It didn’t surprise Fitz that McGarrigle, even though at seventy-eight he was a year younger than Fitz, was beginning to lose it. Yes, Fitz decided, carrying on conversations in the courtyard with long-dead relatives was a definite sign. McGarrigle was out there now, crouched by the lime tree, even though it was well after midnight. Though both men were used to turning off the TV after the ten o’clock news, and heading for bed, they had become positively nocturnal in the past few weeks, McGarrigle out in a corner of the moon-blue courtyard talking to his dead wife and daughter, Fitz pacing, worrying, keeping an eye on McGarrigle.
“A couple of old women.” That was how Fitz had heard himself and McGarrigle described by a young man in their apartment complex, Lime Tree Courts. McGarrigle had just passed by the pool, limping in from the parking lot, a sack of groceries in the crook of his left arm, his rubber-tipped cane helping him keep his balance.
“Queer as three-dollar bills,” another young man, dangling his feet in the azure-blue water of the swimming pool, had added. “I heard they were both football players about a hundred years ago,” the first young man said. The speakers didn’t realize that Fitz was standing on his balcony two floors above the pool. Voices travelled clearly through the dry, early evening air.
“They’re not queer, at least in the way you mean it,” a girl in an orange bikini contributed. “They’re just old. I talked to them once. They both had wives and families. And it was baseball they played, though you’re right it must have been a hundred years ago.”
The group around the pool all laughed.
Fitz didn’t hear any more because McGarrigle was thumping at the apartment door, probably having misplaced his keys again. They should have seen us in our prime, Fitz thought. We could have licked the whole lot of them, their friends and relatives, and the box they came in. Bull McGarrigle was like a raging bull in them days, alright. Saw him almost single-handedly whip six Boston Red Sox in a barroom brawl after a Saturday doubleheader. “Them Red Sox always choke in the clutch,” McGarrigle wheezed as he and Fitz walked away from the bar, McGarrigle shaking beer and blood and broken glass off himself like a wet dog emerging from a river.
He’s always been larger than life, Fitz thought, and he fumbled the door open. “What took you so long? Tangled up in yer knitting yarn again, Granny,” said McGarrigle, ducking his head, crowding into the apartment like an oversized sofa.
Though pushing eighty, Fitz held himself ramrod straight. He walked slowly, his full head of porcelain-white hair contrasting his healthy pink complexion. His eyes were a clear, aquamarine colour. He did not wear glasses or a hearing aid. McGarrigle, on the other had, looked every bit of his seventy-eight years. He had taken on a bulldogish appearance in his later years, his large ears emphasizing the huge size of his head, his potato-like face blotched and mottled. His huge catcher’s hands were gnarled and arthritic. He walked with his legs spread wide, guided by a redwood walking stick.
Lime Tree Courts consisted of seventy apartments built around a swimming pool and shrub garden. Most of the units were studios and one-bedrooms. Fitz and McGarrigle shared one of the only two-bedroom units.
Fitz had been widowed most recently. Pegeen had been gone seven years. At first he’d puttered around the big house in Gardena, taking little pleasure from the landscaping and house repairs that seemed to occupy most of his time. He and McGarrigle golfed year round and had season tickets to California Angels’ games. When the Angels were on the road they often drove to Chavez Ravine in McGarrigle’s little Buick, to watch the Dodgers.
McGarrigle’s wife, Mary-Kaye, had been dead for almost twelve years. Their marriage had not been as happy as Fitz and Pegeen’s. Neither McGarrigle nor Mary-Kaye had ever been the same after they’d lost their daughter.
Fitz and McGarrigle talked of moving to one or the other’s house; McGarrigle’s was grander, with an ocean view, and he could afford to hire a gardener and a part-time maid. Eventually, the empty space became too much for McGarrigle, even with the thought of company. So both houses were sold, and together Fitz and McGarrigle bought a unit in a new and luxurious singles complex, Lime Tree Courts.
Neither would have admitted it publicly, but what prompted their particular purchase was what Fitz had heard referred to as the vanity of the athlete, the hubris that kept thirty-five-year-old pitchers, hitters, quarterbacks, and tennis players hacking away long after their bodies had ceased to react promptly to the commands of their brain.
Fitz and McGarrigle each harboured a secret fantasy that a young woman in Lime Tree Courts would find them attractive. That a young Pegeen or Mary-Kaye would see through the erosion of time to the magnificence that had been, and each harboured an even more forlorn hope that the young woman’s youth would somehow transform them, even for a short time, into what they had once been.
Friends for almost sixty years—McGarrigle from New York City, Fitz (Elwood Joseph Fitzgerald on formal occasions) from a Kansas farm—they’d met playing baseball in Louisville in the first years of the Great Depression. Both had up and down careers in the Bigs, McGarrigle catching for the Browns and the Senators, Fitz playing second base and shortstop for five clubs, with a few stops in the minors in between. His longest stint was a full season at second base for the Pirates in 1933. Fitz had played part of twelve seasons, and he was quick to point out to McGarrigle that his career had been longer, even if he hadn’t played as many games.
“I was still turning the double play when you were hammering 2x4s in California,” Fitz would crow.
After baseball, McGarrigle started a construction company in Los Angeles; he cashed in on the post-Second-World-War building boom, moved later to apartment construction during which time his company had built several complexes similar to Lime Tree Courts.
Fitz and Pegeen had settled briefly in St. Louis, until at McGarrigle’s insistence they visited California and, again at McGarrigle’s insistence, stayed.
McGarrigle offered to take Fitz into the construction business. “I don’t have the temperament to be a boss,” Fitz said. “I like to leave my job behind at the end of the day and head home to Pegeen and the kids.”
McGarrigle found Fitz a job as a representative for a large building supply firm.
Fitz never regretted his choice. He and Pegeen had four children, two boys, two girls, all settled now. There were grandchildren galore and by the size and beauty of a couple of his teenage granddaughters, he guessed he might live to be a great-grandfather.
McGarrigle had not been so fortunate. His marriage to Mary-Kaye was good enough; they both enjoyed fighting, one minute flinging plates and curses at one another, the next making up, putting the same amount of passion into reconciliation.
“Don’t you try any of that aggressive behaviour with me,” Fitz told McGarrigle when they made the final decision to move in together, “or, by God, I’ll pin your ears back like Mary-Kaye could never do.”
Mary-Kaye and McGarrigle had had one daughter, Maggie, as beautiful and sweet-tempered a girl as ever lived. In her senior year of high school, as she was riding her bicycle to a babysitting job a few blocks from her home, she’d turned to wave to a friend and steered her bike into the side of a passing car. One second she was alive, the next dead.
McGarrigle muddled through. Mary-Kaye didn’t. She became at first a secret, and later a not-so-secret drinker. She withdrew from everyone, including McGarrigle, refused help, and McGarrigle spent the last fifteen years of her life essentially alone.
It was his long-lost daughter, Maggie, McGarrigle was talking with now, out under the lime tree in the dew-fresh hours before dawn.
“We have such a lot to catch up on, Fitz,” McGarrigle had said, after the first episode, a week ago.
Neither man had ever been nocturnal, so Fitz, when he’d heard the outside door latch snap at 4:00 A.M., had gotten up to investigate. He’d caught McGarrigle, not going out but coming in, shoes in hand, like a guilty husband.
“Let me guess,” said Fitz. “It’s one of the flight attendants in #27B. I noticed the one with green eyes staring at you last week.”
“It’s my cane that enthrals them,” said McGarrigle. “None of these sweet young things have ever dated a man with a cane. Of course, the symbolism of the cane doesn’t escape them either.”
“Could I interest you in telling me the truth?” Fitz said. “I gather you’ve been outdoors for some time. You’ve got the cool smell of the night on you, and your shirt is wilted.”
“I believe I’d rather lie,” said McGarrigle.
“At least give me a hint,” said Fitz. “You’re not one to miss your sleep without good reason. Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“Eternal,” said McGarrigle.
“You’re having an experience with Himself?” said Fitz, nodding toward the ceiling. Neither he nor McGarrigle were of a spiritual nature.
“Not so you’d recognize,” said McGarrigle. “What’s happened to me is my fondest dream come true. It’s what I’ve wished for in my heart every moment of the last twenty-seven years. Out there, under the lime tree, I’ve been talking with Maggie.”
“To your Maggie?”
What with all the publicity given to Alzheimer’s Disease, both Fitz and McGarrigle kept a wary eye on each other, kidding each other about Oldtimer’s Disease when they forgot names, put their eyeglasses in the refrigerator, or walked about with their zippers undone.
“Just trolling,” McGarrigle would say, zipping his fly, but every joke was tinged with worry.
“Yes, my Maggie,” McGarrigle said, after a pause, while he gazed around the living room as if trying to remember where he was.
“What did she have to say?”
“She relieved me of my fear of death. Not that I had a great fear.”
“I see,” said Fitz. “And Maggie, is she still a girl, or is she a middle-aged lady?”
“Well, now, I didn’t ask. Her voice is as I remember it though. Sweet, and with a little catch just before she laughs.”
“So why here? Why now? Why you? You’re not the only old ballplayer hungry for loved ones lost. What did you do that no one else has done? Do you belong to the right organization? Did you give to the right charity?”
McGarrigle looked startled, as if he’d just been awakened.
“It’s way past my bedtime, Fitz. Yours, too. It’s the lime tree, Maggie told me, the way it scents the air, it . . .” McGarrigle tottered off toward his bedroom leaving his statement unfinished.
So it had been for several nights: McGarrigle pacing the living room, clock-watching, waiting for midnight, waiting for the pool lights to go out, waiting for the last stragglers to leave the poolside area.
“I want to spend every precious moment I can with her, Fitz. She says she doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to come to me.”
Was McGarrigle really losing it? Fitz wondered. Was it possible to appear coherent in most respects, yet be loony as a bedbug? Fitz sat alone in the living room for a long time. “You’re not the only one has lost someone you loved,” he said, rising slowly, the low-slung sofa taking its usual toll on his back, and heading outdoors.
Fitz padded slowly around the pool and, ducking his head, walked the concrete block path through oleander, bougainvillea, what may have been hibiscus, past orange trees, a lacy-leafed olive tree, until he came to, off in a corner next to the concrete-block wall, a lime tree.
The earth was dry, even dusty. Lovers walked to the end of the sidewalk and turned around. As Fitz left the sidewalk, a few fallen leaves crisped underfoot.
Soon after he and McGarrigle had moved into Lime Tree Courts, they had explored the outback, as McGarrigle had called it.
What had drawn McGarrigle out here in the dead of night to this isolated corner, to this small lime tree?
Fitz remembered as a boy in Kansas planting an orange seed in a soup can full of dirt, watching the plant grow day by day, being amazed when his mother squeezed the small deep-green leaves, unleashing the heavenly scent of oranges in the middle of winter.
Fitz pressed gently on a leaf of the lime tree, inhaled the pure perfume it emitted fresh as a dash of cold water, obliterating the exhaust fumes, seeming to quell the sound of traffic from nearby streets.
“Oh, Maggie, I hope you’re here, dear,” Fitz whispered. “I hope you’re talking with your daddy, that it’s not just old age, a failing mind and terminal wishful thinking he’s suffering from.”
Another evening, as they waited, Fitz kept pressing McGarrigle for details: Did he see Maggie? If so, did he touch her? If he touched her, was she there in reality, or just a shade?
“Fitz, do you remember telling me the story of how you tricked your sainted mother?”
“I remember,” said Fitz. “It was a dry, hot Kansas day when the wind teared my eyes and chafed my skin. I was about eleven, and I ran home from the nearest neighbours, two miles away, and told my mother the Parson was there at the Sonnenberg’s, and would be along to our farm as soon as he finished his tea and fruitcake.
“A terrible dirty trick, it was. Poor Mama near had a fit. I’m sure she developed an extra pair of hands as she cleaned and scrubbed the house and us children, all the time cooking a noontime meal that a chef would have been proud of. It was such a simple lie, a teasing lie, but when Mama turned into a whirling dervish of a housekeeper-cook, it became a lie I was afraid to undo. Mama wasn’t even very mad when I finally confessed as she was standing on the porch staring into the white afternoon glare, squinting down the road looking for the Parson’s buggy.
“‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’ve done me a week’s worth of work in under two hours. I believe I’ll take the rest of the day off.’ Which she did. But what has that story got to do with anything?”
“Now, Fitz, do you remember once in Yankee Stadium, about 1935, when you were with the Browns. It was 8–1 for the Yankees late in the game, at least 40,000 fans roaring at every Yankee hit and every Brown error. Two on, two out, and Tony Lazzeri hit a little inning-ending pop-up behind second base. A can of corn. You camped under it; the sky was cloudless, no wind. Yet the ball passed between your hands, hit the bill of your cap, scraped your nose, then bounced over behind first base, while the runners galloped around the bases, and the fans booed the Browns, cheered the Yankees, and rejoiced at your inept play.”
“Are you saying the two events are somehow related?”
“You figure it out, Fitz. You’ve never been slow on the uptake.”
“My own sainted mother would do such a thing to me?”
“Only in a game that was already decided. My Maggie says such acts aren’t revenge. Just a trick here, a harmless joke there. A little soup down the front of a tuxedo might be a mother evening up the score for a threeyear-old puking during a bus trip.”
“I don’t think I believe you,” said Fitz.
“My Maggie says that’s the way things are. And you know Maggie wouldn’t lie. No one seems to think folks laugh on the other side.”
“If I came out to the lime tree, would I be able to hear Maggie? Would I be able to see her?”
“Well, now, Fitz, I doubt it.”
“Then there’s no reason for me to believe that it’s not your hardening arteries sending you these messages?”
“You believe what you like. But there’s something better coming.” McGarrigle moved closer to Fitz, whispering.
“Maggie tells me she’s like a scout. She’s sizing things up. Seeing if conditions are right. Some night when everything’s perfect Mary-Kaye will be there instead of Maggie.”
“You really believe that?” said Fitz.
“Even if it’s a combination of old age and wishful thinking, I don’t want it to end. I’ve talked to my little girl, Fitz. Tonight I held her hand. And she hugged me and kissed my cheek the way she used to do.”
“Can I get in on this good thing? I’d trade any two of my remaining faculties to feel Pegeen’s hand in mine, to hear her sweet voice one more time. For one single kiss sweet as a dew-covered rose.”
“I don’t know,” said McGarrigle.
What good would it do me to argue, to push him further, Fitz thought. He patted his old friend on the shoulder and wished him well.
In the deepest part of the night, while McGarrigle was again out by the lime tree, Fitz sat alone by the silent swimming pool, a single light turning a section of the black water a beautiful turquoise. The scent of blooming flowers, of fruit trees, hung in the air.
As he waited, Fitz imagined he had passed back over sixty years in time to a dusky summer evening at a sandlot baseball game. To a moment when the ball hit the sweet spot on his bat and disappeared far beyond the right fielder. He could hear Pegeen’s startled cheer, her voice rising above the few fans scattered along the baselines.
As he loped around the bases he caught a whiff of the first essence of dew rising from the evening grass; he knew the game was over and Pegeen would be waiting for him, her sun-blonde hair on her shoulders.
He would walk her home. He could already smell Pegeen’s perfume, the sweet and sour of it, and he could feel her in his arms in the shadows of the hedge beside her home, her lips parted for him.
Somewhere a cat yowled, startling Fitz back to the present. He stood and began to make his way slowly down the path toward McGarrigle and the lime tree. His steps were awkward at first, his joints snapping.
Before he even reached the lime tree, he heard gentle noises, and soft scufflings. He recognized the sweet breathless sounds of love, and for just an instant he saw the moonlight-filtered silhouette of the lovers, McGarrigle and Mary-Kaye, beneath the lime tree.
Fitz turned slowly and tottered back toward Lime Tree Courts, his heart full of hope.