Once again, well before the final weekend of the season, the Pirates were assured of finishing in the cellar. Henry watched the last game anyway, a loss to the hated Reds, rooting to the end as Jason Kendall stranded the tying run on third. While he might look in on the playoffs, there would be no more Buccos baseball this year. Summer was over, fall already started. The feeling didn’t hit him till the next day walking Rufus up to the park after dinner. Twilight had fallen. The evening star was out, the gables of Highland stark against the clear sky. The leaves were turning, acorns crunching underfoot, and as he passed a picture window where a couple was watching the news, he realized there would be no game on TV later. The prospect left him strangely bereft.
It was too early for football, though by now the Steelers were 2–1 and a shoo-in to win the Super Bowl, if you believed the Post-Gazette. That Sunday after church, he settled in before the TV like the rest of Pittsburgh to watch them whip the Seahawks, the outcome foregone, only mildly satisfying. He watched the late game half-heartedly as the sky darkened and the smell of pot roast rose from downstairs, warming the house, and once it was over, he was marooned again.
Tuesday the Fearsome Foursome played their last round of the year before Fred decamped for Florida. The air was damp, carrying a tinge of woodsmoke, and leaves dotted the fairways, making it harder to spot their balls. “Winter rules,” Cy joked, moving his from a drift. Normally being out on the course was an escape, the pastoral setting and leisurely pace creating an illusion of timelessness, but as they crisscrossed the fairways after their errant drives, trading the lead, Henry found himself counting down the holes they had left, and, distracted, dunked his tee shot in the pond on sixteen and ended up having to stand lunch. Following tradition, they toasted the season past and pledged to return again next spring, God willing. They said goodbye in the parking lot, envying Fred’s extra months of sun but not the bugs and humidity and geriatric traffic. Inching light to light through the commercial strip of Murrysville, Henry thought it was another loss.
The next day, as if to taunt him, the weather was perfect. He thought of calling Cy and Jack, but they’d never played as a threesome. By some brotherly logic it seemed a betrayal of Fred. Henry doubted they could make it on such short notice anyway. Emily had her bridge club at one, otherwise he would have asked her.
There was nothing stopping him from going alone. His Grandfather Chase was famous in his later years for rising before dawn at Chautauqua and walking the lake course with just a five-iron, his beagle Ollie hunting down his ball. Driving a cart wasn’t nearly as dashing, and maybe it was that Keystone Kops image of himself hopping out, hitting and hopping back in again that kept Henry from throwing his clubs in the Olds. A tee time for one, please. No, it would be embarrassing. His grandfather aside, solitary golfers struck him as a squirrelly, self-involved breed, like hermits or fly fishermen. A lot of places didn’t take singletons, he wasn’t sure about Buckhorn. They’d probably make him play with strangers. The last thing he wanted to do was fill out someone else’s foursome.
He dithered, intimidated by the idea as much as the energy required (he’d have to explain to Emily afterward, a confession he’d rather skip altogether), and by the time he made up his mind, it was too late. Rather than moon about the house, he took Rufus for a walk around the reservoir with his new leash. The sun off the water warmed his face, and he wished he’d gone. What did he care what people thought? He was seventy-five, he could do what he pleased.
When Emily came home—victorious, splitting the kitty with Louise—he asked if she had anything going on tomorrow.
“Besides my book club, which you knew about.”
“Right, sorry. I thought if it was nice out we might shoot a round.”
“It’s that time of year, isn’t it? Poor Henry, no one left to play with.”
“What are you doing Friday?”
“What am I doing Friday?” she asked him, as if he should know this too. “Friday I’m making the dad-blammed cookies for the bake sale. Do I need to put it on the calendar?”
“No.”
“It’s supposed to rain all day anyway.”
“Is it?”
“I’m sorry, Henry, I’d love to play with you, but you need to give me more warning.”
While it sounded like a valid excuse, she didn’t really mean it. They hadn’t played anywhere but their one round at Chautauqua for years now, and stung by this hypocrisy, he decided, with the righteousness of the jilted, to go by himself.
The guy on the phone said he didn’t need a tee time, which Henry refused to believe. The forecast was cool and overcast, but not cold enough to stop real golfers. The pro shop opened at eight. He left early, gunning the Olds up the long hills of the Parkway East, hoping to beat the rush, and pulled in to Buckhorn to find four cars in the lot, all parked at the far end: employees’. He threw on his shoes, paid and grabbed a cart. Clamping a scorecard to the steering wheel, he realized he’d already won.
The grass was still dewy, soaking his shoes and socks. Even with his windbreaker on over his sweater, he was chilly, but it would warm up soon enough. The course was his except for the greenskeepers, who seemed to be right where he wanted to hit. They buzzed in slow circles on their mowers, deafened by earphones, paying him no attention. On four, a par-three, he waited for one to finish and trundle off, then plugged his tee shot in a bunker.
“Come on, Henry.”
It was different playing by himself. He was playing badly, maybe because he was going too fast. He wasn’t taking the time to size up his next shot the way he would in a foursome. There was no one to consult on club selection, no one to read off a yardage marker, no one to show him how the greens were breaking, but mostly there was no one to talk to. When he almost holed out a chip, clanking it off the pin, he spun around, arms wide, as if appealing to an invisible audience. He didn’t see how his grandfather did it. Maybe if he took Rufus with him.
He was coming back toward the clubhouse on seven when he spied in the distance, walking down the middle of the fairway opposite, a fellow singleton. As Henry drew closer, he saw it was an older woman, bandy-legged and deeply tan, pulling an antique rolling bag behind her like a ghost from another era. She waved at him as if they were members of the same club, and Henry waved back.
“Peas in a pod,” he said, quoting Emily.
Discouraged, his feet freezing, he was ready to retire after nine, but he’d paid for eighteen. He stuck it out as the course filled up, shooting a hard-earned 93. The card was his, tempted as he was to pitch it. He skipped their usual sandwich and beer, just returned the cart and peeled off his wet socks in the parking lot.
Home, he brought his clubs straight inside, making Rufus back up.
Emily was getting a head start on her cookies. “Did you have fun?”
“I had golf.”
“That bad.”
“Ninety-three.”
She whistled in sympathy. “I’m sorry.”
“How was your book club?”
“Better than ninety-three. You can put mine away while you’re at it.”
“That’s what I was going to do next.” When in truth he hadn’t thought of them at all.
As penance, he did hers first. In the basement, beneath the warm light of his workbench, he cleaned each club, scrubbing away the dried mud and grass stains, tugging the plush covers over the woods. He snapped on the hood to protect them from the dust and shrouded the top half in a white garbage bag before stowing it on the far side of the furnace, beside their luggage, the matching suitcases taking him back to England and the possibility of escape—futile, he knew, and yet he imagined surprising her with plane tickets and romantic plans to revisit all the places they’d stayed. Putting away his own clubs, he wondered why England, why not somewhere else? Was it too late to make new memories, easier to simply recall the old ones, happy or otherwise? They’d never been to Spain or Egypt or Thailand, and now they never would. He leaned his bag against hers, the pair hooded and bound like captives in the dim corner, and, frowning, squared away his workbench and turned out the light.
“Thank you,” she said when he came upstairs.
“You’re quite welcome,” he said, as if it were nothing.
Friday, as Emily had forecast, it poured, and she baked cookies, her apron powdered with flour, holding ghostly handprints. A mound of dishes filled the sink, but he knew better than to intervene. He kept to the living room, Rufus at his feet, the two of them exiled, occasionally padding to the front window to watch the rain, gray and relentless. Rufus curled up on his bed and sighed.
“I know, buddy,” Henry said. “It’s no fun.”
After lunch, she ran out of cream of tartar and sent him to the East Liberty Jyggle for more. He was glad for the distraction until he walked through the sliding doors and found himself surrounded. The floor managers and cashiers, the older fellow restocking the produce section, the young mother pushing a cart with her toddler—everyone was wearing their Steelers jerseys.
He’d been so focused on his mission that he’d forgotten it was Football Friday, Pittsburgh’s one great civic show of faith, and would be every Friday all the way through the playoffs. While he was a lifelong Steelers fan, being nine years older than the team, he felt separate and left out in his Pirates hat, as if he’d shown up to the wrong party.
“Isn’t it a little early for that?” Emily asked, but she was skeptical about the city’s obsession with football in general, and more concerned just this minute with her snickerdoodles.
“They should win the division.”
“They always win the division.”
He shrugged. “People love a winner.”
“Not like your Pirates”
“It’s only week four.”
“Who are they playing?”
It was the Bills—the hapless Bills, who’d gone to the Super Bowl four times in four years and lost them all and hadn’t done a thing since. Sunday was no different. The game was a mismatch. The Steelers ran inside at will while the defense knocked out their quarterback, piling up a big lead, yet Henry wasn’t particularly interested. He tried watching the baseball playoffs instead, but didn’t care for either team and felt dislocated, between seasons, finally turning the TV off altogether.
He wandered downstairs, where Emily was absorbed in the Times crossword.
“Aren’t you watching the game?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
She squinted, suspicious, and beckoned him closer, tested his forehead with her hand. “You’re not hot.”
“I’m going to take Mr. Joyboy here for a walk.”
“Take a coat, it looks a little breezy.”
He’d hoped she might come with him, but once they were out in the sun he was grateful for the solitude. There was no traffic on Highland—everyone was at home watching the game. On their circuit of the reservoir they met a solo jogger, a tall girl in black tights, winter gloves and a headband. Henry had seen her before and was ready to raise a hand in greeting, but she was wearing headphones and veered wide of them as if Rufus might bite her. Leaves fell and drifted on the water. He imagined they were a problem, catching in the filters, clogging the mains. Strange. All around him the leaves were dead—dry and shriveled, drifted against the fences—while the trees were still alive. He wondered if Dr. Runco’s death had anything to do with his mood, or turning seventy-five. Usually he liked this time of year.
Margaret had called while he was gone—secretly a relief. Emily said she’d seemed fine, whatever that meant.
He had a couple of Iron Citys with the late game and surrendered to the crowd noise and balky rhythm of the play clock, talking back to the set, poking fun at the smarmy commentators and their cherry-picked statistics.
“That’s why they call them the Bungles.”
“What?” Emily yelled from downstairs.
“Nothing!”
Kenny, who’d grown up during the heyday of the Steel Curtain, waited till the game was over to call. He’d had a few beers too. “Here we go, Steel-ers,” he chanted, the speaker making him break up.
“Yes,” Henry said. “Here we go, Steelers.”