My Most Excellent Year (27 page)

Now I know why Hucky believes in chalk pavements pictures. Right now, I’m ready to believe just about
any
thing.

Fondly,

Alejandra

Dear Jacqueline,

Another plot between father and son. “Would it be okay with you if we could rewind to the first day and just be friends?” Honestly. At least the “um” possessed a peculiar sort of subtlety. Even a blockhead like Helena wouldn’t have fallen for
this
one. Do men really think we’re all idiots?? But if we’re not, why did Anthony suddenly get cuter?

Dinner was supposed to have been about our baseball diamond, but that only took ten minutes. In fact, the hangaburs hadn’t even made it to the table yet.

MANZANAR BATTLE PLAN—PHASE 2

1. Find out who the leaders of the Japanese American
   community are and let them know what we’re trying to do. (Anthony has 4 names already.)
   
2. Get ahold of a lawyer named Dale Minami in San Francisco who got them their civil rights back in 1983. (Anthony has his address but Alé writes better, so she’s in charge.)
   
3. Start tracking down the old guys who used to play for the San Fernando Aces. (Maybe the Hall of Fame can help us.)
   
4. Make sure that everything we mail out is CC’d to the Senate and to Fred Hoyt. (Especially to Fred Hoyt.)
   
5. It’s time to bring in the heavy artillery and call Aunt Ruth. Since she’s usually willing to start any House of Repre-sentatives committee that pisses off the president, she’ll be our secret weapon when we need her. (Anthony and Alé should both talk to her.)
   

At his insistence, we met at the Brookline Café so we could sit in the Bobby Kennedy booth. Of course, the waiter had no idea which of the two seats the tantrum-throwing attorney general had actually occupied—but we figured it was probably the one by the window, so that’s where I made Anthony sit. He was welcome to any karma that still lingered, though personally I’d have gotten rid of it all with Lysol. Wouldn’t it be funny if everyone who sat there became whiny and self-centered?

It turns out that the Brookline Café—despite a menu that spells
“spinach” with a t—holds a place of honor in the Keller family, since it’s where Anthony’s father took his mother on their first unofficial date together. Anthony is always so hesitant when he speaks of her that when he awkwardly showed me the picture he’s begun carrying in his wallet, I was momentarily startled—though I could see instantly who gave him his blue eyes. She reminded me of a young Emma Thompson, only lovelier. Evidently, Ted and Nikki met at Fenway Park on an October afternoon in 1978 when an annual fluke put the Red Sox one game away from the American League playoffs, as though they actually deserved to be there.

“Pop’s scalper on Kenmore Square charged him $215 for Infield Grandstand Section 20, Seat 103,” confided Anthony, “and Mama’s scalper on Yawkey Way only charged her $125 for Infield Grandstand Section 20, Seat 104. She never let him forget it.” (I liked her already.)

They didn’t say much to each other for the first few innings—she brought him a beer and he brought her a hot dog on two separate trips to the concession stand, and that pretty much maxed out the conversation. But as soon as the Red Sox had gone up 2–0, they both began to panic at the same moment—and by the time Bucky F. Dent had come to bat in the seventh inning for the Yankees, with Chris Chambliss and Roy White on base, “Mama and Pop were squeezing each other’s hands like two
Titanic
survivors who were getting ready to jump off the stern together.”

After the Yankees had won it all by the predictable score of 5–4, Ted and Nikki remained in their seats for another stunned half hour without uttering a sound. (Come to think of it, if I’d just spent $340 on two tickets worth $13.80, I’d have taken my time too.) Then they introduced themselves to each other, and “Pop invited Mama to
have dinner with him in Bobby Kennedy’s booth. Mama was sitting where you are.” (I have no information on how she felt about your ratty brother-in-law.)

Ted was a college baseball player with a B.A. from Boston University who wanted to build houses, and Nikki was a Newburyport native with a master’s degree in American history from Brandeis. Boy, did she make him sweat. They didn’t agree on movies, wine, or books, she wouldn’t let him give her flowers, and she never seemed to be at home when he called. (According to Anthony, “She was actually sitting by the answering machine listening, but he didn’t find that out until their second anniversary.”) Finally he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Nikki, this is Ted. These are my terms. I’ll learn to like cabernet, I’ll give
To Kill a Mockingbird
one more shot, and I won’t send roses. But on Saturday night I’m taking you to see
The Buddy Holly Story
in Cambridge and after that we’re going out to dinner. You can pick where. So if you’ve already made other plans, break ’em. And meet me at the theatre at 7:15 because I’m not going to call you again.”

She got there at 7:10. And at 11:30, he kissed her for the first time on the corner of Church Street and Mass Ave.

Anthony was born on February 16, 1989, and even though his mother had been hoping it would happen two days earlier, she still called him “my Valentine baby” for the rest of her life. She helped him figure out Santa Claus’s secret identity (he was really Mr. Zentz at the drugstore), she taught him how to find lost purple balloons (“Watch the sky and remember how much you love it, and it’ll come back to you”), and he even got a letter in the mailbox from the Tooth Fairy, thanking him for the cookie he’d left with his molar.

Then, when he was four, his goldfish Cleo died, and he cried for two nights in a row—not because of Cleo, but because he was afraid that one day his mother was going to die too. So she sat up with him until he finally fell asleep, holding his hand and repeating over and
over, “I’m not going
any
where, and I’ll be here as long as you need me.” That was a month before she found the lump in her breast.

Anthony knew his mother was sick, but when you’re that young there’s no real difference between chicken pox and cancer. Just before she started chemotherapy, she was teaching him how to ride a bicycle by himself. First she’d walk along the sidewalk with him—holding the handlebars so he wouldn’t wobble—and once he’d gotten the hang of it, she’d let go. But somehow he always managed to topple over into the grass. So when he raced into her hospital room three weeks later and jumped onto her bed, the front-page headline was, “Mama! I made it to the end of the street without falling off once!” Nikki immediately broke into a huge smile and wrapped her arms around him tightly.

“Now,
that’s
good news,” she said, kissing the top of his head. “Do you know how proud I am?” And that was the last time he ever saw her. She died the following morning, and all Anthony could remember was “I’ll be here as long as you need me.”

“I was only six,” he mumbled quietly, finishing off his french fries, “so I thought that since I’d told her I could ride a bicycle by myself, maybe she didn’t think I needed her anymore. That’s why I always figured it was my fault. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

There was nothing for me to say. Even if I’d been able to.

During the walk home, Anthony was back to making plans for our baseball diamond, but I didn’t hear very much of it.
No wonder he’s tracking down Mary Poppins for a six-year-old boy. I could
never
have survived losing my mother. How can there still be room in his heart for Buck Weaver and Manzanar and Hucky and Augie and me too??

Jacqueline, whether or not I ever give the American people majesty, I’m going to fall in love with Anthony Keller anyway. As soon as he learns that all I want him to be is Anthony. Without the ploys and gimmicks.

Why is it so hard to keep them real?

Fondly,

Alejandra