Agnes Mallory Read Free

the creation of the world when I first saw her. An autumn in the Sixties. An autumn dusk.
    I was playing fungo, first, on Hampshire Road. The dark was thickening. When I whopped the tennis ball into the air, it would nearly vanish in the purple line of sky between the trees. My friends, Freddy and Dave – the two who had not been called in yet for dinner – would wait for it down the street, frozen, mitts tensed at their thighs. Then, out of the twilight, the dirty old thing would fall. Bounce right between them more often than not. And there would be much lunging, pivoting and hurling as we had seen it done in ballgames on TV.
    We played in the street in front of a house, a specific house, which was directly in line with the sewer we used for home plate. It was a small ranch-style house, the broad boards painted gray. It had a picture window out in front – that was the main point, that was the whole idea. When it got dark enough like this, and the lights were off inside, the wide picture pane took on an ebony sheen on which soft reflections rippled: the branches of the apple tree on the narrow lawn, the sweep of the batter when he came around, and so on. When this time came, when you couldn’t see, in other words, through the glass, Andrea Fiedler, so I believed, would stand inside the house and watch me. I didn’t dare to glance over much, not much, but I thought I’d spotted her outline hovering in the dark interior once or twice. Always, to be safe, I assumed she was stationed there, looking on. It brought out the masterful in me. The home-run swing, the hot corner snag when the ball was tossed back; every movement very dramatic. The window was a grand canvas – and baseball was a fine setting – for my heroism, my rectitude.
    I was nine years old then. I was blond and lithe and fine-featured with noble blue eyes. I was a leader on the street or in the playground, looked to by the others for rulings and judgements. At games like these, bat in hand, I would stride the field, pointing to errors, settling disputes. Smaller kids would appeal to me as if by nature when they were shouldered out of a play. And when bullies – like Ira Wertzer and his pals – biked in to start trouble, they saw that I was on the scene and pedaled past. I was a man of peace, of course, but quick with my fists when I had to be. Better yet, I had perfected a menacing glint in my blue eyes from watching old movies like Davy Crockett and Shane on TV. All this, a measure of all this, was being drunk in, I figured, by the window’s ebony depths, by Andrea’s shadowy form behind the glass.
    Now, as night gathered finally, I had set myself up for one last Homeric blow. My bat was in my right hand, the barrel on my shoulder. My left hand was slung low with the ball cupped in it. I had to squint to see my friends out there. I heard them laughing about the dark. The smell of wet leaves and the cold were in my nostrils and I could feel Andrea watching me, I could imagine her eyes.
    â€˜Car!’ Dave called from the outfield.
    â€˜Hey, Harry!’ said Freddy. ‘Isn’t that your Dad?’
    I looked over my shoulder. I saw the widely spaced headlights of my father’s Cadillac. He had the dome light flicked on inside so I could make him out behind the wheel. He beckoned to me. The headlights went off, then on again, then off, then on.
    â€˜Now I just want to tell you one thing,’ my father said as we drove along. He was speaking in his Serious Voice. ‘Your grandfather is very ill.’
    â€˜I know, I know.’
    â€˜Well, I just want to tell you.’
    â€˜Well, I know,’ I said.
    I slumped in my seat blowing long breaths from puffed cheeks. Tapping out a rhythm on my folded baseball mitt. We were zipping quickly along the road to the train station, a wider road than most where the huge Caddy could flex. Outside, in the dark, in the fall wind, the waggling fingers of the