Balls by Nanci Kincaid

Author:Nanci Kincaid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing
Published: 1998-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

DIXIE

Mac comes home from Point Clear suntanned and happy. He gives me six hundred dollars he won on the golf course. “Spend it on yourself,” he says. I know he’s buying my silence, but it’s the most money I’ve ever had of my own. I count it with him standing there, watching. “It’s yours,” he says again.

Then it’s back to normal. We only see Mac at suppertime. Two nights a week he mows the grass before going back to the office and we watch him. Buddy’s afraid of the lawn mower, so he sits in my lap and Sarah distracts him by standing on her head in the freshly cut grass. Her hair smells like onions.

In Mac’s daily absence the children and I carve ourselves a life out of trips to the grocery store, swimming lessons, vacation Bible school, afternoon naps, ice tea and tomato sandwiches, cartoons, and bedtime stories. We make a home where Mac is a welcome visitor. “Drop by anytime,” we seem to say.

I make curtains and casseroles and drive car pools. I plant flower beds and paint bedrooms and set out the sprinkler at night. I push the stroller for miles each day with Sarah running at my side like a happy puppy. We stop and talk with our neighbors who are walking their dogs, or weeding their yards, or pushing strollers of their own.

Several nights a week we eat with Rose and Daddy, delicious suppers Lilly cooks. On Sunday nights they eat with us. Rose comes straight from church, Daddy straight from the golf course. Sometimes they don’t speak to each other all evening. Rose focuses on Buddy and Sarah, and Daddy looks up at the night sky like he’s searching for something—the taillights of a plane heading for another continent, or a particular constellation that has eluded him all his life. We eat peach ice cream out in the yard while Sarah catches lightning bugs in a peanut butter jar and Buddy watches her and shrieks. We’re mostly happy.

When Mac comes home he seems delighted to have stumbled upon such a happy household where everything’s clean and pretty and he’s treated as if he were one of the family.

When the Wives’ Itinerary arrives in the mail it’s the size of a small book. I read it like a novel—all the bowl-game activities they’ve planned for the wives while our husbands are busy, every activity segregated, like something a bunch of Baptists would plan. But I am a Baptist, so I’m used to it. This is my first bowl-game trip—the Orange Bowl in Miami.

The fourth night of the trip I’m seated next to Celeste at an official team dinner. She’s drinking bourbon and water, which I think maybe she’s been doing all afternoon. She orders one for me each time she orders one for herself. I have four hardly touched drinks surrounding my plate.

“My head’s killing me,” Celeste says. She raises her glass over her head, sloshing it. “Winning’s everything!” she shouts. I see Coach Bomar glance at her out of the corner of his eye.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.