|
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
Since it doesn’t show up in pen on paper, you might as well know that words like
“they-a,” and “bananer” when I say them out loud. I got this from Pop, who’s even worse than I am. One time we took the train down to New York so he could show me where Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds used to be, and while we were ordering pizza in Brooklyn and back-and-forthing about who you’d rather have batting cleanup behind you—Pistol Pete Reiser or Charlie Banks—the waitress asked us what country we were from. (Like they’ve got room to talk in Brooklyn.)
Sox. My Grandpa’s name was Tris Speaker Keller (after the 1907 outfielder they called “The Grey Eagle”), my Dad’s name is Theodore Williams Keller (world-famous slugger with ’tude in 1940-something), and I even have an Aunt Babe and an Aunt Ruth. (This was a lucky coincidence. They met 38 years ago at a Bobby Kennedy rally in Rockport and they’ve been together ever since. Aunt Babe swears they would have fallen in love even if Aunt Ruth’s name had been Sheba, but I’m not so sure.) Pop couldn't decide whether to call me Rico Petrocelli or Freddy Lynn, but Uncle Yaz had twins that year and beat him to it. That’s how I wound up Anthony Conigliaro Keller (another snarly batting champ who got beaned in 1967, which somehow turned him into a hero). And the only one who’s allowed to call me Tony C is my Dad, because I’m the only one who gets to call him Teddy Ballgame. To everybody else I’m just T.C. Except to my brother Augie, who calls me Tick.
and I had a brand new hole in my heart from losing my mother. But even though Augie and I had never talked to each other before, he was the only one who knew what to say and how to say it. (Everybody else thought they could get away with blowing smoke up my ass about Guardian Angels and Eternal Paradise, like my mother had gone on a Princess Cruise.) Pretty soon we were taking make-believe trips to the planet Twylo and losing our thumbs to alien walnuts, and that’s when I knew for sure that I wouldn’t be sad forever. Well, anybody who can pull off something like that for you isn’t just a best friend—that’s brother territory. So Augie told his Mom and Dad that they had a new son, and I told Pop the same thing. Screw biology.
proved it instead. Right after my third birthday, we went to Derry, New Hampshire for her cousin’s wedding, and before we left they gave me a purple balloon that said “Congratulations Bobby and Penny” on it. (Mama’s half of the family all has normal names.) Well when you’re three, you just know that a purple balloon is pretty much the biggest thing that’s ever going to happen to you—especially when you let go of it on the way back to Brookline and it flies out the window of your Subaru. My mother finally got me to stop crying by promising that my purple balloon was flying all over Boston looking for me, and that if I watched the sky long enough, it’d see me and come home. So Pop and I stood in the backyard looking straight up for two hours, waiting for it to zero in for a landing. But no snap. Then all of a sudden from inside the house I heard Mama calling out, “T.C.! Come quick! Look who’s here!” And damn if my purple balloon wasn’t bobbing up and down against the ceiling of our front porch. (I was ten before I figured out that she drove all the way back to Derry, New Hampshire just to get me another one.)
wakes me up at 6:00 every morning and we put on our sweats. Then we bike over to B.U. and run along the Charles River up to the Lowell tower and back—and on the way home, I give him a sixty-second head start, which he says is never enough because I always catch up to him at Dunster House. (Not that it really matters, since Nehi beats both of us back to our bikes anyway.) Boston University is Pop’s old hangout. He played football and baseball there, and he still looks enough like Joe Montana that once in a while people ask him for Joe’s autograph (usually around Super Bowl weekend). So he gives it to them. My dad’s easy. Even if he’s never heard of Stevie Nicks, Justin Timberlake, or Avi Vinocur.
|