Marcus had not been nervous about many things in his adult life. not about job interviews, not about Rene's first hospital visit, not about his first month as a solo parent. He'd faced those things the way he faced everything by moving forward because stopping wasn't an option. But sitting in the parking lot of Massachusetts General Hospital at 1:47 p.m. on a December Sunday, he was nervous. He sat in his car for 3 minutes, checked his reflection in the visor mirror, which he never did. Fixed his collar, checked his reflection again.
His phone buzzed. Emily, he's awake and he had soup for lunch. And he told the nurse she was wrong about the infield fly rule. It's a good day. Come up.
He got out of the car. Room 414 was at the end of a corridor that Marcus navigated with a particular alertness of a man who had spent too much time in hospitals and never quite stopped reading them for bad news. He heard the television before he reached the door. Baseball predictably the low murmur of a spring training recap and then Emily's voice saying something he couldn't make out and then a deeper voice slower but still carrying authority responding. He knocked.
Come in, Emily called. He pushed the door open. Richard Carter was 71 years old and he was sick and it showed in the thinness of his arms, in the particular cural that hospitals impose, in the way he was propped against pillows. Rather than sitting upright, the way Marcus suspected was his natural state. But his eyes were sharp.
Immediately, unambiguously sharp, the eyes of a man who had been reading people for 71 years and had gotten very good at it. Emily was standing beside the bed. She looked at Marcus when he entered and some something in her face. Relief mostly the relief of someone whose two worlds are finally in the same room settled into a small smile. Dad, she said, this is Marcus.
Richard Carter looked at Marcus Hayes for a long 5 seconds. Marcus stood there and let himself be looked at. Red Sox. Richard said, yes, sir. Emily tells me you know what you're doing.
I fix things for a living. What kind of things? Train systems mostly switching panels, relay circuits, signal equipment. Richard absorbed this useful I try to be another pause. Then Richard lifted one hand slightly and gestured at the chair beside the bed.
Sit down then. I'm not going to crane my neck. Marcus sat. Emily pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. For the next hour, Richard Carter talked.
He talked about the Reds, about the 1,975 World Series, about growing up in Columbus in a family that had four boys and one television and a system for who controlled the remote that sounded, Marcus thought, remarkably similar to the systems Marcus built for himself. He talked about Emily's mother, Diane, gone since Emily was 16. breast cancer, a grief that had clearly never fully left, but that he carried with the dignity of a man who understood that love didn't end when people did. He talked about his work, 32 years, as a machinist, the last 12, at a plant in Dayton that had eventually closed, the specific pride of a man who knew how to make things with his hands. Marcus listened genuinely, fully, without the half attention. He sometimes gave social situations while the other half of his brain was running the system.
He listened because Richard Carter was interesting and because there was something in listening to this man that felt like receiving something he hadn't known was being offered. At one point, Richard stopped mid-sentence and looked at Marcus directly. "You were married," he said. "Not a question." "Yes, sir. My wife passed 3 years ago." "Cancer?" "Yes, Richard was quiet for a moment." "How old?" "31." Another pause.