Prologue: The Retired Athelete (Revised)

Warnings: Language, Violence, Content That (MAY) Not Be Suitable For Younger Readers, Mention & Use Of Alcohol, And Sexual Suitations.

(A sister story to "What Is It, Baby?")

1995, A suburb, somewhere in western Indiana…

A woman with dark hair and slightly tanned features sits at her small kitchen table. Envelopes lay open, half open, or torn open around her on the table. She props up her chin on the table. She is looking out her small window, overlooking her two boys as they play basketball.

As she looks out the window, a problem she's been worrying about all morning and night turns and turns in her head. The source of her worrying, her mother, happens to live next door. As she thinks of her mother, Corrine can't help all of the memories that come back to her, hitting her like a hard wave of water.

All her life, Corrine was considered a short woman in comparison to the "long-legged belle" that everyone always said her mom was at her age. Looking at pictures of her mom from many, many years ago, Corrine had to grudgingly agree.

The woman definitely had the looks as a younger woman. She had long legs that seemed to go on all the way to her shoulders, soft, always puffy-looking lips, a womanly facial shape, deep, dark eyes, beautiful, rust-colored hair, and despite many years working in toil or under the hot sun, her skin remained a pale milk white. Except, of course, when it had been baseball season.

In the summer, her skin would turn a burnt red, rivaling in color with her red hair. As soon as baseball season always ended, however (or, at least, as Corrine was able to get out of her father) Dorothy, better known as Dottie, would go back to having skin the color of milk. Corrine secretly envied her mother for how beautiful she had always been- even in now, in her old age.

These days weren't the days to feel that way about which looks she had been fortunate enough to inherit from her mother, however. Not just because she was married to the man who loved her, or because of her two darling sons, but because today was Corrine's only chance to get both her mom and dad out of the damn house for once. And to get them- or force them if it would have to come to that- to go to Harvey Field for the last time after nearly thirty to fourty years of not hearing or seeing anything of her mother's old teammates. She had done nearly everything in trying to get her mother to agree to go of her own accord- dropping hints of the new display at Harvey Field, laying baseball cards on the kitchen table for both of the two antiques that were her parents to see, leaving old photo albums from those days around the house. Nothing worked so far, and today was the last day to get ready to leave if they were going to go. And this time, Corrine wasn't going to take no for an answer.

Dad had gone out to the post office to pick something up, so her mother was alone. Without dad to help her mother in trying to get out of going somewhere she had already said that she didn't want to go, she would be easier to force into going to Illinois. And dad would just have to go with them.

Or, at least, that was how the plan was supposed to go.

She walked out the backdoor of her house, and found her two boys shooting hoops in the small paved spaced that doubled as the parking area that lead up to their garages and as the basketball court that the two boys spent most of their time in. The two boys shouted and ran around each other, one with the ball, and the other trying to grab it from the other. Corrine walked past the two in the direction of the adjacent house across the small paved area in the shared backyards.

"Hi, guys." she said, not turning to look at them.

"Hi, mom!" the two boys yelled, going back to their game.

The backyard both her family and her parents shared was filled with both generations' tastes. Her parent's side of the yard was covered in a multitude of plant life in the bright colored variety, the grass was thick and green, and a neatly finished fence encompassed the area that was smaller in comparison to her own family's.

Corrine's own was bigger, unfenced, and was covered in various toys of the nerf variety laid on the patchy lawn. It, however, was kept neatly trimmed by James, her husband, who sometimes spent time picking the toys up to mow, only to find the toys back in almost the exact same place the next day. Besides the unsightly patches and toys, a few pieces of petrified dog doodie was scattered across the yard, thanks to Champ, the family mutt. That small dog was somehow capable of squirting out brown that Corrine was more than certain of being as big as he was. Corrine's father had threatened multiple times to kill the same dog if he ever took a crap in his yard, so her sons David and Ben had to teach Champ which side of the backyard to stay out of pretty quickly.

Corrine walked across the imaginary, yet obviously visible line that separated the two property lines. One side's grass was shorter, with the yellow handle of a water gun shaped like a rifle poking out into the other's. The other side's grass was shaggier, but healthier looking than the other side's.

She crossed into the longer grass. Where could her mom be at ten in the morning? Well, besides up, that is. Walking further into her parents' yard, she quickly saw the tall shape bent over a bed of yellow flowers, spraying water on them from a garden hose.

"Mom?" Mom didn't seem to notice- she looked as though she was focused on the plants she was content to water. "Mom!" Corrine yelled loudly. Mom made a tutting noise, but didn't look up from spraying a long stream of water at some flowers in the back of the flower bed.

"Don't you know it's bad for a plant- especially flowers- to hear yelling? I heard you the first time; just come closer." Yeah, mom sure hadn't changed in the many years Corrine had been alive. Just as difficult as ever.

Corrine walked over to her side."Mom, I need to talk to you…"

Mom looked up. "What is it? Couldn't you have called or come in the afternoon?"

Corrine sighed. "No. I need to talk to you, Mom."--

"Are you serious?" Mom said, hurrying up the stairs. She was now inside of her house and making her way away from Corrine as fast as she could. Despite the huge age difference between the two, Mom managed to move a bit faster than Corrine. In Corrine's defense, she had never been anything more than a broker/ housewife, where as her mother had been a star baseball player up until she began to get arthritis in her knees. She, however, couldn't run from Corrine forever; and forever happened to be in the dead end that was her bedroom. Mom was, however, still unwilling.

""Go to Harvey Field", are you crazy?!" As soon as she said it, she looked all around the room- anywhere except at Corrine. After a moment, she moved to the long dresser that lay on the opposite side of the room from the double bed she and her husband shared, and began to touch everything that she could on it. She looked absolutely at ease- or, at least, to anyone who didn't know her as well as her daughter did would think so.

Corrine knew that when her Mom never wanted to face anybody when she felt uneasy with talking. She would use anything aroun dher to divert her attention. Her fingers seemed unable to stop tocuhing everything on her dresser.

"Come on, Mom." Corrine said as gently as she could, reaching over to her Mom to grasp onto her shoulders, turning her towards her. "You need to get out the house- Dad says you haven't even left to go shopping with him in a month. Why don't you want to go?"

Mom, forced to face Corrine, began to stutter nervously. "N-now, what kind of question is that?!" She turned away from Corrine to go back to moving her knick-knacks and picture frames around. After a long while she let out a long huff of breath and began to speak again. "I swear, you did not get that personality from me- that must have come from your father."

Corrine laughed a fake laugh, trying with all of her might to put her mom at ease. A long silence stretched between them before it was broken by Mom. "Look, even if I wanted to, I can't go right now. I've got so much to do, and I'm finally getting caught up on all of it…"

She stopped, seeing Corrine's look of skepticism. "Really, Mom? What do you have to do that is more important than this one-time chance to at least get to see the new exhibit at Harvey Field- or, or at least to reconnect with all of your old friends… and Aunt Kit?" Mom turned away from Corrine then to look at an old black-and-white picture that sat in the middle of the large dresser. It was the picture that Corrine recognized immediatally as the one that her mom had saved over from her and dad's wedding.

Mom was standing to the left, her hair bound up in a bun and with her wedding veil brushing the sides of her face. A big, wide smile was aimed at the camera through dark lips that were probably rose red with lipstick that day. She wore a long, traditional wedding dress, and with one hand she was still holding onto a bouquet of what Corrine knew from her mother to be red roses, daffodils, and daises. And odd combination, but her mom and dad both decided on the odd arrangement in their usual level of understanding that they both always had. And still did.

Dad was standing next to her, his arm wrapped around mom's shoulders to pull her in as he turned his face away from the camera to kiss her cheek. The eye that was visible in the photo was closed, and it somehow made the photo endearing- even decades later. He also wore more traditional wedding attire of the decade- a dark brown tuxedo. Looking at it now, and knowing just how untraditional her father is, Corrine still found it hard to believe that he would have agreed to the tuxedo.

All of a sudden, a thought occurred to Corrine as she looked at her mom. "Is it your old teammates?" no answer. "Is it Aunt Kit?"

Mom sighed. "It doesn't matter, and don't think-."

Corrine interrupted her. "Dad would want to go, you know."

Mom shook her head. "No, I talked to him yesterday, and we both agreed that we weren't going. We both know we have better things to do than to reminisce over the old days."

When she tried to look away again, Corrine grabbed onto her arm. "What Mom? What is it going to take before you see that you have to go? What can you do that is more important than going back there, just one last time?"

"I-I have to catch up with the bills; I don't have the time. And, if we'd be going, who'd watch the boys?" she looked panicked finally, with nothing to busy her hands with and with Corrine looking right at her.

"You finished those bills yesterday, and James is staying behind so you, dad, and me can go."

Silence. Then Mom walked over to her and dad's double bed as if in a daze. She sat down. "Look, it's just a hassle that I don't want to-."

Mom and Corrine both stopped whatever it was they were doing as they heard the sound of the garage door opening. Corrine raced to the bedroom's modest window, and sighed. "It's Dad. I'm going to go talk to him- maybe he'll listen to reason." Corrine walked to the door, but turned around to look at her mom who sat on her bed. As she did, for perhaps the first time, she realized just how frail her mother looked.

Dottie had always been a force to be reckoned with; but at that moment, she only looked like a befuddled old woman. Corrine suddenly had no problem with envisioning this room as a room in a retirement home, and she realized that the way her mom looked then would make any visitor walking past her room believe that she was just another old biddy suffering from dementia.

"You think about what it is that you really want to do, and I'll be back after I finish talking to dad."

Mom didn't answer her back.--

Dottie listened as Corrine's footsteps sounded on the stairs.

Oh god, she didn't want to go.

She kept looking at the many photographs on top of the dresser for no reason than out of a lack of anything else to do. Some where in color, some were in black and white, and even one or two were in crayon. The color ones may have been the most recent and in detail, but it was always the ones that were in black and white that held the most fascination for her.

As her eyes wandered restlessly over those photographs, her eyes caught on a black and white one with a worn wooden frame. It sat nestled in the far left corner of the dresser, and sat behind at least three other photographs that were in color. But, oh, even from where she sat, Dottie could recognize it. The vague shapes of four people's heads looked over the top of a slightly smaller picture in front of it. She knew what it was before she stood up and walked over to it.

The bottom of the picture had a caption that read "Rockford Peaches!" and it featured women clothed in uniforms that were completed with a skirt that reached to their knees posing in the same way that was used for athletic pictures. All of the women were smiling in it.

She found herself at a sudden loss with what the year had been when the picture was taken- until her eyes found a familiar smiling face. Dark hair, that little pixie smile, and a stance that seemed to say, "Look out world, 'cuz I'm here!"

It was Kit.

As she realized whose face it was, she felt her heart lower into her chest. Or maybe her intestines.

Her being on that picture meant just one thing that mattered to Dottie at that point; this picture was taken during the first year of the league's existence. 1943.

After she realized this, she moved onto trying to recognize the other faces in the picture. A sense of deeply felt sisterhood, and a snippet of egotism were things that were immediately sensed by an onlooker. Each of those faces radiated just a small part of the entire experience that looked oh so familiar to Dottie.

But their names failed her.

After a long moment, however, she soon found herself remembering names she hadn't thought of for months, years, and even decades. And slowly she remembered many things that happened back then; both the extraordinarily bad and the surprisingly wonderful.--