I spent the next few days looking for jobs on Craigslist. Sending applications into the void, each crafted carefully and returning nothing or, worse, provoking creepy offers about discounted apartments from users with names like Biff and lines like free shared Jacuzzi in yard. But it was either job hunting or asking my mother for money or losing my spot in 1938 House and having to go live with her and Dr. Boris Gettleman in Tallahassee.
After Lucas’s revelation about how things ended between him and Mina, I no longer felt certain about us. I had to wait and see what would happen, whether his separation would stick and I was really the person he wanted to be with. His leaving his marriage was obviously what my father had done. If Lucas had done it once, would he do it again? Could I protect myself from that, be sure that Lucas meant it this time? Those questions hadn’t felt urgent when he was with Mina, but now that he wasn’t, I saw how vulnerable I might be.
Sometime during what felt like the millionth hour of my job search, I stumbled on a random link—short-term positions were being advertised for the Washington Nationals baseball stadium.
Baseball. That hit a chord. Short-term sounded good. It seemed kind of fitting, since my life had recently involved following around a baseball. Maybe working at the stadium could tide me over while I sorted everything out and applied for other journalism jobs.
The online application instructed me to list previous employment, along with references. I typed Steve’s name, then deleted it and typed in Jane’s. The application asked whether I could run. The truth was I couldn’t remember the last time I’d run. Maybe on the treadmill in college. I didn’t want to lie anymore. So I said that I was a fast learner, that I would do my best.
They must have been desperate, because I was accepted within hours.
I arrived at the stadium ten minutes before the appointed time, just as the parking lot was filling up with cars. People removed banners and giant foam hands from their trunks. They wore red and white, Nationals colors, unaware as they brushed by me that they were passing a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator, one of the stars of the fourth-inning show.
I thought of what my dad used to say about baseball, how he quoted Roger Angell, who was quoting a friend. “There’s nothing like being in a stadium with thirty thousand people who agree with you,” he would say.
The guy who was supposed to train me for “the Presidents Race” appeared and lit a cigarette, introducing himself as Richard. “This is the worst job I’ve ever had. The suit smells like ass,” he said.
“Okay.”
“And I once spent a summer scooping ice cream in Ocean City.”
I watched him scuff his feet against the concrete. He looked like a cool outsider, the kind of boy who was popular not because he was handsome but because he rolled perfect joints.
“What’s your name again?” he asked.
“Ellie. What am I supposed to do?”
He gestured toward a side door. “That’s the place.”
We went to the locker room to dress in our costumes, and soon I was suited up in red felt trousers. The shirt was a Nationals jersey with 26 stitched onto the back, representing Roosevelt’s number as the twenty-sixth president. Richard would run as Thomas Jefferson, and in the middle of the fourth inning we would meet Lincoln and Washington for the race. The four of us would compete as cartoonish heads of state bumbling across the outfield while the Nationals’ lineup rested and drank Gatorade out of hundred-gallon coolers.
The Teddy Roosevelt head loomed easily four feet high with a fold of mesh at the neck, which provided my line of sight. Teddy’s face was frozen in a giant toothy grin. The mustache was a thick pelt of orange yarn. The skin was satin. Teensy circular spectacles were perched on the end of the nose.
Richard stripped down to his boxer shorts in front of me, revealing a tattoo of a dragon on his back. “If you wear clothes underneath the suit, it’s too hot,” he said, by way of explanation. Below the dragon’s claw was a tattoo of a scroll with the letters R.S.P. ’87. His initials and birth year, I assumed. Did he think he might forget them? I laughed out loud.
“What’s funny?” Richard asked. His shoulder muscles tensed under his skin as he slid the Thomas Jefferson costume over his head. I had the feeling he wanted me to appraise him, but I couldn’t muster interest. What was I doing here?
“They’ll call us in a few,” Richard said through the Jefferson mask. “Do you want to watch for a bit?”
“You go. I’ll stay here.”
I snapped a photo of myself in costume and sent it to Lucas. What would my father think to see me dressed as Teddy Roosevelt, treading the stadium’s clipped grass and the horsehide-colored dirt? I was pretty sure he’d never felt the grass of a major league stadium spring beneath his feet, never bent down to feel the white rubber peel of the base. It was becoming a litany for me, the things my father hadn’t done. I could start listing now and never finish.
I found my way out of the dark tunnel and into the blinding white light of the stadium. Richard was lined up behind Washington and Lincoln. Lincoln reached behind him and bumped me on the shoulder. “Hey, man, gonna eat my dust today?”
I remembered Dad saying that baseball diamonds were the most American shape. “You can see them from space,” he’d said. Like so many things he said, I’d never questioned it.
Richard swung into position in front of me and I followed. We trotted onto the enormous field, flat and fuzzy in the heat. As we moved past the home-plate seats, children slid their arms through the handrails to touch our masks. I jerked away, making a wide circle out of their reach. Richard flung his hand above his head to wave at the crowd, and I did the same. Over the loudspeaker, the announcer cued us up, his voice all low rumble and flash. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Presidents Race! Will Teddy Roosevelt’s luck turn around this time? Tonight could mark the 488th straight loss for Teddy.”
Lincoln swiveled his giant head around to goad me, pumping his arms in the air. George Washington bumped my hip with his hip. Thomas Jefferson leaned toward me until I saw the blur of Richard’s face through the mesh. “Remember, you’re coming in last. Pretend to stumble when you get to the infield, and wait for us to pass you.”
“You suck, Teddy!” a voice yelled from the stands, and there was a smattering of laughter that came from all directions. I felt the words sting beneath my costume.
Right before my father went off to Wesleyan on a scholarship, then moved to Baltimore for a job at a community college, got married and had one child (me), transferred to a larger college in Easton, then a third college, got divorced, wrote a semi-famous poem, married for a second time and had two more children, divorced again, went dogsledding in rural Minnesota, faced custody disputes and near-bankruptcy, went on dates, married a third wife and had a fourth child, danced to Van Morrison, wrapped Summer Christmas presents, and died on the floor of his bedroom—right before all of this, there was a photo of him in The Castle Hill Moat. It had been taken after one of his high school baseball games, and he was sweaty and smiling, his hair shaggy beneath the brim of his cap, his teammates’ arms reaching for him but not quite touching.
The photograph shifted and gleamed before my eyes just as the siren wailed, signaling the start of the race. Had Larry taken that photo? Was there any sign on my father’s face of what he’d done to him? Or what was to come? The children, the wives, the poems? The early death, the gifts, so much left undone. My skin prickled and my limbs flooded with heat. I don’t think you’re fine, I heard Jane say. I love you, Ellie, Lucas said. Gianni told her, Lucas said. She found out. He’d established a whole life with this woman, his wife, Mina. I thought of the home they’d made together, the blue teddy bear in their bathroom.
The stadium lights buzzed and bled. I was Teddy Roosevelt, a big-game hunter and a statesman and a racist with a satin face. I could no longer feel my grief, only the lingering heat from a faded summer afternoon. Summer afternoon—summer afternoon. The skittering of leaves on faraway trees.
I began to run, dimly aware of the other presidents behind me, surging forward. The crowd was silent and then started to roar. They came together like a pointillist canvas, a composite of bodies in a stadium, dulled to circles of similar size. I saw my father in the front row, eating a hot dog. I saw him in the second row, waving at me and raising Larry’s binoculars above his head, a smile on his face. Then he was holding Luna around her great wings as she struggled to break free. “Go, Teddy!” he screamed. And I ran and ran, suddenly frightened of myself. Inside the costume, I heaved deep, guttural sobs that felt like they’d never end. My lips stung and my eyes burned and I gulped down sweaty air. I crossed the finish line ahead of all the other presidents. I wasn’t supposed to win, but somehow I did. I heard my father say, “And the crowd went wild!” in his baseball announcer’s voice, his hand up as if holding a microphone on Summer Christmas.
I kept running. I ran and ran to get away from him, until I’d left the field and ripped off Teddy Roosevelt’s head, and then I was outside the stadium gates, weeping on the concrete.