“…hand him his shoes yourself, like you always did,” Lou finished, and his voice cracked on the last word. “He remembers, Marge. Thirty years, and he remembers the lady at the counter who sprayed his shoes and called them his lucky pair. He still talks about it. He says nobody in the whole world ever made him feel as welcome as you did.” He held the old black ball against his belly like a baby. Behind us on lane four, a girl with pigtails rolled her first strike, and the whole team screamed with joy. Lou flinched as if the sound had hit him.
I did remember. Joey Moretti, nine years old in 1995, with a flat cap and a grin that took up his whole face. Every Saturday at ten, he came in holding the hand of his father, and walked up to the counter, and said, “Lucky pair, please.” They were a size three, red and blue, scuffed to nothing. I kept them on a special hook. I sprayed them, I wiped them, and I handed them over like glass slippers. And Joey said, every week, “Thank you, Miss Marge,” as if I had done him a great kindness.
“I stopped bringing him in 1999,” Lou said. “He was thirteen. A couple of men at the bar made jokes, not mean ones, just the kind of thing men say. And I was ashamed. I should have been ashamed of them, and instead I was ashamed of my boy. I told him bowling was over. He asked me every Saturday for a year. I told him the alley was closed.” Lou looked at the lanes full of children with their bright shirts and their shouting. “I let him think it was closed. For twenty seven years.”
A black bowling ball with initials, a pair of lucky shoes, and a boy who had waited twenty seven years.
We drove to the group home that evening in the rain, Lou and I and Ben, with the black ball in a bag on the back seat. It was a clean tan house with a flower box and a ramp. A staff woman named Dee met us at the door and led us down a hall of framed photographs to a bedroom where a thickset man of forty sat on the bed with his hands folded, wearing a freshly ironed shirt. He had been ready since noon. When he saw me he stood up so fast the bed creaked, and his face did the thing I had remembered for thirty years: it opened like a window.
“Miss Marge,” Joey said. “Lucky pair, please.” I could not speak. I put my hand over my mouth. Ben, bless him, took one look at me and said, “Grandma has them, Mr. Joey. She brought them.” And it was true. I had stopped at the sporting goods store on the way and bought a pair of bowling shoes, red and blue, size ten, and sprayed them with my own can in the parking lot, a habit nineteen years in the making. I handed them over like glass slippers. Joey said, “Thank you, Miss Marge.”
Joey bowled the next Saturday on lane four, beside the team, in the new red and blue shoes. He used the old black ball with the initials J.M., which Lou had carried in his arms all week like a sleeping child. His first throw went straight into the gutter. His second hit three pins. He turned around, beaming, and held up both thumbs, and Lou, who was sitting in a plastic chair behind lane four with his hat in his hands, stood up and clapped so hard his whole body shook. Nobody told him to be quiet. Nobody even looked.
In the third frame, Joey picked up a spare. I do not know how. A kid on the team yelled, “Joey is a pro!” and the team lifted him on its shoulders, which I do not think the rules allow. Lou came to me afterward, red eyed, and tried to say something. I put my hand on his arm. “Lou,” I said, “you cannot make it up to him by being sorry. You make it up by coming every Saturday, and sitting in that chair, and cheering until your throat gives out.” He nodded like a schoolboy. He said, “I will. I will be here at nine.”
He was. He has not missed a Saturday since. Lou also did something that surprised the whole town of Lima. He closed Lucky Strike for a day, hung a banner across the front, and invited every family with a child or adult with special needs to come bowl for free, all day, with pizza. Four hundred people came. Lou stood at the counter in a sports coat and sprayed shoes himself, one pair after another, with his big clumsy hands. The line went out the door and down the block.
The league got a permanent home. Lou donated lanes one through six for every Saturday morning, and he pays the fees for every player on the team, and for any who join. The Special Olympics team has twenty two bowlers now, and Joey is their captain. His average is a hundred and fifteen. It is, according to the scoreboard, the finest average in the history of the alley, a fact Joey will tell anyone who stands still long enough.
I do not work at Lucky Strike anymore. My knees see to that. But every Saturday at ten, I walk in with my cane, and Joey is waiting at the counter in his red and blue shoes, and Lou is behind it, a gentler man, with the spray can in his hand. He nods to me. I take the can. And together, because he asked, I spray the lucky pair, and I hand them across the counter to a man who says, “Thank you, Miss Marge,” as if I had done something wonderful. And every single time, I believe him.