Seth Raab
5367 N. Gladstone B
St. Louis, MO 63121
snoodmonger@gmail.com

Signs

   I wasn’t with my father the evening he died, though I often imagine I was. I place myself there, in the stadium beside him, the chill of the October air light but sharp. Around us, the crowd buzzes; they link arms and tense as the teams line up opposite of one another, black helmets across from green, leaning forward, almost touching.
   This play will be the game. If the kicker makes it (and how could he miss? It’s a chip shot), the Spartans win, and the crowd around me will deflate. If, by some miracle he misses, Northwestern holds on for the victory.
   The kicker positions himself. He jumps on his toes for a minute, trying to kill his nerves. The holder blows into his hands, his breath warm and visible. The referee signals the start of the clock.
   When the ball is snapped, we tense. The noise swells, and the hope in the stadium is palpable, the hope that a hand will extend, and the ball, oblong and turning end-over-end, will not crest the tangle of outstretched limbs.
   Miraculously, that’s exactly what happens. A big lineman’s hand clips the ball, sending it spinning to the right—a gunned down fighter, a dying quail—and we surge forward. The old stadium shakes as the crowd explodes. All around me there is jumping. There is shouting. High-fives are awkwardly exchanged.
   It is this next part that I continue to imagine, guiltily, reluctantly, and more than a bit obsessively. I worry at it like a child does a scab, fully aware it isn’t healthy and it doesn’t feel good to do so.
   I turn to my father, who is beside me in the crowd. I expect to see elation, but instead I see his face, bright red and contorted. One of his hands move to his chest; another extends behind him, as if he knows he’s going down, all 6’7” of him, all 330 lbs. of him. Timber.
  With the exception of my presence in the stadium, all of this really happened. I don’t know why I fantasize about it. The reality is, I’m fortunate I was not there to actually witness it. Because had I been there, had I turned to celebrate with him and seen him falling, had I been forced to experience that moment of elation-turned-confusion-turned-horror, I’m sure that I would have suffered the same fate. His heart attack would have passed to me like a virus, striking immediately.
  And that is how my fantasy ends: a chain reaction of heart-attacks. First Pops, then me, then whomever is next to me. We all go down, the crowd reverse-undulating like a mockery of the wave. The shouting, the elation, it is all cut short, dissipating like a mist in sunlight. Here is one section dropping, here another. Then the band, collapsing in a great clatter of falling instruments. Now the players, their equipment smacking against one another as they fall in heaps, until only the kicker is left standing. Then he, too, crumples. His fall is silent, though, because by now the last of the shouts has long since faded, and the stadium lights click off, burning orange to black like dying embers, shrouding the now quiet stadium in darkness.

***

    My father died from a massive heart attack suffered while watching the climactic end to a Northwestern University football game. He probably would have called it a “grabber,” as the men in my family, prone to exploding hearts, have been forced to develop a sense of humor regarding catastrophic heart failure.
   When I found out what happened that night, I was shocked, but not in the way one might expect. I was sitting at my parent’s house watching TV when the doorbell rang. I opened the door, and I saw my mother’s friends, wrapped in purple and white Northwestern gear, crying. “You have to come with us,” they said. “Something happened to your dad.”
   The truth is, I always expected him to die at a sporting event. Just not a football game. When they explained what had happened on the drive to the hospital, I even thought, There’s no way he dies from a football game. We’re baseball fans.
   It is difficult to make anyone who was not raised in my house understand the importance of baseball to my family. We all played. We all watch it. We all get overly depressed or inappropriately excited by it. My father was the ring-leader of this cult. For him, baseball was not just a sport. It was a way to connect with us, his kids. It was his way to show us how much he loved us. If we were upset, he used it as a way to cheer us up. He gathered our family around baseball. Crammed onto the couch watching the Cubs lose was our version of the family dinner.
   The best example I can think of to illustrate this is also one of my earliest memories. In 1984, the Cubs made the playoffs for the first time in my father’s life. He was forty-years-old. The stress was almost more than he could take. In the decisive game five of their playoff series against the San Diego Padres, he was unable to even watch. While my siblings, my mother, and I huddled around the TV and watched the Cubs jump to a lead, Pops got into the car and just drove around, listening on the radio. He returned home in the late innings, the Cubbies still winning. Of course, the Cubs being the Cubs, they collapsed. Leon Durham let a ball roll through his legs. The Padres came back and won the game, moving on to the World Series.
   Pops sat silently while this all went on, and while the Padres celebrated on the field, a pall descended over the house. I can only imagine how he felt. The game he’d waited all his life for was over. Cubs lose.
   My brother and I were eight and ten respectively, and we took the loss hard. We turned to him to make us feel better, probably not capable of understanding how depressed he was. We were kids, after all. We were resilient. Give us some ice cream or tickle us, we’d be smiling again in an instant. Pops, on the other hand, probably needed Prozac. A whole damn fistful of it.
   When he saw our faces though, he didn’t recede into his brooding state, something he was very capable of doing. Instead, he told us to go out to the yard and get ready for a game of catch. Normally, this meant he’d get the mitts and a ball, but that night, he brought out a small white football. He tossed it easily, and as it sailed toward us, in stark relief against the dusky gloaming. With each throw, his implicit message became clearer—“There are times when it’s best to not even think about baseball.”
   My brother and I recently talked about that day.  “Do you remember the football?” he asked.
   I remembered it being white, and he laughed rather darkly. 

“Yeah, it was white. White and purple. It was a Northwestern football.”

***

   I often think that baseball saved my dad and sister’s relationship. To understand how, one must first know the one truth about my dad that I continually hide, be it from my friends or even myself. Pops was racist. It’s difficult to even write such a thing. There are times I find myself trying to mitigate this crime. “He was a product of his time,” I say, but I am unconvinced by such a weak argument. My mother and father were the same age, and she isn’t a racist.
   The other thing I’ll tell myself is he wasn’t that racist. He had black friends, I find myself thinking, and then I groan. Am I really trotting out that tired old line?
What it really came down to was my father didn’t mind black people unless they happened to be dating his daughter. Unfortunately for him, my sister Erin dated black guys almost exclusively.
   In many ways, I believe in the idea of fate and the notion that people are put on this planet for a specific purpose. I think one of the reasons my sister is here was to expose this flaw in my dad and, if possible, correct it. The trick would be communication. My dad was not the type of man who’d talk things out. If he was angry, he’d brood and silently simmer. This was not an invitation to talk. It was his way of saying stop doing what you’re doing, and things will be okay again.
   This is what he’d do whenever Erin brought a black male home with her. He’d shut up or, at the most, grunt one-word answers. Dinners with her boyfriends were the worst. The whole table would be silent, my Dad chewing his food, glaring at nothing, while some poor kid desperately made unrequited conversation with him. After about ten of those dinners, I began to hope Erin would start dating white guys, if only so I could eat in peace.
   My sister, however, refused to acquiesce to his unspoken demand, and the results could have been terrible. Their relationship stood the risk of becoming the collateral damage of his silent war. Fortunately, there was baseball.
   There was one particular time she’d gotten in trouble for ditching school. She skipped to be with a boyfriend, and my dad took the opportunity to levy a stiff punishment. No phone, no boys, no going out, and, the last straw, he forbade Erin from even seeing Missy, our cousin and her best friend. Fed up, she decided to move out, even though she was only sixteen. My mother caught her first, and they talked and were able to work things out. But what about Dad? My sister had no intention of talking to him, and most likely, he wouldn’t be interested anyway. My mother’s solution was simple. When Pops got home, she handed him his mitt. Then she went upstairs and handed Erin hers.
   " Go play catch,” she said.
   They didn’t say anything at first. I imagine she threw each ball as hard as she could, the ball hissing as it sped towards my dad, hoping to sting his hand through the soft leather glove. He caught it and probably tried to do the same. Eventually, they started talking. Not about her boyfriends or his issues, but about baseball. About how hard she threw. About how it was bullshit she had to play softball when she was as good as any boy.
   Baseball, in the end, wasn’t the only thing Erin and Pops talked about. The truth is, he adored her, probably more than he did either me or my brother. She was his first child, his daughter, his princess with a cannon for a right arm. Eventually, he even talked to her about his race issues, and in a tacit way, admitted that while he knew it was wrong, it was how he felt.
   Ironically, Erin has always been the most forgiving of my dad’s prejudice, insisting that, at heart, he wasn’t racist. “If he was,” she said, “we would have been raised to think like he did. But we weren’t. He never pushed those kinds of ideas on us because he knew they were wrong.”
   Erin has two kids now. Their father is black. My dad died before they were born, and sometimes I get terrified and wonder what he’d think about them. Would he have been unable to love them as much because they’re biracial? That question troubled me until recently, when Leila, Erin’s daughter, showed me something.
   " Look,” she said, emerging from her room. “I’m a Diamondback.” I looked up, and she was wearing her purple and black Tee-ball jersey, white baseball pants, and a grey and black mitt I’d bought her for her birthday. She wore her hat pulled low over her head, pigtails sticking out, the brim concealing most of her cinnamon face.
   I smiled. Somehow, everything would have been alright.

***

   I am not a hospital person. There’s something about fluorescent lights, the perpetual smell of boiled chicken, and stuffed bears holding tiny, encouraging balloons that unnerves me. So when people get sick and hospital visits are required, I see it as a great inconvenience. “I know Beverly has inoperable Cancer. Does that me I have to suffer too?”
   Technically speaking, my dad didn’t die at the football game, though I see that as little more than semantics. He spent a week afterwards in the hospital, alive only by the loosest interpretation of the term.
   I did go visit him, though not as often as I should have. This was partly because I didn’t understand our purpose there. The night he had his heart attack, I found myself in a conference room in the ER with my family and two doctors. I was immediately encouraged. A conference room. This is a place where results are gotten. Sleeves are rolled up in conference rooms. Plans are devised, fine-tuned, and executed. We and the doctors, we would hunker down and figure out a simple, rational, medical solution to this problem, because my dad dying was not—could not be— an option. I waited for the doctors to speak.
   Finally one looked up, tearing his eyes away from a clipboard. A clipboard. Yes. Excellent. A fantastic start.
   He looked at each of us before he spoke. “What we’re hoping for here,” he said slowly, softly, “is a miracle.”
   As it turns out, reaching a dying man in the upper levels of a football stadium with medical equipment—especially while the celebrating crowd is streaming out of the stadium—is a logistical nightmare. So when Pops went down, it was twenty minutes before he received medical attention. That’s twenty minutes with no blood to the brain. Even a causal viewer of ER knows that’s no good.
   When the doctor said “miracle,” I glanced around the room, expecting to see the same indignation I felt. Is this quack actually prescribing a miracle? Is that what’s written on the clipboard? “Wait for miracle”? It didn’t make sense. You can’t just wait for miracles. They don’t happen; that’s what makes them miraculous. But as I looked around, I was shocked to see heads nodding. No indignation. No anger. We concur. A miracle seems to be the best option.
   So the vigil began. We ascended to my father’s room in the ICU. “Look for signs of life,” the doctor had advised. “Talk to him. Touch him. See if you can coax him back. Miracles do happen.” As lifelong Cubs fans, we begged to differ.
   Once in the room, I lost all hope. Pale, glistening with a cool sweat, Pops looked as lifeless as the tubes that sprouted from his nose and forearms. His body rested limply, too large for the bed, so his feet almost dangled off the end. Around him, machines whirred and clicked, the only proof he was still alive. In the span of a few hours, my real dad was replaced by a beeping machine with a green, digital display. See that green squiggly line? That’s Pops.
   Only one person saw those “signs of life” we were waiting for— Crazy Rita, a parishioner from our church. “Crazy” is obviously not her given name; this was a name earned through years of dedication to the subtle arts of being insane.
   " He squeezed my hand,” she told us, and I wanted to shove her head through a window; I wanted to push her through it and watch her fall, spiraling cinematically, until she smacked against the concrete ground below. What she was describing was impossible. And what’s more, it was cruel. Are you to tell me, Crazy-ass Rita, that of all the people who sat vigilant around my dad’s bed—his wife of 32 years, his daughter and two sons, nieces, nephews etc.—he squeezed your hand?
   It wasn’t out of cruelty that Rita said what she did. Most likely, it was an attempt to rekindle that long extinguished hope. But I knew better.
   That first night in the hospital, my brother and I took a break from the miracle waiting. As we walked out of Pops’ room, we passed the waiting room, the chairs askew, empty and dark but for the awkward blue light of a silent TV. We slipped in, both of us slumping into seats and staring at the television in silence. The World Series was on.
   It was the Florida Marlins vs. the Cleveland Indians, and the Marlins, a franchise only four years old, were on the verge of winning the Series. I could practically hear Pops’ voice, as if he’d pulled up a chair and settled in next to us.
   " You have got to be kidding me. Fifty-three years I’ve been watching the Cubs, and I don’t get so much as a sniff of the Series. These bums slap a team together out of spare parts and four years later, they’re about to win the whole ‘schmegiggle.’”
   I know that’s how I felt. And I thought to myself, as I watched one team do in four years what my favorite team hadn’t done in ninety, that this just wasn’t a time for miracles.

***

   My brother is very much like my father was, at least in a communicative sense. He’s not a talker. So as I called him to see what his take on all this was, I found myself laughing, because D’Arcy’s and my verbal relationship is quite similar to the one we all shared with my dad. We talk, long-distance, probably six times a week. And what do we talk about? The Cubs.
   I didn’t know what to expect when I broached the topic of my dad and baseball and communication. In fact, as the phone rang, I realized I didn’t even know how to broach the topic. It was awkward at first, and for a few moments, I thought maybe I wouldn’t ask at all. Finally, though, after a lot of hemming and hawing, I just asked D’Arcy if he remembered things the way I did, and he responded almost as if he were waiting to be asked.
   " Well, when I graduated high school, I didn’t want to got to college at all,” he said.
   This was not new information. D’Arcy was never a school guy. He had trouble finding subjects that interested him, and he only began to excel in class later in life when he found out he was fascinated by economics and finance. But as an eighteen-year-old, all he wanted to do was play baseball.
   He also knew my parents hoped he’d try college, so he agreed to enroll at a local community college. He stalled, though, and by the time the classes started, he still hadn’t registered. He drove up to the campus the first day of the semester, fully intending to enroll in something. But when he got to the school, a low brown brick structure that baked on a broad expanse of concrete parking lot, he realized how little he wanted to be there. He turned the car around without ever stopping.
   I know now that my parents were very worried about D’Arcy, who at that point in his life got into a lot of trouble with the law. So they were excited when he agreed to go to college, and that night, when he admitted he didn’t want to do it, they were very disappointed.
   " Wouldn’t you be?” my brother asked. “I told them all I wanted to do is work at the theater and practice baseball. That’s not exactly what you want to hear from your son.”
   But my parents weren’t the type of people who made their children do things. I’m sure my mother gave D’Arcy her famous speech, the one about how all they really wanted was for him to be happy, and if working at the theatre at $5.25/hr made him happy, then by all means, be the best usher you can be. And I’m also sure while my mother said all that and hugged D’Arcy and encouraged him, Pops just sat there. He probably read the paper the entire time.
   " I had no idea what Pops thought,” D’Arcy admitted. “I guess, even though he hadn’t tried to talk me out of it, I felt like I was letting him down.”
   The next day, D’Arcy got up in the morning and gathered his baseball equipment together. He wasn’t lying about wanting to practice, wanting to be good enough to play pro. At the time, Pops’ law firm was struggling mightily. I doubt he had any clients, much less a case to prepare for, so instead of going into work, he put on a t-shirt and shorts, dusted off his mitt, and asked D’Arcy if he could join him. Together, they went to West Park together, and my father pitched to D’Arcy, trying to help him learn to hit left-handed. This was not a one-time event.
   " We probably played out there twice a week,” D’Arcy said. “Pops skipping work and just pitching to me.”
   D’Arcy paused.
   " I was really grateful for him doing that,” he said quietly. “It was totally his way of saying he was behind me and that, you know, he was cool with the choices I was making. Even if they were probably really bad choices.”
   Later that night, two things occurred to me. One was how readily D’Arcy told that story, how easy it ended up being to talk to him about some pretty serious stuff that we’ve almost never talked about. Like I said, from a communication standpoint, D’Arcy is very much like my dad. So I was left wondering, was that all I would have had to do with Pops? Just ask? Was it that easy, and I never did it? Is that what I had to look back on, twenty-two years of missed opportunities? It was a horrible, uncomfortable thought, and I quickly banished it in favor of the image of those two, my father and brother, playing together in West Park.
   My dad looms tall on the mound, sweat blooming from his armpits and creating a V under his collar. He winds up slowly and lobs a pitch to D’Arcy, his creaky arm no longer capable of throwing hard but still deadly accurate. D’Arcy swings, his lefty cut awkward but improving. They do this over and over, the metal clink of the bat ringing through the park, the ball sometimes squibbing across the diamond, sometimes arcing, a graceful parabola, into left field. Aside from Pops’ quiet instruction—head down, D’Arcy…keep your shoulder in—they don’t say very much. They don’t have to.

***

   It stormed violently the day of my father’s funeral, and I’m not talking about a few thunderclaps and thirty minutes of brisk downpour. I’m talking apocalyptic. It was so dark that, despite the fact the funeral was held at noon, I consistently recall it being a nighttime event. Wind blew in gales, snapping branches and taking down trees. Silt and dirt from the streets swirled around in mini-whirlwinds, stinging the eyes and face, and rain poured down horizontally, fat chilly drops that instantly soaked through even the thickest clothes.
   Despite all of that, two, maybe three hundred people showed up, packing into my church for the combined wake and funeral. I was stunned, and I remember wondering what it would take to lure that many people to my funeral. A catered spread would be a start. That and an impromptu set by the Rolling Stones.
   The moment the wake started, the church lost all power due to the storm. Candles were lit, and amid the licking, flickering half-light, I walked around, accepting condolences from shadowed faces I couldn’t recognize.
   The lighting had a weird effect on me. There was some confusion among the guests as to why the funeral was candlelit, and the anonymity of the shadows provided me the opportunity to be slightly inappropriate. At first I explained the circumstances, but gradually, I purposefully sought to make the questioner uncomfortable. “The candles? Yeah, that’s Lutheran tradition. Makes it easier to transition right into the post-funeral séance.”
   Had I been able to see their faces fully, to see the brief moment of disgust which would transition into pity and sympathy, I wouldn’t have said such things. But the darkness gave me the opportunity to be angry, and since I knew I wouldn’t cry—no matter how hard I tried—being a prick seemed like the next best thing.
   After a few hours, the service started. People found seats, filling the pews to capacity. I saw this as I helped carry his casket up to the altar. It was a six person job, a heavy job. In Chicago, a borderline union job. As we made our way carefully down to the head of the church, I, for the last time in my life, felt small in his presence. Maybe it was the hundreds of darkened faces. Maybe it was the tangible heft of only one sixth of his body weight in my hand, but I flashed back to being a child, to sitting on the floor and watching him walk toward me. The house would shake with every step he took, as if he were a giant, a mythic beast. And I would be scared, worried he was so large he wouldn’t see me and would step on me, crushing me without ever knowing it.
   After the minister spoke, people were given to opportunity to freely eulogize him. As the resident Person Who Pretends He is a Writer, I felt it was incumbent upon me to say something, to crystallize for the assembled people the range of emotions my family was experiencing. I decided to go last, not even sure what I’d say.
   The second to last person to speak was Corky Troy, the father of my brother’s best friend. He talked about the first time he ever saw my dad.
   Corky was walking home, past Howell Park, which is across the street from my house. In the center of the park was a giant man wearing a baseball mitt and playing catch. Initially, Corky couldn’t see who my father was throwing to, but as he continued walking he saw my sister, only seven years old, snapping the ball out of the air and whisking it back. Knowing her, she probably threw harder than any 12-year-old boy.
   As Corky related this story of a man and his tiny daughter winging the ball back and forth, not saying anything, just laughing and throwing, I wondered what I could possibly say that would represent my father and his relationship with us more accurately.
He finished his speech, and Pastor Doberstein stepped up to the mic. He leaned into it and asked if anyone else would like to speak. I remained seated.

***

   When I started writing this, it began as an homage. Not to my father, but to baseball. It was, in a way, a thank you note to the game that had provided my family with a lexicon, a language to keep us together.
   So I’m surprised, right now, by the anger I’m harboring over not having something more than that. This isn’t resentment directed at my father, at least not exclusively. Talking with D’Arcy made me realize how little effort I made, too. I am, essentially, angry that my dad never answered questions that I never asked. So who’s fault is that? It probably doesn’t matter.
   What does matter is that I’m only twenty-nine years old now, and I’m struggling to recall the kinds of memories I want to have about my dad. And it seems more than just a little fucked up that almost every important familial memory I have culminates in a rousing game of catch. I know we had more than that. So why can’t I remember it? And what if that is all we had. Is it wrong to want more?
   I know my father loved us. I know this because he would say so and, more importantly, show it. Sometimes he showed it obviously, but sometimes it was a bit more subtle.
   Most people are familiar with the image of a baseball coach giving signs. The coach goes through a series of mysterious hand signals, touching his face then his hat then his belt, then his crotch then his face then his ear then his crotch again. A batter who knows the coach’s signs can watch all that and know if the coach wants him to bunt, to swing away, to take a pitch, or to hit and run. He can know, in essence, what the coach is thinking.
   This was what my father did. He gave us signs. It was up to us to know them.

***

   I recently spent part of Father’s Day with a co-worker and her father. He had stopped into the restaurant we worked at, and after we closed, she invited me to join them for a drink. I did so reluctantly and only because her invitation seemed sincere.
The bar we went to is old and dark, all rich stained wood and framed pictures of artists and writers. We sat together in the corner, the father and daughter sitting across the table from one another. I watched them interact quite a bit, admiring the way he’d poke fun at her but then soften it by touching her hand across the table. They looked lovely, actually, the quintessential image of a father and his child. It was fucking depressing.
   It was depressing for the obvious reason. Watching them made me sharply aware I was seeing something that I’ll never experience again. It is an impossibility more far-fetched than a blocked field goal or a Cubs World Series. But that wasn’t the hardest part.
   As we left, I walked behind them while they talked, arms around each other’s waists. It was late, and the streets were empty, suffused with that after-hours quiet you can only experience if you’re the last to leave an already empty bar. The streetlights hummed, and their feet scuffed softly against the sidewalk as they drifted past darkened storefronts. I dropped back a bit to give them space, not wanting to interrupt their private moment , but also needing one for myself. Suddenly, I couldn’t help but wonder what my relationship with my dad would be like now, if he had lived. Would we have ever gotten to that point where we could sit across from one another at a bar and just talk?
After I said goodbye, I raced home, eager to get to my apartment, turn off the lights, and slip into my fantasy about the game. And that’s what I did. I closed my eyes until I could hear the crowd and the sound of the marching band’s brass sharp against the night sky. I smelled the stadium, a mix of spilled beer and popcorn and autumn air. I was there, just like always, ready to live that moment I was fortunate enough to have missed in reality. It doesn’t have to end that way, though, I thought. This is my fantasy. It can end anyway I choose.
On the field, the teams line up, the stadium’s lights reflecting off their helmets. The kicker walks off his steps, and even from my spot high in the stands, I can see him take a deep breath. On his knees, the holder blows his hands. The snapper spins the ball, waiting for the kicker to call for it.
   What if it didn’t get blocked? What if the ball was kicked just an inch higher, and it spun gracefully, silently through the uprights? Would things be different? Would he still be here? Would it have been me and him walking down that empty street together, late that night on Father’s Day?
   The ball is snapped, and I watch it spiral to the holder, who snatches it from the air and plants it on the turf. The kicker moves forward, his crisp, deliberate steps mapped out. His leg swings and ball goes up.
   It is my fantasy, and I could have lifted that ball higher, beyond the outstretched hand of number ninety-two. But there are some things that are so true, it does no good to pretend otherwise. The kick was blocked. My dad died. Nothing can change that.
   I did change one thing, though. This time, instead of watching the play, I watch my dad. I don’t know what to do, but I know what I want to say. Don’t watch, Pops. Don’t watch. I slide closer to him, trying to get his attention. Even though I’m 6’4” and 250 lbs, I am small next to him, like a child pulling on his arm. Don’t watch, Dad, I say, and I know the ball is in the air, spinning toward that player’s hand. It’s only football. It’s only a game.