Damn Straight

by Elizabeth Sims

  "Unh." She cleared up a little. "He was gone before she got periods."

  "What about—"

  "Why d'you care about tzhese shings? Who cares?"

  "I'm trying to help your daughter."

  "Trouble? She in trouble?"

  "I don't know."

  "She never gave a good goddamn about me."

  She reached for the bottle and sloshed a lot more into her glass. I took the bottle back and took a slug out of it. After a minute I felt calmer. The bottle was almost empty.

  "Why didn't she care about you?" I asked her.

  "Dunno."

  "Maybe because you were a drunk? Maybe because you never gave a damn about her?"

  "Mm, ah, did. Did, too."

  "Listen. Mrs. Wickers. Did Genie have an abortion back then?"

  She gave me an answer I wasn't expecting.

  "I hope she did. Yepsh, I sure hope she did. 'Smy daughter you're talking about."

  "What do you mean, you hope she did?"

  "You—all ya want—all ya people want—" she appeared to be gasping, struggling for air. I waited, poised to do something, I didn't know what. Suddenly, with an effort, she got it together and screamed, "Get out! Offa my house! Get out—getoutgetout!" Her face went shiny, and she began what I can only describe as projectile sobbing. A lifetime of grief spewed out of her, fearsomely. Terribly.

  "You don't care!" she screamed. "You never gave a damn!" Her face swelled and turned yellowish, mottled with purple. "You never gave me a damn thing! Damn! You hear me? Gimme!" she slobbered, "Gimme it! Look what you made me do!"

  Recoiling, I leaped up and headed for the door.

  As the storm door fell shut she got the TV going again.

  "Asher, if you walk out that door now, don't you EVER expect to come back!"

  Chapter 20

  One Wickers was enough for me, but for the sake of thoroughness I stopped at number 15, a brick cottage overgrown with yews and junipers, which closed behind me as I pushed toward the front door.

  I heard a phone ringing inside. No one answered my knocks.

  Dominic Dengel lived in an apartment above the Wash-n-Fold back in town; I struck out there, too.

  Still, I was doing all right. It was one-thirty. I picked up a microwaved burrito at the Stop & Snack and ate it in the car while I thought about the angles I had left.

  The existence of Dominic Dengel signified a big break, I felt. If Genie had had an abortion as a teenager, or more than one, this guy might've decided to blackmail her about it now. But I couldn't imagine who'd really care whether Genie had had an abortion fourteen or fifteen years ago. The media? Come on. Sponsors? Well, maybe. Genie had a few big contracts for clubs and apparel; you saw her face looking out at you from Golf Digest, Golf for Women, the usual. Still, sponsors are so frightened of lesbianism you'd think they'd be glad for some proof that one of their stars had had heterosexual relations at least once in her life. Is this nasty? I don't know anymore. The thing was, Genie didn't want this information coming out. That had to be enough for me right now.

  I remembered Genie saying sharply, when I was gossiping about that European star, "I don't care what someone did a long time ago."

  My appointment with Coach Handy was at two o'clock.

  Why had Genie changed her name? Why do people, other than giddy new brides, change their names? To reinvent themselves. To get away from the past. To gain something.

  The summer I was eleven, I read True Grit twice through and immediately changed my name to Mattie Ross. I wanted to be everything Mattie was that Lillian Byrd was not: fearless, smart, driven. Driven from within to fight a good fight to the death if need be.

  Carrying a sharp stick, I rode my bike through the crummy streets of Detroit's south side, into the weeds in vacant lots, along railroad beds, looking for criminals and rattlesnakes. In those days, criminals were not so easy to stumble across. There were no rattlesnakes in any event.

  During the summer that I was Mattie, I felt brave, square, and true. Confidence braced up my posture as I patrolled the neighborhood, convincing my playmates to join my posse.

  Then, I suppose, school started again, and I resumed my journey to actual adulthood, with its anxieties and consequences and exhilarations. I have never felt as capable, though, never again as fearless, as when I was Mattie Ross.

  Marian Handistock lived in a house with a white picket fence around it and a basketball hoop in the driveway. I had to go past it and park on the next block down, because the street on the coach's block was torn up and men were digging a trench. I thought it would be presumptuous to park in the driveway.

  She stood in the doorway watching as I came up the walk. The house and yard were tidy, notwithstanding the mounds of dirty snow still clinging to life here and there. In the summer the yard would be shady: Maples and shagbark hickory trees, their bare branches thinking about all that great sap down there starting to thrum, towered overhead. I caught sight of a goshawk perched on a high limb; it was silently watching a cluster of plump chickadees that were taking turns pulling seeds from a feeder. The chickadees kept in touch with each other with a constant chatter: chee-dee! diddy-dee! The goshawk was thinking about food, too.

  "Welcome," said the coach, who filled the doorframe gracefully, I thought. She was stocky but not fat. Not tall. I recognized her aggressive chin from the pictures. She could've been a utility infielder, or possibly a goalie, apart from golf. She wore the prettiest blue blouse you've ever seen. Silk, maybe. Such a pure cerulean. Gorgeous. Around her neck was a clever ornament: a miniature coach's whistle made of silver, on a fine silver chain. What a nice retirement gift, I thought.

  She sized me up; of course, she was accustomed to sizing up women: How strong are you? How fast? The legs? The back ? Her eyes drilled deep into mine for an instant: Fighting spirit? Team player?

  "Benchwarmer," I said, shaking her hand. It startled her, but then she gave a friendly laugh, embarrassed that she'd been caught. I smiled and thanked her for seeing me, then wiped my feet carefully on the mat.

  "Oh, don't trouble yourself," she said pleasantly.

  "Water-main break?" I asked.

  "Yes. What a mess it's been! They say they're almost done, though." She directed me into the kitchen and took my coat. She had a pot of coffee going, and there was a plate of windmill cookies on the table. A clean kitchen, a civilized kitchen, it was. And a civilized woman, I thought with a measure of gratitude.

  "It's great to be talking with someone from Sports Illustrated again," she said, pouring coffee.

  "You've been interviewed before."

  "Several times. Do you know Tommy Pursell?"

  "Uh, no."

  "Jane Metz, then?"

  "Actually, I'm really new. I was working for the Motor City Journal, and I'd done a few freelance things before that, and one thing led to another. You know. Crazy business."

  "Right, sure. So—"

  "So what I'd really like to talk about today, Ms Handistock—"

  "Please, I'm Marian."

  "Marian, thank you—and of course I go by Theresa—are Genie Maychild's early days; I mean, before the record starts. I feel there's a gap between obscurity and fame, a sort of magical time, and it seems important because Genie came from very humble beginnings. I think a lot of fans would be interested in how you worked with the raw material of Genie, so to speak, how you took this young person and helped her on the path to sporting greatness. Like, the Nick Bollettieri angle, the Jack Grout angle."

  Coach Handy sipped her coffee, which she'd served in nice china cups with saucers. She'd set out a ceramic sugar and creamer in the shapes of bluebirds. I glanced around for evidence of a roommate but saw nothing conclusive. I did notice, through an archway to another room, a couple of antique golf clubs on a wall, and a pair of new space-age snowshoes, the kind you can jog in. Yep, old Handy was still a jock.

  An extremely serene Golden Lab walked in, sniffing, circled the table, then settled beneath it. It was
a nice dog, with a smooth coat and that sort of concerned expression those dogs have.

  "Some people," I prompted, "would say you created Genie Maychild."

  "That's not for me to say. But it is true that when she came to me she had no swing at all. We built it together."

  "You won the Illinois Amateur, didn't you?"

  "Yes, in college. I thought I'd turn pro—but that's another story."

  "The point is, you knew the game as well as anybody in this state."

  She smiled. "Genie was like a lot of young golfers: all power and no balance, no real finesse. She wanted—"

  "Who first put a club in her hand?"

  "I did."

  "When was that, Marian? How old was she?"

  "She was fifteen-and-a-half. It was toward the end of her sophomore year in school. You see, they'd made a mistake on the sports budget at Pearl Center Con, and we had more money than we thought, for once, going into June. It was the end of May. If we didn't use the money by the end of the school year, it'd go away—you know how that works. So I pushed through a request for some golf equipment. I'd seen Genie in my gym class. I could see she was a natural athlete, in spite of being out of shape. She had a gift."

  "Yeah?" I took a cookie.

  "She could move. She was coordinated. I invited anybody to come after school and try out the equipment, and she and oh, half a dozen other kids showed up. From the moment she took a grip, I knew I had something special on my hands."

  I'd gotten my reporter's nod going as I made notes. The reporter's nod in the seated position isn't so much a head nod as an upper body rock, a rhythm you get going more or less in time to the speech patterns of the person you're listening to. The purpose is to create an atmosphere of receptivity and encouragement. Every now and then you vary things, do different head movements—a head cock, an upward chin tilt. Reporters do this naturally, unconsciously. The TV ones, however, have to force themselves to sit practically immobile, at least while they're taping the reaction shots, because the reporter's nod on TV looks idiotic.

  "There was something about Genie then," Coach Handy went on, "It was like a world opened up to her. She took to the game. The other kids didn't have the patience for it, or if they did, they weren't interested in playing for the school. This is the heartland, Theresa, you know."

  "Football country."

  "Right. Golf is sissy to boys, and girls would rather play team sports."

  "Or lead cheers," I put in.

  "Ufh! Yeah. It's a short season here, too, of course. In the spring you get some pretty raw weather."

  "But it didn't bother Genie."

  Coach Handy said, "No, she had gumption."

  "I like that word." She smiled in agreement. I asked, "What was Genie like before she picked up that club?"

  The coach took a big long breath, then let it out. She leaned forward and cupped her chin in her hand. For a while she gazed at the tabletop. I waited.

  She looked up. "May this be off the record?"

  I hesitated, pretended to consider, then put down my pencil. "Of course."

  "I felt there were problems at home. I have to tell you, the teachers at the school—you know, when a girl is as—as marginal as Genie was—I say marginal—I—I mean, it was as if she was invisible. She wasn't attractive; she wasn't bright. I don't mean she was actually stupid, I mean she didn't appear bright. Never spoke up. She was shy in gym, and she was fat, big belly. Still, she could move." She paused. "I got away from what I was trying to say. When a girl is like that, it's usually the gym teacher who tries with her. The other teachers don't even know she's there."

  "What kind of problems were there at home?"

  "Theresa, I don't know for sure. She never talked about her home, her family, at all. To this day I've never met her parents. There were a couple of older kids, I heard, who lived someplace else—Minnesota? I wondered about—are we really off the record here?"

  "Yes. More than you know."

  She looked at me. I shouldn't have said that. Too cute.

  But she went on. "I wondered about incest. But—but that's not the kind of thing you talk about. Is it?"

  I shrugged sympathetically.

  "Not the kind of thing you bring up," Coach Handy asserted. "You sit and you wonder at night, you know. You ask yourself questions. Finally, I decided that if something's buried, it ought probably to stay buried."

  "Yes," I said. "Is Genie's dad dead?"

  "I don't know. He's as good as dead to Genie."

  "What about friends? Did Genie have any?"

  "The way Genie's life went was, nobody paid her any attention when she was a nobody, except, I suppose, to tease her. You know how young people can be—my God, they can be cruel."

  "Yes, they can."

  "And then, when Genie's confidence went up, when she became fanatical about golf, she was practicing and working out four and five hours a day, then I think other girls and boys came around her, but by that point she didn't need them. Didn't want them."

  "Sounds like she went from needy to entirely self-sufficient, all at once."

  Coach Handy bit a cookie. "Well, she had me."

  "You really took her under your wing."

  "Yes." She put the cookie on her saucer and lifted her eyes to the kitchen window and the tree limbs beyond it. "Aside from teaching her the game, I taught her about diet and nutrition. I taught her the kind of physical regimen a golfer needs for strength, I taught her about clothes, even, and her hair." Coach Handy looked at me. "She was like a thirsty plant. She lost the extra weight, gained muscle, and became...beautiful."

  She smiled a funny smile: one of those fake-modest smiles that indicate a deep, wide pride and the attempt to cover it up.

  I said, "I know you devoted a lot of time to Genie. She's said you practically gave her the shirt off your back."

  Marian Handistock said, with sudden tension, "I would have done anything for that girl."

  Oddly, my heart began to pound. I was getting jealous. Pushing it down, I said, "It's that way sometimes between mentor and student."

  "She gave me her Open trophy."

  Whoa, I thought. "I didn't know that. So she was like a daughter to you. Do you have children of your own?"

  She just watched me from across the table. Suddenly, the whole situation felt very uncomfortable. The look in her eyes was like, I could take you any day, you fraudulent bitch. Everything was wrong. The little ceramic bluebirds began to seem menacing. The dog stirred under the table.

  I realized that Marian Handistock and I were both deeply in love with Genie Maychild. I pressed to the end. "Did Genie have a boyfriend that you knew of?"

  "No." That was the shortest answer she'd given.

  "Did you know a kid named Dominic Dengel?"

  "No."

  "Okay," I said. "Well, I'll be catching up with Genie this weekend. She's agreed to an interview on Sunday."

  "I see."

  When you ask somebody if they know a certain name, you can tell things. A person answering honestly will stop and think, say the name over, and at least run a brief scan of the old brain cells. But Coach Handy had that No ready for me.

  "Do you see Genie these days?"

  "Oh, yes. Not often, I mean, she doesn't come back to Pearl Center very often." She gave a frosty laugh. "But now that I'm retired I like to go to her tournaments."

  "Do you give her advice?"

  "She has another coach now."

  Man, it was getting cold in that kitchen.

  "How come you're not at Mission Hills this week?" I asked.

  She stared at the tabletop for a minute. "I've learned that I have a heart condition. My doctor said I should avoid extremes of heat and cold. The desert, well."

  "I'm sorry to hear that," I said, glancing at the snowshoes.

  She didn't reply, and the interview was over.

  Chapter 21

  Skip Doots was editing a pile of junk copy when I popped back in to talk to him. He looked at me wi
th a little gleam; I didn't know why.

  "Skip, my man, my time in Pearl Center runs short. I've got just one more question for you."

  "I didn't find any shots that show that pig-mask person," he said.

  "Thank you for checking anyway. Skip, if a girl gets pregnant in Pearl Center, where does she go for an abortion?"

  "You know, they don't know you over at Sports Illustrated."

  "And I don't know them, so we're even. Look, man, we're in the same business, you and I. I'm trying to help someone. You can take me at that or not. I wish I hadn't lied to you."

  "It's all right." He sat there thinking. "That wasn't supposed to be a pig, right? That person?"

  "No."

  "Somebody was trying to mess with her."

  "Yes."

  "And they're still doing it?"

  "Yes." I glanced at my watch.

  "These days, if you want an abortion, you go to the women's clinic in East Horton. Next town over."

  "How long's it been there?"

  "Oh, yeah," he said. "Only about, um, five years. In that event...she wouldn't have gone to Dr. Carlsborg here. She would've gone to Dr. Fischell, the old G.P."

  "Where's he?"

  "East Horton, too."

  "All right. You don't happen to know a guy named Dominic Dengel, do you?"

  "Yeah, I know Dom Dengel. Why?"

  I waited for it to click.

  "Oh. Oh, man. Oh, man." He shook his head.

  "What?"

  "Sometimes I serve as an escort at that clinic I just mentioned."

  "Yeah?"

  "I know Dom from there."

  "You mean he works there? I'm looking for him."

  "No, he—well, I guess he feels he works there, in a way. He's a regular protester there."

  "God! Really?"

  "Yeah, he's—he's, you know..."

  "Is he one of those quiet sincere ones," I wanted to know, "or one of those loud nasty ones?"

  "He tends to the nasty. He's likely to be there now, in fact."

  "Yeah? You mean right now?"

  "Yeah, he likes the afternoon shift." Skip picked up a pencil and rolled it between his palms. "The place was bombed last year."