"Seasons Clear, and Awe" - Chapter 3

by Matthew Gasda

and

Nov 07, 2025

We continue PILCROW’s Inaugural Serialized Novel Contest: over the next three weeks, we’ll serialize the first few chapters of our three Finalist’s unpublished novels, and then subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack (Finalists are awarded $500; the Winner $1,000.)

Our Finalists for this round:

Seasons Clear, and Awe by Matthew Gasda
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Mites by Gregory Freedman
Notes on the State of Virginia by Michael Pilarz

We’re excited to have all of you as a part of this endeavor to forge a new path for fiction on Substack. If you believe in what we’re doing, please consider offering a paid subscription.

“Seasons Clear, and Awe” chronicles three decades in the life of the Gazda family, whose children inherit not wealth but something more dangerous: their parents’ unlived ambitions and their mother’s gift for psychological dissection. As Stephen and Elizabeth grow from precocious children into neurotic artists in their thirties, Matthew Gasda reveals how post-industrial, late 20th century America created a generation too intelligent for ordinary happiness, too self-aware for decisive action: suspended between the working-class pragmatism of their fathers and the creative and spiritual aspirations of their mothers, capable of everything except building lives.

Matthew Gasda is the founder of the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research and the author of many books, including the recent novel The Sleepers and Writer’s Diary.

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—2001—

Michael took the lawnmower out of the shed, or out of the garage. It was a Sunday morning. Stephen had a baseball game that night. It was late May.

Michael was 51 years old. He was wearing shorts, sneakers, a Jimmy Buffett T-shirt, with his backwards bright red Phillies cap (the same hat he’d had for 15 years, with the old school logo). He’d lost some hair on his head, which was also going grey, no longer the black, thick hair he had when Stephen had been born. His neck was still relatively thick, still an athlete’s neck. He was still strong and thin, active, especially in the summers. He still threw batting practice a few times a week and golfed several times a month through the summer. He and Adele would often take a walk after dinner, and if he found himself sitting too long watching TV at night, he would do 10 or 15 or 20 push-ups before bed, just because.

This regular, easy kind of maintenance kept him feeling young. He didn’t smoke even the occasional cigarette anymore. He had largely switched over from beer to red wine at night.

A new family had moved in next door that winter: the Stolls, John and Heidi. John flew private planes for hire and kept crazy work hours. Sometimes he was gone for two weeks, sometimes he was home all the time. Heidi was a stay-at-home mom. They were both Bush voters and Christians, as they’d made clear to the Gazdas, in a gentle way when they moved in.

Adele and Michael had voted for Gore, and both believed that the election was stolen in Florida. But it didn’t make much difference who was president in Bethlehem. As long as Bush didn’t privatize Social Security or push for school vouchers, Michael’s life was over, and his life wouldn’t change very much. All that mattered is that he kept his teaching job, kept his PA pension.

It was 9 a.m., about 71 degrees outside. It would get warmer over the course of the day. It was supposed to get up into the 80s, which was unseasonably warm. The push mower roared to life. Flora and fauna, earwigs and caterpillars, birds and bees, wriggling and writhing, flapping and rising and ordering themselves, reacted in a silent aurora around him.

The dogwood was green, ready to bloom. The one pink, the other yellow. The grass would be mowed, but he would not bag it, so that the dry stems would return to the earth.

It was the sixth inning. Stephen, standing on the mound, or rather stalking around the mound like a madman, 12 years old, 5’4’’ and 90 pounds, topped out at 67 miles per hour; and, when he combined that fastball with the submarine change-up (which he had invented himself and which, if his coach were anyone other than his father, he would have never been allowed to throw), he was dominant (one game early in the season he’d struck out 16 of 18 batters).

Stephen’s team, The Orioles, in third place, were playing the Metropolitans, the first-place team at Northeast Little League in Bethlehem, PA, whose coach, Bob Hall, was going to be the coach of the All-Star team, as he had been the year before.

Stephen was up to 12 strikeouts after five innings. The boy felt the interconnecting transmission of energy across the system and grid of his body. He felt the many centers of his muscles and joints spring into coordinated action. He felt that he could achieve, by plan, time, schedule, the locating of a fastball, the locating of a changeup.

He felt in control and unlike when he was hitting or playing shortstop, he didn’t think about it. He didn’t feel any kind of performance anxiety, which he felt in school or during his piano recitals or playing video games or talking to girls. He only felt calm when he was, like this, playing pitcher or quarterback.

When the ball was in his hands no adults or other kids could fully touch him. Or he could shut other people out and just be alone with his single-minded task.

Michael knew his son deserved a chance to be one of the two starting pitchers on the All-Star roster, but Coach Hall was going to guarantee to make his own son, Matt, the opening day pitcher. Matt outweighed Stephen by about 50 pounds and three inches, and his best friend Dougie, the son of Tom D’Ambrosio, Stephen’s dentist, had been the number two pitcher the year before and was likely to get it again. Just because.

Stephen threw a fastball in the dirt, which the skinny Puerto Rican lead-off hitter failed to swing at.

The count was three and two.

They were small. They didn’t have as many boys going through puberty. Didn’t have as many chunky country boys as the Metropolitans. For various reasons, the Orioles had sons of Lehigh and Moravian professors. The Metropolitans had sons of police officers and contractors. Sons of men who rode motorcycles and had tattoos. It just sort of fell out that way. Grown men drafted players who resembled them. By extension, little kids justified the grown men’s attitudes, philosophies, and ways through life.

Michael, standing in the center of the dugout, observed the comically grim focus on his 12 year old son’s face.

Stephen’s commitment to excellence, across the board, was haphazard, which worried his father.

He threw at his dad every day. He went to camps, he played with his friends, he ran around, but he resisted doing any kind of fitness, ate junk food, wanted to play Crash Bandicoot and Madden all day. He also didn’t practice the piano, even though he was a good improviser.

And his son was starting to do worse in school, in middle school (something had shifted in the last year: Stephen’s fifth grade teacher had said, unironically, that Stephen was the best young writer he had ever seen and the most ferocious reader).

On some level Michael respected son’s unorthodoxies: the fact that he chose to throw a submarine change up, that he insisted on being a power pitcher even though he was so skinny, that he wanted to strike kids out with fastballs. He didn’t need to be chunky, aggressive (the boorish son of a chunky, boorish guy like Mike Hall who rode motorcycles and dirt bikes).

The Halls had only moved here after their own house, their first house in South Carolina, had burned down in some kind of insurance scam, but Michael had never really heard the full of it. Mike’s older son, Scott, had gotten a D1 scholarship to pitch but had torn his rotator cuff and now just hung around the little league as the unofficial pitching coach of the Metropolitan hitters.

The next batter, the two hole, a stocky hit who also wrestled, but whose name Michael couldn’t remember (Scott something) hit a line hard drive to center field, but right at the centerfielder, Tim Watkins, who was one of the Orioles better defensive players. An easy out.

Michael looked across to the dugouts and saw that the Metropolitan hitters and their coach rolled their eyes almost collectively in sigh. They wanted to fuck up Stephen; they wanted to embarrass him (because he was too physically small to be this arrogant). They wanted to terrify this defiant, almost feminine, absurd little pitcher. They wanted to humiliate him.

Michael was proud of his son. If they couldn’t today, they would do so during the first day of All-Star practice, because most of the All-Stars were going to come from the Metropolitans. Last year, Coach Hall had made Stephen play second base, not shortstop, and hadn’t given him any innings as a pitcher, and Michael got the sense that the better Stephen pitched in the current game, the less playing time he would get during the All-Star season: a suspicion confirmed by Coach Hall’s posture across the dugouts (jeering, rough, dismissive). Why did assholes always win?

During his own football career, from high school through college, Michael had always lacked the necessary fire to dominate; he was athletically gifted, built, and fast, good hands for a wide receiver, but he never demanded the ball, never talked shit, and only really got playing time his senior year at Lehigh (when it could have been much earlier if he’d really wanted it). Something in Michael had held himself back; now he was worried that he was letting his son, who did have that brashness and that competitiveness, down; he didn’t fight to coach the All-Star team; he was losing the political game among Little League parents which was at least equally important to regular season performance (and this could affect making the high school team, playing in college, God knows what else; God knows how talented Stephen might prove to be if he went through a growth spurt).

3–2 pitch. Stephen’s fastball was high and away, his hips tugging his arm and wrist too far off target, and the batter walked. It was a bad pitch. Stephen had nothing to be afraid of from this two-hole hitter, whom Michael had never seen hit a ball out of the infield in the three games they’d played against the Metropolitans. But Stephen wasn’t thinking tactically. He wanted to be aggressive. He wanted another strikeout. He really just needed to keep it in the zone, close enough that the kid would’ve tried to get a bat on it.

The Orioles weren’t great hitters. They were twelve years old.

Michael watched the coach fall across the dugout, clapping, spitting, slapping the three-hole hitter on the ass.

—Fuck him up, someone called from the Metropolitans dugout, followed by laughter.

The three hole Colin McTagg, was tall, already 5’8”. He had hit a few home runs, including one off Stephen in the first game of the year in April, in cold weather.

This was dangerous. The game was tied 3–3, and the Metropolitans had scored almost entirely on walks and errors. The Orioles didn’t have much power. They’d had two home runs all year, total, and one of them was Stephen’s inside-the-park home run. They were small. They didn’t have as many boys going through puberty, didn’t have as many chunky country boys as the Metropolitans. For various reasons, the Orioles had sons of Lehigh and Moravian professors. The Metropolitans had sons of police officers and contractors: sons of men who rode motorcycles and had tattoos.

Grown men drafted players who resembled them. By extension, little kids justified the grown men’s attitudes, philosophies, and ways through life.

Stephen threw a fastball right over the middle. He was juiced up, and Colin took it. Michael was surprised. But again, they were twelve. Maybe Coach Hall had told him to take a pitch. That was probably the case. Coach Hall didn’t think Stephen could throw strikes. He saw Stephen as wild, improvisational, which wasn’t completely untrue.

Ball. Then another ball. Two and one. Coach Hall was clapping, touching the brim of his hat. Michael had no idea if this meant take or swing.

McTagg swung and fouled the ball off deep down the right field foul line. Long enough to be a home run. Some parents gasped into the drama.

Ball again. Three-two. The stocky second baseman wasn’t threatening to run. Coach Hall wasn’t going to risk making an out on the basepaths when he had his two best hitters.

Another foul ball.

Michael clapped and looked at Coach Prosser. This might be Stephen’s last inning if he couldn’t get these outs. They had other kids who could pitch. Stephen wouldn’t want to come out, but if he got rattled, it could spiral fast. If he gave up a double or a home run here, it would be better to let another pitcher get hammered rather than have Stephen disintegrate in real time.

Up and away. Ball. Stephen got the ball back, nodded, started his windup quickly, too quickly. Another ball. Then another. Then another. Colin McTagg trotted to first base.

—Fuck! Michael said under his breath.

From the other dugout, Coach Hall was smiling calmly. His own son was up.

Coach Hall was missing a lot of muscle on his right leg from a motorcycle accident. The whole thing was scarred up, and he walked with a limp. There were rumors the Halls were in debt, that their house was in arrears. Their son Scott had gotten kicked off the Temple University baseball team and spent time in jail for selling weed.

Matt Hall, the coach’s second son, was next, the four-hitter, the cleanup hitter. Matt Hall had hit eight home runs already this year, unofficially, which was a huge number for a Little Leaguer.

Stephen came out firing. Strike outside corner. Great pitch. Changeup. Low and away. Matt Hall, chubby, strong, built kind of like Hack Wilson. He had a big head. Big hands. Bigger than his body.

Stephen was too confident. Michael could see it. He felt the urge to call timeout and run up to the mound; all he could think was: don’t throw in the strike zone; don’t challenge him; get him to chase.

But Stephen challenged the chubby-strong rival (fastball inside), and Matt Hall crushed it: a towering 222-foot shot to center-left field. Way out of here.

—Fuck, Michael said under his breath.

The snack stand (which boasted an industrial-sized grill, a popcorn machine, and a slushie machine, all thanks to a grant from the city and state) was part of a larger concrete structure: the new, three-story Northeast Little League Clubhouse.

Elizabeth was wearing a Gap Kids spaghetti strap sundress in pastel pinks with a butterfly pattern on the front, jelly sandals, and a scrunchie-wrapped ponytail.

She leaned in at the snack-stand window. —Can I get a water ice? she asked the attendant.

—What kind would you like?

—Watermelon, please.

The attendant, a teenage girl, much taller than Elizabeth, working beside her visor-wearing mother, shoveled the pink ice into a paper cup.

Jamie, Rich Prosser’s sister, who was seven, piped up, —Can I get a watermelon too?

The girls dug quarters from their pockets and slapped them on the counter.

Back at the bleachers, Elizabeth, who cared little for baseball but loved hanging out at the snack stand and making new friends, sat beside her mother, who looked grim.

—What happened?

—Your brother just gave up a home run, Adele said.—They took him off the mound. Now he’s at shortstop looking miserable.

—Okay! Elizabeth munched her water ice, confused by and indifferent to the sudden gloom. A home run was bad (someone had knocked the ball over the fence), but Stephen had been pitching so well, “in the zone,” as he liked to say. Now he stared at his shoes, kicking the dirt.

Rich Prosser, in a pair of Nike Air Zooms, had taken over on the mound; He threw more slowly than Stephen but kept the ball under control; the next batter popped up, and Stephen himself caught it, though he looked as if he’d rather go home.

—Come on, Steve! Elizabeth clapped.

Adele touched her arm.

—I don’t know if he wants to hear that right now. I think he’s pretty upset.

—But he was doing so well.

—Yes, but he wants to win.

Elizabeth studied her mother; Adele didn’t care about baseball, but she was competitive and determined her children feel special.

—Should I boo him? Elizabeth whispered.

—Your brother might actually appreciate that, Adele said. He has a sense of humor.

—Actually I’m giving him a hug after the game, Elizabeth declared. A big hug, and I’ll tell him he’s the best brother.

—I think that would be good.

Thirty minutes later the game ended, 7–3. After the teams shook hands, the boys stomped around manfully spitting, chewing gum, buying burgers, and laughing in mingled groups. Elizabeth found Stephen pacing behind the outfield fence, far from everyone, alone.

—Steve, I want to give you a hug.

—I’m all dusty, you know.

—Can I still hug you? I told Mom I would.

—Did she send you?

—No, I’m sending myself, Stinky.

—Okay, come here, Stephen said, stepping forward.—Give your old brother a hug.

—You’re not old, you’re twelve.

—You know what I mean.

Elizabeth wrapped her thin arms around him.—I love you, brother. I love you, Stinky.

—I’m actually stinky.

—I know you are. Pee-yoo. Are you ready to come back now? She tugged at his jersey sleeve. —Come on, have fun. No one cares about the game anymore.

—I care about the game… but I’ll come over. I probably look like a total loser out here.

—Yeah, a stinky loser, Stinky. She tugged again.—Let’s go, horsey.

Stephen smiled and let himself be led. Elizabeth felt good, useful. Sometimes she didn’t know how to fit into her big brother’s secretive, emotional world. She and her mother sang at the piano, but Stephen refused. Yet, on quiet afternoons, Elizabeth would hear him downstairs softly making up songs, and at night she sometimes found him crying behind his closed door.

They trudged about two hundred feet, parallel to the field, until they reached the snack stand where their parents chatted with other adults.

—Howdy, folks, Stephen drawled, half stoic, half goofy.

—Hey, Steve, Michael said. —Tough one today.

—You can say that again, boss.

—Steve, I thought you were doing great, Adele offered.

—Yeah, I was... until I wasn’t. Stephen replied.—Got blasted to the friggin’ moon.

Michael changed the subject.—Want anything? A burger, or do you just want to go home?

—I just want to go home.

Elizabeth felt that all her brother wanted to do was cry and, realizing that, to the great surprise of everyone around her, began to cry herself.

Michael and his son had showered and changed and were now sitting on the porch. Both were in T-shirts and shorts. Michael in his Yuengling shirt from a factory tour. Adele was in the kitchen heating up dinner.

Stephen, like the last pitch he’d thrown, was crushed.

Michael looked at his son with grief in his heart. And he felt the warm summer breeze and loss of the sun on his skin. Not even fully aware of how strange it was that an adult man could be so connected to the very transitory and insignificant feelings of a child.

It was a little league game. It was over. It would not be recorded or written down in stone. It would not be chronicled or remembered.

And for the Matt Halls of the world, this was peak. Being 12, 13, 14, 15; being bigger than other kids; hitting home runs. Getting an atta boy from your dad in the dugout. The other guys were busy laughing at the Stephens of the world. The temporary underdogs with high IQs who would go to really good schools and get really good jobs.

—The problem is we can’t hit, Stephen said after a long, non-meditative pause —We can’t hit. So I’m afraid to make a mistake, and so like...

—I know, Michael said quietly, —I know.

—Really sucks, Stephen said, using a word he didn’t use very often.

—Yeah, it does.

—I hate them, Stephen said, half clenching his fist, I actually hate them.

—Well, Michael said trailing off, unable to think of a counter-argument, realizing that he hated the Halls too. Hated the whole brutish Metropolitans roster.

Matt Hall was an extension of Bob Hall’s will, in a way, which is why he was overgrown, verging on fat. It was like he was pregnant with his father. Whereas Stephen loved and respected his father, he didn’t want to expand to fit his authority. Stephen wanted his father as a protector, as a shield against anyone who would ask him to act in any way that was other than completely individualistic, heroic, and princely. Free from guilt or failure.

Now that the game was over, however, and he’d had the drive home to think about it, Michael had to admit that Stephen had brought the result upon himself. Stephen had wanted his father to protect his right to challenge Matt Hall with a fastball over the (which wasn’t hard enough). And this is why the Metropolitans’ whole dugout had exploded, cheering and laughing. And this is why there was so much tension before the at-bat.

Because Stephen wanted something more than a team win. He wanted to win individually. He wanted to defeat Matt Hall. He wanted to defeat an entire class of adolescent boy. He wanted to defeat authority itself, and to defeat a type of boyhood that the Matt Halls of the world represented. A boyhood where the boy did what the father wanted, where the boy was like the father, acting as an extension of him.

Stephen realized that the world of men was not dominated by men like his father, but by men like Coach Hall. The Coach Hall team always won.

Michael shifted in his seat, sitting up straight, leaning across the table towards his son, who was bunched up in a ball on his side.

—Steve, can I tell you something?

—Dad, I know what you’re going to say.

—What am I going to say?

—You’re going to say I should have walked him.

—Yeah? That’s right.

—Okay, Dad, I’m sorry.

—I’m not asking you to say sorry. I’m just... I’ve struck out Matt Hall before.

—Yeah, and how have you struck him out?

—By getting him to chase.

—Okay Dad.

Michael was proud of his son’s abilities, physical and mental. He was in the gifted program at school. His teacher said he was a natural leader, outspoken and extremely articulate for his age. At least in the classroom, and not after a baseball game. But he had this tendency to take shortcuts, to do things his own way, to disregard even the simplest directions. This would make life harder for Stephen than if he would just do things his father’s way, or his teacher’s way, or his coach’s way once in a while. If he would compromise just a little bit and make compromise a habit. But because his mother encouraged it, praised him, told him that his classmates were jealous of him or his teachers didn’t understand him and so on, Stephen avoided learning any really significant lessons about himself.

Michael had had to grow up early. The youngest of four kids. The son of an alcoholic steelworker. His mom had died young of breast cancer when he was twenty, during his second year at Lehigh. His own saintly, tender, beautiful, faithful mother. No one told Michael he was special. No one administered an IQ test to him. No one intervened psychologically in his life to protect him from reality. He got his first job at fifteen in the throwing mills. As soon as he could drive, he’d have to pick his father up drunk from the bar. He’d been subject to relentless hazing by his older brothers, Greg and Bradley.

He’d had to win his way onto the Bethlehem Catholic varsity football team. He’d had to win his way into a scholarship at Lehigh. He’d gotten concussed. He’d broken bones. He’d struggled to put on weight to bulk up. To endure the beating he took practice after practice. And he never complained. Practice, work, home, school. That had been his life in some combination from the time he was Stephen’s age to the time he graduated from college. And when he graduated from college, he was a married man. He’d gotten a job teaching right away. Even though at the time he had no real interest or inclination to teach. He had done it because he had a duty to support himself and because it was necessary.

But looking at his son, Michael failed to see how he would be mentally ready to get a part-time job at fifteen or sixteen. And he failed to see how he would be ready for the psychological, if not physical, demands of high school sports. Again, despite all of his ability. His precociousness. His originality. None of this mattered if he lacked consistency and stick-to-it-ness and toughness.

Late in the game, when the game was out of hand, Stephen had made an error. He had short-stepped on a routine ground ball. He just fumbled the ball in his glove. Couldn’t get his throw off to first base in time. It had no impact on the game, but Michael knew it was a bad sign. Great athletes shook off bad plays and came back and made great plays. Great athletes didn’t check out. Great people didn’t check out. And he wanted his son to be a great person. He needed, even, for his son to be a great person. Michael saw rebellion in his son’s eyes.

—You know, I think sometimes it’s just, um... it’s just important to be... smart, you know? Rather than brave. I really, I really... I didn’t think he’d... I didn’t think he’d go for it. Or expect it, I mean. Like, I didn’t think he’d expect it. Stephen exclaimed, worked up. —You know, I was thinking, like, in terms of reverse psychology...

Stephen’s voice still hadn’t dropped, although he tended to cast it down in a self-aware way, as far as it could go. So his voice was projected halfway between boyhood and manhood. That uniquely adolescent male voice.

—It’s okay, Steve. I... I just think there’s a lesson in here somewhere.

—The lesson is that I should be five inches taller and... throw 90 miles per hour and be awesome.

—But you’re not, and you don’t, so... maybe one day...

Michael trailed off. Michael was a big guy. Six-three. A lean 185.

With his arm, it’s true that if Stephen was five, six, seven inches taller, if he really went through a bigger growth spurt, he actually could be a college-level pitcher. Even get drafted. And Michael didn’t know. It was hard to project. Twelve was still a child. And there wasn’t really much guarantee that Steve would even get any innings as a pitcher on the All-Star team because Bob Hall was the fucking coach.

So why was he thinking about college and getting recruited or drafted? That was crazy, right? That was just fantasy.

But Michael had played in college. Played football, and probably could have played baseball too as a first baseman if he pursued it. And he hadn’t gone through a growth spurt when he was twelve. It wasn’t until he was fourteen or fifteen that he really came into his own as an athlete. So it wasn’t crazy to think that Stephen, who clearly had his father’s genes, his father’s athleticism, would do the same. He was coordinated. Competitive. Determined.

Illusion and reality. Hope and fear. All collided and fell into confusion when he thought about his son. And the truth was, he hated playing college football. He didn’t like the other Little League dads for the most part. He didn’t think Stephen really enjoyed team sports. Stephen enjoyed being Stephen. Stephen enjoyed pitching. But the second the ball was out of his hands, he would lose interest. It was the same thing with football, which Stephen played with his friends down in Edgeboro Park. Michael didn’t really watch those games, but he knew that Stephen played quarterback. That he wanted to go out for the seventh-grade football team. But Michael hadn’t let him play pee-wee football. Because he thought it was too much too soon.

Michael looked past Stephen towards the front yard. Fireflies were beginning to appear in the grass, and up in the outer branches of the sycamore, squirrels clung to their scouting position.

Michael thought about the future, when he would be dead, and the house owned and possessed by another family. And the sadness and beauty of that, the commonplace tragedy of that.

—I’m going to go down and turn on the Phillies game in a second, Michael explained, referring to the newly refurbished basement, which he had done himself. —You’re welcome to join me.

—Is Scott Rolen playing? Stephen asked.

Scott Rolen was Stephen’s favorite Phillie, their third baseman, the heir to Mike Schmidt. An incredible defensive player. And a solid 3-4-5 hitter. A good hitter for power and average. But he clearly wasn’t juicing like a lot of Major League players, so he didn’t hit for some of the outrageous numbers that Rafael Palmeiro, Bonds, Andrés Galarraga, McGwire, or Sosa hit for. And Scott Rolen was a noble player on a pretty bad Phillies team. He had just come off the 15-day DL after getting hit on the wrist with a fastball.

—Yes, I believe so.

Stephen flopped down in the grass and lay on his back, spreading his arms like he was making a snow angel, still in his dusty uniform. —I’m gonna go downstairs and play Civ Two.

—Okay. I’m gonna get the game started, maybe listen out here on the radio, Michael said. —Your mom’s making you something to eat, I think.

Stephen’s eyes flicked toward the kitchen, visible through a back window, where Adele was visible in the foreground. Michael was touched by his son’s grief: the speciousness of it, the irrelevance of it. By his child’s childish involvement in what was just a game.

Adele had put this idea in Michael’s head, and it wasn’t typically Michael’s nature to think that abstractly, but he watched his son clover out of the grass and stare into the obstacle of the sky like he could clear it away. He appreciated that there was something in the boy that needed nurturing in order to ascend rather than descend, that his son had the necessary raw material for a great life, but also the capacity to waste and complain and make excuses as he got older. His son was free and entitled in ways that Adele encouraged and that Michael couldn’t control.

His son, who was not fully aware of the process of generations passing. Of the deeds of settlement and the urge to marry well that had propelled him into existence. Of the many solitary ax blows required for the Moravians to carve Bethlehem out of the ancient woods. And the many centuries of industry and industriousness that led up to this moment in the silver dark of an ordinary evening.

—Hey, you’re gonna be okay.

—I know, I know, Stephen groaned.

—You’re gonna be okay. You just shouldn’t have challenged him.

—I know, I know! Stephen said again, half-shouting.

—You don’t have to get upset.

—I’m not upset, Stephen sulked.

—Seem a little bit...

—I dunno, I dunno, Stephen moaned —I just wish it didn’t happen.

—What are you gonna do to get better?

—I dunno be a farthead loserface.

—Do you want to start going to a gym? We can get you signed up at the community center or...

—No.

—Why not, Stephen?

Stephen registered the concern in his father’s voice. The boy didn’t like the idea of having to enhance his body: the power was supposed to be there, coiled like a spring, released by the magic of his concentrated, superactive mind.

—I dunno; just seems stupid.

—It might serve you to get a little stronger, especially at the plate.

—Yeah yeah yeah.

—I get the feeling you’re not listening boyo.

—I’m listening.

—I’m just sayin.

—Can I think about it?

—Yes. Doesn’t have to be this year, maybe going into 9th grade if you wanna try out for baseball or soccer.

—Or football.

—Do you wanna play football?

—I’m a good quarterback.

—I know you are.

—I just wish I were bigger.

—You’re a normal size for your age.

—Yeah but also not, Dad.

—You can play football if you want.

—I’m not sayin’ I do, boo.

—Personally I don’t really see the point in playing middle school football, Michael said.

—When did you start?

—9th grade.

—Okay.

—When did you go through a growth spurt?

—7th grade. I was six feet. Grew another three inches in 8th grade, and that was it.

—Lucky, Dad.

—Well it was great while it lasted.

—You really don’t want me to play football.

—It’s brutal.

—It’s fun.

—Wait til the kids tackling you grow up.

In the fall, Stephen would bike down to Edgeboro Park to play tackle without pads, often he and Rich Prosser, who lived next to Edgeboro, would organize the games; white kids, Black kids, Hispanic. The bigger kids loved to hit Stephen, and he loved to pick himself up and pretend like nothing happened. He loved juking, throwing, hollering, running around like a madman. Sometimes Michael would drive by on his way home from work and watch Stephen, unbeknownst to his son, from his car.

—So what, I’ll grow up too.

—That’s true.

—I can do whatever I want, Dad.

—Prove it.

Michael could see the rage in his son’s eyes; his son was offended by reality because it didn’t live up to the grandiose visions that were in his head, or what Michael felt or suspected were the grandiose visions.

Young children had a remarkable consciousness. And Michael knew that his son was an exceedingly, even amazingly, difficult young child to understand: someone with an unusual number of great dreams and great visions.

Michael sometimes heard his son praying out loud to God in his room and asking God to tell him why people died. And he knew that his son, even out on the baseball field or at the pool or at school, was always carried away into thought.

And he wondered if the fact that Stephen had been born blue, with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, had in some ways imprinted something on him, or if his prenatal state had been filled with extraordinary visions, if his son was death-marked and different.

There was no reason to throw Matt Hall a fastball down the middle. If he threw one or two miles per hour faster, maybe Matt Hall would have missed, but Stephen couldn’t, and Matt Hall didn’t. Stephen believed that there was a larger narrative in which Matt Hall was meant to miss, but that wasn’t the case. That wasn’t how things worked. There was still something infantile about Stephen and his magical thinking.

Michael considered too about the lives that he hadn’t lived, his own lack of ambition as an athlete, and whether it was affecting his son. If he had worked harder, if he had gone D1 instead of 1AA, gone to Penn State instead of Lehigh. If he had really used his 6’3” height and run sprints up hills and drunk raw eggs and increased his bench press and maybe gone to the NFL or the CFL, would Stephen feel so much anxiety about failing to get a strikeout in a league? His son wanted to become the dominant, domineering alpha athlete that his father hadn’t had much interest in being or confidence to become. But ironically, it didn’t seem like Stephen was going to be nearly as tall as his father or nearly as physically strong, even if in other ways he was quicker, more dexterous, had better hand-eye coordination, a better arm, and better vision. The irony was that father and son would have made a great composite athlete, but, on their own, were clearly flawed.

He would have to find a way to free Stephen from the nurturing environment of his mother, which kept his son in an infantile mental state no matter how creative and intelligent he was. He had about four or five years to get his son to really embrace reality, the hard reality of life. Otherwise, he would be incapable of living on his own and finding some kind of character that belonged to him. He didn’t want his son to be an idle dreamer.

Michael felt the duty to try to artificially create the conditions in this comfortable, cozy house that he had faced as a teenager when he had to work at the throwing mills and that his father had faced as a teenager when he had to start working at the steel mill. On one hand, of course, he didn’t want Stephen to have to do any of those things, to have to do heavy labor. On the other hand, what did you replace labor and economic necessity with? There would be economic necessity in the longer-term sense because Michael didn’t make nearly enough money as a teacher to set up any kind of trust fund for his son or his daughter. But in a metaphorical sense, he had to prepare his son to live without him.

Or without a doubt, Stephen saw adults as guardrails who had gently put him back on the right path if he strayed too far away by dreaming too much. That was fine at 12, but what about at 14, at 16, at 18, 20, 22, 25? What if Stephen kept throwing fastballs down the middle of the plate defiantly?

In some ways it was like father and son, participating in some wider event. They were both subject to the same pressure. To prove themselves as men, Michael had to prove that he could be a strong and wise father. Stephen had to prove that he could break away from his father and assert his own inner amplitude or make his inner amplitude a part of the material world.

Stephen had waited until his father had left the yard and gone around to the side entrance before he started to cry quietly in the grass. It wasn’t that Matt Hall had hit a home run; it was that Stephen felt everyone, except for his father but including his teammates, had wanted Matt Hall to hit a home run, had wanted him humbled, even Coach Prosser.

If he were older, he would have found a comparison that felt like a political assassination. And he felt like a tragic hero, like Jon Snow in A Storm of Swords, a fantasy series that Stephen had read and re-read twice by George R. R. Martin, which Stephen had found in the Bethlehem Public Library. Stephen had even written to Mr. Martin himself because the author regularly updated his personal website and answered fans. Stephen was writing his own fantasy series secretly on his sister’s desktop computer when nobody was home, and he’d hoped that George R. R. Martin would write back in, enjoining Stephen to send him his novel, and from there realize that Stephen was a genius. Martin did write back after six months to say, thank you, but you’re too young to be reading my books.

Eventually, someone other than his parents would notice how special he was; they had to.

Stephen thought that Elizabeth had the same secret powers that he did. Elizabeth, however, was better at getting noticed by teachers, and in fourth grade she’d gotten to sing Morning Star at the Moravian Vespers in front of the whole town, basically. Stephen didn’t have a comparable moment.

Stephen dug his fingers into the grass. It was like he was living life on the outside, and other people got to live on the inside. Other boys and girls got to have those individuating experiences, but he was pressing buttons that didn’t work, going through routines that didn’t work.

He was supposed to have gotten a strikeout. He was supposed to have won the game. He was supposed to have Harry Davies, the high school coach (his father’s friend and their neighbor) watching, taking note. But Harry hadn’t shown up. And it was good that he hadn’t, because Stephen had thrown the fastball over the middle of the plate, and it wasn’t too fast for Matt Hall.

Stephen took deep breaths, letting his ribcage expand. The suffering felt good. The grass felt good. The last of the day’s sun felt good.

Alone in her room, with just a table lamp on, Elizabeth was playing house with Mr. Fluffy, her stuffed polar bear. Content. She was as little interested in her brother’s baseball career as he was interested in her music or ballet recitals. Which he would inevitably complain about having to attend season after season. She didn’t like that everything that happened in the house was related to Stephen and what he needed. Her grandfather had an Albanian word for it. Diagi, the pampered boy.

Adele entered Elizabeth’s room with a knock to put her daughter to bed.

—Okay, honey, I think it’s time to go lights out. What are you doing?

—I’m talking to Minnie Mouse.

—I feel like you’re getting pretty old for Minnie Mouse, Adele said to her daughter, who’d be turning eleven in August.

—Why would I be too old for Minnie Mouse? Elizabeth asked in her high voice, stringent and panicked.

—Oh, I just mean... It’s okay, never mind. Adele sat back in her room.

—I know she’s not real, Mom, Elizabeth said suddenly.—You don’t have to prove it to me, I already know that. Stephen tells me all the time that Minnie Mouse isn’t real.

Adele found this a little heartbreaking.

—It’s just a part of growing up, honey. Not everything we believe, when we’re very young, we believe forever. Like Santa Claus, right?

—Yeah, just like Santa Claus.

Elizabeth hadn’t believed in Santa since she was eight.

—In a way, Minnie Mouse is a part of you, it’s only she is real, Adele said, suddenly not wanting to deprive her daughter of her local divinity, but this was only confusing for the child.

Elizabeth didn’t say anything and scrunched her brows, strangling Mr. Fluffy, the stuffed rabbit.

—Can I take your pigtails out now? I need to before you go to bed.

—No, I like them.

—Elizabeth just let me...

—No, Mom, I like them.

—Did you take your bath tonight?

—Yes.

—Do you want me to brush your hair?

—Yes.

—Okay, let me get my brush.

Elizabeth watched her mother disappear quietly for a moment. She liked the sensation of having her hair brushed. She was glad her mother had asked. This is one of the ways that she could actually feel close to her mother and not feel the strange pressure from her, this pressure that didn’t have a name, that didn’t have a point of origin, but that she felt everywhere along her body, like the way the retainer she’d gotten made her mouth feel at night.

Her mother was bending her into something all the time. It was so dark outside, except for one streetlight in the alley that Elizabeth could see from her window, which was located at the foot of her bed. She liked the nights, summer nights, and she liked spring nights. She liked spring nights which weren’t too hot. She liked having the windows open. She loved listening to the rain on spring days from her room. She hoped it would rain soon. And she was excited for summer too, and going to the beach and getting a tan and playing tag with her friends and eating ice cream and riding on her bicycle.

Adele returned with a boar’s tooth comb, sat next to her daughter who sat up in bed, eager for the cathartic touch of her mother.

—What are you thinking about, honey? You seem lost in thought. Are you sad about fifth grade ending?

—Kind of, yeah.

—Hopefully you like middle school more than your brother does.

—He doesn’t like it, Elizabeth said.

—Did you ever talk to your brother about this? Adele asked.

—Stephen’s stupid. Elizabeth said.

—Once you get him going, he can actually be pretty easy to talk to, Adele said. —But I guess it’s harder and harder to find a way in, find something he wants to talk about.

—Did you come in here to talk about Stephen? Elizabeth asked her.

—No, no, I didn’t. I’m so sorry, Adele said, brushing more vigorously her daughter’s long, golden brown hair, shining in the light of the table lamp. —You’re so right. You’re totally right. I’m so sorry.

—It’s okay, Mommy.

—Of course. I guess me talking about Stephen is like you talking about Mr. Fluffy.

—I love Mr. Fluffy.

—Um, no, I just... no, I’m sorry. I should keep my big mouth shut, Adele said. —I should just shut up and comb my daughter’s hair, shouldn’t I?