by Tess Oliver
I dropped my gaze and stared down at the tan carpet below my feet.
She pulled the clipboard back to her side of the desk. While I hadn’t looked at her yet, I knew she was watching me.
“Not everyone has that level of moral reasoning, Tommy. Empathy isn’t intrinsic in everyone. But I saw it in you yesterday. That exterior doesn’t match what’s on the inside at all.”
“That’s because it was Sugar.”
“I know how you feel about Sugar. But it doesn’t make it any less significant. Give yourself some credit for being human, all right?” She sipped some of her orange juice and lowered the glass down. “Some people end up in rehab for one simple reason, they are unhappy. Their lives are a disappointment, or they suffer from clinical depression. For other people, there is something, some event in their life that triggers a need to find comfort in drugs and alcohol.”
“So, you’re looking for my trigger?”
She shrugged. She was wearing a right and proper blouse to go with her long row of earrings. “I don’t know. Do you have one?”
“Think my whole life has been a long series of triggers.”
She opened up the manila folder that apparently had my whole life spelled out on green-lined paper. “You played football in school, right?”
I stared at her. She was digging again. Yeah, she was paid to do it, but it still didn’t make it any easier for me to accept. “I did.”
“From what your dad said, you were really good too. A quarterback with big potential.”
“I guess. Hurt my knee, and it took me out of the game for awhile.”
“You decided not to go back?”
I glanced around her office. She had her diplomas hanging on the wall in thin gold frames and there was a painting of a farmhouse. My mind drifted back to the dining room and sitting with Sugar.
“Tommy?” Kirkendall said.
“I went back for awhile. I just wasn’t that into it. My dad was the one who wanted me to stay, but I didn’t really like the coach. Then I broke my leg. That put an end to football for good.”
She took another sip of juice and rested a forearm on her desk. “I’ll bet the coach was disappointed he’d lost his star quarterback.”
I got up and walked over to the painting. A rooster was strutting around the yard. “Do you think it would be a lot of work to run a farm?”
“I imagine it is, but, Tommy, please focus. How did your coach feel about you leaving the team?”
In the reflection on the glass, I could see her sitting in her chair, watching me. “Pissed, I guess. He liked to call me his sophomore prize, his gift from the football gods. I was the first sophomore to make varsity in ten years.”
“Wow, that’s high praise from a football coach. They aren’t usually that poetic.”
I sat back down. “Yeah, Coach Higgins was a fucking poet. This football topic is boring the hell out of me.”
“If you don’t mind me mentioning it, you seem more irritated than bored.” She smiled. “Like someone is rubbing sandpaper along your skin as you’re talking about it.”
“Interesting analogy.” I leaned back in the chair. “I guess that’s what it feels like.”
She flipped through the folder. “Let’s switch topics. Tell me about the accident where you broke your leg.”
“Wow, another fun topic.” I inadvertently rubbed my leg, something I did whenever I thought about it. It still pained me when the weather was cold or when I’d done some strenuous exercise. “Not much to tell. I was riding my dirt bike, having a good time, as always. You can really lose yourself when you’re flying on one of those bikes, you know? I took off and knew before I even hit that I was going down. Blacked out. When I woke there were a lot of strange faces peering down at me with tight mouths and creased brows. The pain was so fucking bad, I couldn’t actually pinpoint where it was coming from.” I looked back at the farm picture. Sugar was right. It would be cool. “I knew it had to be bad because the red lights of the ambulance were getting closer. I remember moving my toes because liquid was sloshing around in my riding boot. Then I felt something hard like a tree branch sticking into my leg and I thought, shit, I landed on a tree. Turned out to be the femur jutting through my skin.”
“Christ.” She sat back looking a few shades whiter and possibly regretting that she’d dug into this topic. “I guess anyone could forgive you for getting hooked on painkillers.”
“Forgive? Nah. My dad thought I was weak for needing them for so long.”
“They are highly addictive, Tommy. You have nothing to reproach yourself for there.”
“I don’t know about that, but they sure helped me get through it. The physical therapy was pure torture, but they got me walking again.”
“I occasionally catch a slight limp, but I have to say you’ve mended well. Compound fracture of the femur is a horrid injury.” She finished the juice and stared at the empty glass. “I’m not big on eating oranges, too much work, but I love the juice.” She put the glass down. “Tommy, tell me about the boy on your team, Alex Yardley.”
I stared at her across the desk. “Shit, my dad really didn’t leave out any details, did he?”
“Actually, he left out a lot.” She closed up the folder, and I wished it meant that we were done. “I was hoping you’d fill in some holes.”
“I beat the shit out of the guy. What’s there to say?”
“You were in the locker room at school, right? Did this fight happen before the broken leg?”
“Yeah, it was after practice. I was training after my knee injury, training reluctantly. My dad had basically told me I had to play again or he was shipping me off to some quasi-military school. It was one of those ‘tough love’ schools to straighten me out. My dad was good at one-sided negotiations. I guess that is why he’s so successful. Give your opponent options, just make sure the options suck.”
“You consider your dad an opponent?”
I sighed. “Look, I know you’re always looking for that magic ticket to treatment town and I know you think it’s my dad. Yeah, we had a pretty contentious relationship. He was pissed because he couldn’t control me like he had everything else in his life, and I was pissed that nothing I ever did was good enough. I was a shitty student, mostly because school bored me, and bad grades kept me out of the one thing I was good at, sports.”
“But you played football.”
“Yep. Sometimes, if you’re talented enough, grades can be overlooked or changed.”
“So, because of your abilities on the field, you passed all your classes?”
“C’mon, you know this happens all the time. Lots of shit gets overlooked when you’re the star quarterback.”
She stared down at my folder. “Like beating another kid to a pulp?”
Kirkendall was fueled with ammo today. It was as if she’d decided just to light all the fucking fuses at once and see which stick of dynamite went off first.
“Alex Yardley was a senior who outweighed me by fifty pounds. I was just barely sixteen. I’d basically screwed him out of his position on the team by being better, a lot better. The guy hated me, and I hated him. He knew I had a stutter, and he made a point of calling me T-T-Tommy. I ignored him most of the time but, you know, if you let things stew long enough, shit boils over. We were in the locker room. Coach Higgins was in his office. Alex started telling me that the only reason I was playing first string was because my dad had bought me the position.”
Kirkendall’s eyes widened. “Was that true?”
I shook my head. “Nah, Alex just wanted it to be true.”
“Of course, you have to understand where the guy was coming from. Someone much younger had outplayed him. That had to be a hit to his ego and being an athlete—”
“What are you trying to say, Doc? That we j
ocks have monstrous egos?” I laughed.
She smiled and shrugged. “Finish the story. So, you were in the locker room—”
“I was just getting dressed and he walked over from his locker and shoved me real hard. I smacked into the locker and that was it. I turned around and just started pounding him.” The words came out smoothly, as if I’d practiced this version in my head.
“And the coach?”
Another fuse. “What about him?”
“You said he was in his office.”
“I know he was there. He had this annoying habit of snapping the gum in his mouth. Always had a mouthful of it and he would chew it like a fucking cow with cud. He’d snap it over and over like some stupid kid.”
“He didn’t intervene?” she asked.
I looked over at the farm picture again and wondered what Sugar was up to and what Kirkendall and Julian had been talking about that had made him leave looking like a man turned to stone.
“Tommy?” she asked, bringing me back to the discussion.
“I t-t-told you,” the stutter made the chill in my tone seem almost laughable, “I was his sophomore prize. His gift from the fucking football gods.”
She knew the nerve had been struck. This session was over. The office walls were closing in on me, and I needed a smoke. Kirkendall stared at me across the desk for a second. “I think we got a lot done today, Tommy. You can go.”
Chapter 10
Sugar’s long legs caught my attention, as they usually did. She was wearing jean cut offs that were so frayed, tufts of white thread dangled sensually around the tops of her thighs. She was leaned over a helium tank blowing up a red balloon. I stood behind her for a second, taking advantage of the view, until she sensed me there. She tied a knot in the balloon.
“Working on a new profession for when you break out of this place?” I asked.
She smiled. “Nope, they’re actually part of my escape plan. I’m not going to break out. I’m just going to float out under a cluster of helium balloons.”
Sugar was one of the few girls I knew who could match my sarcasm with her own.
She picked up a blue balloon and yanked the end over the spout. “Nurse Greene was given the task of filling hundreds of balloons for visitor’s day, and she was really stressing about getting it done along with her regular work.”
“Let me guess. You volunteered to help her.”
She turned the nozzle and the balloon inflated. “With the stipulation that I don’t inhale the helium.”
“Damn, there go my plans for a helium high.” I walked over to the counter. “Where is Nurse Greene?”
“At lunch, I think.”
I picked up a bunch of balloons from the pile on the counter. “This is a lot of friggin’ balloons.” I glanced through the front doors. The sun was blaring outside and heat was rolling up off the white cement paths. I grabbed a handful of balloons. “Follow me.”
“Tommy, I need those. Where are you going?” She followed as I headed outside and toward the garden.
There was a half decent sound system on the covered patio that was only turned on for special outdoor events. I walked over and turned on the radio, found a decent station and cranked it. I figured it would take people on the inside awhile to figure out that I’d switched it on. The music rolled across the neatly mowed grass and grounds.
I clutched the balloons in my fist and strolled across to the garden. I picked up the hose and pulled a balloon over the end. I filled it with water. Sugar grinned. She reached back and tied her hair up in a loose bun. She tied the balloons off as I filled them. Fifteen minutes later, we had a stockpile of colorful water balloons and a crowd gathered across the front window to watch. Nurse Greene must have still been eating lunch because she hadn’t come out to turn down the music. ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ blasted across the grounds.
“Hey, Sugar, I dropped a balloon on the way over here. Could you go get it?”
My beautiful accomplice spun around and walked across the lawn to the lone yellow balloon. She bent over to pick it up. As she turned back around I heaved a water balloon at her. It broke on her shoulder. Water dripped down her white t-shirt.
“Why, look at that,” I said. “You’re wearing a pink bra under that shirt.”
She looked down at her wet t-shirt and laughed. Then she lifted her blue smiling gaze to me and raced toward the pile of water balloons. She plucked up several and ran after me. One hit my hand and the other missed and bounced past me. It didn’t break, so I plucked it up like a football and heaved it at her. She screamed with laughter as it broke on her hip.
The first brave person out the door was Harold. I could have guessed he’d be the first out. But Jayleen and Mandy weren’t far behind. Everyone armed themselves and found strategic locations to stand where they could duck out of the way of flying balloons and still peg an opponent. Minutes later, Pete, Lawson and another ward assistant had joined us. Colorful water bombs were arcing through the air and being lobbed from behind benches and trees. At one point, Pete and I teamed together to corner Lawson. Then we both pelted him good. I high-fived Pete and, wearing a rare grin, he nodded to me. Residents who I barely ever saw, who kept mostly to their rooms, came out of hibernation. Music thrummed across the yard and mixed with the wild bouts of laughter and the splats of breaking balloons.
Nurse Greene walked out and put her hands on her hips. “What the heck is going on?” We ignored her and continued with the water balloon fight. The sun was hot, but most everyone was soaked, making it, suddenly, not so unbearable. Greene marched out on her petite little nurse shoes, dropped the shoes next to the pile of balloons and picked up a water bomb. She looked straight at me. I ran. At the ball game, she’d proven to have a damn good arm. She raced after me on bare feet. I’d managed to stay completely out of the way of any balloons. I ran a fast weaving pattern across the grass and then turned around to taunt her. She hurled the balloon at me and I ducked. It flew over my head. I heard it splat behind me. Nurse Greene’s eyes went wide, and everyone stopped. I turned around. Dr. Kirkendall was standing behind me. One side of her blouse was soaking wet. She blinked at me.
“You were looking for a way to get everyone outside,” I said.
She nodded and twisted her bottom lip as if she was trying to figure out what to do next. Then she slipped off her shoes and leaned down to pick them up. “You are going down, Tommy Jameson.” She glanced around at everyone else who still held their balloons waiting to see if the fun was over. “Look at all of you,” she said. “You’re all soaking wet. Anyone else notice that Tommy is completely dry?”
Sugar was standing nearby, drenched from head to toe. She tossed a balloon back and forth in her hands. “Now that you mention it.”
There was a mass migration to the ammo pile. Seconds later, I was running across the grass dodging balloons. A twinge of pain shot through my bad leg, but no one could catch me. I still had it, that speed and agility that’d made me skilled on the football field. I circled around the yard with a parade of residents and staff dripping and laughing and yelling maneuvers to each other.
“We’ve got to corner him,” Kirkendall yelled.
I ran for the giant mulberry. Its trunk was wide enough to duck behind, while I caught my breath. I slid behind it and poked my head around the trunk. They were all descending upon me with colorful ammo and determined expressions. I glanced back toward the building. It was my only chance.
“Suckers!” I yelled at them, and was just about to make a dash for the building when a water balloon dropped directly on my head. Everyone laughed. Water dripped down my face and hair. I peered up at the branches above.
Julian was sitting on one of the thick branches, a hint of a smile on his face.
“Dude, you’re supposed to have my back,” I said.
“I’ve got it,
Tommy. But that was just too tempting.”
I was pelted with water balloons from every direction. Smacking me with the balloons seemed to make everyone’s smiles widen even more.
We spent the next thirty minutes picking up the broken balloon pieces. No one turned down the music, and the laughter lasted way past the clean-up. Kirkendall walked up next to me.
“I can see why you were a star quarterback. You are fast. Thank you for that, Tommy.”
“Sometimes the best therapy is just doing the stuff that makes you smile, the stuff that reminds you why it’s good to be alive.”
She stopped. Her proper white blouse, which was no doubt dry clean only, was soaking wet and her expensive shoes were clutched in her hands along with the collected balloon pieces. “Maybe you should sit on the other side of my desk next time.”
“Nah, that’s all right. But next time you need an idea to get everyone outside, let me know.”
Chapter 11
While we’d shrunk the balloon supply some, there were still plenty of them hovering in clusters around the yard and in the dining hall, where a spread of food and cakes had been set up. Some of the residents seemed pleased to have visitors, and others, like Sugar, seemed uptight about it. She’d taken her mom outside to sit on the benches and eat their plates of food. Her mom was, like Sugar had mentioned, pretty. But she didn’t have that same quality that Sugar had. No doubt the woman could turn heads in a crowded room, but Sugar could turn heads and stop conversations.
Julian and I were about the only two people who had no visitors. He had taken a small plate to his room, letting me know with just a shake of his head that he didn’t really feel like company. I’d seen his father twice. He had enough clout to visit whenever he pleased, and he’d shown up two times since I’d been at Green Willow. His father looked all business, not a humorous or charming bone in his body. The kind of man who would consider laughter and fun a complete waste of time. Not the type of guy you would ever sit down and just have a beer and chat with. He was thin and fastidiously dressed, not a hair out of place. Both times, I remembered watching Julian with his dad, thinking they looked like two complete strangers together, awkward and uncomfortable, as if they’d just been introduced as father and son.