diaries and tracking her symptoms. Dehydration is easy enough to avoid with water and electrolytes, but some of the foods that she thinks trigger her migraines get snuck in and are harder to avoid.
As Sutton began to navigate her migraines, I took careful notes myself, and after Mandy moved and Sutton found herself without a roommate, I found myself keeping a closer eye on her both in Seattle and on the road with the team. For the most part, her migraines are hormonal, and I know she would hate that Mandy told me that, but arming myself with that information means that while I can’t necessarilypredicther migraines, I cananticipatethem and have ways to support her through them.
So with groceries in hand, I head home and step right into my happy place. The first thing I do is measure andrinse my rice before leaving it alone to cook. While the rice does it’s thing, I prepare two salmon filets on a baking sheet with a maple glaze, doing my best to avoid anything with artificial sweeteners as they have a tendency to exacerbate migraines, and while Sutton hasn’t quite nailed that down, I don’t want to risk it.
As I’m preparing vegetables to roast in the oven with the salmon, my phone rings, my sister’s picture filling my screen.
“Hey Leecey,” I answer, putting her on speaker phone so I can keep working on dinner. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” she sounds tired. “It was a long day, that’s all.”
“Tryouts start yet?” I ask, adding sweet potatoes and black beans to the sheet pan with onions and garlic, then throwing the whole thing in the oven.
“Next week,” I can hear the smile in my sister’s voice. Something I haven’t heard from her in a long, long time. “I have a good feeling about this season, Max.”
Elise teaches kindergarten and coaches softball in the Bainbridge Island school district. She moved in with me a few years ago after filing for a protective order against her now ex-husband, and has lived with me ever since. As a single man with a job that keeps me on the road for most of the year, it’s nice to have someone to come home to at the end of a long road trip or after a tough loss…even if that person is my sister. Coming home to Elise and Loretta – my eight year old Maine Coon that I adopted as a kitten – is a comfort.
“I’m glad, Leecey. Need me to come scout for you?”
“Absolutely not,” she laughs. “But if you could send Sutton…”
“Why do I let you two be friends?”
“First of all, you don’tletus do anything, thank youverymuch. We are two grown adult women who can make our own choices and I don’t appreciate the insinuation that…”
“You know what I did just now that was stupid?” I interrupt my sister before she getstoofired up. “I tried to make a joke and it came off as condescending and controlling, and I’m sorry Elise, that wasn’t what I meant.”
There are days I think I’ll be able to forgive her ex for the way he treated her, for the way he tried to control and isolate my sister, and then this fire comes out of her – this fire that he tried to extinguish – and all feelings of forgiveness vanish. She reminds me that forgiveness isn’t for my idiot ex-brother-in-law, but for me, and someday I’ll work through that, but today is not that day.
“It’s okay, Max,” she sighs, and a faint meow comes over the line which means she’s got Loretta nearby. “You don’t have to apologize. I just have to stop hearing everything as a threat.”
“Elise, no. Don’t minimize the trauma. Don’t blame yourself.”
“Maxwell, I love you. But I need you to be my brother and not my therapist. I already have one of those.”
“Heard,” I smile, grateful that my sister is seeking therapy, and learning to reclaim her voice and her power. And if it means that I’m the recipient of it, fine. “And I’m sorry. Again.”
“Don’t be. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine,” I tell her, ignoring the ache in my muscles and the pull in my heart toward the woman in the house next door. “Tired. It’s hard being the old man in camp these days. The pitchers seem to be getting younger and younger every year.”
“And your arm is okay?”
“My arm is okay. I’m taking it easy, I promise.” Because I didn’t take it easy during the off-season and I should have. And while I haven’t made a decision yet, or an official announcement, or even informed my team of people-who-should-be-informed, there’s a chance this season is it for me. I turn thirty-nine tomorrow. I’m old for a baseball player, especially a pitcher. “Are you still planning on being at the home opener?”
“Maxwell Theodore Harrison, what kind of question is that?! That’s the first day I request off with each new school year. Anyway…” there’s a note of sadness in my sister’s voice, but almost as quickly as it came, she hides it. “I have to work on lesson plans, I just wanted to hear your voice. Give Sutton my love.”
“I will. If I see her.”
“Sure.If.” I can’t see my sister’s face, but I can feel her smirk over the phone. And I don’t appreciate it.
“Goodnight Elise. I love you. I have to go now.” I fumble to end the phone as my sister laughs at me, a sound I never get tired of hearing. Once we’re off the phone, I wipe down the counters and wash the knives and cutting boards I used to prepare the fish and vegetables, and when the food is ready, I fix myself a plate and leave it to keep warm in the oven while I walk a plate to my neighbor.
