When I got home after game four, still carrying some bruising from game one, I hid in my music room for a full day with Maddie. We didn’t emerge. She and I slept and ate and crapped ourselves. Not really. I did leave to use the bathroom. When day two dawned, Joe came in. The cheeky manny didn’t even knock, he just walked in as if he owned the place.
Me and Maddie were lying on the floor, thick blankets under us, making music. Well, she was grunting and filling her diaper and I was plucking on a ukulele making up Hawaiian lyrics for a new song called “Fuck Me With a Coconut” but since I didn’t speak Hawaiian the lyrics weren’t progressing well.
“She needs a bath. You need a bath. Your phone is buzzing nonstop. Your grandmother is firing up the sweat lodge and telling me that I have to go sit in it with her, naked, to purify my aura so my passionate soul will burst free. I don’t want to go sit naked in a deerskin tent with your grandmother. Who’s going to clean up the mess after I burst?”
His words ran out of him as he bent down and tenderly lifted Maddie from her yellow duckie blanket. He was cute when he was worried. His brow furrowed and his upper lip kind of drew in.
“She worries about your pores,” I replied and strummed a tiny refrain from “Tiny Bubbles” then tossed the ukulele aside. “Maybe I should go steam.”
“You should go shower and answer your phone,” he tossed over his shoulder as he absconded with my daughter.
I rolled to my side to stare listlessly out the double doors that led outside. It was a clear day, stunning by the looks of it. The sun was up and the sky indigo blue. I needed to get up, Joe was right about that. I did need a shower, shave was optional.
I had to face the disappointed fans and the rest of the team. Breakdown day was in two days and I didn’t want to go back. Ugh. We’d hosed things up so badly. I just wanted to leave it all behind for a few days. I breathed in the soft smell of flowers riding on a hot wind. I needed to go to my little desert camp. Yes. Yes. It was perfect! I’d find myself there, shake off this suffocating case of artistic funk-slash-athletic blues, and maybe even work on lyrics for my ballad.
“Hi.” I rolled my head around to find Emma standing on the patio. She’d been creating mud pies. Her mother would be thrilled.
“Hey, Pretty Miss Emma.”
“This is for you.” She pattered barefooted into the music room, her new pink dress smeared with mud and sand. Her face and hair were thick with gooey wet dirt and her tiny toes were packed full. “I digged a hole by a purple bush and made pancakes. You can have this one. It has extra sand and two stick candles on it because,” she paused to breathe, “you lost a game and was sad like I was sad when our house burned.”
“Thank you so much.” I held out my hands and she flopped the mud pie into my palms. “This looks awesome. I like the dead grasshopper. That gives it a nice touch.”
“Yeah, I found that under the big window by the pool. Are you still sad?” She sat beside me then took the time to pull her skirt out and press the wrinkles free, with her muddy hands. That made me smile.
“A little.”
She nodded sagely. “Uncle Joseph says that it’s okay to be sad when sad things happen. My mommy makes me laugh. Maybe your mommy can come here and make you laugh then you won’t feel so sad.”
“My mommy can’t do that, she’s in Heaven.” I pushed to my feet, my sleep shorts twisted around me, and placed the pancake on top of an empty pizza box resting on the Steinway’s shiny black top. “I’ll eat that for dessert after breakfast.”
“I’m sorry for your mommy being in Heaven. You can share mine.”
I choked up a bit. “Thanks. That’s super generous.”
“I know. I have to go make more pies. Please use a napkin!” She scampered off, muddy feet leaving little prints on the hardwood flooring. The cleaning service would be thrilled. The tracks made me smile, though.
“Hey, you ready to get up and face the world?” I heard Simon ask from behind me.
“Not quite yet. I think we need to get out of here. Maybe go to the petting zoo or—”
“My guys have tracked down Maddie’s mother.”
I turned from the open doors to gape at Simon. “How?”
“Lots of leg work. We started with the short bit of CCTV from the neighbors we got when she dropped Maddie off that day. She’d had a hoodie on when she got out of the car, but it was down when she drove through the security gate. Grainy image and blurry, but we had a general description, and also a make of car. Tracked the car to a rental agency in Tempe. Then we did the hard work. Spread out, located the car in a small lot in Mesilla, New Mexico. She signed off on a credit card to pay for the rental and we had her. She’s living in an apartment with two other girls and waitressing at a strip club at night.”
“Wow,” I whispered, dropping to the piano bench
