There’s Not Much I Don't Know

By David Brinson

David is this month’s winner of $517.50 for his story about family and fatherhood.

Bio: David Brinson is a graduate of Boston University's MFA program where he received the 2021 Saul Bellow Prize in Fiction. He is currently an assistant professor at Berklee College of Music. Readers can find more of his work at https://davidbrinson.wixsite.com/portfolio.

Without further ado, “There’s Not Much I Don't Know” by David Brinson.

The night before Jonathon’s thirteenth birthday, I nearly got thrown out of a little league baseball game for arguing a safe call at home. My son had taken the rubber and let’s just say the kid got rocked out there, I mean hammered, and a parent can only sit there and watch their child get pummeled for so long before they get up and do something about it. It was yet another sloppy, pathetic game in what had been a season to forget. We, the Perry Goldbart State Farm Insurance Phillies, received a ten-run rule shellacking from the Dayton Benihana Yankees in a lopsided skirmish, a late regular season game with little playoff implication. Patty, the umpire, was a good guy, but didn’t appreciate me getting in his face and showing him up.
            I stood by the fact it was a blown call—the throw beat the runner to the plate by a mile—but I’d never lost my cool like that in front of the kids. A cloud of losing and embarrassment gathered above our heads. Ed and I, arms crossed, stood behind the dugout. Our dejected team kneeled in front of us, wearing their hangdog faces. The parents circled behind us.
            These post-game speeches tended to drag. Ed was a fat blowhard. His son, our first baseman, was somehow chubbier. Every obese first baseman was the head coach’s son, I’d decided.
            My wife and daughter snuck up behind me. Sabrina tapped me on the shoulder, told me they would meet us at home. On the off chance we had won, they would have hung around.
            “We’re yelling at umps now?” Sabrina asked.
            “I’m not proud of it. I’m calm now.”
            “Good, don’t push him. He had a rough game. I want him in a good mood tomorrow.”
            “Can Alex come over for dinner?” my daughter Madeline asked. “And before you answer, I’d like to remind you that I spent my Friday night at a dusty baseball field.”
            I checked my watch. “Dreamboat’s gone by eleven.”
            When I turned back, the parents and players were clapping half-heartedly as Ed tossed Jonathon the scuffed game ball for “really hanging in there” on the mound. This was what the world had come to? We were rewarding kids for walking six batters and allowing eleven runs? We hadn’t taught them a single fundamental. Coaching was to fail kids who weren’t even your own.
            “Lew, any words?” Ed gave me the floor.
            “My behavior tonight was unacceptable, boys. We don’t lose our cool and we don’t argue calls, we say 'thank you' and get ready for the next play. I should be teaching you guys to be better sports than that, so I’m sorry.”
            My son, head down, played with the macadam, gravel tumbling through his fingers.
            “Also, for those of you who don’t know already, we’re having a party tomorrow night for Jonathon’s birthday. Whole team’s welcome.”
            We were almost home free. Walking up to the car, I noticed the Brewsters loitering outside their truck and there was no avoiding a conversation. Their son, Rhett, our shortstop, was a cocky little shit and had a canon for an arm but couldn’t hit if you put it on a tee for him. In Cody's and Allison’s eyes, he was the next Pete Rose.
            “The boy played hard!” Allison Brewster clapped her hands. “Jonathon, some of those hits were plain bad luck, not a thing you could do.”
            “If we didn’t have bad luck, we wouldn’t have no luck at all,” Cody said.
            “You win some, you lose some.” There was a time when I mocked the athletes on TV for their banal, canned interviews, but during my tenure as an assistant little league coach, I have realized the temptation: reciting a script will save you the time and heartache that comes with the malicious truth, i.e., we played like gutter trash, i.e., my son was a human pitching machine, i.e., why didn’t Miguel tag up at third on the flyball with one out?, i.e., when I told Remington to fill in at right field, he asked, “Do I have to?”, i.e., the kids lack fight, i.e., don’t blame the wind or the bounces or the groundballs with eyes, because luck had nothing to with it.
            “My arm hurts,” Jonathon said.
            I could have hugged my son right then and there. “We better get home and get some ice on it. Good game, Rhett.”
            “We must have just missed Sabrina. I was going to ask if she needed us to bring anything for the party tomorrow?” Allison asked. “We’d be happy to help.”
            No part of me wanted the Brewsters and the holy terrors they call kids at my house.
            “Just bring yourselves,” I said.
            On the drive home, we had the windows down to air out the smell of Jonathon, of stale sweat you only earn from manual labor and athletics. The air whipped our tired faces, and we did not talk. When Jonny contemplated something, he picked at his nails. Click, click.
            “Do you want me to rip your fingers off?”
            He didn’t response, but he stopped all right.
            “Not like you’re going to need your fingers for pitching, not if you pitch like that. Since when do we flail our glove around when we come to the plate? Every pitch, it’s GUH! GUH! GUH!” I demonstrated. “You’re short-arming it. And when you actually get the ball across the plate, they’re mashing it. This isn’t American League. You have got to toughen up. You’re going to have to really reach back there and find something if you’re going to play with these kids.”
            “Those runs at the end were Remington’s fault. He should have caught it.”
            “Is Remington the one who loaded the bases with walks?”
             “No.”
            “Is he the one who forgot to cover home on a wild pitch?”
            “No.”
            “Take some responsibility then.”
            “I know, Dad. I don’t need the play-by-play. I was there.” A majority of his vocabulary was smarting off, i.e. obviously, i.e., duh, i.e., clearly or some variation.
            “Enough with the nails!”
            “They’re uneven now! I’m fixing it.”
            I counted and loosened my grip on the steering wheel. The white of my knuckles vanished. My kids thought I was hard on them, but they should have seen my parents. Growing up, I'd thought my name was Worthless, my father had called me it so often. The only birthday present he ever gave me was a used push lawnmower and a gallon of gas when I turned ten. Once, he punched me in the throat for sitting in his recliner. I think my mother only had children so she wouldn’t be the low man on the totem pole in her own house. All those years ago, when Sabs had Maddy on that January night that wouldn’t end, they handed my daughter to me and I didn’t have the slightest clue how to act, but I whispered to her, knowing full well she couldn’t discern words, but praying she could tell by my tone, you know how dogs can, repeating, “You’re so loved. You’re so welcomed. My, my, we are so happy you’re here.”
            “Where does Drew’s Dad live?” Jonathon asked.
            Drew. My nephew. My sister’s only child.
            “What? Where’d that come from?”
            “Drew said on the 4^th of July his dad wrote him a letter, but he wasn’t going to read it. He wouldn’t say why though. Why haven’t I ever met him? I found a picture of him in one of the albums and he was holding me.”
            I thought I had burned all the pictures of him and pissed on the ashes.
            “Is he dead?”
            “No, he’s alive. Uh, in prison, I think.”
            This was a mistake. Jonny put the tip of his pointer in his mouth and pulled at a strand of cuticle with his teeth. I could almost hear the questions he kept inside. I had accidentally given him a lead. This wasn’t the first time he came snooping around, going over the old tapes, diving in dumpsters. Stories were not adding up. Everybody was on the take. Recently, he had gotten braver, openly confronting me for information.   
            A few months before, at our dining room table, he had come at me with: “Why does Madeline go to therapy?”
            It must have been during the school year, because we were working on Algebra and having a rough go of it. I had been able to help him when he was in elementary, but we had graduated onto Algebra 1’s graphs and linear equations.
            “Kid, you have got to take better notes. How am I supposed to follow this? Help me out here. This isn’t my homework. If this doesn’t get gone, I’m not losing any sleep.”
            “Dad.”
            “I don’t have a dog in the fight. Quit picking at your nails, they’ll get infected.”
            “Therapy is for sad people,” he said.
            “Who says?”
            “Marcus. He said therapy is for depressed and fucked up people.”
            “I’m going give you a pass, because you gave the citation and everything.”
            “You and Mom have said way worse.”
            “More of a ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ kind of deal.” I pointed at the homework. “So, we’re taking the F on this. We’re calling it? Well, great, I’m going to bed then. Good luck.”
            “Is Madeline sad?” White specks and shavings sprinkled the table. If I hadn’t given him something, he might have ripped his nails off their beds.
            “She needs some help,” I said. “In this family, if someone needs a doctor, we get them a doctor.”
            “So, she needs it?”
            “Yes. And if you needed someone to talk to, you know we’d find it for you. Right?”
            “God, I know! I don’t need a therapist. That’s not why I was asking.”
            And that was the end of it. For a time.

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            As we pulled onto our road, Jonathon begged me to let him park the car in the garage. I went ahead and let him, despite him being so young and needing to mess with my seat settings to reach the pedals. We had to drag Madeline behind the wheel, so the kid was a natural compared to her. Sabs would roll her eyes when she heard me tell other parents this. “I thought we weren’t going to be those parents who say their daughter will break a lot of hearts and their son’s so smart because he can turn on the TV.”
            Dreamboat held hands with my daughter on the sofa in the living room, pretending to watch a movie. He jumped up when I walked in. He was about the tallest kid I had ever seen. Hard for me to be intimidating when he was a good head taller. He wanted to go to Northwestern for engineering (it was about the only thing I could get him to talk about). Practically everything he said was manner minding. And, as the joke went, he was way too perfect to be real. I thought it was an act at first. After what we went through, you look hard into a man’s eyes when he shakes your hand, checking for any ravenous wolves inside, howling, snarling, gnashing at the bars of the cage, waiting to escape in a dark room. This kid was all golden retrievers.
            “Dreamboat, always a pleasure. Practically feels like you live here.”
            He blushed and laughed nervously as a response.
            “So funny, Dad," Madeline said. "How long until the food’s ready? We’re starving.”
            “I’m fine. Really, don’t worry about me,” Dreamboat said.
            “I just walked in the door, Madeline," I said.
            It was getting mighty close to eight forty-five and I was hungry too, so imagine the love I had for my wife when I found her in the kitchen prepping the sauce, slicing the vegetables thin, marinating the chicken breasts. My stir-fry was a staple in the summer months when we had veggies from Sabs’ garden coming out of our ears. She hated being inside during the summer and would have rather been working outside. There had never been someone as funny and caring as my wife, even if she snored and left cabinet doors open as she cooked. Not knowing what else to do with them, I tamped those feelings down and popped open a beer. I wished I could feel the love more spread out and not so all at once. She caught me staring and side-eyed me.
            “You’re happy all of a sudden, Hot Head.”
            “Thinking how I’m going to miss having you around when I marry my do-over wife.”
            She laughed as she grabbed plates and silverware to set the table with. “Wish I could say the same, but my do-over husband is going to have a lake house.”
            “Have fun with some old geezer. Mine’s going to be young and dumb.”
            “Scooch, I need in there," she said, leaning into me. "That would mean yours is probably in Jonathon’s grade right now, about to graduate middle school. Have you been scouting?”
            Scowling, I turned to the stovetop.
            “I was just teasing,” she said.
            I waited for the pink chunks of chicken to whiten and then brown. “Jonathon asked about Richard again.”
            She clanked the dishes down on the counter and sighed. “Lew, you know what I think, but you don’t really care what I think, so…” she said, not nasty, not nice either. “He’s going to be thirteen. We have to tell him. Really and truthfully, it’s been a long time coming.”
            “He’s not even in high school! Kids his age shouldn’t be worrying about that.”
            “Madeline had to worry about a lot worse a lot sooner,” she whispered.
            The whole house sounded like it was collapsing when Jonathon rushed down the stairs. The conversation ended there. I could hear him and Madeline arguing in the other room. He ran into the kitchen with his hair still sopping wet from his shower, opening drawers, looking behind pasta boxes in the pantry.
            “Madeline’s making out and won’t let me look in the living room.”
            “You’re in my way, Hombre," I said.
            “I can’t find it. I’ve already ruled out all of your usual spots.”
            “Sounds like your dumb old man outsmarted you.” We were coming up on a new record for the longest it had taken him to find his present. On his eighth birthday, nearly his entire birthday week went by before he discovered his new iPad in the folds of a towel in the upstairs closet.
            While rummaging around the pot and pan cabinet, Jonathon almost walked into my serrated knife.
            “Jonathon, get out of my face!"
            “But, my birthday is tomorrow. I need a hint.”
            “Man, I must have really failed raising you. You know I don’t hide things in the kitchen.” Not since Madeline threw away a cereal box with his Indians tickets hidden at the bottom.
            “So, that would make it the perfect hiding spot.”
            I took a step at him with the knife, and he scampered out of the room.
Chicken popped, the sauce bubbled, the cooked peppers and zucchinis and onions softened. All the scents melted together and filled the house. “Chow time! Get your own drinks!” I shouted, placing the bowl on the table. Sabs made a selection from her bottles of wine. Madeline and Dreamboat walked in, holding hands, only breaking apart so Madeline could go get their waters. Dreamboat stood, his long arms hovering at his sides.
            “Where should I sit, sir?” See what did I say? Polite.
            “You know we don’t do assigned seats in this house,” I said. “You can sit by me if you want a break from Maddy.”
            Madeline appeared with two filled glasses, bouncing on her tiptoes the way she does when she’s around Dreamboat. “Is the dumbass still looking? Can I just tell him where it is?”
            “Do not. If you ruin it, you’ll be sleeping outside. Just because you’re too cool and grown up for it now doesn’t mean you have to ruin it for him.”
            “Jonathon!” Sabs shrilled. “Come eat. You can look later.”
            “Looks great.” Dreamboat pulled out his chair. “My mom won’t let Dad touch a dirty plate. Guys never cook in my family.”
            “She beats me if I don’t help cook dinner. Find you a nice wife who won’t abuse you.”
            “Whatever,” Sabs said. “Alex, please do not go around repeating him.”
            Jonathon finally sat down, and Sabs said grace, since we had company. Digging in, we swallowed our voices and chewed, talking only to ask for something to be passed. As we neared the end of our first plates, Madeline tried, “Mom, don’t forget to sign my sheet.”
            “I know, I told you to remind me when I wasn’t busy. Does this look like the time?”
            “I’m saying for later!”
            “Wait, wait, hold up a minute,” I said. “Did you get those last ten hours of day driving you need?”
            “Nobody’s parents care about the hour sheet. Emma’s literally filled it out the night before. I was there, I saw them do it.”
            “Maddy sucks at driving,” Jonathon said to Dreamboat, food in his mouth. “Dad said I’m better than her.”
            “Dad said you suck at baseball.”
            “Dad!”
            “Be nice, both of you. Madeline, you asked your mom because you knew what I’d say.”
            “No, I asked Mom because you went ballistic on that ref tonight.”
            “Well, we do things right in this family and don’t act like you didn’t already know that.”
            “I could finally have my license! You’re really not going to sign it?”
            “When Emma runs over a kid in a school zone, it’s going to be on Joe and Shelia. They are going to have to explain to the grieving parents the reason they’re burying their child is they were too special to follow the rules like everyone else.” I grabbed a fresh beer from the fridge.
            “Oh my god. Your logic doesn’t even make sense. You’re making up worst case scenarios. Mom, please tell me you see how illogical this is.” Madeline’s new favorite buzzword. If you asked her, she was the last logical person left on the planet.
            “Madeline, lay off it,” Sabs said.
            “You can drive me around tomorrow to get the stuff for the party. Quit pouting. I can’t stand it. If you wouldn’t have been so scared to drive, you would have your hours by now.”
            “This is delicious,” Dreamboat added.
            “Unreal,” Madeline said. “Absolutely unreal.”

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