Tommy Sucks at Wiffle Ball

Tommy Sucks at Wiffle Ball

By Catherine Harnett

The first thing Patrick Michael the Archangel Flanagan sees when he rounds the corner of Dover and Pine, his house halfway down the street, is his four-year-old brother, Tommy, drawing in the driveway with fat pieces of chalk. He is making tulips, blue and pink, but bigger than the ones he makes with paper and crayons.

Tommy is obsessed with tulips; not daisies, not roses.

Jeez, is that all he can draw, Patrick mumbles to himself.

Aren’t these pretty? Tommy asks his big brother.

Patrick drops his banana-seat Schwinn in the driveway, in precisely the place his father pointed to, red-faced, yelling at the top of his lungs, that he almost ran over the goddam bike. I didn’t spend all Christmas Eve putting this goddamn bike together just so I could run it over six months later.

Patrick walks over to see the flowers more closely. Pink and blue, as always.

Yeah, they’re great. Better finish before the rain comes and washes them away.

 He turns his back on Tommy’s masterpiece, opens the kitchen door, goes straight to the refrigerator to gulp milk from the carton. His sister Nora is on the phone, the cord wrapped around her several times while she walks and talks at the same time. As if playing charades, she waves her left arm in a shoo-ing motion, holding the phone in the crook of her neck.

Get out of here, freak.        

Patrick lingers, looks in the cabinet for Oreos, takes his time. He enjoys seeing how wound up Nora gets, her red cheeks and her tight lips.

He doesn’t care who she is talking to—probably one of her pimpled friends, Linda or Valerie—he just hopes to hell she will tone it down while he watches the Mets. 

Nora has a habit of squealing ‘Eeewwwwww, nooooooooooooooo!’ during her conversations.

Patrick tells her that she sounds like a pig giving birth.

So jejune she mouths, knowing that Patrick can’t read her lips—and even if he could, he doesn’t know what the word means. Patrick thinks it is better to give the finger, which speaks volumes.

He turns the TV to Channel 9, sinks into the green couch, its malformed seat cushions. Despite frays and cigarette holes it is comfortable enough, but hard to get out of. Patrick has perfected rolling onto the floor with minimal effort. He doesn’t need to burden his legs.

He is still hungry. At the commercial he gets some pretzels to dunk in a Flintstones glass of milk, his usual indulgence while watching Koosman pitch.

Just as he settles in, Patrick hears something outside, a weird choking sound.

Jeez, I just sat down, and, some freakin’ thing is ruining the game already.

Patrick has a chill, realizes he sounds like his father, the irritation and cadence in his voice.

Tommy stands there, sobbing, not having moved an inch. Patrick sees his brother’s sad, wrinkled face. Snot runs down his top lip; it is hard for Tommy to speak.

Patrick asks what happened. He wipes Tommy’s nose with the back of his hand, rubs it on his shorts. Tommy struggles for enough breath to talk.

You-you-you said my-my-my flowers would disappear. You-you wanted them to disappear. In the rain.

Though it’s only been nine minutes, Patrick doesn’t remember what he said, but tells Tommy not to worry. Tommy’s shoulders stop heaving, but tears still run down his cheeks. Patrick reassures him that he can always start over tomorrow, maybe draw other things, trucks and houses. His little brother is silent, dubious.

He stands close to Patrick, the big brother who is often in trouble, a loudmouth, almost a stranger, twelve years between them.

Impatient and hot, Patrick takes a piece of pink chalk, bends down on his knees and draws a big circle. He tells Tommy to make a face, a ball, the moon, whatever the hell he can think of, and offers a fat blue piece, orders him to get him when it’s done.

Patrick doesn’t want to miss the line-up.

They were the Miracle Mets last summer. Not so miraculous this year.

Tommy looks at him obediently, then turns toward the chalk circle.

When Patrick looks back through the screen door, his brother is on his knees, his head tilted, figuring out where to start.

The game is a doubleheader played in another time zone, giving Patrick an ample dose of baseball. It’s the only good spot in his stupid freakin’ day. Ralph Kiner and Lindsay Nelson will do their regular annoying preview and wrap-up, but they interview players, so he’ll endure them.

Tommy calls for him, come out, come out, I’m done!

Patrick groans to himself, what the fuck do you want now?

Tommy’s knees hold tiny shiny pieces of asphalt as he stands near his chalk drawing.

Proudly, he points to the circle which has tulips inside its circumference. He asks Patrick to draw a house next to the tulips.

Patrick is silent. He resigns himself, then and there, to the fact that Tommy faces a future of ridicule on every bus he’ll ride, digging his hole deeper with every swipe of the chalk on the sidewalk, or crayon on construction paper.

Part Archangel, at least in name, Protector, Rescuer, Patrick Michael pulls Tommy away from his drawing, tugs at the collar of his tee-shirt, plants him on the patch of grass near the garage, tells him not to move. Tommy looks forlorn and confused, but stands perfectly still.

For Patrick, it is now or never: the day that Oops! Tommy will do boy stuff, catch and hit his first Wiffle ball.

The ball has seen better days, as has the bat, once bright red plastic, but now weirdly faded from the sun.    

Patrick had graduated to a small Louisville Slugger at Tommy’s age; it’s been so long since he’s thrown the plastic ball, it feels make-believe.

Let’s go in the backyard, we’ll take turns, I’ll throw it and you catch, then I’ll bat and hit it to you.

Tommy asks, does the ball hurt, what if I get hit?

Another day Patrick might have explained how light the ball was, and that the bat could hurt only if someone smacked it against the back of his legs; speaking from experience.

They play in the small backyard with its crabgrass and clothesline, where Patrick’s oafish friend examined Nora’s air-dried brassieres and panties last week.

With Tommy now, his dirty knees and untied Converses, the yard looks different. Pale yellow light, no predicted rain yet. No clothes on the line, just a small expanse of green.

Patrick throws the Wiffle ball gently underhand. Tommy misses it. Again and again, another six pitches.

It’s okay, you’ll get the hang of it.

Patrick is beginning to feel a little sorry for Tommy.

I’ll keep throwing to you, just try to catch it.

Eight drop, and on the ninth, Tommy finally catches the light ball in his cupped hands.

See, I got one! He squeals. I got the ball!

Officer Jack Flanagan appears through the screen at the bedroom window in his undershirt. Patrick hadn’t heard his father’s car, or loud threats to run his bike over. Must’ve had a good day—either he arrested a whole group of gamblers or sat at the precinct, telling lewd jokes.

Hey, he says, looking weirdly like a priest in the confessional box. Paddy, my lad, toss it to him a few times overhand, see what he’s made of.

He always calls his first son by the stupid old-man Irish version of his name.

Yeah, right. That’s all Tommy needs, more humiliation.

About this Paddy thing, all he knows is that he is descended from people who ran out of potatoes on the other side of the ocean. The only actual Irish people he’s met are his father’s bunch, who wear kilts and play bagpipes at funerals, and on March 17 march in a crummy parade, and Father Beane, the pasty pervert priest from Dublin. 

Patrick isn’t interested in the whole Old Sod, Galway stuff. He couldn’t care less that his traditional name is Padraig, and he hates, hates the Paddy thing.

Don’t call me that, you know how much it bothers me.

Grow a set of balls, Jack replies through the screen. You’re going to have to take a lot of shit from hundreds of shit-heads in your lifetime.

Patrick groans. He knows how important it is that his father see a Mickey Mantle Tommy, not a Grandma Moses Tommy.

Tommy starts to blink over and over, what he does when he hears loud television shows or while his parents fight. Nora is of the opinion that her sweet brother blinks as a defense from modern life’s assaults, like so many sensitive people and artists do.

Stop blinking like that, you’ll miss the ball. Here it comes. Don’t take your eyes off it.

Patrick throws the ventilated plastic sphere as gently as possible. It lands at Tommy’s feet. He drops to his knees and begins to rock from side to side. Patrick feels a pang, he doesn’t know what to say. He knows all Tommy wants is to show his father that he can. But actually, he can’t, he didn’t.

I wanted Daddy to see me, Daddy to see me, Tommy begins to cry. Patrick walks over to him, wipes snot off Tommy’s face with the hem of his Mets t-shirt, tells him it’s okay to blow his nose. Tommy looks down at his sneakers, tears running.

Patrick scrambles for words to comfort poor Tommy. He is not used to comforting.

Guess what, Daddy didn’t see you mess up, he doesn’t know you didn’t get the ball. Anyway, he’d tell me I threw it crappy, he always gives me Hell. He wasn’t there for more than a minute.

Tommy looks blankly at Patrick.

When I was pitching, I heard Ma calling him to come into the kitchen. So, he didn’t see anything, my lousy pitching, or you missing the ball.

Patrick puts the bat and ball in the garage.

You know, Tommy, sometimes good things come out of bad things. Like the other day, remember when Ma got so mad at me? She kicked me out of the house. She threw a sneaker at my head. But it turned out good because I got to hang out with my friends for a long time, and I didn’t have to eat that crummy smoked butt she made for supper.

A pink hunk of inexpensive pork, tied in a string.

Tommy looks at his brother, still blankly.

Take what just happened. You messed up—that was bad. But Daddy didn’t see it—that’s good. Get it?

Oh, is all Tommy says. He gets up and whisks grass off the back of his shorts. He puts his hand into Patrick’s.

Okay, another good thing, Patrick says, as they walk to the kitchen door, is that it didn’t rain. Your masterpiece will be there tomorrow, right? And remember, sometimes good is bad and sometimes bad is good, and you’ll just have to figure it out when you’re a big kid.

 Even Patrick knows how hard it is to grasp that invented concept. For someone like Tommy, whose world is composed of flowers, who knows nothing of numbers or letters, it will be uphill all the way.

For now, he holds his little brother’s hand, sweaty and wet from wiped tears and snot.

Let’s get some pretzels and watch the game.

Patrick knows Tommy hasn’t got a clue about baseball, even games on TV.

It doesn’t matter to Tommy. He has the chance to be with his big brother, who most of the time calls him a pest, behind his back and to his face.

Patrick brings a box of Mr. Salty Veri-Thin pretzels, with a silly sailor logo, over to the lumpy couch where Tommy sits, expectantly.

No bowl, no napkins. Being a dense teenage boy with no common sense, Patrick finds it easier to eat directly out of a box, a bag, drink milk or orange juice directly from the carton. It is justified as courtesy, one less item for his mother to wash.

Usually he ends his ill-mannered endeavors with a forced, dramatic burp. It’s what Jack Flanagan does, it’s what men do.

Patrick hasn’t yet perfected a post-Communion wafer belch, but he’s not giving up.

He tells Tommy not to stick his grubby little hand into the box, and grabs a bunch of pretzels with his big grubby hand to drop them on his brother’s lap.

It’s not only the pretzels Patrick wants: it’s the residual salt at the bottom of the box. He has it down, his head back like a baby bird waiting for the worm. The loose salt enters his gullet. It burns a little, but is exquisite. He moves to the second stage, licking his fingers to catch any salt that remains.

After a swig of orange juice, a wonderful sweet-salty experience is complete.

Jack Flanagan shouts from the kitchen, what the Hell’s going on in there?

Truth is that Jack loves the salt as much as Patrick does and his mature gullet functions more efficiently. Being the patriarch, Jack has first non-negotiable dibs on the Sodium Chloride. But Patrick has beat him to the punch today.

You dunce, take a glass of milk and set the table, you ass.

Jack sees Tommy on the couch.

He picks up the box, shakes it, and finds a teensy bit of salt at the bottom, leans his head back like his idiot son does.

Being a man, having been once a dopey teenage boy, Jack doesn’t care about free-wheeling germs lurking in the box. Patrick could have peed without washing his hands, so what?

Jack picks Tommy up off the couch, notices his sunburned cheeks.

Time for dinner, big guy. Know what, kid? From the window I saw you catch the ball. Way way better than your knucklehead brother was at four. 

Tommy thinks his father is talking about Patrick, but he’s not sure. He’s pretty sure whoever he referred to had fucked up.

What about this, kid? I’ll toss you a few balls on Saturday. You’re a champ, no doubt about it.

Jack tousles Tommy’s summer-lightened hair, It’s damp and salty and sticky from the little guy’s herculean efforts.

Patrick knows the little-boy smell of Tommy’s head won’t last forever. He was delightful once, too, he thinks, he must’ve been.

Catherine Harnett is a poet and fiction writer originally from Long Island; who grew up obsessed with the Miracle Mets in 1969. She spent the entire summer glued to the TV, listening to Ralph Kiner and Lindsey Nelson call the games. Winning her 6^th, Grade Spelling Bee, she was awarded a cheesy glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary, but rejected it, demanding the pack of baseball cards seized from misbehaving boys by Sister Tarcisius. Her poetry and fiction appear in numerous domestic and international publications and anthologies and have been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. Her entire career has been spent in the government—a Congressional staffer, and the Departments of State and Justice. Her home is in the D.C. area, which gives her the chance to root for the Nationals through thick and thin.

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