Red Shirt

by A. J. Stewart

  “I don’t know, but Dad wasn’t that interested anyway. You know what he’s like. He’s old school, conservative. He might have been aggressive on the gridiron, but with money, he’s risk averse.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . Brett tells Dad he gets all that, but this is a great deal, and he wants to pay Dad back for everything Dad did for him.”

  “Okay.”

  “He tells Dad that he can invest a small amount, nothing life changing, just to see that Brett knows what he’s doing.”

  “Sounds like a gateway drug.”

  “I wish you had been here,” Mrs. Dunbar said, eyes on the darkness of the backyard, but speaking directly to me. “You would have sniffed him out.”

  That didn’t make me feel good. I owed Coach Dunbar more than I could ever repay, and although he would never ask for any such repayment, it hurt to think I might have let him down simply by being absent.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t. What happened?”

  Kerry continued. “Dad wrote him a check for a few thousand. He came back about six months later with double the money.”

  “Double?”

  “Yes. Then he said he had this other thing, and Dad was hesitant again, but Brett said now Dad was playing with the house’s money. He said Dad couldn’t lose.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “Yes, oh boy. So a few months after that he comes back and tells Dad his money has doubled again. But this time he has a life changing proposition. Some major infrastructure project in Boston, a tunnel or something.”

  “A tunnel? Like the big dig?”

  “Something like that. He wasn’t that specific, was he Mom?”

  Mrs. Dunbar shook her head slowly.

  “So Dad figures that Brett’s looking after him, so he puts down his nest egg.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand, give or take.”

  “So what happened? With the tunnel or whatever it was?”

  “Mom? You tell him.”

  Mrs. Dunbar didn’t look at me, but she spoke.

  “It was dumb luck really. One of the parents of a student at the school organized a spa thing, down in Greenwich. You know, do your nails, get a massage, that sort of thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “We were there, sitting under the hair dryers like a bunch of silly old women, and we’re talking about the old students and where they are now, that sort of thing. One of the women mentions that a former student had approached her husband—who works for an investment bank or something like that—to invest in the deal he was putting together.”

  “Okay.”

  “So her husband asks around, does a little digging, and finds out that the guy isn’t in on the deal; that he’s selling, what did she call it? Vapor? Like he was selling nothing. I remember thinking, thank goodness we’re invested with someone we trust, and then one of the ladies asked the woman who the former student was and she said, Brett Pickering.”

  “Any chance there’s another Brett Pickering?”

  “She was pretty specific. The quarterback, Brett Pickering.”

  “So Mom called me,” said Kerry. “And we got in touch with his office. He stopped answering calls, never returned a single one. Someone at his office said everything was all good and Mom’s information must be bad.”

  “Well that’s something we need to confirm. How good is the information?”

  “It’s good. See, when Dad retired at the end of last school year his teacher pension kicked in. It’s modest but enough, but there was Paris.”

  “Paris?”

  “I always wanted to go to Paris,” Mrs. Dunbar said. “It was a foolish childhood dream. You probably don’t know this, but I was an art major in college. I wanted to visit all the museums, walk along the Seine. But we got married and Brian got into teaching and coaching. I worked at the store part time and, well, you figure maybe one day.”

  “Okay, but it doesn’t cost two hundred fifty thousand to fly to Paris, does it?”

  “Of course not,” said Mrs. Dunbar. “But that money was to last us the rest of our lives.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Brian never forgot. He said now that we were retired, we should do it. He said I deserved it, and it was why he had invested the money with Brett. So we could go to Paris, but not eat away at the nest egg.” She stopped talking and put her hand to her mouth. “It’s all my fault.”

  “Mom, don’t say that. It isn’t your fault. It’s no one’s fault.”

  “I’m getting the impression that it’s someone’s fault,” I said. “So what happened?”

  “Dad figured he’d go to Brett and get some of the money out. Maybe he figured it was like a bank, like you could take it out whenever you wanted. He didn’t call. He just turned up on Brett’s doorstep, and Brett gave him a whole load of reasons why he couldn’t get the money out yet—it was a big project, wait a little longer, the payoff will be worth it.”

  “And that’s not true?” I asked.

  “No,” said Mrs. Dunbar, turning to me. “Brian came home and told me what had happened, said Paris would have to wait a little while. I couldn’t keep it from him anymore. So I told him what I had heard at the spa.”

  “You hadn’t told him?”

  “Of course not. You know how proud he is, and he was very close to Brett. Together they got to the only state final that our little school ever made.”

  “I remember,” I said. “So you told him, and . . .”

  “He didn’t want to believe it. So I got the number of the woman who had told the story, and we contacted her husband, and we went and saw him. He was a nice man. He didn’t want to say too much, I guess there’s some code of ethics involved—”

  “Or he didn’t want to get sued,” said Kerry.

  “Maybe. But he said enough. He told us he knew Brett from his banking days, and he knew that Brett had arranged some Caribbean get-together for all these rich investors, but that in the end he had gotten no part of the project he claimed to be in on. Brian told the man he must have been mistaken and the man said that he was afraid it’s a small community, and he knew the people who were involved in the project. He guaranteed us that Brett wasn’t one of them. As we left he said he would deny ever saying so, but his information was that Brett was two steps from insolvency. He said we should try to get back whatever we could, as quickly as we could.”

  “But you couldn’t.”

  “Brett’s still not returning our calls.”

  “And when did you speak to this guy, this banker?”

  “Last week.”

  “Mom just told me what happened,” said Kerry. “The only thing I could think of was to call you. I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do. It’s their life savings.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” I said. “If I can help, I’ll help. First thing, Mrs. D, how are you for money?”

  “We’re fine.”

  “Don’t sugar coat it, Mrs. D. That’s a large chunk of change.”

  “We’re fine, honestly. We own our home, fully paid off, and Brian gets his pension, which has health cover. It’s not what it used to be, but nothing is. We might have to pull in our belts a little, maybe I’ll get some work back at the store, but we’ll be fine.”

  “All right. If you need anything, you let me know. I’m serious.”

  “Of course you are, dear.”

  “So what now?” asked Kerry.

  “Tomorrow I’ll do some digging, see what I can find out. But right now, I need to find a hotel.”

  “Pish posh,” said Mrs. Dunbar. “You’ll stay in your old room.”

  “You still have that?”

  “Of course. What else would we do with it?”

  Chapter Four

  Mrs. Dunbar returned inside and Kerry walked me over to the garage. The old door opened with a familiar creak and she flicked the switch at the base of the stairs, still bare boards.

  She opened the door to the room above the garage a
nd I waited for the deja vu to come, but it didn’t. It didn’t smell familiar at all. If I was pushed, I would have called the scent potpourri. But when she flicked on the light and I saw the room, it was like looking at a time capsule.

  It was as if I had died and my parents could not bring themselves to touch anything in my room, except that these weren’t my parents and this wasn’t technically my room. I had never officially moved in with the Dunbars. I just started spending more and more time there, until it reached a point where the vacant room above the garage became my sanctuary. The same old bed, which by senior year was no longer long enough for my body, sat under the sloping roofline, covered by a handmade quilt. Against the opposite wall there was a chest of drawers and a faded poster of Drew Bledsoe, quarterback for the New England Patriots, that Coach had put up as a surprise for me the year that Bledsoe went on to throw 13 touchdowns and 16 interceptions.

  Kerry walked into the room and leaned against the old desk that sat under the window overlooking the driveway. I dropped my overnight bag and sat on the bed with squeak.

  “Tell me about Coach,” I said.

  She stepped over and sat beside me on the bed.

  “It’s a bunch of things, you know? He was a coach and a teacher for his whole life. And not just his life in terms of tenure—it was his life. You know that. When he wasn’t running science fair, he was coaching football; and when he wasn’t doing that, he was drumming up donations so the volleyball team could go to regionals, or he was painting the bleachers or helping some kid after school with his homework so they could get their GPA up to get into college. But nothing prepared him for life after. There was no class, no course, no book he could read. Just one day he was a teacher and a coach, busy all hours, and then suddenly he’s retired and they throw him a party and then he’s left to sit at the dining table and listen to the clock tick. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He never wanted to be anything else, so he didn’t have any other plan.”

  “Why did he give Brett the money?”

  “Same reason. He trusted Brett, but it was more than that. I think it hurt his pride, that he had been the provider for so long and now he wasn’t. I mean, he earned the money, Mom and Dad both did, but now here he was, searching for purpose, and in his mind he’s thinking that throughout all these years, he’s been doing exactly what he wanted to do, but what about Mom? Like she said, she was an artist, she had dreams. I guess when they were younger they talked about that stuff.”

  “I can’t picture that.”

  “It’s hard, I know. But I think under his stoic exterior he knew that she had given up a lot to have this life, and maybe now it was time for payback. I think Brett came along at exactly the right time—or the wrong time, maybe. Dad’s thinking that Mom wants to go to Paris and do this and do that, and he wants to give it to her, and here’s Brett with this opportunity to set them up financially to be able to do it all.”

  “But what happened? I hardly recognized the guy at the dinner table, and it’s not just that he’s older. We’re all older, but it’s like, I don’t know.”

  “The fire’s gone out.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” I said.

  “That’s new. That’s what made me call you. I think once he could no longer deny that Brett had done him wrong, he gave up. One of his boys—his closest boys—did this to him. Took away the chance for him to give Mom something he thought she wanted so badly.”

  “Does she? Want it badly?”

  “She wants to go to Paris. Who wouldn’t? But she’s not crying herself to sleep about it. She’s crying herself to sleep about Dad.”

  I nodded but said nothing. I felt the hairs on my arms prick up as my mind flew back through the years, back to this room, to a boy crying himself to sleep in this very bed. I had thought at the time that my tears were for my mother, but I guess I knew all along that I couldn’t bring her back. She was dead and that was that. It was my dad that I was crying for—and selfishly, I thought, for myself.

  I knew then, I would fix it. They would get their money back, and Coach would find his fire and Mrs. D would get to go to Paris. Because if one of his boys could hurt him, then one of them could fix him. I’d take out a loan if I had to. I’d pay the money back myself, if it came to that. Because I had it all. Like Coach, I had a job that I loved—for reasons that often escaped me—and the best bunch of crazy misfit friends a guy could wish for. And like Coach, I had found a woman who was my superior in almost every way, but for some reason didn’t hold it against me, and who loved me unconditionally, and for whom I would do anything. Even fly her to Paris, if she wanted to go.

  I had all that because of the Dunbars. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts. It was more than the occasional bed for the night which became more or less permanent when my dad’s drinking got too much. It was more than the meals and the hugs and the love they showed me.

  Lenny Cox had lived his life by the idea of paying it forward. I was a poor imitation, but I tried to follow his lead. But sometimes you couldn’t pay it forward. Sometimes you had to pay it back.

  “Are you staying?” I asked Kerry.

  “Yes, I’ll leave first thing.”

  “You’re still in Hartford?”

  “Yes. Ray will get the girls to school but I want to be there to pick them. We’ll be back on the weekend. You’ll keep me posted?”

  “I will.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll do what I do best. I’ll stick my nose in where it isn’t wanted.”

  Chapter Five

  I woke the next morning with a hollow feeling inside. The sky was gray and looked like it held rain. There was an oil heater in the corner of the room that I had forgotten to switch on, so my feet were frozen. The bed hadn’t gotten any longer in my absence and my cold toes were hanging out the end. I dressed and wandered across to the house, the stiff grass crackling underfoot.

  It was completely different in the house. It was warm, for starters. The smell of bacon and coffee hung on the air. Mrs. Dunbar was in the kitchen, and I asked if I could help. She just pointed at the small table, so I sat and watched as she prepped eggs and bacon and the kind of white bread toast that earned a curious look from Danielle if I ever ordered it.

  Mrs. Dunbar placed a meal fit for a king and three of his closest friends before me, and I had half a mind to tell her that I no longer ate like a professional athlete, but it all smelled so good that I did the wise thing and kept my mouth shut.

  “Where’s Coach?” I asked as I sipped coffee.

  “Getting the paper.”

  “You don’t have it delivered anymore?”

  “I stopped it. It gets him out of the house, at least for a half hour.”

  “He needs a dog.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  She sat at the table across from me with a small mug of coffee. Mrs. D was an old school, stiff upper lip type of woman. She always made the best of every situation, and it never occurred to me that she might be less than happy. In hindsight, I supposed that was part of the job of being a parent, as she saw it. I couldn’t be sure either way, but as I watched her sipping her coffee I could see a weight was bearing down on her, writ across her face.

  “How bad is it, really?” I asked her.

  For a moment the troubled look was gone, as if she now realized I was watching her, and her public face resumed with a forced grin.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Like I said last night, Brian gets a pension, so we’re okay.”

  “But no travel? No Paris.”

  “I think Brian wants that more than me.”

  “Really? He never struck me as the Paris type.”

  “He’s not. But he’s got it in his head that I have always wanted to do that.”

  “And you don’t.”

  “Honestly? I don’t care.”

  “Mrs. D, I don’t think you’re being completely honest.”
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  She cocked an eyebrow. “You think I’m lying to you?”

  “No. I think you might be lying to yourself.”

  “That’s what we do, isn’t it?”

  “Sometimes to our detriment.”

  “When did you become such a wise old soul?”

  “I’m not. I just know a few people who are.”

  “Honestly? Sure I wanted to see Europe, travel a bit in our golden years. But it isn’t the end of the earth. I haven’t lived a horrible life waiting for this great retirement to kick in. I’ve loved my life. It isn’t quite what I thought it would be, but whose is?”

  I shrugged. Certainly not mine.

  “What I really want is my husband back. The one real sacrifice I made all these years was giving up time with him. And now that we have the time, he’s drawn inside. I know him; I know what he’s thinking. He thinks he’s let me down, that somehow he lived his dream but I didn’t live mine, and now he’s messed up my chance. What he doesn’t get is that my dream was to live a long and fruitful life with him.”

  She sipped her coffee and then put the mug down and smudged at an imaginary blemish in the formica table top.

  “I don’t really care so much about the money,” she said. “I care about what it has done to him.”

  “And you think getting it back will fix him?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. Because it’s not just the money. It’s the fact that one of his favorite sons did this to him. I think it’s the betrayal that cuts him.”

  I nodded. I could see that. Coach Dunbar was a stoic man, but he was a proud man, too. At the time I thought he was driven by the idea of winning, the notion that turning students into winners was an end in itself. But with the passing of water under the bridge, I saw it differently. I realized that what drove him was not just the winning, but that his players would learn what that winning entailed: the hard work, the sacrifice. Perhaps in us he saw himself and the lessons he didn’t learn, and he found his purpose in helping young men and women learn how to be successful people. But what he was learning now was that successful people aren’t always good, and despite all his teachings, maybe that was out of his control.