Charlene called me around ten that night. I’d had the phone machine on and it had recorded three or four hangups. I mentioned this to her.
“I don’t like leaving messages on machines, Ryan, It’s like being kept waiting.”
“I would have called you as soon as I got in.”
“Where you been?”
“Putting the troops to bed,” I said,
“My, my, does a manager do all that?”
“Manager do what a manager gotta do “
“They say on TV you got cut.”
“Got a spike in the face. Don’t worry. I’m still handsome as I ever was.”
“I really didn’t believe you were going to go through with this,” Charlene said. “Someone at the hospital says to me today that they wanted to know how I felt about you being on a team full of wetbacks.”
“And you said?”
“I said you liked it just fine.”
“And they said?”
“They didn’t say nothing more to me if they knew what was good for them.”
“You don’t have to get in no fights on my account, Charlene.”
“Oh, I don’t, do I? I suppose you never thought of the effect this was going to have on our relationship, did you?”
“I know I didn’t want you getting all balled up by it, Charlene. You got your life and I got mine and the only thing that’s important is that we got each other.”
“We’ve got each other. Do we, Ryan?”
“Don’t we?”
“Well, I know you got baseball and what I got is people feeling sorry for me that I got you “
“Well, don’t let people’s pity get you down. It’s a game and it’s a salary and after next September, I’ll be back in Houston to stay and we can be thinking on opening up the health food place.”
“Ryan Patrick, what if I was to say right now, ‘Just quit.’ Would you?”
I paused for a long moment. “No, Charlene, I wouldn’t. I’ve come this far, might as well see the thing played out.”
“I didn’t say quit, I said ‘what if,’ but you gave me your answer anyway, didn’t you?”
“I guess I did,” I said. “I love you, Charlene Cleaver, right down to the soles of your pretty little feet.”
“But not that much,” she said. She was getting in a mood or she was in a mood. Depended on when this all started with her.
“Well, I just wanted to see if you were all right and it appears you are.”
“I miss you, Charlene. We play the Texas Rangers beginning of May on the West Coast trip.”
“I know when you’re next in Texas, Ryan, I can read a schedule.”
“I know that, Charlene. I just want to say how much I miss you,” I said in my quiet, gentle way.
“Oh, Ryan,” she said.
Well, there it was. She was doing Scarlett O’Hara and I was doing Bronco Billy. Different themes.
“I do want to be happy,” Scarlett said.
“I want you to be happy.”
“I really hate what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?”
“Everything wrong,” she said.
Well, that doesn’t lead to a whole lot of discussion. So I kept quiet and waited for her.
“Well, Ryan. I got to go now “
“Stay and talk a while.”
“You miss me?”
“I told you that.”
“Well, you can say it again “
“I miss you, Charlene.”
“All right. Well, I got to go now.”
“Charlene —”
Click.
I could call her back, but what would be the point of that? She was in a mood and I suppose someone had said something to her that was worse than she’d told me and it had made her mad — angry — and the next thing had led to the next thing and now I was about two thousand miles too far away from her.
I knew how she felt.
! could even have sympathy for her point of view. It’s a terrible thing when a man gets all involved in something as basically silly as baseball. I used to look at baseball uniforms from a different perspective, and they looked dumb to me. That bothered me because I was wearing a uniform, too, so I put the thought out of my mind. Baseball is full of things like that. Take a catcher’s gear — the mask, the mitt, the crotch pad, and the chest pads — the whole getup is as basically silly as a woman wearing a corset with little clips holding up her stockings. On the other hand, you don’t think of things like that when you’re seeing them the way they’re supposed to be seen, sort of in context.
My head was full of this kind of thinking. Always is, when I’m trying to figure out what it is exactly that Charlene wants. She wants me to quit the game but she wouldn’t have any use for me if I did — I know that — so what was it that she wants?
Hell with it. I opened a can of beer and turned on the TV and started watching my old friend Clint Eastwood. He would have been as puzzled by Charlene as I was, I knew that much.