The Rome of Fall

by Chad Alan Gibbs

  My mother shook her head. “Son, you don’t have to say everything you think out loud.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled then said, “but I didn’t come back here to awaken ancient feelings. When I saw her in the gym at that first pep rally, every part of me wanted to run, but I couldn’t. So we talked, and then we hung out, and, well, I think she’s the one, Mom. She’s always been the one. And I hate to shock you in your fragile state, but I want to stay here, in Rome. I want to marry Becca and live in this house and grow old. God, it’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  My mother was crying, and after she wiped her eyes, she said, “Son, Becca is a sweet girl. She’s single in a small town, so people say things, but I don’t believe any of it. Not anymore. If you can give her the benefit of the doubt, then so can I.”

  “Thanks,” I said and walked over to sit on my mother’s bed, and as I held her hand, she said, “I’m proud of you, son. After everything with your dad and Steve, I shut down. I was stupid, and I didn’t want to get hurt again, and you know what? I never did. But I’ve paid a terrible price. I’ve lived a lonely life, Marcus, and it broke my heart watching you go down the same road. But you’re risking the pain to love again, and I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.”

  With considerable effort, my mother sat up to look me in the eye and said, “I can’t see the future, son. I don’t know if things will work out between you two. But I can die knowing you won’t make the same mistake I made. You’re going to grow old and happy with someone. I just hate I won’t be around to see it.”

  I was crying now too and hugged my mother and said, “Me too, Mom. Me too.”

  “After graduating from Harvard, and spending a month in the Metropolitan Correctional Center for assaulting a NYC equine officer named Caesar, Marcus Brinks has spent the last six years living in a suite at the Sandals Royal Caribbean in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where he reportedly interacts with fans and plays a mean game of beach volleyball.”

  —SPIN, “The Beige Album, 10 Years Later,” November 22, 2007

  Chapter Twenty-Three (1994)

  “Wait, how long?”

  “I don’t know. She said it was incalculable, which I took to mean a long-ass time.”

  My mother, like all accountants, was a spreadsheet junkie. She created spreadsheets for everything, from our family budget to when she needed to buy me new underwear. For my thirteenth birthday, along with fifty bucks and a sweet Bo Jackson T-shirt, she presented me with an absurdly complex spreadsheet, laminated no less, detailing the length and breadth of punishment any particular infraction would earn me during my teenage years. If I missed curfew, all I had to do was consult my spreadsheet to know my punishment was the loss of my next weekend. Disobeying my parents cost two weekends, lying four, bad grades (B-minus or worse) meant six weekends under house arrest, assuming of course that my grades rebounded, and drinking alcohol was the biggie, a whopping twelve weekends in the can. Whenever I’d screw up, Mom would consult the spreadsheet, which she hung on my door next to a poster of Hakeem Olajuwon and, with detached coolness, read aloud my punishment. No debate. No appeal. My punishment had always been there, in black and white, so I had no excuse.

  However, since she’d left my dad, moved us to Rome, and hooked up with the biggest piece of shit east of the Mississippi, my mother rarely punished me for anything. By November, if I came home by curfew, it was only out of boredom. I disobeyed my mother more than I obeyed her. I lied to her frequently, my grades had tanked, and unless she’d mysteriously lost her sense of smell (and she was still with Steve, so maybe she had), she ignored smelling beer on my breath half a dozen times. But standing in her living room, ankle-deep in Solo cups and the stuffing from her couch cushions, my mother unleashed months of built-up parental justice in a ten-minute screaming display that I’m certain, had the police not been present, would have ended with my premature death at the hands of whatever blunt object she could find in her purse.

  My punishment, doled out on the spot without trial by jury or consulting the spreadsheet, which we’d left in Texas, was eternal grounding. Perhaps this seems a little excessive, but Mom told me when I was thirteen that, if I committed a crime so grievous that she hadn’t even bothered to list it on the spreadsheet because she knew I’d never be stupid enough to do it, her punishment would be swift and painful. And no, hiring a stoner to impersonate the gas company so I could throw an insane party that resulted in the destruction of most of my mother’s property was not on the spreadsheet. Looking back, I’ll admit, the punishment fit the crime.

  “Well, at least she didn’t kill you.”

  “True, but she’s reserved the right to shoot me later if she finds another condom in her bedroom.”

  We were at lunch on Monday, meatloaf day, and Silas and I sat across the table from Jackson, whispering about the same thing everyone else in school was whispering about: My party and the fall of Deacon Cassburn.

  “Did you guys see the paper?” Jackson asked, and when we shook our heads no, he said, “Here, I cut this out of the library’s copy.” He slid the Riverton Times clipping across the table, and we read it.

  Carthage, Alabama—The Carthage Police Department announced the arrest of a juvenile offender, found intoxicated and nude on a park bench near Carthage City Hall, shortly before midnight on November 27, 1994. Carthage police officers discovered the juvenile while responding to an alarm at Carthage Flowers & Gifts. It is not clear if the two incidents are related, and due to the juvenile status of the offender, the Carthage Police Department cannot release additional information, a spokesman said.

  Silas and I looked at each other then back at Jackson and burst out laughing.

  “Keep it down,” Jackson said, and we tried. Then he whispered, “Why did you take his clothes off?”

  “We didn’t take his clothes off,” I said.

  “He must have done that on his own,” Silas added, and we burst out laughing again.

  Jackson shook his head and said, “This isn’t funny. In homeroom, I heard MeghanJennifer say Deacon is in federal prison.”

  “He’s not in federal prison, you dumbass,” Silas said. “They don’t send drunk teens to federal prison. I bet they took him in, scared him with a bunch of juvie bullshit, then called his parents to pick him up. They’ll just make him do community service or something.”

  “Will he get to play on Friday?” I asked.

  “Nope. No way,” Jackson said. “Coach P is crazy strict about discipline stuff. He tells us every spring, if we get into trouble with the law, we’re off his team. If he let Deacon play, it would go against everything the man has ever said.”

  “So the state championship is Jake Norton’s to win or lose,” Silas said, and Jackson nodded.

  “Shit, and now you’re second string?” I asked, and Jackson nodded again then looked like he might spew meatloaf against the wall. I’m not sure we’d even considered that taking down Deacon Cassburn would leave Jackson one sprained ankle away from quarterbacking Rome in the state championship game. I can’t blame him for looking sick.

  “Deep breaths, dude,” Silas said to Jackson. “It’s gonna be okay. You won’t see the field.”

  “I’ve lost my appetite,” Jackson said, and as he stood to throw away his food, a couple sophomore girls walked up to tell me how much fun they had at my party. Then the skater guy from gym class who’d spent the night on my roof, howling at the moon, walked by with a fist bump and said, “Brinks, my dude, kick-ass party.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, and Silas said, “See, my dude, I told you throwing a party would only help your social standing. You’re now as popular as some third-string football players.”

  He was right, though I’d worried over the weekend that people would somehow blame me and my party for what happened to Deacon. But as word spread that he left my party with some Carthage girls, consensus was the dumbass got what he deserved.

  “Speaking of football,” Silas said, sliding an index card across the table
, “I’ve added a throwback option to ‘Convulsion’; this play is literally unstoppable now.” I pretended to look at the squiggly lines on the card, and he said, “By the way, I got Madden ’95 yesterday. You up for an ass-beating this afternoon?”

  “Eternal grounding,” I reminded him.

  “Oh right, sorry.”

  “Sorry about what?” Jackson asked, returning to his seat.

  “Brinks’s eternal grounding.”

  “Will your mom let you go to Montgomery Friday?” Jackson asked, picking up Silas’ index card and saying, “Oh nice, a throwback option.”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “Shit. Sorry,” he said, and I shrugged. I had bigger things to worry about than missing a football game. The talent show was just three days away, and with Deacon out of the way, Becca was all but mine.

  “No biggie,” I said as Becca walked by with her lunch tray. “I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a really good week.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Deacon returned to school on Tuesday, shooting holes in MeghanJennifer’s federal prison story, but he was now persona non grata, which is Latin for a person no one gives a shit about. The football team shunned him because he’d let them down and possibly cost them a state championship. The rest of the school shunned him for the same reason and because, at some point in the last four years, he’d been a dick to each and every one of them. But most importantly, Becca shunned him. She no longer sat by him in class, or spoke to him in the hall, or acknowledged his existence in any way. The door was open.

  On Thursday, I was up by five, cramming in all the last-minute practice I could cram, and around seven, I went downstairs for breakfast. Steve was there, as always, and he stared at me from the kitchen table while I poured a bowl of Fruity Pebbles.

  “You would eat Fruity Pebbles, you little fruit,” Steve said, and I tried to ignore him. He’d always sucked, but since the party, he’d reached all new levels of dickheadedness. He pointed at my guitar case and asked, “What the hell are you taking that to school for?”

  “Talent show,” I muttered.

  Mom was next to Steve at the table, but she hadn’t looked up since I entered the room. She’d been crying.

  “Well, hell,” Steve said, getting to his feet. “I’d forgotten all about that guitar of yours. I tell you what. I’m gonna take it down to Riverton Pawn and see what they’ll give me for it.”

  I grabbed my case and said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Steve moved toward me and said, “Way I figure it, you owe me about five hundred dollars in damages, boy.”

  “What damages? Mom, what is he talking about?”

  “I kept some clothes in your mama’s closet,” Steve said, “and somebody at your party stole ’em.”

  “No one at my party would want your clothes, you idiot.”

  He was in my face now. “I kept some pills in there,” he said, “and those are gone too. You owe me, boy, and you’re gonna pay.”

  Ignoring half-hearted protests from my mother, Steve reached for my guitar case, and when I pulled it away, he stumbled and fell because he’d had Jack Daniels for breakfast. “You little shit,” he said and this time came at me swinging. He caught me on the side of the head with a surprise left, and I dropped the case and stumbled back into the fridge before falling. Steve grabbed my case and said, “Back in an hour, Bev,” and I watched him walk out the front door.

  Up until that point in my life, I’d never been in a fight. Well, not a fight where both combatants actively participated. I’d never even thrown a punch, but this pathetic excuse for a grown man was going to keep me from winning Becca’s heart, and something in me snapped. I caught him in the front yard, tackled him from behind, and somehow ended up straddling him on the ground, hitting his ugly face with both fists as hard as I could. I know I broke his nose—he tried to sue me to pay for plastic surgery years later, and we settled out of court for two hundred dollars, no joke. I’m not sure how long I sat there punching him, it felt like hours, but Steve eventually got away and ran to his car, peeling out of our driveway as fast as his piece-of-shit Mustang could manage.

  I tried to open the case to check out my guitar, but my hands were still shaking with anger, so I just sat in the yard and cried. When I finally looked up, I saw Mom sitting on the front steps. She was crying too, but I didn’t care. This was all her fault for bringing that asshole into our home, so I picked up my guitar and left for school without a word. It wasn’t until fifteen minutes later, after the adrenaline rush passed, I realized I’d broken my hand on Steve’s stupid face.

  For the first time in my life, I skipped school, a four-week grounding per mom’s spreadsheet, like such things mattered anymore. In the parking lot, I tried to see if I could still play, but my hand was so swollen I couldn’t open the damn guitar case, so I drove to Eckerd and the pharmacist sold me a wrist splint and a bottle of Advil and told me to go see a doctor, but instead I drove around Rome for a couple hours then went home.

  When I got home, Mom had scattered all Steve’s belongings across the front yard, and I found her at the kitchen table, staring into her coffee mug.

  “Marcus, your hand, what hap—”

  “I broke it on Steve’s face,” I said, and she started crying again.

  I sat across from her, and she said, “Marcus, I’m so sorry. I really messed us up.”

  I was mad at her, but I couldn’t stand to see her cry, so I said, “Mom, this isn’t all your fault. If Dad hadn’t—”

  “Marcus,” my mom said, wiping her eyes but not looking at me, “there’s something I need to tell you. Steve ... Steve was my boyfriend in high school.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “he told me the same night he said he was going to marry you and send me back to Dad.”

  My mother sighed. “I’m so sorry, Marcus. I truly am. Steve ... do you remember last October, when I came here for my twenty-five-year class reunion?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Dad and I stayed in Houston because we had Oilers-Bengals tickets.”

  “That’s right,” Mom said. “Well, I ran into Steve at the reunion, and he was ... I know you won’t believe this, but Steve can be very charming.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Mom rubbed her bare ring finger and said, “Your dad and I, we were in a rough patch then, and I don’t know ...”

  “I’d rather not hear any more of this,” I said.

  “No, you need to hear this. Steve and I began talking on the phone two or three times a week, and when we were here visiting Grandmother last Christmas, I snuck out to see him a couple times. I told your dad I was leaving him in January, but he wanted to work things out. So I tried, I really did, but in June, he told me he’d started seeing his secretary, so I packed up our things and we left.”

  I stared at my mom for a full minute and finally said, “So Dad didn’t leave you for his secretary.”

  “No, your dad had an affair, but—”

  “But only because you told him you were leaving him for a redneck asshole. God, Mom, I’ve spent the last five months hating Dad, and he didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t even call him on his birthday because I thought he was the reason we ... but it was you ... he didn’t—”

  “Your dad’s not entirely innocent here, Marcus. I told you we were in a rough patch, and—”

  “And you thought hooking up with the biggest asshole in Alabama would somehow make things better?”

  “No, Marcus, I thought ... I thought that ...” Mom rubbed her eyes and said, “You never get over your high school love, Marcus. One day, you’ll understand.”

  I stood up and said, “Here’s what I understand. You’re a selfish woman, and you destroyed our family, and I will never believe another thing you say as long as I live.”

  “Marcus, wait,” Mom said as I stormed upstairs, but I didn’t stop.

  I didn’t speak to her again for ten years.

  Chapter Twenty-Four (2017)

 
; My mother died in her sleep two days after Rome defeated Gaul 28-27 to advance to the state championship game in Tuscaloosa. She took a turn for the worse on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving, and though we listened to the game together in her room that night, she slept through most of it.

  “Did we win?” she asked me Saturday morning, while I drank my morning coffee and read the Riverton Times in her room.

  “Yeah, Mom, we won,” I said, holding up the front-page photo of Kyler celebrating his game-winning touchdown pass. “We play Middlesboro next week in Tuscaloosa for the state championship.” She managed a smile before fading again.

  Becca stopped by around noon and talked me into going to the WigWam for lunch. I suspect Rita called her because she knew I was in for a long night and would need my sustenance. By evening, Mom’s breathing became shallow, and I sat next to her in bed, wiping the sweat from her head with a cool washcloth and singing songs from an old hymnal she kept on her nightstand. I dozed off sometime after midnight, holding my mother’s tiny hand. I was still holding it when she slipped away. Rita woke me up around four and told me she was gone.

  I squeezed my mother’s hand one last time then asked Rita, “What do I do now?”

  Rita hugged me and said, “You don’t have to do anything, Marcus. I’ll call the funeral home when you’re ready. They can be here in an hour.”

  “When I’m ready?”

  “I thought maybe you’d want to spend some time with your mother first.”

  I looked at my mother’s body then back at Rita and said, “Nope, I’m good.”

  Rita laughed through her tears and said, “Your mother told me you’d say that. She also made me promise I’d tell you to shave for her funeral or she’d come back as a ghost and shave you in your sleep.”