Caroline's First Game

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Caroline and her Dad at the Spinners game

(6 of 6)

Back in Chelmsford, Dad expresses the obvious opinion that he's too old for all this, and I offer that I am, too. I tell him I've got a headache and am going for a jog to clear it. My route when visiting home is a seven-mile loop through West Chelmsford, past the house where I lived from birth to age seven, then through Nabnasset and back on Dunstable Road to Berkeley Drive. As I jog I think a lot of things, most of them lighter than dark. She'll never go to another ballgame. She'll never watch baseball with Daddy again.

I jog along Main Street, an old road dating to Colonial times where our former house still sits, painted grey now, the house that Dad and Mom bought for twelve grand after the War. As I pass by it I think, not for the first time, how that used to be an impossible Wiffle ball shot from home plate to the back of the house. I jog and count: It's actually only a dozen adult strides. I wasn't much older than Caroline is now when hitting that wall was called a homer.

A minivan passes me and rounds the Dangerous Curve of my youth, which I now realize saw perhaps three cars of traffic per day, back then. The van pulls over. A fit, Marine-looking man gets out and crosses the street. I think he's going to ask for directions, and I figure I might be able to assist him, since I used to be of this town.

"Excuse me," he says as I slow to a stop. "Are you the dad of the little girl at the Spinners game last night."

"Yes."

"I'm the deputy police chief from Lowell," he says. "I arranged that escort for you. Did that work out?"

"Wonderfully. Thanks."

"Is your daughter okay?"

"Seems so. Thank God."

"You staying here in Chelmsford? I heard you weren't from here. I heard you were from New York, and figured you came up to see the Staten Island club."

My first thought is: The last thing I would ever do in this wide, wide world is travel to an away game of a New York Yankees affiliate. All I say is: "We're not from here. Well, we used to be. I used to live right down this road, at 148 Main. My folks live on Berkeley Drive now, and I'm staying with them."

"Oh, that's really something," says the cop. "I live down Main a ways, too. I'm Ken Lavallee."

I introduce myself, shake hands and ask, "Are you related to Leon Lavallee?"

"He was a distant uncle. He worked in the city, at the Jeanne D'Arc Credit Union."

"I know. He was a friend of my mother's. She was president there just before Paul. . . ."

"Mayotte," Ken offers. "Paul Mayotte. Sure, I remember her. I remember Mrs. Sullivan. Is she well?"

"Just got her hip replaced. Rehabbing now at St. Joe's, or whatever it's called."

"And your daughter's where?"

"Saints Memorial. We hope to have her out by tonight. My wife's there now."

"Well, we're all praying for her," says Officer Lavallee. "That was quite a thing."

"Sure was. Thanks. Bye."

"Bye now." As the van pulls away and I step back into my exhausted trot, I realize that Caroline is of Lowell now in a way that her mother, father, aunts and uncles never will be. She's history, like her grandmother. She's the little girl who got whacked at the Spinners game.

Caroline is released that night. Next day, the clan floods the fourth floor of HealthSouth to finally pay the visit we had come for. Mama, in a wheelchair, is surrounded by her 85-year-old husband, her three kids, her son-in-law and daughter-in-law and her five grandkids—our three and Gail and Scott's two. There's a lot of talk about all the recent trips to the hospital by everyone here, and about Mom's hip, but the acute focus is on Caroline. She's tired but happy, still with no appetite and still with an achy neck from either the ball or the brace.

"Do you remember what happened?" Luci asks at one point.

"No."

"You got hit with the ball."

Caroline considers this, then asks, "The big one fell off?"

Apparently there had been a large rubber ball at the top of the rubber slide, and Caroline had noticed it as Mommy had reached for the tickets and as the foul ball was descending toward her.

So, then, good. Perfect. Caroline's first game. We'll never forget it. And she'll never remember it.

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