A House by the Side of the Road (9 page)

*   *   *

“I'll give you this much,” said Meg. “You were right about the onion burgers.”

Hers was just the way she liked it, crisped around the edges. The bun had been grilled in butter. Mike, who had ordered the same thing, nodded. “You will find I am rarely wrong.”

“About anything?” asked Meg.

“Very nearly,” he said.

Meg pushed her cleaned plate away and sighed happily.

“I like a woman with a good appetite,” Mike said.

“I like a man who likes a good woman with a good appetite. I worked one up today.”

“You don't look it. Hardworking girls don't look so pert.”

“Hardworking girls with blow-dryers do,” said Meg. “Even when they have to plug them into ancient sockets and risk blowing fuses.”

Mike tapped one finger against his forehead. “I'd grasped a certain failure to conform to code,” he said. “I tried to tell you.”

“You'd also concluded that I'd be better off staying in Chicago and selling the place, sight unseen. Proof that you can be wrong, rare as it may be. But not about dinner. Thanks. And thanks for having the kitchen cleaned so well.”

“Just following orders,” he said, “which required me to hire a crew and pay for it from the estate. I'm surprised they did a good job. Somebody who could really clean, no, who
would
really clean, could make a fortune in this town.”

“Well, to tell the truth, they didn't do a particularly good job except in the kitchen,” said Meg. “Even in there, inside and behind things needed work. But I'm grateful for what got done. You get sick of cleaning the place you're moving out of so you can move into another place and clean it too. One or the other, sure, but it never seems to work that way.”

“It did for me,” said Mike. “When I moved into Aunt Hannah's place, there wasn't so much as a cat hair anywhere.”

“Which reminds me,” said Meg. “Why didn't you take Charlie, so he could stay where he was used to?”

“You mean the cat? Jane wanted him. She would barely speak to me, but she made that much clear.”

Meg remembered what Christine had said. She did her best to appear innocent. “Why wouldn't Jane speak to you?”

Mike looked puzzled. “Beats me. She was just hostile, in that stony, adolescent way. Lots of ill-concealed, angry glances. You've seen the swing in my front yard?”

Meg nodded. The ropes that supported the plank seat were at least thirty feet long.

“Aunt Hannah called it ‘Janie's swing.' She put it up when Jane was three, and Jane loved it—right up until the day my aunt died. I told her to use it, just like she always had. She hasn't sat on it since.” He gave his head a half-shake and looked away. “She asked me once if it was normal for an heir—that's exactly how she put it, ‘an heir'—to also be the lawyer who wrote the will. The question was more than a little pointed.”

“Is it? Normal, that is?”

“No. It's legal—at least in Pennsylvania it is—if the lawyer is closely related to the person, but around here I don't think it would be looked on kindly. You have any idea how conservative this little piece of heaven you've landed in is? Lawyers watch their step, along with anyone else whose livelihood depends on respectability. Besides, if I'd drawn up her will, I would have done a better job. She didn't use a lawyer, but it was witnessed and binding. I was just the executor. I tried explaining that to Jane. As far as she was concerned, being the executor was just as bad.”

He put his thumb to his temple and rubbed the middle of his brow with his forefinger, looking suddenly tired. “I don't know what she's got on her mind. It's hard to tell with kids.”

Meg regretted questioning him. It wasn't any of her business, and it was a rotten way to repay him for dinner. She changed the subject.

“Christine and I are going to coach Jane's baseball team,” she said. “Christine claims it won't be easy.”

Mike brightened. “Neither easy nor, in the end, fruitful,” he remarked.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that the team I coach will undoubtedly hand your kids their teeth on a platter.”

“Wanna make a bet, Mr. Smug?” asked Meg.

“You haven't even seen your kids practice yet,” he said.

“Doesn't matter. Wanna make a bet? Or are you a great, big, clucking chicken?”

He looked at her, his brown eyes amused, and ran a hand through his crisp hair. “It just doesn't seem chivalrous,” he said. “But you ask for it, you get it. What do you want to bet on? First game between our teams or league standings at the end of the season?”

Meg was no fool. She'd been through Christine's notes. “League standings,” she said. “And bet something that matters. Not cash.”

“Okay,” he said. “How about the loser must, with great sincerity, tell the winner, ‘You're a better coach and a finer human being than I am or could ever be'?”

“Oh, please!” said Meg. “You're a lawyer. You're used to saying things you don't mean with an appearance of astounding frankness. But I'd have to practice for hours in front of a mirror and, even then, it would nearly kill me to choke out the words. Forget it. It's like a Rockefeller and a panhandler making a hundred-dollar bet.”

“Then you decide,” he said. Meg noticed he did not argue her assumption. “But before the season starts. Dessert?”

“As a bet?”

“No, now. I want dessert. Do you? Or are you a great, big, clucking chicken?”

She was very full. She ate dessert. It was lemon meringue pie, and it was good. On the way home, she stopped at a grocery store and bought dog food.

Eight

“Get down on the ball, Bobby!” yelled Meg. She peeled off her batting glove and stuck it in a back pocket of her cutoffs, then walked out and stopped in front of the second baseman. She waved the other fielders to join them.

“You all need to hear this again,” she said. “You get a grounder, get in front of it. I want your mitt touching the ground with your body behind it, knees bent, weight on your toes. Then you come up however much you need to.”

She borrowed Bobby's mitt and demonstrated, the muscles in her thighs tightening as her body rose, her hands moving up and back, into her stomach. “Your other hand goes up like this, behind the mitt. If you judge the bounce wrong, your body's there to block the ball. Let's try some more.”

She glanced around the group. “Let's divide up into two groups. Half of you can take grounders, and the other half can go out into right field and bunt.”

“Who's going to pitch to us?” asked Suzanne. She was a skinny little girl who could beat any of the others around the bases. If she could bunt reliably, thought Meg, she'd have a .600 batting average, easy.

“Coach Ruschman,” said Meg. “Pitching is one of the many things that Coach Ruschman does with brilliance.”

She assigned her group to positions and started working, loving the feel of the bat in her hands, even just hitting infield practice, enjoying the
crack
it made on contact. She used a wooden bat just to hear it make that sound instead of a
whang.

“Quit dogging it, Jason!” she yelled at the third baseman. “You play like you practice!”

After twenty minutes, she called her group in. “Better,” she said, smiling and leaning on her bat. “But at least half of you had your weight on your heels until you saw the ball coming. There's no way a fielder can move as quickly as necessary if he—” She glanced at Jane. “When I say
he,
I mean ‘he or she,' and it's grammatically correct, so don't give me that look—if he has to shift his weight to his toes. It's like dancing.”

The children looked blank. “Never mind. Just take my word for it. Keep your weight on the balls of your feet.” She lifted her heels from the ground several times. “If you can do that, your weight's on the balls of your feet.”

She looked around at dusty, attentive faces. “Then, on every pitch, you say to yourself, ‘Hit it to me. Hit it to
me.
Hit it to
me,
to
me,
to
ME.
' I don't care if it's the truth or a lie. Say it. You'll field twice as well and, I guarantee, there's no way you can keep your weight on your heels while you're saying, ‘Hit it to
me.
' Okay, go switch with the other kids.”

It was warm for April, and exertion had made her feel damp. She pulled her T-shirt out of her cutoffs and wiped her face with it. A voice from behind the backstop said, “Cute tummy.”

Meg looked up, embarrassed. Jack Deutsch was grinning at her, an impressive camera dangling by a strap from his hand.

“I thought the batter was unusually good for a twelve-year-old,” he said. “Then I got closer and realized she was the coach. I liked your speech.”

Meg eyed him. “So it sounds stupid. It works.”

“No, I mean I liked your speech. You're a great coach. I've been watching for a while. The league may be in for a surprise.”

Meg picked up a ball, tossed it into the air, and caught it. He made her want to have something to do with her hands. “You know about the league? Why? You freelance as the sports photographer for the local paper?”

“I watch games when I can,” he said. He lifted the camera. “No, I take pictures, but not of baseball. You should come see them sometime.”

It seemed a splendid idea to Meg. She would have liked to continue the conversation, but the bunters had arrived, each pleading to be assigned to shortstop. Jack lifted a hand.

“Get back to work, Coach,” he said. “Let's have breakfast tomorrow. You make coffee; I'll bring the rest.”

“Okay,” said Meg. “
Not
before seven-thirty.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he replied. “But not much later.”

She went through the same routine with the new group, trying to concentrate on the task at hand. Did he really think she had a cute tummy?

*   *   *

Meg liked the way Christine drove, confidently maneuvering the big car. They had driven to the park together from Christine's house.

“When does your team start practice, Teddy?” asked Meg, twisting around to look at him and Jane in the backseat.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

“It sure was nice of you to help out with our practice.”

Teddy had taken the throws in from the field while she hit. He shrugged. “I like it. And it was fun to listen to you.”

“Whoa!” said Christine. “High praise.” She gestured toward the back of the car. “What I want to know is, who died and made me equipment manager?”

“Do you or do you not have an immense, boatlike station wagon?” asked Meg. “Do I or do I not have an itsy hatchback? I'd have to attach a trailer to haul two huge duffel bags full of shin protectors, batting helmets, and bases.”

Christine pulled into her driveway and stopped next to Meg's car. “Come on in and have some iced tea while I start supper,” she said. “The kids have homework to do…” She raised her voice as Jane and Teddy scrambled out of the car: “…which they will be
starting on immediately,
so we can talk.”

Warren G. Harding had gamboled around the children and now ran up to knock Meg against the car as she got out.

“Off, Harding!” said Christine sternly and the big dog dropped his forefeet to the ground. He barked joyously.

“Progress!” said Meg. “He obeyed a command!”

“I know,” said Christine. “It's staggering. For a while, he thought his name was Bad Dog.” She touched his head as she went by. “You doof,” she said affectionately.

The big kitchen was airy and pleasant. Meg helped herself to iced tea, poured a glass for Christine, and sat down on a sturdy, cream-colored chair at the table. Christine washed her hands and dried them on a towel with a beautifully stitched border hanging from a peg next to the sink.

“I have a towel like that,” said Meg. “I've never dared use it.”

Christine shrugged. “I guess I could frame them, but it makes me happy to use them. We don't go on cruises; we have casseroles for supper much too often; the phone bill isn't always paid on time. But every night we all rest our heads on one-hundred-percent cotton percale pillowcases with beautiful embroidery and crocheted edges. And I use these towels. All thanks to Hannah Ehrlich.”

“I like your kitchen,” said Meg. “I like your whole house.”

“The benefit of being married to a contractor,” said Christine, picking up a potato and beginning to peel it, “is cheap labor. My kitchen isn't as classic as yours; it doesn't look like you entered it from a time machine, like yours does.”

“Well, no,” said Meg. “It does contain the ubiquitous microwave…”

“Which, despite my love of huck-toweling kitchen linens, is not something I am willing to live without,” replied Christine. “What do you think of the quiet rural life? Doesn't Harrison seem
slow
compared to Chicago? Are you bored to death?”

“No,” said Meg truthfully. “I'm not. It's …
too
quiet sometimes. At night. But it's incredibly beautiful here. There are things I like a lot and other things … It's funny what you miss, you know?”

“I know. What do you miss?”

“Well, let's see. I'll bet Harrison doesn't pay a lot of attention to when the new Beaujolais arrives, and that'll be hard on me.”

“Come
on.
What do you miss? I mean, besides your friends.”

Meg thought about it. How could she explain how she'd felt hearing the shouts and laughter of adolescent boys playing basketball in the alley behind her apartment, seeing Asian children and black children and Hispanic children clambering over the equipment in the tiny city playground on the corner, watching middle-aged men playing bocce in the park while conversing in a language completely unknown to her?