Alive on Opening Day Read online

CHAPTER THREE

  Reunion

  Fifteen minutes later, Dan still sat at the table, flipping through the 1974 calendar trying to make sense of what he was seeing when the doorbell rang. He looked toward the front hall but then turned his attention back to June, where the 15th day was circled in fat red marker: “Dan’s 20th birthday!” the writing inside proclaimed.

  The doorbell rang again, followed immediately by a loud banging, and Dan could hear a muffled voice through the front glass.

  “Dan! Dan! Are you in there?” It was Mrs. Bisler. “Let me in, Dan. I’ve called your mother, and she will be here any minute.” A pause, followed by, “Da-an!”

  Dan stumbled to his feet and dropped the calendar on the table. “I’m coming,” he called out, but it came out as a dry, cracked whisper. He cleared his throat and walked toward the door, yelling again: “Coming!”

  The knocking and shouting stopped, and Dan peeked out the long window beside the front door. He could see Mrs. Bisler standing on the stoop in her full-length June Cleaver dress, wrapped in a light woolen shawl. He unlocked the door and pulled it open and, as he did, Mrs. Bisler bounded over the threshold and clamped him in a bear hug.

  The force nearly knocked Dan over backwards but he managed to catch himself and found his arms wrapped around Mrs. Bisler’s neck, his face buried in her shawl. “Oh, I’m so happy to see you, Dan!”

  Dan thought it was an ironic thing for her to say considering there was no way she had actually seen him in her bull rush. After several seconds of bone-crushing embrace, Dan managed to push away from Mrs. Bisler, and he held her at arms’ length.

  “Whoa, Mrs. Bisler!” he said, and instantly felt guilty for his exclamation. He pulled his tone down a notch and continued with, “Well, I’m happy to see you, too, Mrs. Bisler, but we just saw each other …” Dan stopped to think of when the last time was he HAD seen Chris’ mom. It should have been the day before at the sectional game, but that was still a black hole in Dan’s memory. “… um, at our last baseball game.”

  There, that was safe, he thought.

  “Oh, Dan, you really don’t remember, do you?” Mrs. Bisler asked, and Dan felt uneasy because it was as if she had read his thoughts.

  Dan wanted to be respectful, but he’d had about enough of the strange way Mrs. Bisler was acting. Not only had she barged into his house when his parents weren’t home, but she was treating him like a child or an invalid. If she had been anyone other than Chris’ mother, Dan might have been concerned for his safety. As it was, he wanted the nonsense to end.

  “Remember WHAT, Mrs. Bisler?” he said, his voice rising. The older woman recoiled, and took her hands off his arms. “What is it I’m supposed to remember, and just why are you acting so strange?”

  Mrs. Bisler’s worried eyes shifted to the front door. She pulled her hands together and began fidgeting with her purse strap.

  “Well, Dan, it’s just that … ” She was stumbling over her words. “I think I’d better go back outside and wait for your mother. I’ll be in my car if you need me, dear.”

  With that, she rushed past him and out the storm door, making a beeline for the shiny Pontiac standing at the curb. Dan snatched at her shawl as she went by, and he called after her, but she didn’t even look back.

  Dan stepped out onto the front stoop, hands held palms-up at his side in wonder at the scene that had just transpired. He was completely befuddled about what Mrs. Bisler was up to, but he thought the best thing to do would be to wait for his mother. What he WANTED to do was go to school, but he didn’t see anyway he could get past Mrs. Bisler’s car without her seeing him, and probably stopping him. So he went back inside and sat at the kitchen table again, but he left the front door open and turned his chair to face the street. From where he sat, he could keep an eye on Mrs. Bisler to make sure she wasn’t up to anything really weird, and he could see when his mother pulled up.

  Although it felt a lot longer to Dan at the time, the clock on the stove told him only six minutes passed from the time he sat down until Clara parked her car and walked over to speak with Mrs. Bisler. The other woman was agitated and pointed toward the house several times, then got out of her car again. The two women stood at the foot of the sidewalk speaking in hushed tones for a good five minutes, one of them occasionally glancing in Dan’s direction, before hugging and going separate ways. As Dan’s mother walked toward the house, Mrs. Bisler climbed back into her car and drove away. She tooted her horn twice as she passed by after turning around.

  Dan watched Clara clop up the sidewalk in her “working clothes,” as she called them — a khaki blouse and blue jeans, with a red bandana tied behind her head to keep her long red hair teased into a wavy pony tail. Dan always thought, had his mother been born 15 years later, she would have made a great hippie. As it was, she made a pretty good mom and he was really glad to see her.

  Maybe it was just the ordeal with Mrs. Bisler, or maybe it was because he STILL couldn’t remember what had happened the night before, but Dan had an overwhelming feeling of homecoming when his mother put her hand on the storm door and called out his name. It felt as if he were seeing her for the first time in a long time, and his sadness began to subside, though the source of his gloom remained a mystery.

  In spite of the fact he considered himself a full-grown man, Dan squealed and shot to his feet. “Mom,” he called out and ran toward the door, arriving in the entry way just as his mother stepped inside. She dropped her purse and jacket on the floor, wrapping her arms around him.

  “Oh, Danny!” she cried. “You’re really here!”

  Even though Dan was slammed with the same surge of emotion which moved his mother, he had no idea why. But the moment felt so much like a reunion he decided to just ride the wave for a little while, and both of them sobbed. It was the strangest thing Dan had ever done, but it seemed right.

  —

  Ten minutes later, when Dan and Clara had composed themselves and wiped away their tears, she led him back into the kitchen and told him to have a seat, which he did.

  “Have you had anything to eat?” she asked him, shaking her head as if correcting herself. “I mean, do you feel like eating? Are you hungry at all?”

  Dan had been awake about an hour at that point but had not even considered eating. Normally, he would feel faint if he missed a meal by a few minutes, but the morning had been too crazy for him to notice the gnawing in his belly.

  He nodded and smiled. “Yeah, Mom, I am.”

  She wiped tears from her eyes and said, “Hmm, how about some pancakes and bacon?”

  Dan raised his eyebrows. “And scrambled eggs?” he asked.

  Clara laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, Dan, and scrambled eggs.”

  “And Mom?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “You have a story to tell me, don’t you?”

  She began to tear up again, and her voice was thick. “Yes, honey, I do. You sit down and we can talk while you eat.”

  Dan pulled his chair up to the table and watched his mother make breakfast. It was a scene that seemed resurrected from Dan’s ancient past. He asked where she had been that morning, and she told him she had been volunteering at the library, which is where Mrs. Bisler reached her. Clara said she had been spending more time at the library “since” … and she let the word hang. Next she finished with, “We can get into that in a few minutes.”

  She pulled a large plate from the cabinet next to the stove and loaded it high with pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs, with maple syrup and hot sauce as toppings. Then she filled a large glass with milk.

  Finally, she brought the food to the table and set it in front of Dan, taking a seat across from him. As he ate, she reached across Dan’s meal to tussle his medium-length brown hair and grabbed one of his hands in hers, gazing into his hazel eyes to begin her story.

  “Here’s what happened, Dan,” she said.

  Dan nodded, eager to hear the tale of his lost day, but nervo
us to find out the truth.

  Clara went on, “It was the night of the sectional game against Melville …”