Still, we were excited by the bright lights shining down on the green field. We could smell the burgers and hot dogs on the grill, and it was chilly enough to enjoy cups of chowder. The cheerleaders were fresh-faced and peppy. Annabel Wright, the captain, had fashioned her usual long ponytail into three braids that whipped around like ropes. The kids in the stands seemed like just that-kids-though the boys wore flat-top Red Sox hats and baggy jeans low on their hips like rap stars. And the girls looked like nascent supermodels-some in tops that showed off their midriffs and pierced belly buttons, most wearing tight jeans and makeup and perfume-and we felt a mixture of sadness and nostalgia because we remembered these same girls when they were pudgy and freckled and wearing pink sneakers whose soles lit up when they ran under the bleachers chasing their brothers and their brothers’ friends.
The game had yet to begin, so the crowd was still milling around: people greeted one another, found seats in the bleachers, and bought blocks of raffle tickets for the fifty-fifty, which supported the Nantucket Boosters. The Atheneum librarian, Beatrice McKenzie, and her husband, Paul, who had played for the Whalers in 1965, sat in the front row, just off the handicap ramp.
What many of us didn’t know was that Jordan Randolph and his son, Jake, were walking in the back entrance. Word had reached nearly all of us that Jordan Randolph had returned from Australia with Jake but without Ava. No one was surprised by this. We all understood that Ava came from and belonged to a city, a country, and a continent on the other side of the world. A few of us had heard that Ava was adopting a baby girl from China, which we agreed was a wonderful thing.
Jordan and Jake paid their five-dollar entrance fee and walked down the hill to the northwest corner of the playing field. We thought they might make their way over to the bleachers, but they decided to hang on the fence. We remembered that Jordan had always been a fence-hanger. He liked to watch every down of the game, reporter-at-heart that he was, but Jake used to sit in the bleachers with Penny. Penny, unlike her scantily clad counterparts in the stands tonight, always wore her brother’s navy blue away jersey with Alistair printed in white letters across the back, above Hobby’s number, which was 11. It was hard for us to think about Penny in that jersey, and it must have been even harder for Jake to think about it. We understood why he was keeping his distance.
Standing together, Jordan and Jake Randolph looked remarkably alike. We were glad to have Jordan back at the helm of our newspaper, not only because some of us felt that the standards of the newspaper had slipped (the content of lesser quality, perhaps, and the editing not as sharp, a few more corrections appearing in the following week’s editions than we were used to seeing) but also because, for as long as any of us could remember, a Randolph had headed the Standard. We hoped we were right in assuming that Jake Randolph-despite all he’d been through in the past few months-would resume his position as editor of Veritas, the student newspaper, then go on to major in journalism in college, and come back and work alongside his father, and eventually take over the legacy.
But we were all of us finished with trying to predict the future.
The front center bleacher had been roped off as “reserved,” and we had our suspicions about why. Sure enough, a few minutes before the team took to the field, a hush came over the crowd, and Hobby Alistair, Zoe Alistair, and a pregnant Claire Buckley walked in single file in front of the stands, up the stairs, and into those reserved seats. The three of them looked good. Hobby loped along, barely limping, Zoe held her head up; her hair was back to its artful shaggy style, the tips recently having been highlighted cherry-cola red. But it was Claire Buckley who stole the show. For the first time, possibly ever, her hair was down, flowing long over her shoulders, and the front of her sweater was filled out in a becoming way, and below her full breasts was a discreet swell.
We all wanted to comment on the three of them-how strong they looked, how luminous, and most of all, how unified. We wanted to comment on the mysterious aspects of life, those things almost beyond language, such as how it would feel to lose your seventeen-year-old daughter, or what it had been like for Hobby to spend nine days suspended in the netherworld of a coma, or how poetic and right it was that Claire had realized the sanctity inside herself and decided to keep Hobby’s baby. We wanted to explore these topics and more-What happened when we died? How were we to know that death wasn’t as profound an adventure as life was?-but just at that moment, the team stormed the field, and the crowd let out a great roar.
The names of the Nantucket Whalers were announced over the loudspeaker one by one, and while our eyes were on the field, they were also on Hobby. How would it feel for him to watch his former teammates being cheered, knowing that he could no longer play among them? How would it feel to hear Maxx Cunningham introduced as the team’s new quarterback?
Hobby handled it not only with grace but with exuberance. Despite his still-healing leg, he alone in the crowd stood for the announcement of each player. He clapped and whooped. When his lieutenants were announced-Anders Peashway, Colin Farrow-he whistled. And he cheered perhaps the loudest when his successor, Maxx Cunningham, rushed onto the field.
At the center of the field, Coach Jaxon took the microphone.
He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to call Hobson Alistair onto the field.”
Hobby turned to his mother. The crowd quieted. We watched as Hobby scooted out past Claire and made his way down the stairs and through the gate that led onto the field. The players on the sideline parted to let him through. With what looked like painless ease, Hobby jogged out to the center of the fifty-yard line.
Coach Jaxon said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Hobson Alistair.”
Instinctively we all stood, and the applause was thunderous. Hobby looked shocked by the whole thing at first, but then he grinned and waved. We watched Zoe and Claire standing right along with everyone else, clapping. Claire gave a piercing whistle, loud enough to raise the dead.
Coach Jaxon held up the white home jersey, #11 Alistair, that Hobby used to wear and would have been wearing right then if things had been different. He said, “Tonight we retire number eleven.”
The crowd went wild.
Coach Jaxon handed Hobby a football, and with the perfect spiral we all remembered, Hobby threw the ball to Maxx Cunningham, who, though startled, managed to put out his hands and catch it.
We thought we were witnessing the resolution of the story right there on the Whalers’ field, but of course there were other, connected narrative lines unfolding simultaneously elsewhere.
At seven o’clock in the morning in springtime air that smelled of a peppermint grove, Ava Price Randolph was finishing her second cup of tea and the previous day’s crossword puzzle. Her hands shook a little as she washed her teacup in the sink. She was nervous. In a scant hour, her sister May was coming to drive her to her first appointment with the adoption agency. When Ava had talked to Meaghan, the adoption counselor, on the phone, she had said that the adoption process could take up to five months, and that it would require patience and fortitude.
“I’m committed,” Ava said.
“Good,” Meaghan said.
Meaghan already knew the salient facts about Ava’s situation. The applicant was the mother of one son, age seventeen, who was currently living with his father in America, and another son who had died of SIDS at eight weeks old. She was single, but supported by the husband from whom she was now amicably separated. She had a large family with many helping hands all within a twenty-kilometer radius. She was committed to being a mother again.