Chapter 20
“Eat shit, Martinez!” a voice bellows from somewhere nearby as the sound of an organ playing “Charge” blares out of the speakers above Fenway Park.
More boos arise from the crowd in the bleacher seats around us. The sky has darkened and the lights above are on, illuminating the field below so the green grass almost glows.
“Hey, Martinez, does your wife know you’re fucking us?!” someone else yells from behind us.
I lean toward where Ben is sitting to my right. “Who’s Martinez?”
“The guy who just got walked,” he says, nodding to first base as he throws a peanut in his mouth. “He came up through the Sox’s farm system and built his career here, then requested a trade last year.”
“Yeah, because the front office sucks!” Pete shouts, leaning forward as if the men on the field can hear him. “Typical nickel-and-dime bullshit they pull every year.”
Next to me, Ben nods in agreement. I laugh around a mouthful of popcorn.
Even after I agreed to take Lauren’s ticket, I still wasn’t sure if I should come. But then Ben grabbed one of his Red Sox caps from his apartment and slipped it on my head, blessedly taming my bangs, and there was no possible way I could say no.
During the T ride down to Fenway, Pete attempted to fill me in on the complete 125-year history of the team, but as the train grew more crowded with fans all headed to the same place, more and more people began interrupting him, adding nuance to his anecdotes or challenging his statistics.
When we finally arrived at the Fenway stop and the crowd emptied onto Comm Ave.
, we’d barely made it through the 1978 pennant race.
By then it didn’t matter. Any chance I would retain the information was gone the minute we were enveloped into the mass of people on Lansdowne Street, the smell of grilled sausages and onions filling the air, along with the yells and jeers as fans passed one another beneath the shadow of the stadium.
I followed Ben and Pete inside through the turnstile, dodging our way through the crowd and up a flight of stairs.
I was so wrapped up in the chaos I didn’t realize we were actually entering the park itself until there it was, sprawling out in front of me, the field glowing under the bright stadium lights.
Above it, the sunset painted the sky in vibrant pinks and yellows, extending out past the stadium walls.
I couldn’t imagine any of the other fans around us coming here and not being overwhelmed by awe.
Then the game started.
“Get off your knees, ump! You’re blowing the game!” the elderly woman sitting in front of us yells.
Strike three is called, and Pete lets out a sigh of relief as he leans back in his seat.
“Finally! Jesus!” Pete yells, then he turns to me, his demeanor immediately shifting from belligerent to attentive. “Okay, rewind. You moved from California because your ex-boyfriend got a job here?”
I nod as I throw another piece of popcorn in my mouth.
Over the course of the past five innings, Pete has made a concentrated effort to learn everything he can about me, like he’s filling in the gaps of whatever information Ben had shared before.
He didn’t appear to know about the injury, though, or my memory loss, and I wasn’t in a rush to tell him.
It wasn’t that I was trying to keep it a secret; I was simply enjoying the fact that, for one night at least, it wasn’t the center of the conversation.
“Then you broke up with said boyfriend, and now you’re living across the hall from this guy,” Pete continues, nodding to Ben.
“Yup,” I say.
“Well, that sucks,” Pete says.
Ben throws him a look.
“Not you,” Pete says, waving him off. “I’m just saying, if I moved here from California and didn’t have a reason to stay, I’d go back in a heartbeat.”
“You’d never get Lauren past Rhode Island,” Ben says flatly.
“True,” Pete murmurs, taking a sip of his beer.
I smile. “How did you two meet?”
“High school. We were in the same algebra class freshman year.”
“Lauren turned him in for cheating on a midterm,” Ben adds grimly, as if he’s reprimanding a child.
“Yeah, she’s a narc,” Pete quips with a sigh, as if he’s never loved her more. Then he turns back to me. “So what do you do, Marnie from Malibu?”
I take a big sip of my soda as I try to think how to answer that question.
What do I do? It feels like, for the first time in years, I’ve been trying to work that out.
But I have no idea how to explain that to Pete without launching into a diatribe that reveals everything else.
Well, I spent five years building a career in HR, but quit to become a barista and take photography classes in my spare time, which I’m really excited about even though I have no memory of why I did any of it.
I swallow and still have no clue what to say, but thankfully Ben speaks first.
“They’re starting Ronson again,” Ben says, nodding out to the field.
Pete’s head whips around to watch the pitcher jog toward the mound.
“Give it up, man!” he shouts. “It’s over!”
Pete forgets to follow up as the inning begins, then we lose him to a rousing rendition of “Sweet Caroline” pumped through the speakers during the seventh-inning stretch.
The entire stadium seems to be on its feet, swaying to the music and belting out the lyrics in every key except the one intended by Neil Diamond.
When it’s over, Pete leaves to find the bathroom, sliding past the other people in our row and heading toward concessions.
“I like Pete,” I say after a moment.
“Don’t tell him that,” Ben murmurs, his gaze sliding across the field. “It’ll go straight to his head.”
I laugh.
“He can get intense with the questions, though,” Ben continues, turning to face me. “Feel free to tell him to back off.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
I expect that to be enough for us to move on, but Ben’s attention stays glued to me, his gaze focused on my eyes, my lips, my cheeks, like he’s checking to see if I’m really okay. Doctor Sweater assessing his patient.
The thought turns my blood to hot syrup in my veins, and I look back to the field, pretending to be very invested in who is where, and not at all distracted by the fact that the seats at Fenway are so close that Ben’s arm is tucked next to mine on the armrest. How I can smell sandalwood and soap even amid the mess of food around us.
How I can feel the warmth radiating off him so much I can’t even tell if the temperature has dropped with the sun.
“When was the first time you came here?” I ask.
“In high school. My best friend and I almost got arrested over in the grandstand.”
I turn to him, incredulous. “Excuse me?”
The corner of his mouth ticks up. “I bought tickets off a scalper for Game 4 of the playoffs. It cost all the money I saved that summer, but I thought it was worth it. We get here, we actually make it inside, but when we get to our seats, there were already people in them.” He shakes his head.
“If we were smart, we would have kept our mouths shut, grabbed some food, and watched the game from the concession stand. But we weren’t smart.
We found a security guy and told him there were people in our seats.
He took one look at our tickets and brought us downstairs. ”
“What’s downstairs?”
“A prison.”
My eyes go wide, and he’s no longer able to temper his smile. It broadens across his face, and suddenly I can see him at that age: a teenager fumbling his way toward adulthood. “I’m kidding. It’s just their security office.”
“What happened then?”
“I think the fact that we essentially turned ourselves in was enough evidence to prove we weren’t trying to scam anybody.
We were just idiots,” he says. “It helped that my friend Moe’s face was painted like a red-and-white checkerboard, too.
So they let us go and we watched the rest of the game from the Cask ’n Flagon over on Lansdowne Street. ”
I laugh, a bit of the tension releasing from my shoulders. The sound of an organ playing echoes through the speakers above us.
“Hey, Bobby! You sure you’re right-handed?” someone nearby yells.
More people join in, and I laugh as they all start arguing with each other. After another moment, I turn back and catch Ben watching me. The corner of his mouth is still turned up, but there’s that softness in his eyes that I haven’t seen since that day in Harvard Square.
I’m happy right now, I think. Even if I never get the courage to tell that to Ben, even if we’re never anything more than what we are right now, I will always remember that in this moment, with him, I was really and truly happy.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod. “Thank you for inviting me tonight, Ben.”
He leans in like he’s about to tell me a secret. “Thanks for coming, Marnie.”