The Off Season

by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

  "D.J.! You think I don't feel bad about what happened tonight? You didn't even warn me you were coming by!"

  "Yeah, it's my fault I don't warn you whenever I appear in public."

  "That wasn't public—don't do this. We have a complicated relationship, okay? It's not normal."

  "I'm not normal?"

  "That's not what I said! And by the way, you're not. Normal means average. Average girls aren't six feet tall, and they don't play football or run dairy farms, and they date..."

  "Who do they date?" I needed to hear this, what he said.

  Brian sighed. "I did not want to be attracted to you. Don't you understand? It was not something I did on purpose, it was something I fought. Because I knew how hard it would be."

  "More than hard, it sounds like," I said. "I guess I'm just too big for you."

  "Jeez, D.J. I feel so bad right now—"

  "Yeah, well, go tell your friends." Then I hung up.

  All this time I'd thought Brian was brave because he could talk about really painful subjects. Like just now when he said how bad he felt—that's something Schwenks suck at, discussing feelings. I'd thought how great he was too. But a guy who's really great would have friends who are great as well. Not friends who make fun of me and badmouth me all the time. And if friends did do that, a guy who was really brave would be able to make them stop. And invite me over to his house, and to the movies, and say hello when he saw me on the street even if that street was Hawley High School.

  Brian wasn't brave. Talk is easy, compared to action. Brian was a coward. And worse than that, he wasn't my friend. This whole time he'd been using me, like a guy uses a girl for fooling around but in a different way. A worse way, even. He was pretending we were really close, that we were girlfriend and boyfriend even, but only on our farm and at the Mall of America where it didn't matter. Where he wouldn't upset his real friends. And that's why finding a town full of strangers to live in wouldn't work out ever. Because he'd always be looking over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't going to get caught with his embarrassing pretend pal, D.J.

  22. Rehab

  DAD AND BILL WERE INTO THEIR FIFTH BEERS, it looked like, when I got to the apartment, and Mom was asleep on the floor with a couple pill bottles beside her. I popped myself a beer, which is pretty unusual for me but what the hey, and slumped at the table next to Dad. Bill was turning the beer can in his hand like he'd been doing it for hours without even noticing. Dad didn't react to any of this. He just sat there, looking so much like Grandpa Warren. So old. "Jesus. What are we gonna do?" he sighed.

  Which sort of put a damper in my plans to announce that Brian and I had broken up. It's not like I much wanted to say it anyway, seeing as I'd never even really discussed the fact we were going out, but I'd figured I could at least be brave enough to speak the words. Now, though, I didn't think another dose of bad news would be too helpful. So instead we sat together and finished our beers without saying anything, which I think is the conversation we needed most.

  Bill and I saw Mom and Dad off the next morning, helping Mom into the back of the Caravan and me telling her over and over again—lying over and over again—that it was absolutely okay for her to be going home, and that I really wanted to be here, and that she needed to heal so that she could help Win later. Between all the stress of Win's injury plus trying to lift him, she'd brought the slipped disk right back, and now she was at square one again. She was pretty doped up on pain pills, which was good because that ride home was going to be a monster, but still she tried to give me all these instructions on taking care of Win, to keep telling him we loved him. Her clothes hung on her so much that I was afraid her pants were going to slip right off, and then I realized it was because she'd lost so much weight.

  "Keep feeding her, Dad," I said as they left, which is something I never thought I'd say to my father. I didn't bother asking how long I'd be staying because I had a feeling it was going to be something like "As long as it takes," only no one knew what "it" was and no one wanted to talk about it. Then I waved at them, faking a smile, and watched them drive away. Just like Dale and Amber had driven off, only they were going in the opposite direction. And I walked into the hospital next to Bill, who was so hunched over that he looked as shriveled as Mom. He didn't even get checked out by the nurses, that's how bad it was. They just looked bummed out too.

  The next couple days, oh boy. Win wasn't cooperating at all. He wouldn't even answer the PTs when they asked if he felt dizzy. One big thing with SCI is blood pressure, and when patients first sit up—which makes anyone dizzy if you do it too fast, even regular people—they have to be really careful. They might only sit up halfway, or one fifth, even, until everything gets stabilized a bit. It might take a couple days of practice just to get all the way up.

  The PTs said that as soon as he could sit up, we'd all get to practice moving him into a wheelchair so he could go down to the cafeteria to eat. They're really caught up in having everyone eat together so patients can get to know one another, and staff too, and families. I couldn't help but think that hell would freeze over solid before Win sat at a table chatting it up, and then once I saw the cafeteria, I got even more worried.

  The room itself was really nice, with photos on the walls of all sorts of patients who were now Successful at Life. And it had the counters of food and trays and stuff just like any cafeteria space. only all the shelves and doors were built with wheelchairs in mind, and the tables had very few chairs because, duh, most of the people arrived with their own. Some of the tables were extra high for the patients in power wheelchairs because those seats are higher than normal, and the regular walking people sat at those tables like they were kindergarten-size or something, the table up around their armpits. The silverware holders had forks and spoons with extra-long handles so patients whose hands didn't work so well could still feed themselves, and a lot of the plates and bowls had suction cup bottoms so those patients wouldn't knock them off their trays as they ate. Some of the patients were eating with spoons strapped to their arms, and others who couldn't move at all, the complete quads, were being spoon-fed by aides or by their family members sometimes, their caregivers.

  All of a sudden I almost lost it, realizing this was Win's future, and I had to drop my head down and squeeze my eyes shut tight, and hope with all my heart that my tears wouldn't ooze through anyway and drop with a splat on the floor.

  "It's really hard, coming here for the first time," said Maryann, the PT who was showing me around. "Some people just fall apart." She waited a minute, then she added, "They've got some really good vegetarian chili today. Are you a vegetarian?"

  Now, I don't know if she asked that because she was sincerely curious or because she was just trying to change the subject—which shows how nice she is—but even in all my misery I couldn't help but snort because the thought of me being a vegetarian is right up there with the thought of me becoming president of the United States. "Do they have any real food?" I asked. And then remembering my manners I added, "I mean, not that there's anything wrong with being a vegetarian. I mean, it's okay to be one—if, you know, you are already."

  She laughed. "Only with chili."

  After we got our food, she sat with me at a table with an L3. I was really glad that he was lumbar and not cervical because if I'd had to watch him struggle away with one of those spoon tools, I would have lost it for real. He and Maryann didn't talk to me too much—I guess they could tell I was on the far side of fragile—they just chatted about PT and wheelchairs, this new model he was thinking of getting, while I worked through my vegetarian chili and tried my hardest not to cry.

  Bill and I would sit with Win, hours passing without us saying a word, or Bill would spell me. I took mornings and nights, and he was there in the middle of the day because he's stronger and could help more with the transferring. So I'd have long, long stretches pretty much alone, with so many thoughts inside my head that I worried sometimes my skull would just explode right off my neck,
like a balloon pumped with too much air. Especially when I thought about Brian.

  I couldn't believe that Brian and I were ... I didn't know what we were, actually. It was more than a breakup, because our friendship was over as well. Our so-called friendship. I didn't want to be friends with him, not for a long while anyway. Because even if he promised he'd change, and promised to defend me to all his friends or take me to the movies or whatever, I wouldn't trust him. Because being embarrassed about someone isn't something you can change, any more than you can change being spooked about needles. Only it was a lot harder to be sympathetic about Brian than it was Dad.

  I guess you could say my feelings were hurt.

  And Brian didn't call again. I don't know if that makes him brave or wimpy—I still haven't figured that one out—but I was glad. Well, actually I was horribly miserable and spent hours on end wishing I could talk to him. But it was better that he didn't call. No matter what my brain was wishing, I still needed time to figure this stuff out.

  Plus now that I was stuck in Minnesota taking care of Win, my life—the life I'd just left behind in Red Bend, for who knows how long—didn't look so bad, even without Brian being part of it. If I was at home, I could be going to school and actually getting help with all my assignments instead of being stuck with a huge pile of books and head-scratching homework that Mom had asked all the teachers to send me, each of them giving me their home phone number like the one thing I wanted to do most in the world was call my Spanish teacher about all the vocabulary words I'd missed, or my world history teacher about China. Every night I'd bring a pile of books and papers to the hospital and sit there straining my brain over math or whatever, sometimes with Win facing me if he'd been rolled on his side, a pillow between his knees to prevent bedsores, but he never once asked me to lob him some algebra problems just to pass the time.

  If I was at home, though, maybe Curtis could help me with algebra, he's so smart, and I could cheer him up about the science fair, help him be less intimidated by the kind of kids who wouldn't know a science fair if it bit them on the butt.

  If I was at home, I could be getting ready for basketball. That time I'd spent shooting baskets in our driveway, right before Curtis had ended my big forty-five minute day of rest, had been quite a wake-up call, actually. Kind of like when I decided to play football last summer only I've played b-ball my whole life. If I were on the team, scouts would see me, and maybe I'd end up with a scholarship and that college degree everyone thinks is so important. But now, though, that was impossible. No high school, no basketball season, no scholarship, no college, no future.

  And I'd think about Amber, who was in St. Paul right now working with Dale. She kept asking how she could help but she couldn't do a darn thing. Heck, she couldn't even help out with Mom's slipped disk because she'd run away from Red Bend just because her moron mother got mad at her and some kids at school said things that someone as tough as Amber should be able to handle. But no, she took the easy route and split, her so-called grown-up girlfriend not even stopping her because all she worried about were stupid things like jobs and diplomas, when they both could have worried for maybe two seconds about, well, about me.

  Then Amber called to say they were moving to Chicago, and could they stop by to say goodbye.

  23. Why the Packers Might Not Totally Suck

  THE THREE OF US went for lunch in the hospital cafeteria. I'd asked Bill if he wanted to come down—hoping he wouldn't but you still have to ask. He said no. I guess seeing other people's friends would have been too depressing, not to mention the cafeteria itself.

  I was pretty used to it by now seeing as I ate at least one meal a day there, even if it was only sandwiches I'd made in our little apartment, or a bowl of cereal. Dale and Amber were pretty blown away by it, though. The place was full of all sorts of wheelchair folks, from the man on the ventilator being spoon-fed by his wife, it looked like, to a couple of muscle guys in pro jerseys who looked like they'd just come off the basketball court, one of them even with a b-ball in a special bag on the back of his chair.

  Amber and Dale's eyes got awfully wide, taking it in. Dale looked at me with so much honest concern that tears started prickling my head.

  "So ... you in school yet?" I asked Amber.

  Which got Amber going because she was even less interested in my crying than I was, which I appreciated, describing this beauty school in Chicago she hoped to get into, which led to a couple funny stories about her hair disasters, most of them on me, that got us all laughing, and got my mind for one minute off our family's problems.

  "How's that man of yours?" Dale asked, grinning at me.

  I shrugged. "We—I don't know—we broke up."

  Amber tried to look sympathetic.

  "That stinks," Dale sighed. "He seemed like a nice guy."

  "Yeah, he was. He still is, I'm sure."

  "Not much of a boat rocker though, is he?" And from the way Dale smiled at me, I knew she understood everything that had happened.

  "Yeah, but he was pretty cute," Amber said. Which was nice, her endorsing Brian like that.

  It felt so good to be having this conversation, just like when we were all sitting in Dale's camper outside McDonald's. Girl talk. Which I wouldn't be able to have ever again, now that they were taking off.

  All of a sudden, these words popped out of my mouth: "Please don't go. Come back to Red Bend. I need you there."

  "Well, I can't." Amber scowled down at her tray. "And you know why."

  "You can't control what people say about you, you know," Dale said. Which kind of drove home that she wasn't all that unfamiliar with people's stares and nasty whispers.

  Amber gathered up her tray. "But I can blow them off. Come on, we got a lot of driving to do."

  I walked them out to the camper. I thought about tossing out a Bob the duck line, something like, "Hey baby, can you take me south with you?" But it would have been far too depressing, on every level I could think of. Instead I just waved goodbye to them, and almost started bawling as they drove away from everything I couldn't leave, and from the most honest and heartfelt request I've ever made of Amber. If I ever made it back to Red Bend, it would suck ten times more with them gone. Even if Amber didn't play basketball, it still would have been nice to have her around. And maybe I could have talked her into playing somehow, the team really needed her...

  I know I sound pretty selfish—not just my complaining, but also that I'm not really describing Win and what he was going through, which was a heck of a lot more than I was. But you know, there wasn't much to say. He wasn't improving, he was barely talking, and he still wasn't interested in telling the doctors or Bill or me what sort of pinpricks or dizziness he could feel, or in trying to move, or in talking to the psychia-lady—only here it was a psychia-man—about his emotions, or in anything. He just lay there staring at the ceiling, or at the wall if he was rolled that way. And late at night he cried. Which I still helped him with, that one little bit I could do.

  Going back up to the room, I remembered one time that Win got punished for something, probably not doing a job exactly how Dad wanted, and when Mom sat down next to him on the couch, he turned his back on her. And she said—because she's a mom and not a normal person who'd call him a jerk—she said he was trying to push her away but she wouldn't let him. And in the end, because she's a mom, he didn't.

  Win was doing the same thing now, trying to push us away so he could be miserable all by himself. And I guess it worked with Mom, at least in the sense that her back went out so she couldn't hang around telling him she loved him. And guess what? It was going to work with me too. Because if Win was that unhappy, that absolutely miserable, well, I wasn't sure anyone could change him.

  When I got up to our floor, a guy in a Packers jacket was in the hall talking to Bill. Which is odd because this is Minnesota—Vikings country—and a Green Bay fan walking around like that is just inviting attention. Which is why I don't wear my Vikings jersey in Red Bend except w
ith my Vikings-fans family, and pretty much the only good thing about this hospital was that I now could wear that jersey in public.

  The Packers guy, though, looked like he didn't care that most people on the floor would cheer if his team lost. He was a big guy, with a gut like old football players get, and he kept looking at Win's door and nodding as he and Bill talked.

  Bill waved me over, looking happier than I'd seen him in weeks, and tossed one of his big arms around my shoulders to introduce me. "This is our sister, D.J."

  The guy shook my hand and said he was an old friend of Charlie Wright's, and an offensive coordinator with the Packers.

  "Oh," I said. I'd never shaken hands with a pro coach before.

  "You let your brother know we're serious, okay? Charlie can't say enough about him, and us getting a go-getter like that—I know he'd be a real asset."

  "What—you ... you offered him a job?"

  "It's just an assistant's position with the conditioning team. But we'd sure like to have him." The guy handed a card to Bill. "That's my cell number on the back. We're in town for the weekend."

  "But—" I said the first, stupidest thing that came to mind. "But we're Vikings fans."

  Bill cracked up. The guy too. "There are worse crimes," he said. "Enjoy the game tomorrow." He grinned at us as he got on the elevator.

  Bill stood there holding that card like it was a baby. "Well, shoot. What do you think of that?"

  "What's Win say about it?" I asked.

  "Dunno. I came back from talking to Mom and that guy was just walking out."

  So the two of us scooted over to Win's room, knowing already this would make the difference.

  Only it didn't.

  "Get out!" Win snarled as soon as he heard us. He could barely talk, he was so angry. Tears ran down his face. "Disappear! I don't want to see you! Don't you get it?"