I heard about her from a mutual friend. He said she had “European habits” which I later found out meant that she didn’t shave her armpits. I met her at school in a class called the Arab/Israeli conflict. We sat in the back of the room. Neither one of us ever raised our hands to ask or answer questions. I was excited to find out that she was the one my friend had told me about, not because of her armpits but because she always wore a green army jacket which might seem superficial, to be interested in someone because of their jacket, but I had another class that year about Asian Religions and the teacher talked at length about American kids becoming interested in Buddhism in the 60’s and that got me thinking about the Vietnam War and green army jackets.
She seldom talked to strangers so I felt kind of special because we talked all the time, before, during, and after class and we sometimes got in trouble for making too much noise and interrupting the professor’s lecture. I remember a few months after the class I bumped into her on the North Avenue Bridge on Milwaukee’s East side. She was crying and confided in me that she had just broke up with her boyfriend. She was contemplating whether or not to turn around and make up with him. I discouraged her not to and we walked together to the other side of the bridge, the side I had started out on so I was going backwards, but I didn’t care. I considered Ana Watermark more than a classmate, not quite a friend, but pretty close. We wandered down the slope to the Milwaukee River and sat and the water seemed to relax her. She stopped crying and we talked for a while.
I don’t remember what we talked about but I like imagining that she told me a story about how a few days earlier, when she started thinking about ending her relationship, she had accepted what looked like a cigarette from an old man in the bus cabin which would be totally out of character because she didn’t even talk to strangers let alone smoke something they gave her. He would be sitting down on one of the rectangular seats and they would be small seats, probably to keep the homeless from spreading out and sleeping there. She would take a puff and quickly realize that she didn’t want to be waiting for the bus anymore and didn’t want to be in that bus cabin either. She would try to bow which she figured was far easier than a hand shake, a fist pump or a look in the eyes, but she wouldn’t even be able to bow which would bother her in that moment because she would know about Japanese bowing and Hideo Nomo. She wasn’t a big baseball fan, but I mentioned it a couple of times during our talks, specifically that they played in Japan which surprised her and then I told her about Hideo Nomo’s two no hitters, one of them being at Coors Field and she remembered his name. That part is true. I did tell her about Japanese baseball and Hideo Nomo, but I can’t say for sure if she remembered that he threw two no-hitters. Anyway, in this imaginary tale, she would just turn and walk away from the old man and out of the bus cabin into the cold breeze.
She would pass the old Elm tree with a red X on it and would begin to think that her personality was a stolen identity or at least that’s what half her mind would insist with the other half far more compassionate, reminding her that it was more of a personality exchange/influence, that it worked both ways. Ana would be terrified of mirrors, more than clowns. She would dread them because they would remind her of what she’d stolen. It’s a wonder she didn’t overdose or jump off that bridge. She would never stay too long in her apartment. Instead, she would loiter in libraries and eat at soup kitchens which is where she would go after exiting the bus cabin, to the free lunch at St. Hedwig’s and the place, as usual, would be packed. As she sat down at the table, some young guy would comment about her red hair and say Rusty Staub had red hair too.
“More musings from the Maggid,” the guy would laugh loudly. “I’m Herschel Smith.”
Ana would be curious about the word Maggid because it was so close to magic and she believed in magic, not just the abracadabra of David Copperfield, but that all of life was magic, that is, when she wasn’t down on herself about being a copycat.
“A Maggid is an itinerant preacher” would say the young man.
An older man who was apparently the young preacher’s father would stumble in front of his boy, a tall bottle of Smirnoff in his hand. He would sit down at the table and slur.
“My dear boy, don’t start with th th th the preaching. Just my llllllluck a brainwashed, blithering boob for a son. Let’s talk about the Padres, the baseball team that has never won a World Series!”
The father would push his chair back from the table and lay flat on the floor, drunk, not the least bit interested in hearing whatever cockamamie his son had to say.
“PADRES,” he would continue, “with Kurt Bevacqua and memories of his bubble gum chewing ways and the Padres are a tribute to the Franciscan Friars. Isn’t that holy enough for you? And plus they had those pitchers who were into the John Birch Society back in the 80’s, not exactly religion, more about politics, but it’s all the same.”
I never told Ana about Tony Gwynn’s swing, but I like pretending that I did and in that moment, I like thinking that Gwynn’s swing would be the only thing she had on her mind, far from the troubles with her boyfriend and far from the feeling she had about stealing other people’s identity. I like to think that Ana walked closer to the father because he knew about baseball and that reminded her of me. The father would still be flat on his back, but awake enough to hand her the Smirnoff and since she had already accepted a smoke from a stranger she took the booze too. The father would then fall asleep and Hershchel the preacher would sit back down at the table, eat some bread and wait for a new victim. Ana, with the bottle in her hand would feel kind of scared or annoyed by the preacher so she would leave her tomato soup, head outside, and finish off the bottle.
And then as is often the case, when you’re thinking about something it starts appearing all over the place and there, that same afternoon in the park, where people typically played chess would be a man and woman rolling strat-o-matic baseball dice, the man holding a 20-sided die in his hand and Ana, by then, not so down on herself, would sit down beside the strat-o-game and when she did , the player at bat with the die in his hand would take a quick look at Ana’s green eyes and not for too long either but he had apparently gathered all he needed because he would then break out into an impromptu lecture about Masaoki Shiki and his involvement with the Haiku and his love for baseball…
“Shiki was a Japanese haiku poet inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame,” he would say, “And a haiku is that 5-7-5 syllable poem.”
I know that Tony Conigliaro has a 5 syllable last name and that Biff Pocoroba’s full name also has five syllables and there must be a first-middle-last baseball name with a 5-7-5 syllable sequence and I know this doesn’t matter much, but still, I wish Ana knew about Conigliaro and Pocoroba and that she wondered about baseball player names, but instead she would say,
one leaf on a tree
plucked from an upper deck hand……….
paperplane set freeeeeeeeee
And as she said it, she would know for the first time in her life that she was Ana Watermark and no one else was exactly like her. The player holding the 20-sided die would then reach into his pocket and hand Ana a different 20-sided die. Ana, still under the influence of accepting gifts, would smile, say thank you, take the die, and then suddenly she would remember that she had an unopened pack of Marlboros in her green army jacket. She would then walk back to the bus cabin and the same man would be there and he would have figured out a way to get comfortable on the small seats. He would be spread out and sleeping. Snoring. Ana would stuff the unopened pack of Marlboros in his jacket pocket and walk into the future.
brewers baseball and things 