Work Text:
Steve told her once that when he couldn't fall asleep at night he would close his eyes and imagine practicing free throws. The ball in his hands. The set. The motion. Over and over again. Maybe it's the same as counting sheep or something, he had shrugged. But he said it worked. He said he kept a ball next to his bed and sometimes he just pressed it between his palms when he woke up in a panic and it helped, somehow. Reminded him of who he'd been before all this. I don't know, he had said. But he said it worked. Somehow.
Nancy kept buying things.
A basketball felt like nothing to her. It was too big for her hands and it weighed awkward and she had always passed it away from herself as fast as possible in gym class, not wanting to have to take the shot. A basketball had nothing to do with any version of her that had ever existed.
She donated it.
"This isn't breakfast," Robin told her one morning when she'd used her spare key to let herself into Nancy's apartment. To clean the kitchen and make sure Nancy was eating. Cold noodles didn't count, apparently. Robin set a grocery bag down on the counter and opened the fridge and then closed it again, disgusted. "Seriously Nance, do you even know how old those are? Your fridge is full of this crap and i know you didn't order it all yesterday. Come on. Give it to me."
The noodles were fine. She had taken them from the front, they had to be fairly new. But she slid the carton across the sticky table and let Robin throw it away even though there were much older cartons that should be thrown away much sooner.
Robin threw them all away before she left.
She made Nancy scrambled eggs and she washed the pan afterwards and she told her "You better answer your fucking phone from now on if you don't want the fire department breaking down your door next time."
She had to go to class, she said. "I mean it, Nancy. Pick up the phone sometimes, okay?" She asked.
She took out the trash on her way out.
Nancy wondered whether, if Robin hadn't had her hands full with the garbage bag, if maybe she would have hugged her.
Nancy decided she'd take the trash out, from now on.
The eggs stuck to the pan, when she tried to make them herself. She tried nonstick spray but it lit up in a puff of flame when she sprayed it over the burner and she decided it was a safety hazard to keep going.
The eggs sat in the fridge, the Best if Used By deadline trying to sneak up on her, but she knew it by heart.
She was very busy. Work kept her very busy.
She was new, and young, and small and pretty in an inconvenient way. I have to put in the hours she'd say, when she picked up the phone, sometimes. When Robin asked her if she was free to have a drink, sometime. When Robin offered to cook her dinner, sometime.
When Robin said "I can't believe I'm saying this, Nance, but I actually miss having Jonathan around. At least you left the house."
"I leave the house," she argued.
"Work doesn't count."
"You hate Jonathan."
"I'm supposed to hate the guy who dumped you," Robin reminded her. "Perks of the job."
"What job?" Nancy asked. Robin was a grad student.
"Being your friend, dumbass."
Nancy kept buying things.
People here weren't into guns. It wasn't like home. Nobody went hunting on the weekends. The man at the store tried to sell her mace, instead. I have that, too, she told him. Let me see the Double Eagle. It was heavier than a basketball.
She used the mace on a man, once, walking home from the train station when she stayed too late at work. She didn't regret it. She lived. She kept second guessing herself about it, though, like maybe it had been a misunderstanding. Like maybe he was just a man walking home from the train station after he stayed too late at work. It was a coincidence that she grabbed the mace first. It was luck, or physics. Mace was lighter than a gun, it didn't sink to the bottom of a bag. It was lighter even than a basketball.
"What do you think that feels like?" Robin asked Nancy when she finally agreed to meet for a drink one night. There was a baseball game on in the bar, or the beginning of one. The image was fuzzy but the sound came through clear. Some kind of hall of fame induction or something. Old timers waving and throwing balls into the crowd. "Like. Do you think when they pick up a baseball it's like- Not like being young again, I guess. But like, their whole life they were holding baseballs until suddenly they weren't, you know? What do you think that feels like?"
Nancy knew how it felt.
She woke up some mornings with her hand gripping an invisible pistol, after the nights she fell asleep at all. She didn't remember how she managed it. She knew she didn't count basketballs, or sheep.
Nancy kept buying things.
She went to the store and bought eggs with a fresh Best if Used By date and she threw the old ones in the trash. She took the trash out.
The Red Sox didn't make the playoffs.
She wondered how the players felt in the off season. She wondered how it felt for them to see the other boys still out there playing, fuzzy images on a screen. She wondered if they imagined throwing curveballs to fall asleep at night.
She took her gun out of her bag and put it in a box in her closet. She kept the mace where it was.
I'm getting married, Jonathan said, when she picked up the phone, thinking it would be Robin on the other end. I'm happy for you, Nancy said. She realized she wasn't even lying. She congratulated him and got off the phone as quickly as she could without being rude. Robin called ten minutes later.
Nancy kept buying things.
She bought basketball tickets. Steve went with her when he was in town to see Robin. The Celtics weren't bad that season, and Steve hated them. He had fun. They met up with Robin for drinks afterwards and they stayed out until the bars closed. Nobody tried to stab Steve for wearing a Pacers jersey. Nancy's mace stayed in her purse.
She kept buying things.
She bought noodles. Robin liked spaghetti. She bought a plane ticket home for Christmas and another one to come back.
Sometimes, Nancy told Barb, when she'd taken the long walk to the cemetery to get herself out of the house. Sometimes, when I'm trying to fall asleep at night, I think about holding your hand. Is that crazy? Barb didn't answer.
Nancy bought a cookbook and never opened it, but it looked nice on top of the fridge.
She drove to Providence and Robin messed with the radio the whole way down even though the stations were mostly the same. They went to the zoo in the snow. It was for work. Something light for the weekend magazine. These animals were raised in captivity, the plaques said. Nancy wondered what elephants did to fall asleep at night. She wondered if they really never forgot.
Nancy felt like she was remembering, sometimes, for all of them.
She bought new sheets. New curtains. She wiped down the countertops in the morning with one hand and read the paper in the other while her coffee was brewing. The light shone in through the kitchen windows in the morning and the table got warm in the sun.
She got a cat for free from somebody who had taken out an ad in the paper.
Nancy thought the Red Sox might have a chance this year. She bought two tickets for opening day. It got rained out, but they won the next day. Robin liked onions on her hot dogs and Nancy thought that was gross, but she bought her two of them anyway.
Reggie Lewis collapsed on the practice court and died, in the off season. He was only a little bit older than Nancy. She didn't really care about basketball but she found herself hyperventilating in a bathroom stall at work when she found out, crying. She thought of Steve, back home, pressing his eyes closed and his basketball between his hands. She picked up the phone and called him for once.
Jonathan got married, and Mike said the wedding was nice, I guess, but the food was crappy. Nancy couldn't remember Jonathan's hands, anymore. Only the scar.
She went to the shooting range for the first time in a long time and emptied an entire clip before she found her sight. She was amazed, a little bit, that she could forget something like that.
She put the gun back in her closet. She never forgot it was there.
"This isn't breakfast," Robin told her one morning, when she was wearing socks and a shirt and underwear and nothing else, when she had snuck up behind Nancy at the stove and wrapped her arms around her waist and ruined the surprise. When she looked down at the eggs sticking stubborn in the pan. "Sit down, I've got it." Nancy shooed the cat off the sunbeam on the table and laid her head in her hands on the warm wood to watch. The table was clean.
She bought a new frying pan.
Nancy woke up some mornings with her hand gripping an invisible pistol. She reached over, now, and held Robin's hand, instead, and Robin squeezed back.
She went back to sleep.
The Red Sox didn't make the playoffs.
Nancy had a good feeling about next year.