This Is Where I Leave You

his swing in check. Dan calls it a ball. The second pitch is low, but Boner swings anyway and misses.
    “Strike one! One and one.”
    Paul shakes his head, not pleased with the pitch. He rolls his head around on his neck and shrugs his shoulders a few times. Then he settles and stares down the batter. He winds up and unleashes a straight fastball that lands in Horry’s glove before Boner’s swing has even crossed the plate.
    “Strike two!”
    The other guys applaud and cheer. They are all meatheads, their best years behind them. Tracy and Alice join us in the yard, along with Boner’s wife and a few random shiva callers who are happy for the diversion. Paul bangs his mitt against his shoulder and grimaces a little, like it’s tender. His next pitch is a changeup, and Boner manages to catch the edge of it, fouling it up into the net.
    “Strike two!”
    “Come on,” Boner says. “Now I got you.”
    Paul removes his mitt to rub his pitching shoulder for a minute, trying to mask the pain he’s feeling.
    “Paul,” Alice says. “It’s enough.”
    His ligaments were shredded like cheese, the muscle ripped right off the bone. They did what they could to reassemble the working parts, but the lumpy patchwork mess of surgically spliced tissue beneath his skin cannot support the strain he’s putting on it with these pitches.
    “It’s fine. I just need one more pitch.”
    “The hell you do,” Boner says.
    Alice shakes her head sadly.
    That’s the thing about jocks. They’re wired to compete, regardless of angry wives or busted shoulders. They will not back down. If Paul strikes him out, Boner will leave here bruised and bitter. If Boner hits off Paul, Paul will brood about it for days. Whoever wins will gloat and talk some supposedly good-natured trash to rub it in. There can be no draw. Someone’s going down.
    Paul steps back onto the rubber mound, shaking his shoulder and rolling his neck. He leans forward onto his front knee and takes a deep, measured breath. Horry pounds his mitt. Boner swings his bat, squares up his stance, and settles down. Everyone is sweating and deadly serious, the fact of the shiva completely forgotten. “If it reaches the point where I think you’re being a fucking idiot,” Phillip says under his breath “then you’re probably being a fucking idiot.”
    Paul winds up and something goes wrong on his release. Three quarters of the way through, he lets out an anguished cry and prematurely releases the ball, which flies hard and fast and right into Boner’s face. Both men fall to their knees at the same time, Paul clutching his shoulder in pain, Boner’s nose bleeding through his fingers, staining his white batting gloves. Boner’s wife shrieks and runs to his side. Alice stands her ground outside the cage, willing herself to be unmoved, but then caves and runs to Paul, helping him to his feet, asking him whispered questions. It occurs to me that there’s a deep and genuine love between them, and I wonder why I should find that so surprising. Dan and Emily help Boner to his feet, and Horry pulls off his mask and says “Whose bright idea was this anyway?”
    Paul walks gingerly over to Boner to apologize. They say some macho things to each other, bang fists, and slap asses, and in this manner, all is forgiven. Someone procures an ice pack from the freezer to press on Boner’s bruised face. They may be over-the-hill idiot jocks, but you have to admire their code. If only all our conflicts could be resolved with a few grunts and a smack on the ass.

Chapter 36
    12:45 p.m.
    The parade of weathered flesh continues. Sitting in our shiva chairs, we develop a sad infatuation with the bared legs of our visitors. Some of the men wear pants, and for that we are eternally grateful. But this being late August, we get our fair share of men in shorts, showing off pale, hairless legs with withered calves and thick, raised veins like earthworms trapped beneath their flesh who died burrowing their way out. The more genetically gifted men still show some musculature in the calf and thigh areas, but it is more often than not marred by the surgical scars of multiple knee operations or heart bypasses that appropriated veins from the leg. And there’s a special place in shiva hell reserved for men in sandals, their cracked, hardened toenails, dark with fungus, proudly on display. The women are more of a mixed bag. Some of them have managed to hold it together, but on others, skin hangs loosely