Imperfect: An Improbable Life (6 page)

So Kathy packed her things and left her sisters and her year-old brother and her mother and father in the little three-bedroom house in north Flint. She moved in with Katie and Uncle Mac and their children, introducing herself on her way in the door, Mike trailing with her two suitcases. Kathy was there for six months, out of the way. Being the oldest of six, Kathy knew a little about mothering, and through spring and summer in Bloomfield Township read to Katie’s small children, knitted them sweaters, and made them mid-afternoon snacks. Every month Katie or Uncle Mac drove her into Detroit to see Dr. Kenneth Trader, who’d delivered Katie’s two daughters. Mike chipped in with a few dollars when he could and visited on the weekends.

St. Matt’s hadn’t lost a football game in the fall and then didn’t lose a basketball game in the winter. There would be a parade and
convertibles and bands for an unbeaten basketball season, a state championship. Mike was finishing his fifth year playing for Coach Pratt. Over the final weeks of the basketball season, however, their relationship grew cool. Mike had tried to keep Kathy’s pregnancy to himself. On the final bus ride of the season, Coach Pratt walked the aisle, got to Mike, and lowered his eyes to meet Mike’s. Coach Pratt knew.

“You know,” Coach Pratt said gravely, “you’re flunking foreign relations.”

“Coach,” Mike said, “I’ve got more on my mind than foreign relations.”

Coach Pratt returned to his seat. That was the last conversation they’d have about Mike getting his girlfriend pregnant.

Meantime, Katie, still advocating for Mike and Kathy to keep the baby, took them to her church—St. Hugo of the Hills in Bloomfield Hills—to meet a clergyman about a holy union. A young priest, Father Jim, told them no, he would not marry them, not with Kathy being pregnant, not in his church, not like this. Mike and Kathy left the church confused. Mike had not actually asked Kathy to marry him but had arrived with Kathy on the idea that it was the most responsible path. They did love each other. And they were, after all, trying to do the right thing. Katie left angry and stayed angry at the church for some time. As fall neared, Kathy convinced a priest at St. Agnes, her alma mater, to marry them. They set a date for late September. Kathy would be pregnant still, but that seemed a minor detail all things considered. What was important was they be together officially, because just like the wedding, they’d not ever actually decided to keep this child; it simply came to be.

They also had decided they’d eventually live in the house on East Fourth Street. Frances had moved to an apartment, leaving the old
place empty. Where there’d once been nine, there’d be two—Mike and Kathy—and their baby. Decaying when Mike was a boy, the neighborhood had continued its slide, but the house was comforting to Mike. And it was free. He’d joined the Michigan National Guard, which would keep him out of Vietnam, but, ironically, not Detroit. The same summer, with Kathy in Bloomfield Township and Mike mopping hot tar in Flint, Detroit police raided an unlicensed bar at the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue on the west end of Detroit. The police action sparked an uprising—soon called the Twelfth Street Riot—that lasted five days. Nearly fifty died, more than 7,000 people were arrested, and some 2,000 buildings burned down, Kathy watching it all on the black-and-white TV. In Flint, the 125th Infantry of the Michigan National Guard, Mike’s unit, was called in. Mike was only newly sworn, however, and so lacked the training to march into a smoking Detroit. He was left behind to build his life.

Kathy telephoned Mike on the afternoon of September 19, breathless. She was in Flint for the first time since she’d been sent off to become more pregnant and have her baby. She’d come back to be married. Two days before, she and Mike had walked hand-in-hand into a Flint jewelry store, pointed out two eighteen-dollar gold bands, and paid cash for them. And then, in the kitchen of her parents’ house in north Flint, six months since she’d last been there, days from her wedding, Kathy went into labor.

“My water broke,” she told Mike.

M
IKE WAS SILENT
, though not yet from anxiety or fear. He didn’t know what she meant. Water? What water?

Life was moving fast, so much so that Mike could barely keep up
in that old Impala. He prayed a state trooper would haul him down from behind and lead them into Bloomfield Township, through all those potential delays. But they were on their own, barreling toward a new life and a new child, parenthood and marriage, racing first to Katie’s house—she stood anxiously in the driveway, and it killed Mike even to slow down and kick the door open—and then to Providence Hospital.

“Name?” the nurse at the desk demanded.

“Mike Abbott,” he said. “Kathy Adams. Me or her?”

“Address?”

“Thirty-one hundred Miller Road West in Flint,” Mike said, his mother’s address.

“Insurance?”

“I don’t have any,” Mike said.

“You don’t have insurance?”

“No, I don’t,” Mike said, hoping they wouldn’t be sent away. “I don’t really have a job, either. Well, maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I don’t know what I have.”

The nurse looked over the top of her glasses at the soon-to-be father.

“My mother will pay,” he told her.

I
T WASN
’
T LONG
—two hours at most—before a doctor came through the door of the hospital room and stood at the end of the bed. Mom had given birth quickly. Dad had taken care of the administrative details, those he could, and killed time in the waiting room, sweating. He was nervous, a little frightened of course, but forcing himself to breathe. He cared a lot for Mom, as different as they were, as they’d always be. They shared a great attraction for each other. He
had the long legs of a basketball player and the thick waist and shoulders of a football player, and a generous, gregarious spirit. She was thin, magazine-pages pretty, and adored Dad. He was loud and so sure of himself. She was shy, liked books, and came to think life might be kind of boring without him. He needed stability. She wanted some color. Now they had wedding bands … somewhere. They’d had a baby. They smiled to each other, then looked to the doctor.

He smiled thinly, as generously as he could. “You have a fine baby boy,” he began, “but …”

Dad’s sister, Aunt Katie, sat beside him, Mom’s mother, Grandma Frances, next to her, all to Mom’s right. At “but,” they’d reached for each other’s hands.

“… he was born without one of his hands,” the doctor concluded.

For Dad, the next minutes clicked and clattered like an old silent movie unspooled by a projector. He listened but did not hear. He tried to hold the words in his head, align them exactly, but they wouldn’t stay in order. Instead, other words came, other questions.
I don’t know what I’m going to do about this
, he thought.
Who do I turn to? Can I handle this responsibility? Can I be the father to do that? Am I man enough?
He had been deeply unsure; now he was afraid.

Aunt Katie turned first to Dad. She saw defeat on his face and in his shoulders. He was sure right then that this was his fault. God had punished him for this whole mess, for Mom getting pregnant and her having to move away and them not being married, all of it.

A nurse arrived holding James Anthony Abbott, cleaned up and wrapped in a blue blanket. Wordlessly, she lifted one corner of the blanket and revealed the place where my right hand should have been. Mom raised her arms, accepting this tiny child.

She refitted the blanket around my right arm and held me tight.

D
AD SAT THAT
night at the kitchen table in Bloomfield Township. Aunt Katie sat across from him. Mom and I were together in the hospital room. Dad was inconsolable. He couldn’t be this little boy’s father. He was barely responsible enough to provide for himself and Mom. He had six months to serve with the National Guard. Who would take care of Mom and the baby then? It was all his fault, he kept saying. Maybe they should put up the baby for adoption, give him to people who could do this. Aunt Katie told him he was wrong, that no one was to blame, that the family would pitch in and help, that Dad was man enough to raise the boy.

Dad returned to Flint and to his mother, still emotionally spent, still unsure of what he should do. His mother grabbed him by the shirtsleeve. This time there would be no trip to his father’s portrait.

“Michael,” she nearly shouted, “you remember this: God takes away once, he gives back
twice
.”

Dad shook his head. Just words, he thought. This wasn’t what he wanted. He should be off in college, playing ball like his friends, being eighteen. He shouldn’t have a girlfriend in a hospital bed, a disabled child to raise, bills starting to come, a report date for the National Guard looming. The weight was unbearable. He turned away from his mother, who wouldn’t let go.

“You listen to me!” she shouted this time. “You can do this!”

He turned back and she said, quietly, confidently, reassuringly, “You have to.”

It was true. Dad nodded. He’d have to.

Mom and I were in the hospital for four days. In that time, doctors came, asked a few questions, and went. No, Mom told them, she hadn’t taken any medication, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke. There were
no accidents. There was no history of it in either family. The doctors nodded grimly. Mom didn’t have a lot of questions, which was fine, because the doctors had no answers anyway. During the pregnancy there’d been no complications, and no indications of complications. The doctors shrugged and shook their heads. They didn’t know why.

Really, it wouldn’t much matter why anymore. It just was.

CHAPTER 4

A
lbert Belle missed a curveball by eight inches and I knew I might be on to something. Matt Nokes thrust his mitt toward me and whipped strike three to Wade Boggs at third.

The second inning brought Belle, Randy Milligan, Manny Ramirez, and Candy Maldonado, all right-handed hitters, all protecting against my cut fastball. But, here I was, changing speeds, flipping a curveball that dove short of and under Belle’s swing, and on a full count.

Nokes knew we were on to something, too. I could tell by the way he sprang from his crouch after that breaking ball carried him toward Belle’s back leg. I was only four outs in, and I was throwing a lot of pitches, but getting Belle—one of the most ferocious hitters in the American League, he would hit 38 home runs and lead the league in RBIs that season—on his front foot, looking for something else, thinking he’d measured the cutter, was important.

I’d shown the Indians’ lineup, which had hammered me earlier that week, not just a second pitch, but an effective second pitch. And better than
them
knowing I had a curveball that day and would throw
it for a strike,
I
knew I had it. Nokes could ask for it. I could throw it, if not always for a strike, then so it looked for a long time like a strike, or so it looked like a ball and became a strike. At a time when I needed it, that pitch gave me the confidence to breathe a little. I asked for it, and it was there, almost perfectly so.

Also, I was counting on something to go well. I was getting outs, but they were a lot of effort. The ball had life, but I couldn’t establish enough command to really get rolling. Some of it was self-inflicted; I knew I had to change speeds more than I had in Cleveland, and the results at times were choppy. Part of it was just the natural process of me getting acquainted with the game. The feel of the ball in my hand. The feel of the mound under my feet. And part of it was trying to pitch back from failure, which was becoming more familiar to me than I would have liked.

I could see Nokes was enjoying this. The curveball was like a fun, new toy, and he wanted to pull it around the block a couple times, particularly against the Indians’ sluggers. After getting only 11 outs against the Indians in Cleveland, maybe I now had the stuff to get through the order a couple times, and not have the offense work so hard, and get me and the team to win a ballgame again. So, as the ball toured the infield after the strikeout of Belle, I pounded my glove, eager to get the ball back, happy to get after Milligan.