The muggy summer air was alive with the buzzing of dragonflies and the hum of midday exhaustion. My hair surrounded me like an entourage of curly fries, and if it wasn’t so devastated by bleach and chemical treatments it might have stuck to the sweat pouring down my back.

I adjusted the strap of my swimsuit, noting the ugly red strip it left on my skin. Ouch. I took a glance around; the only company I really had here was the rusty, dilapidated skeleton of my grandfather’s first love — a coupe from the forties — and the armies of red-faced ants climbing every stalk of grass in furious ambition. I slipped my red bikini top off from under my faded peach tank, throwing it carelessly down at my side. Now that I was sitting up, I pulled my sad mess of a perm into a lazy bun to keep it off my back and out from under my arms — it was physically impossible for it to absorb any sort of moisture, so all it did was imitate the feeling of rubbing my sweaty body on an old abused carpet. Which, I don’t know if you’ve ever done that, but it isn’t pleasant at all. It was more irritating even than the feel of the dry grass poking my low back as I lied back down, slipping the dumb heart-shaped glasses my mother gave me off my forehead and onto my nose.

I squinted through the foggy age-worn shades to look at the sky — the deep blue was scratched with the harsh trails of fake clouds that fell out behind the jets that tore through the sky every few days, dispersing and forming an odd spiderweb of shade. The sun was cruel and spared no one in the hottest wave yet this summer, the small animals and birds keeping quiet, hiding from the heat. In this weather, there was no prey and predator. Just a bunch of tired creatures, trying not to die.

“Fallon!” came a shrill voice, cutting through the quiet field like a call to arms. I sat up suddenly, surprised at my own attentiveness; I eased, though, recognizing the voice instantly. I stretched and considered putting my top back on, thought better of it, and rolled onto my feet. I slipped on my flip-flops, which I might add should have been thrown out a good two years ago. and shook the bits of grass and dirt off my shirt. I looked around; the house, which sat atop a small hill looking neglected and painfully rustic, was a hop skip and upwards trudge away. Leaning on one of the peeling beams that held up the roof above the porch was the owner of the voice. She was very thin, with sun-freckled skin that gathered pencil-line wrinkles around her neck, chest, and mouth; I noted the laughter lines around her eyes, which were very apparent for someone who never really laughed at all. Her eyes were harsh and the colour of half-dead grass, all faded green with yellow in the middles; currently, those eyes were watching me with considerable scrutiny, sizing up my walk, my hair, the way my arms swung too wide, my thighs too bare. It didn’t bother me, the downward turn of her mouth as I approached, the narrowing of her eyes as her nose twitched slightly in a reaction to reproach she never could help. As I came closer she crossed her arms, and in habit, I fixed my eyes on her skeletal hands, the veins bulging like fat earth worms under her skin. They looked like the hands of a woman much older.

“Hi mom,” I said, struggling to lift my eyes greet her critical stare.

“Fallon,” she said, her voice straining to show some semblance of emotion. “What were you —” she broke mid-sentence to look at me a little closer — I watched her eyes widen in a poorly-contained horror as she spotted the red bikini crumpled up in my hand. I didn’t try hiding it.

“Why aren’t you wearing an undershirt?” she scolded. “This isn’t the sixties, Al, show some respect.”

I hid my hand behind my back, as if that would make any difference. I responded to her with signature avoidance, a move I used quite often. “You’re home early,” I said conversationally. “Did you get laid off?”

Her eyes narrowed again and she seemed to forget all about the bra thing. She rolled her eyes. “No.”

“Then why are you back?” I persisted.

“What, am I not welcome in my own home?” she snapped. That was faster than I expected. I’ve had fourteen years to observe the way her brittle exterior cracked under pressure; by now I was a damn expert on how to break her down.

“I didn’t say that,” I said wryly, smiling in the way I knew she hated. “I’m sure you’re welcome in your own home. In San Francisco. But this is Texas, and this is Grandpa’s house, so you’ll have to ask him about that. Is that a new skirt?”

She let out a deep sigh and dropped her arms to her sides, throwing her eyes up as she spun around in exasperation. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered, thrusting open the squeaky screen door. I followed her inside, followed by a serenade of creaky wooden planks as I ducked into the kitchen and closed the door behind me with a click. My mother drifted through the old kitchen in a bride’s veil of long dirty blonde hair and heavy hemp skirts, her sandals scraping across the chipped floorboards. I wondered fleetingly, glancing at the unassuming state of disrepair, when last Grandpa had cared about the state of his dwelling. I felt quite certain it had been at least five or six years, give or take a day or so — since Grandma died. A twist of pity formed in my stomach, thinking about Grandpa, with his crooked smile and his twinkly pale eyes gleaming behind wire-frame spectacles, always putting on a brave show of contentment when I knew he missed her bad. Real, real bad. I missed Grandma, too, with her soft cheeks and her small animal teeth — the way she closed her eyes when she smiled and bowed her head when she laughed, covering her mouth and squinting when she knew something I didn’t. I wished she had been my mother. She would grab my face and press our cheeks together, cooing nothings to me whenever I said that to her. She never mentioned anything to my mom. I don’t think she had to; I’m sure it stung enough to know that my grandmother had been more of a mother to me than she had ever been. If she even knew that at all.

I watched her daughter walk into the small living room, dropping onto the old wicker bench with patchy green cushions, sending out a sigh of tired wood as she sank into it. She kicked off her sandals and lifted her feet onto the glass coffee table, that sported a crack that spanned the entire length of it, designed by yours truly when I was five years old and a little too excited with my brand new baseball bat. She reached over and grabbed a magazine she had read cover-to-cover for the fifteenth time, pursing her lips and clearing her throat to let me know she would not be responding to any attempt at communication for at least twenty minutes.

I leaned against the entryway, lifting my glasses onto my head again. I crossed my arms, silently watching her with a look I hope portrayed my desire to know why she was home from work five hours early. My mother was a cosmetologist and had recently gone to school to focus on aesthetics, and for a moment I wondered what could have possibly sent her home early on a Wednesday. Did they run out of hairspray? Did someone come in for a waxing and she had become nauseas, convincing her boss to let her come home to recover from possible emotional trauma? She completely ignored my presence though, so I sighed and gave in — it was too hot to put up a fight. I walked through the living room, past the front entrance that looked straight onto the staircase, and into the study down the hall. It wasn’t much of a study, really more of a tribute to baseball. And not real baseball — you wouldn’t find a photo of Jackie Robinson or any vintage signed hard balls with the stitches all torn and the glossy white turned yellow here. No, my grandpa didn’t care at all for that — the old box-back TV in the living room only had three cable channels and none of them were national sports. This room was all for my mother. My mother, and the boy she was going to marry when she was eleven; my mother, and the girl with the raging red hair who gave her lollipops when she hit a home run; my mother, and the kid from the poor part of town whose clothes were full of stitches but could run like the wind to second base; and they were celebrated in newspaper clippings, tin trophies painted gold and silver, old bats and balls stood up proudly on the shelves. My mother, who played baseball from age nine to sixteen, who met a handsome pitcher in high school and married him, and never once hit a home run.  

This was my grandpa’s hobby. Maybe more than a hobby — a passion seems fitting. To him, when one of the local kids hit a wild shot in the ball park, it was an exceptional event. He would grab my shoulder and shake it excitedly, like a child seeing their favourite cartoon character appear on screen, and say, “Jeepers, Fallon, didja see that one? Oh boy, that kid’s got an arm! By God, didja see that? He’s gonna go to the big leagues, Al, I’m tellin’ ya. By God!”

I didn’t get his obsession with the local Little Leaguers. To him, they were all little Babe Ruths, running around with their caps on backward and scowling in the sun, ready to make that perfect pitch, that mighty swing. All I saw was a bunch of bored kids melting in the summer heat and throwing tantrums when the coach called them over for breaking the rules. I would look at the stands and see all the mothers with their big sun hats, fanning themselves with magazines they’d rather be reading anywhere else, forcing a smile every once in awhile when their husbands would pat their legs, muttering, “Look, baby, look at our little girl! You go, honey! Show ‘em what you’re made of!”, throwing in a redneck “Yeehaw!” every once in awhile. I wondered if they meant it ironically. I saw the involved moms, with their baseball caps and sweat-stained T-shirts, screaming at their children like rabid hyenas, throwing their hands up when their kids struck one, two, three — sneering at the other parents when their kids outperformed the rest. I saw the grandparents, the aunts, the teachers, the empty seats for absent stepmothers and unbothered fathers — and no one wanted to be there more than my grandpa.

He was obsessed with with the spark of talent in them that he alone could see — it was magical to him, and he took pictures at every game and sold them to the local paper for fifteen years, until one mom got particularly unnerved and the police told him he couldn’t come within a hundred yards of a school zone.

I leaned in the doorway, quickly taking in the careful layout of the study; the heavy oak desk that my grandfather’s father fashioned from a fallen tree so long ago I couldn’t calculate it because math is hard; the five custom bobble-heads that stood welcoming guests with their exaggerated grins and hands in the air, mid-pitch, mid-swing; every detail, every photograph and memory so carefully placed. It filled me with a twisting sadness, not unlike the pity I felt when I thought of Grandma. I wondered why a man as gentle and compassionate as my grandfather was always dealt the losing hand.

Grandpa wasn’t here, so he must either be out buying vegetables from the farm over, or messing around with a hopeless bit of machinery somewhere in the barn. I wanted to see him, suddenly desperate; thinking about Grandma and his stolen dream made me miss him, his reassurance. Even if his two favourite hobbies — worshipping the Little League and listening to Grandma talk — were harder to do nowadays, he always found time to make me feel important. The attentive way he followed my words, offering suggestions when my mind went blank; the way he nodded, waiting every fourth nod to crack a twinkly smile, the way he gave great belly-laughs at the jokes my father taught me. He was my best friend.

I strode back to the living room, my mom exactly where I left her, completely engrossed in her magazine while she chewed on her fingernails. “Hey, where’s Grandpa?” I asked, walking right past her into the kitchen. I heard her grunt dismissively like I knew she would as I flung the back door open and welcomed a swarm of flies and strangling heat into my personal space. I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked across the sea of still golden grass to the old barn. Sometime in between my afternoon nap and journey indoors the barn had opened up, the heavy peeling doors giving way to the shady mystery within where, no doubt, Grandpa was tinkering with something or other.

I made the hot trek across the field to the barn, wading through the ocean of swaying wheat and the flies that followed me like the veil of the corpse’s bride. I came across a long-lost baseball cap that I had misplaced last summer sometime between disenchantment and childhood; it sported the insignia of one of my dad’s old company logos, back when he fancied himself a port operations manager — whatever the heck that meant. It was torn at the brim and the navy blue had faded to denim grey, and there were a few curious ants seeking refuge within — but for the most part it was still intact. I shook the dirt out from it and used it to fan the heat from my face, wondering how I’d completely forgotten something I’d treasured for so many years and marvelled at how well it had kept lying outside for near ten months. Dad gave me the hat when I was a seven. I was still young and eager enough to willingly accompany my father to his work outings with little to no complaint, I walked behind him like a good duckling as he went about, giving instructions and wearing a bright neon vest; me staring at him in awe and admiration as the forklifts whizzed past us like caffeinated kids on go-carts. Oh, how lucky he’d been to land that job, and how proud I’d been to tell the kids at school. ‘Manager’ was as good as ‘President of the Universe’ to me; and Mom must have agreed, as I’d never seen her more affectionate and content during that period of my life. She was a hairdresser at a two-bit salon that she worked at from nine to five, four days a week, and even though she hated it she would end every hourly complaint with, “But it’s only four days — I’ll survive. But you, Mister Manager, you’ve really got the gold pot, eh? My boy, my man. I’m so proud of you, hun.” Then she’d smile, the realest smile I’d ever seen her wear, and pet his head or kiss his cheek, my dad gushing like a schoolboy. I’d watch them and be filled with a sort of warmth and fullness I was very unused to, a feeling I visited in daydream memories these days — that must be where Mom got her laughter lines. When she smiled back then her skin was young and plump and glowing. Now she was blotchy, thin and hollow-cheeked. Even the makeup she used sometimes to hide the dark circles couldn’t mask it, the deep sadness that fed on her energy and mopped up her attention. I almost pitied her, but I still remembered that, even when she smiled for my father’s success, she kept her hands on both of his shoulders — far away from me.