Change Up Read online

  By the time the late afternoon had come around I was getting frustrated. I went out the back door of my parent’s house and decided to take a walk. I walked down the path towards the stables, kicking gravel along the way, trying to come up with a scenario where Izzy and Kristin could both be happy. There didn’t seem to be any happy medium anywhere.

  Part of me felt like Izzy was unreasonable, acting up and acting out like she was a petulant child who just wanted to get what she wanted. The other part of me felt incredible guilt because she felt like I was never there for her through all these years. I always tried to do what was best for her and put her first in my life, whether she realized it or not, but somewhere along the line that became lost on her. Even though she had my parents around to love her and take care of her, I realized that maybe she was feeling like her parents, both her mother and myself, had left her to her own devices.

  I had reached the stables and walked inside. There was no one to be seen in the stables area since it was both Sunday and later in the day. I could hear the strands of hay crunch beneath my feet as I walked along, looking at the horses as they seemed to stare back at me. I stopped at the stall for Pops, giving him a friendly pat.

  “Life’s a lot easier for you I think, Pops,” I said to him.

  “Oh, I don’t think they have it so easy,” I heard a voice walking towards me. I looked over and saw Dad walking towards me. “They have to deal with us all day long, waiting for us to tend to them. I’m sure they get just as frustrated with everything as we do.”

  Dad came over and stood next to me. “Feeling any better?” he asked me as he took a piece of apple out of his jacket and gave it to Pops to munch on. The horse happily took it in his teeth and enjoyed the snack.

  “Not really,” I told Dad honestly as I turned from the stall and started the slow walk back out of the stables. “I want to understand where Izzy is coming from Dad, I really do. I’m just having a hard time seeing it, where all the anger and resentment is coming from. She’s not like that with you and Mom, is she?”

  “No, she’s not Wes, but we’re not her parents. Does she act up and do the typical teenage girl stuff now and then? Of course, she does. If she didn’t, I would be worried about her. But you’re her father, Wes. The relationship is different, and her expectations of you are different. She tries so hard to do the right thing all the time, to make you proud of her.”

  “I am proud of her Dad,” I said in my defense. “She knows that I am.”

  “Maybe so, Wes,” Dad answered. “But I think there are lots of times in her life where she wishes you were here with her, for good times and bad, so that you can share in her life with her. She’s not a kid anymore Wes; you can’t just buy her a toy or take her on vacation, and everything is fine. She needs more than that now.”

  “I’m not going to feel guilty about what I do, Dad,” I said to him. “My career has given her opportunities that other kids her age may never have. I know it hasn’t always been easy for her, but it’s not easy for me either. I’ve had to watch her grow into a young woman and know that I’ve missed a big portion of her life.”

  “I know it hasn’t always been easy for you Wes,” Dad said as he put his arm around me. “You’ve made sacrifices for her, for us as a family. Maybe Izzy doesn’t understand that, or maybe you need to talk to her about it to explain that to her.”

  The two of us walked along the path back towards the house. As we walked in the back door and into the kitchen, Mom was there getting dinner together. Izzy was in the kitchen with her, peeling some potatoes. I smiled over at her, and she quickly looked away, going back to her task. I opened the fridge and grabbed a cold bottle of water and left the kitchen quietly.

  Dad was sitting in the living room now, in his recliner, flipping channels on the TV. I sat down on the couch next to him, hoping some mindless TV could take my mind off everything else that happened today. Dad had settled on the sports channel, and I could see a game was coming on. It was then that it dawned on me that it was Opening Night for baseball. The season was starting, and I wasn’t part of it.

  The graphics flashed on the screen, and I could see that the game was taking place at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. Of course, with my luck lately, the Reds were playing the Pirates tonight.

  Dad looked over at me. “I can turn it off if you don’t want to watch it,” he said to me, pointing the remote at the TV.

  “It’s fine, Dad,” I said resignedly. Part of me was curious to see the team and how they would fare tonight. It was odd for me to watch the game from this perspective for the first time in a very long time. I would normally be out in the field or on the bench, watching the action right in front of me, hearing the sounds of the ballpark, the smell of the grass or the leather of my glove. Instead, I was sitting on the couch, smelling the pork chops Mom was cooking in the kitchen.

  I took a glance at the lineup for the Pirates and saw that Bill Thomas was playing first base and batting fourth, my usual spot. I had nothing personal against Bill. In fact, I had helped him last year in spring training and this year, giving him advice about playing first base, helping him with defensive positioning, and giving him tips about reading certain pitchers and what to expect in situations. He seemed like a good kid, all of twenty-one, and I was in the same boat he is in now years ago, taking over a position from an older player.

  The Pirates went down quickly in the top of the first before it was the Reds turn to hit. John Stephenson was pitching for the Pirates, a pitcher that had been with the team a few years now and I got to know. He had good stuff and had been the best pitcher on the staff the last couple of seasons, earning him the Opening Day start. Unfortunately for John, he got off to a rocky start, walking the first two batters and then giving up a ringing double to left-center to drive in a run. The Reds quickly followed that up with a single, another double and another walk to load the bases. It wasn’t going well for the Bucs tonight, with the bases loaded already and no one out.

  The Reds first baseman, Bob Irving, who like me was an older player on a team of youngsters, was next up. Bob was a big, strong guy that had seen his numbers taper off in recent years, pushing him down to batting seventh in the lineup. The first two pitches to him from Stephenson were well out of the strike zone. I thought this was the point where I would normally walk over to the mound to calm my pitcher down, help him regain focus, and may give him a kick in the butt to get someone out, but Bill Thomas didn’t move off his position.

  Rookie mistake, I thought to myself.

  Instead, the Pirate pitching coach, Pete Starling, jumped out of the dugout for a mound visit to try to settle Stephenson down. Stephenson simply nodded at him a few times as he spoke, likely agreeing that he had been lousy so far and needed to change the course of the game.

  After the mound meeting, Stephenson focused in on the catcher, nodded, and proceeded to throw a fastball in on the hands of Bob Irving, ricocheting off him and down the third base line. Irving immediately dropped his bat, shook his wrist, and squatted down, clearly in pain. The umpire signaled a hit batter and waved him to first, forcing another run home, but I could tell by the look on Irving’s face that he was hurt. The trainers came out while Reds’ fans rained boos down on Stephenson for hitting their player.

  The close-up replays they show on TV today showed a clear view of the ball hitting Irving square on the wrist. It certainly didn’t look good watching it on TV that way. When something like that happens during the game, when you are that close you can almost hear the ball striking bone and breaking it, and I can imagine Bob Irving let out quite a yell and a bunch of expletives as it happened to him.

  It wasn’t long after the hit batter that Mom was calling Dad and me in for dinner. We sat around the table, and I looked down at the meal set.

  “Looks great Mom,” I said to her as I placed a pork chop on my plate and passed the platter over to Dad.

  “Thank you,” she said nicely. “I don’t have the energy to cook mu
ch anymore, but I felt good today. Izzy helped me quite a bit actually; she’s usually the real cook around here.”

  I looked over and smiled at Izzy as she put some roasted potatoes on her plate. She glanced at me and then looked right down to her plate. She didn’t show any signs of breaking the silent treatment just yet.

  Dinner passed quietly, with Dad offering up some small talk about the schedule for the horses this week, and Mom mentioning that she had some doctor’s visits this week to take care of. Other than that, the conversation was limited as everyone seemed afraid of saying the wrong thing.

  I helped to start to clean up and went to take Izzy’s plate. She didn’t even look up and looked right at my mother.

  “Is it okay if I skip cleanup tonight, Grandma? I have some stuff to get ready for school tomorrow.” Mom gave me a look to see what I thought, but I just picked up the plate and turned towards the sink.

  “Sure honey,” Mom said to her. “That’s fine.”

  Izzy got up from the table and walked out towards her room. I loaded items in the dishwasher as Mom passed them to me.

  “How long do you think this will go on?” I said to Mom.

  “Hard to say,” Mom said as she passed me another dirty dish. “She’s a teenage girl and has the stubbornness of her father, so I am guessing it could be a while,” Mom said with a smile.

  By the time I was done with cleaning the kitchen, the ballgame had pretty much gotten out of control. The Reds scored a few more times while we ate, and by the time we got back to the game it was the seventh inning and the Reds were winning 8-0. Things looked bad for the Pirates. It got worse when the Reds had a man on second and a groundball to short occurred. The shortstop made the easy toss to first, but Bill Thomas whiffed the ball and missed it completely, leading to another run scoring.

  “This is ugly,” Dad griped to me. “Are you done with this?” he said to me in frustration, anxious to turn the TV off.

  “I was done a while ago,” I told him. I could smell that Mom had put the coffee on in the kitchen and walked in to see her cutting a few slices of a pound cake and sprinkling some blueberries on it.

  “Nice looking cake,” I said to her as I poured some coffee.

  “Izzy made it,” Mom said. “I think she was doing anything she could today to take her mind off things. Want some?”

  “No thanks, Mom,” I said to her. “Coffee is good for me.”

  “I’ll have some cake,” Dad chimed in, as he took one of the plates and sat at the table. Mom cut herself a slice and poured coffee for her and Dad, and the three of us sat down at the table.

  Mom smiled over at me as I sipped my coffee. “What are you smiling about?” I asked her.

  “This is nice,” she said to me. “The three of us haven’t sat at a table like this in a very long time.”

  “It is nice Mom,” I said to her, returning her smile. I stared off as I took another sip of coffee.

  “But you think it could be better,” she said to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “It’s just hard to get it all out of my head.”

  “You’ll work it out Wes,” Mom said to me. “I know everything will work out as it’s supposed to.”

  “And how do you know that?” I asked, sitting back in the chair.

  “Oh, a mother just knows these things, Wesley, trust me.”

  I took another sip of coffee and then felt my phone vibrate and heard it ring. I looked directly at Mom and froze for a moment before I answered it. Mom just smiled at me again.

  I grabbed my phone and stood hope, hopeful it was Kristin. Instead, I saw it was Randy calling me.

  “It’s just Randy,” I told my parents, sounding disappointed. I pressed the phone and answered.

  “Hey Randy,” I said to him as I walked around the kitchen.

  “Wes, how’s it going?” Randy said to me, sounding like he was out of breath.

  “Okay, I guess,” I answered. “Why do you sound like you just ran a marathon?”

  “Sorry, I was on the treadmill working out, and then my phone rang, and well… it doesn’t matter. Did you see the game tonight?” he asked me.

  “I watched some of it before it got really ugly.”

  “Well, the game sucked for the Pirates, but I just got off the phone with Felix Burton, the Reds’ GM. Turns out Bob Irving broke his wrist. He’s going to be out for a few months. They wanted to know if you were interested in signing with them,” he said excitedly.

  I was feeling a bit of shock. I had been hoping for a phone call from someone, anyone, so I could get back to playing, but with everything else going on, I hadn’t really thought much about playing again at all.

  “Wes? You there?” Randy yelled into the phone.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I told him. “I guess I’m just surprised is all. I feel bad for Bob; that’s a lousy thing to happen the first game.”

  “Rough for him, good for you,” Randy said hurriedly. “Think about it, Wes. This is the perfect script. Your comeback against the team you have been with for years. The team wants you there tomorrow for the afternoon game in Cincinnati. I can fax the paperwork to you. I can get you on a flight out tonight if you want, or there’s one tomorrow morning first thing.”

  “There’s nothing later?” I asked Randy. He paused for a second before answering.

  “Well the game is at 1, Wes; how much later do you want it to be? It’s less than an hour flight non-stop. The best I can do is have you fly out by 10.”

  “How about I just drive there?” I responded. “It’s only a four-hour drive from here.”

  “What’s going on with you? You should be more excited about this. This what you wanted, right?”

  I looked around the room at Mom and Dad, both staring at me, wondering what was going on.

  “Can I call you right back Randy?” I asked.

  “Sure, Wes, but I need to hear from you right away so we can make arrangements and get contracts going, so call me, okay?”

  “No problem, I told him. “I’ll get back to you in 5 minutes.” I hung up the phone.

  “Randy has an offer for you?” Dad asked me.

  “Yeah, the Reds want me to come in and start tomorrow,” I told him and Mom.

  “That’s great,” Mom said quietly. “Congratulations, Wes.”

  “I just don’t know if it’s the right time to do this,” I said to both of them. “Leaving right now, with the way things are with Izzy… and with…” my voice trailed off as they both knew where I was going with this.

  Dad walked over to me and stood in front of me.

  “Wes, we’ll stand behind you whatever you want to do, you know that,” he said. “If you want to wait a little while and see if something else comes along, that’s fine. You want to retire, that’s fine too. But don’t do something that you might regret. You don’t know if you’ll get asked by another team or not. This might be your last chance.”

  “I have to talk to Izzy,” I said as I walked down the hall to her room. I tapped lightly on the door and heard a soft voice say, “come in.”

  I walked in and saw Izzy’s face, looking surprised that it was me.

  “I… I thought it was Grandma,” she said, turning her attention back to her laptop.

  “Izzy, I need to talk to you,” I said as I sat down on the bed near her.

  “Dad, I don’t want to get into this again, not now. I have to study and get ready for school tomorrow.”

  “It’s not about… all this stuff,” I said to her. “Randy just called me. The Reds want me to play for them. I would have to be there tomorrow.”

  Izzy looked over at me, looking at surprised at first, and then a look of resignation on her face. “Are you going?” she asked me.

  “Not if you don’t want me to,” I said to her. “I can’t leave here knowing that there’s this wall between us Izzy. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it, and I would be miserable. If you want me to stay, I’ll stay.”

  I could see she was
thinking about it for a moment. “I can’t ask you to do that Dad,” she said to me. “It wouldn’t be fair to you. You should go.”

  “Are you sure, Izzy? I need you to be okay with this.”

  Izzy looked at me and smiled a little. “I am, really,” she said to me. She then lunged towards me and gave me a big hug. “I’m sorry Dad,” she said to me, crying as I held her. “I didn’t mean to be so mean to you. I think I was just jealous, jealous that Ms. Arthur was able to get so close to you so fast and be important to you, while I… I was on the outside…”

  “You were never on the outside, Izzy, ever,” I told her as I hugged her tightly. “And you never will be. You need to know that.”