They won. The Cubs played their first game with Dick Raynes as the manager, and they won, beating the Red Sox by a narrow score of three to two.
Dick is walking on clouds. The win was amazing, but the look of pride on Jim’s face is what resounds in his heart.
Dick arrives in Independence still pumped from the victory. Normally, Dee works Saturday nights, so he’s planning on a night of pizza and movies with Jesse.
It turns out Dee has other plans. When he walks through the door, Dee, Jesse, and Janelle are standing in the living room, matching mischievous grins on their faces.
“What’s up?” he says.
None of them say a word. Instead the grins grow, and that’s when he notices the kitchen chair on the white sheet in front of the couch.
“Sit,” Janelle orders.
He does as ordered, and like a surgeon directing a nurse, Janelle turns to Jesse and says, “Towel.” Jesse hands her a teal bath towel, and Janelle wraps it around Dick’s neck. “Water.” Jesse hands her a spray bottle. “Might want to close your eyes,” Janelle says to Dick.
Dick squeezes his eyes shut as his head is spritzed with water until it is dripping.
Dee and Jesse giggle and snicker as Janelle goes to work with scissors and comb, and Dick can’t tell if it’s all in good humor or at his expense. But they’re having such a good time that, truthfully, he doesn’t care.
Janelle continues to fly around him, snipping and snapping like Edward Scissorhands until he’s quite certain he doesn’t have any hair left. When she’s done, they refuse him a mirror, and before he can ask what’s going on, they are pushing him out the door and into Dee’s Subaru.
“Where are we going?” he asks, which is answered with more conspiratorial giggles.
Janelle turns up the radio, and the three start singing along to a song about chicken fries and beer.
Two hours later, they arrive at the Antelope Valley Mall, and Dick is ushered into a store called Hollister. Janelle and Dee buzz around the racks while Dick and Jesse hang near the entrance. Fifteen minutes later, the girls give Jesse a thumbs-up, and he pushes Dick toward the changing rooms.
“We want to see each item,” Janelle says, thrusting a bundle of clothes into his arms.
“And we will each give you a thumbs-up or down,” Dee adds. “Two thumbs out of three is a keeper.”
All he can do is smile. He hasn’t seen Dee this happy since she was a kid, flittering around and giggling like the world is nothing but rainbows and light. And he’s proud, knowing he had a hand in it.
He carries the clothes into the dressing room, sees his reflection in the mirror, and laughs. His hair is buzzed short on the sides, and the longer strands on top are gelled so they stick up like spikes. He runs his hands over the stiff tips and chuckles again. Since Dick was a kid, he’s worn his hair the same, a side part swept to the left. Now there’s no part, and hardly any hair. It’s a good thing he’s not going bald, or his scalp would show right through. He tilts his head this way and that, and his hair doesn’t move. He looks a bit like a hedgehog but supposes it is hipper. Jim might approve. Maybe even Kiley.
He turns to the clothes, and with a resigned sigh, pulls on a pair of jeans and a shirt that looks like it’s made from red polka-dotted boxers. He walks out to the judges, and fortunately, Dee and Jesse veto Janelle’s enthusiastic thumbs-up on the shirt. The jeans receive unanimous approval.
He returns into the dressing room, feeling a little like a poodle in a dog show, but once again, the laughter outside the dressing room is all the motivation he needs to continue.
When he’s done, they each carry two bags filled with an updated wardrobe—two pairs of jeans—one blue, one black—five casual shirts, four T-shirts, a sweatshirt, a jacket, a brown belt, a black belt, three pair of shorts, and one pair of swim trunks. He has specific instructions on how to wear it all and an explicit order from Janelle to throw everything in his current wardrobe away.
They continue on to Macy’s and do a similar routine for work clothes. The dressing room is larger and the light less flattering, and as Dick waits for Dee to bring him different-sized slacks, he studies himself in the mirror. Beneath his T-shirt, his belly bulges, and he estimates he’s well into his second trimester. His legs are bony and his arms flabby. His skin is sallow, and his teeth stained from cigarettes.
Disgusted, he redresses, and storms from the room.
“I don’t want to try on any more clothes,” he says. “Let’s just buy what you think works.”
“You okay?” Dee asks.
“Fine,” he says, pulling out his credit card and painting on a smile, not wanting to dampen the mood.
“Ooh, Baskin-Robbins,” Janelle says as they walk from the store.
Dee, Jesse, and Janelle each order a two-scoop cone. Dick orders a low-fat frozen yogurt.
Janelle looks at him from across the table as they eat their treats and tilts her head. “You’re not bad-looking,” she says as if seeing him for the first time.
He looks at her cockeyed, and Dee giggles. Jesse rolls his eyes.
Janelle is undeterred. “I’m serious. You have good features, a nice nose and strong chin. You still have most of your hair, which is more than I can say for most guys your age. You’re what I would call intellectually handsome.”
“In other words, not your type,” Dee says, and they all laugh. Janelle is known for her taste in burly, tattooed rednecks.
“Well, the way I’ve been going, maybe I should change my type.” She gives Dick a wink, and Dick gives an exaggerated wink back, and they all laugh again.
They walk from Baskin-Robbins, and Dick says, “One more stop.” He turns into Foot Locker and says to his personal shoppers, “I need coaching and running clothes. I’ll choose my own sneakers.”
Dee and Janelle flitter away, and he and Jesse head to the shoe department. Dick picks out a pair of running shoes and a pair of black cross trainers, the kind he’s seen the other coaches wearing.
It’s ridiculous how many bags they are carrying when they walk toward the exit, all of them loaded down. They’re almost to the doors when he notices Dee’s eyes slide to the window display of a store called Express. He’s already spent a month’s salary, but unable to help himself, he says, “I think you girls deserve something as well.”
Dee opens her mouth to protest as Janelle says, “Hell yeah.” Grabbing Dee’s arm, she pulls her into the store, and half an hour later, his American Express has bought a white miniskirt and zodiac-patterned halter top for Janelle and the simple, sexy black dress that was in the window for Dee. As they walk from the store, Dick wonders who she intends to wear it for.
* * *
It’s late by the time the group gets back to Independence. Janelle kisses Dick on the cheek and, with an up-and-down appraisal, says, “You really do clean up well.”
Dick blushes, and his heart swells with the same gratitude he felt when he was nineteen and home from college and Janelle took pity on him when she discovered he’d never been kissed and took him behind her dad’s auto body shop and gave him a lesson to remember.
She hops in her truck and drives away, and Jesse gives a wave and shuffles into the house.
Dick turns to Dee. “Thanks for today. I don’t know what I did to deserve all this, but I loved it.”
Her gaze settles on his, and the gaiety stills. “For what you did, you deserve a whole lot more, but I wanted to do something.”
His skin goes cold, wondering how she knows.
“I knew I could count on you.”
Before he can respond, she turns, and he watches as she climbs the steps to the Raynes home to tuck her son safely into bed.