EPILOGUE: Can't You See
Brewster, Cape Cod – Two weeks later
October 27th, 2004 – 11:15 PM
"What do you think? Are your boys capable of taking it home finally?"
Lily shuffled across Jeff's back, under the same twisted sheets she'd been confined to for almost two weeks, between bathroom and food breaks, and late night swimming in the Bay. She kissed his bare shoulders and then nibbled on the last bit of banana pancakes he'd made for her. She had to admit, he was right, they were an addicting sort of oddity.
"I think they'll screw it up."
"Well Jesus, aren't you just the epitome of martyrdom to your team. You know they're ahead by three, babe?"
She sighed and ruffled his messy, shorter black hair. "Yeah, but it's the Red Sox. They always find a way to break our hearts. Trust me. The bottom of the eighth at game four of the series, with a three-nothing lead, isn't going to change anything."
He shook his head as she rolled off of him and threw on his old t-shirt, dancing in front of the TV as the speakers of the St. Louis stadium began to blare, Sweet Caroline. Jeff sat up, intrigued, delighted by the show and altogether too hard again for words or gestures. He just wanted her to get back in the bed and let him ravish her back into trusting that Boston could pull a win.
She teased him though, with pouty lips and sweet lyrics flowing out of her all too knowingly, corrupt and dirty mouth.
"Hand…touching hands…reaching out," she reached for him and stroked his bare shoulders at the edge of the bed, "…touching me…touching you…"
And then together, as she fluffed his sexed in hair and twirled around in his wrinkled old shirt, they shouted, "Sweet Caroline…" and the universe temporarily bowed down to them. But it was interrupted with laughter and a kiss on his even more hungry lips, before she scooted through the bedroom door and down the box ridden hallway.
"Where the hell do you think you're going, it's the top of the ninth? And I need you!"
Jeff fell back to the middle of the large bed in agony, grunting out her name teasingly as she shouted back, "Give your hand a workout while I use the bathroom." And then she slammed the door shut and he could hear her laughing.
He rolled his eyes instead, slid from the bed with a sheet tied at his waist for unnecessary modesty in his own house, and then took the sticky pancake plates down three flights of stairs to kitchen, trying to occupy himself until she could occupy everything else again. He washed the plates, swept the sandy kitchen floor, took the dog out (so named for him, as he'd eventually let her tell the tale), and then came back inside to refill their wine glasses and return upstairs to the bed and the game and her undeniable skin.
Lily was still in the bathroom though when he walked down the hall.
"What the fuck are you doing in there?" He banged on it with a free fist and kept walking towards the bedroom. "Hurry up, Foulke's pitching the bottom of the ninth!"
There was no response and no emergence from the bathroom. Jeff made it back to the bed, slouched against the pillows with a steady hand on his wine and an even steadier 'eye' on the game. The one thing that he'd failed to mention to Lily right away was that his sight had come back to a halfway point of understanding. His left eye had refused to cooperate with the insanely risk engulfed procedure they'd used him as a lab rat for, so he could only see vividly through his right eye, which despite it, was plenty more than enough for him.
He looked at the clock above the TV to see that it read 11:38. She'd been in bathroom for twenty minutes. His attention was taken back to the game though, the moment he got up to go bang on the door some more. There was a fool from the Cardinal's batting club running clear across the bases, one by one, going at it strongly too.
"Fuck, no! Get him, get him!"
He yelled at the TV, caught up in the thrill of watching so much, that he barely noticed the sound of the bathroom door creaking open, or the red painted toenails that carefully walked back into the bedroom beside him, attached to the legs that held up the mold in his old shirt, and held onto something that was better and altogether more thrilling than any third base retirement.
"Jeff?"
Coming down off of his high, but still going strong on adrenaline with his furious calls to the plasma screen, she tried him again, more nervously, with a tap of her foot on the wood floor.
"Sheldon?"
"What, babe? You're missing this. The game's ridiculous."
He laughed and his eyes flew back to the screen as she muttered, "I bet I can top it."
"Huh?"
"Jeffery, stop and look at me."
She tugged on his face, narrowing his gaze from the screen back to her as they stood in the middle of the new pitching line up, what would be the last.
"I need to tell you something."
She was squeezing his cheeks so badly, his lips were curled beyond speech capability, but he mumbled through all the same, "Tell me…quick."
Lily lifted the pregnancy test from her side and held it up for him to see the tiny pink plus, while in the back of his mind, he allowed the sports caster's voice to filter in with the details he was missing on the screen behind him.
'Foulke to the set, the 1-0 pitch here it is…'
"See that?"
He nodded with a wide-eyed fish face in her hand.
'Swing and ground ball…stabbed by Foulke!'
"You got me pregnant. Are you happy now?"
He nodded a second time with a faint smile crossing his lips as she released his numb jaw.
'He has it; he under hands to first…and the Boston Red Sox are the World Champions!'
And just as Jeff went in for the kill and leaned down to kiss her madly for the news, Lily's eyes flew wide open and her face was directed at the TV screen with wild optimism and disbelief.
"What?!"
'For the first time in 86 years, the Red Sox have won baseball's World Championship! Can you believe it…?"
Lily's head shook in a craze as she screamed at the top of her lungs and threw her body into Jeff's unsuspecting arms. He laughed as he caught a tight hold of her, not caring one bit that she was depriving him of proper oxygen with her swarming arms around his neck, or her ravishing lips all over his mouth and face. That was the pinnacle for him, the one he'd waited so long to get to and never was sure how it would truly arrive.
"We're having a baby," he whispered into her ear, as he swung her around their bedroom.
And the thing that convinced him that she was his girl and no one else's, that everything was right and just and fair and beautiful in the world after all this time, was when he heard her shout with tears in her eyes and her mouth pressed to his, "I know and we just broke the curse!"
Then she jumped out of his arms and danced around with him to Dirty Water and he knew that there was a balance somewhere, in the center of existence, where all great things come to the crest in one long, glorious spark, like lighting on a rooftop and fireworks off the Cape.
He twirled her around and she came back to him at last, pressed to his chest and staring up at him with the bluest eyes he'd ever seen, since 1996 at least. She was a sight, the one he'd waited for, the one he'd begged upon when going under the knife.
Her eyes were brightened with a curious glow when she said with a salute, "Sparky, let's make love for the Red Sox."
"Christ," he sighed as he lifted her from the ground and carried her back to the bed, "How the hell did I ever get this lucky?"
