Reading the Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Page i

CHAPTER ane

This is for my son Owen, who ended up teaching me a lot more about the game of baseball game than I always taught him

Pregame

THE WORLD had teeth and it could seize with teeth you with them any-time it wanted. Trisha McFarland discovered this when she was 9 years old. At 10 o'clock on a morning in early June she was sitting in the back seat of her mother'southward Dodge Caravan, wearing her blue Ruddy Sox batting exercise jersey (the ane with 36 GORDON on the back) and playing with Mona, her doll. At ten thirty she was lost in the woods. By 11 she was trying not to be terrified, trying non to permit herself recall, This is serious, this is very serious. Trying non to call back that sometimes when people got lost in the woods they got seriously hurt. Sometimes they died.

All considering I needed to pee, she thought. . . except she hadn't needed to pee all that desperately, and in whatsoever case she could take asked Mom and Pete to wait up the trail a minute while she went behind a tree. They were fighting over again, gosh what a surprise that was, and that was why she had dropped behind a little bit, and without maxim annihilation. That was why she had stepped off the trail and behind a high stand of bushes.

She needed a breather, uncomplicated every bit that. She was tired of listen-ing to them argue, tired of trying to audio bright and cheer-nine. ful, close to screaming at her mother, Permit him go, and so! If he wants to become back to Malden and live with Dad so much, why don't you just let him? I'd drive him myself if I had a license, only to get some peace and quiet around here! And what then? What would her mother say then? What kind of await would come over her face? And Pete. He was older, almost xiv, and not stupid, so why didn't he know better? Why couldn't he merely requite information technology a rest? Cut the crap was what she wanted to say to him (to both of them, really), just cut the crap.

The divorce had happened a twelvemonth ago, and their mother had gotten custody. Pete had protested the motion from sub-urban Boston to southern Maine bitterly and at length. Function of it really was wanting to be with Dad, and that was the lever he always used on Mom (he understood with some unerring instinct that information technology was the one he could plant the deepest and pull on the hardest), but Trisha knew it wasn't the only reason, or even the biggest one. The real reason Pete wanted out was that he hated Sanford Heart School.

In Malden he'd had information technology pretty well whipped. He'd run the computer club like it was his own private kingdom; he'd had friends - nerds, yeah, but they went effectually in a group and the bad kids didn't pick on them. At Sanford Middle there was no computer club and he'd only made a single friend, Eddie Rayburn. Then in January Eddie moved abroad, also the victim of a parental breakdown. That made Pete a loner, any-1'south game. Worse, a lot of kids laughed at him. He had picked up a nickname which he hated: Pete'south CompuWorld.

On most of the weekends when she and Pete didn't go downwards to Malden to be with their begetter, their female parent took them on outings. She was grimly dedicated to these, and although Trisha wished with all her heart that Mom would cease - it was on the outings that the worst fights hap-x pened - she knew that wasn't going to happen. Quilla Andersen (she had taken back her maiden name and you could bet Pete hated that, besides) had the courage of her con-victions.

Once, while staying at the Malden firm with Dad, Trisha had heard their father talking to his ain Dad on the phone. "If Quilla had been at Little Big Horn, the Indians would have lost," he said, and although Trisha didn't similar it when Dad said stuff similar that virtually Mom - it seemed babyish as well as disloyal - she couldn't deny that in that location was a nugget of truth in that particular ascertainment.

Over the last half-dozen months, every bit things grew steadily worse between Mom and Pete, she had taken them to the machine museum in Wiscasset, to the Shaker Village in Gray, to The New England Found-A-Torium in N Wyndham, to 6-Gun City in Randolph, New Hampshire, on a canoe trip down the Saco River, and on a skiing trip to Sugarloaf (where Trisha had sprained her ankle, an injury over which her mother and male parent had later had a screaming fight; what fun divorce was, what really good fun).

Sometimes, if he really liked a place, Pete would give his mouth a balance. He had pronounced Six-Gun City "for babies," but Mom had immune him to spend most of the visit in the room where the electronic games were, and Pete had gone abode not exactly happy simply at least silent. On the other paw, if Pete didn't like one of the places their Mom picked (his least favorite by far had been the Plant-A-Torium; returning to Sanford that mean solar day he had been in an especially boogery frame of mind), he was generous in shar-ing his opinion. "Go along to go forth" wasn't in his nature. Nor was it in their mother's, Trisha supposed. She herself idea it was an excellent philosophy, but of class everyone took i await at her and pronounced her her father's kid. Sometimes that bothered her, only mostly she liked it.

Trisha didn't care where they went on Saturdays, and would have been perfectly happy with a steady diet of amusement parks and mini-golf courses just because they minimized the increasingly horrible arguments. But Mom wanted the trips to exist instructive, besides - hence the Plant-A-Torium and Shaker Village. On top of his other problems, Pete resented having education rammed downwardly his throat on Saturdays, when he would rather have been up in his room, playing Sanitarium or Riven on his Mac. One time or twice he had shared his opinion ("This sucks!" pretty well summed it up) and then generously that Mom had sent him back to the car and told him to sit in that location and "compose himself " until she and Trisha came dorsum.

Trisha wanted to tell Mom she was wrong to care for him like he was a kindergartener who needed a fourth dimension-out - that someday they'd come up dorsum to the van and find it empty, Pete having decided to hitchhike dorsum to Massachusetts - but of course she said nothing. The Saturday outings themselves were wrong, but Mom would never take that. By the end of some of them Quilla Andersen looked at least 5 years older than when they had fix out, with deep lines grooved downwardly the sides of her mouth and 1 hand constantly rub-bing her temple, as if she had a headache. . . just she would still never stop. Trisha knew it. Peradventure if her female parent had been at Lilliputian Big Horn the Indians yet would have won, simply the body-count would accept been considerably higher.

This week'due south outing was to an unincorporated township in the western part of the land. The Appalachian Trail wound through the surface area on its fashion to New Hampshire. Sit down-ting at the kitchen tabular array the dark before, Mom had shown them photos from a brochure. Most of the pictures showed happy hikers either striding along a forest trail or standing at scenic lookouts, shading their eyes and peering across slap-up wooded valleys at the time-eroded but even so formidable peaks of the central White Mountains.

Pete sat at the table, looking cataclysmically bored, refus-ing to give the brochure more than than a glance. For her part, Mom had refused to notice his ostentatious lack of interest.

Trisha, every bit was increasingly her addiction, became brightly enthu-siastic.

These days she often sounded to herself like a con-testant on a Tv set game show, all but peeing in her pants at the thought of winning a fix of waterless cookware. And how did she experience to herself these days? Like gum holding together two pieces of something that was broken. Weak glue.

Quilla had closed the brochure and turned it over. On the back was a map. She tapped a snaky blue line. "This is Route 68," she said. "Nosotros'll park the car hither, in this parking lot. "

She tapped a little blue square. Now she traced 1 finger forth a snaky red line. "This is the Appalachian Trail between Route 68 and Route 302 in Due north Conway, New Hampshire. It'due south simply half dozen miles, and rated Moderate. Well. . .

this one little department in the middle is marked Moderate-to-Difficult, just not to the point where we'd need climbing gear or anything. "

She tapped another bluish square. Pete was leaning his head on one mitt, looking the other way. The heel of his palm had pulled the left side of his mouth u

p into a sneer. He had started getting pimples this twelvemonth and a fresh crop gleamed on his forehead. Trisha loved him, but sometimes - terminal night at the kitchen table, as Mom explained their route, for example - she hated him, besides. She wanted to tell him to stop beingness a chicken, because that was what information technology came down to when you cut to the hunt, every bit their Dad said. Pete wanted to run back to Malden with his footling teenage tail between his legs because he was a chicken. He didn't care about Mom, didn't care about Trisha, didn't even care if being with Dad would be good for him in the long run. What Pete cared about was not having anyone to eat tiffin with on the gym bleachers. What Pete cared near was that when he walked into homeroom after the beginning bell someone always yelled, "Hey CompuWorld! Howya doon, homo-boy?"

"This is the parking lot where nosotros come out," Mom had said, either not noticing that Pete wasn't looking at the map or pretending not to. "A van shows upward there around three.

It'll take u.s.a. back around to our car. 2 hours later on we're habitation over again, and I'll haul you guys to a movie if we're not as well tired. How does that audio?"

Pete had said nothing concluding night, but he'd had plenty to say this morning, starting with the ride up from Sanford.

He didn't want to exercise this, it was ultimately stupid, plus he'd heard it was going to pelting afterwards on, why did they accept to spend a whole Saturday walking in the woods during the worst time of the year for bugs, what if Trisha got poisonous substance ivy (equally if he cared), and on and on and on. Yatata-yatata-yatata.

He even had the gall to say he should be home studying for his final exams. Pete had never studied on Sabbatum in his life, every bit far as Trisha knew. At starting time Mom didn't answer, but finally he began getting under her pare. Given plenty time, he always did. By the time they got to the little dirt parking area on Route 68, her knuckles were white on the steering cycle and she was speaking in clipped tones which Trisha recognized all too well. Mom was leaving Condition Xanthous backside and going to Condition Blood-red. It was looking like a very long 6-mile walk through the western Maine wood, all in all.

At starting time Trisha had tried to divert them, exclaiming over barns and grazing horses and picturesque graveyards in her best oh-wow-it'due south-waterless-cookware voice, only they ignored her and after awhile she had simply sat in the back seat with Mona on her lap (her Dad liked to call Mona Moanie Balogna) and her knapsack beside her, listening to them debate and wondering if she herself might cry, or actually become crazy. Could your family fighting all the fourth dimension drive you crazy? Maybe when her female parent started rubbing her temples with the tips of her fingers, it wasn't because she had a headache simply because she was trying to go along her brains from undergoing spontaneous combustion or explosive decompression, or something.

To escape them, Trisha opened the door to her favorite fantasy. She took off her Cherry Sox cap and looked at the sig-nature written across the skirt in wide blackness felt-tip strokes; this helped get her in the mood. It was Tom Gor-don's signature. Pete liked Mo Vaughn, and their Mom was partial to Nomar Garciaparra, but Tom Gordon was Trisha's and her Dad's favorite Red Sox actor. Tom Gordon was the Red Sox closer; he came on in the 8th or 9th inning when the game was close but the Sox were yet on peak. Her Dad admired Gordon because he never seemed to lose his nerve - "Wink has got icewater in his veins," Larry McFar-country liked to say - and Trisha always said the same affair, sometimes calculation that she liked Gordon because he had the guts to throw a bend on three-and-oh (this was something her father had read to her in a Boston World column). Merely to Moanie Balogna and (once) to her girlfriend, Pepsi Robichaud, had she said more than. She told Pepsi she thought Tom Gordon was "pretty adept-looking. " To Mona she threw circumspection entirely to the winds, saying that Number 36 was the handsomest man alive, and if he ever touched her hand she'd faint. If he ever kissed her, fifty-fifty on the cheek, she idea she'd probably dice.

Now, as her female parent and her brother fought in the front seat - about the outing, virtually Sanford Middle School, well-nigh their dislocated life - Trisha looked at the signed cap her Dad had somehow gotten her in March, only before the season started, and thought this: I'm in Sanford Park, merely walking across the playground to Pepsi's house on an ordinary day. And there's this guy continuing at the hotdog carriage. He's wearing blueish jeans and a white T-shirt and he's got a gilt chain around his neck - he's got his dorsum to me but I can run into the chain winking in the sun. Then he turns around and I run into. . . oh I can't believe it but information technology'due south true, it's really him, information technology's To m Gordon, why he'south in Sanford is a mystery merely it's him, all right, and oh God his optics, just like when he'south looking in for the sign with men on base of operations, those eyes, and he smiles and says he's a niggling lost, he wonders if I know a boondocks chosen Due north Berwick, how to get at that place, and oh God, oh my God I'm shaking, I won't be able to say a discussion, I'll open my oral fissure and naught will come up out but a little dry squeak, what Dad calls a mousefart, only when I try I can speak, I sound almost normal, and I say. . .

I say, he says, then I say and and then he says: thinking about how they might talk while the fighting in the forepart seat of the Caravan drew steadily farther abroad. (Sometimes, Trisha had decided, silence was life's greatest approval. ) She was all the same looking fixedly at the signature on the visor of her base-ball cap when Mom turned into the parking surface area, still far abroad (Trish is off in her own world was how her father put it), unaware that there were teeth hidden in the ordinary tex-ture of things and she would soon know information technology. She was in San-ford, not in TR-90. She was in the town park, not at an entry-point to the Appalachian Trail. She was with Tom Gordon, Number 36, and he was offer to buy her a hot-domestic dog in exhange for directions to North Berwick.

Oh, bliss.

First Inning

MOM AND PETE gave it a residue as they got their packs and Quilla's wicker constitute-drove basket out of the van's dorsum end; Pete even helped Trisha go her pack settled evenly on her back, tightening ane of the straps, and she had a moment's foolish promise that at present things were going to exist all right.

"Kids got your ponchos?" Mom asked, looking up at the sky. In that location was still blue up at that place, but the clouds were thick-ening in the w. It very likely would pelting, but probably not presently enough for Pete to have a satisfying whine about being soaked.

"I've got mine, Mom!" Trisha chirruped in her oh-boy-waterlesscookware phonation.

Pete grunted something that might take been yes.

"Lunches?"

Affirmative from Trisha; another depression grunt from Pete.

"Practiced, considering I'm not sharing mine. " She locked the Caravan, then led them beyond the clay lot toward a sign marked TRAIL WEST, with an arrow below. There were perchance a dozen other cars in the lot, all but theirs with out-ofstate plates.

19. "Bug-spray?" Mom asked as they stepped onto the path leading to the trail. "Trish?"

"Got it!" she chirruped, non entirely positive she did but not wanting to stop with her back turned so that Mom could take a rummage. That would get Pete going again for certain. If they kept walking, though, he might see something which would involvement him, or at least distract him. A raccoon.

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